page_title: Palmer Park (Detroit)
section_title: Merrill Humane Fountain
hierarchical_section_title: Palmer Park (Detroit) / Merrill Humane Fountain
caption_attribution_description: English: Merrill Humane Fountain, in front of the old Detroit Opera House. Between 1901 and 1906 in Detroit, Michigan.
context_page_description: Palmer Park is a 296-acre public park next to Detroit, Michigan's Palmer Park Apartment Building Historic District. It is named for U.S. Senator Thomas Witherell Palmer, who initially created the park when he donated 140-acre for a city park in 1893 on the condition that the virgin forest be preserved. The park includes a historic log cabin, a public golf course, tennis courts, hiking and biking trails and a large pond known as Lake Frances.
context_section_description: The Merrill Fountain was designed by the architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings and originally stood in front of the old Detroit Opera House in Campus Martius Park. Built in 1904 at a cost of US$1,000,000 (equivalent to $28,455,556 in 2019), it was named for Charles Merrill and dedicated by his daughter, Elizabeth Palmer. As automobile traffic increased in downtown Detroit, the city’s elders decided to move the fountain to the Merrill Plaissance, at the far southern boundary of Palmer Park, in 1926. The fountain functioned for one season in the park and then pipes broke. It has been dry for over 50 years and suffered from theft of pieces and destruction by vandals.
  The fountain is a white marble structure in the Italian Renaissance style. In the forefront is a circular pool leading up one level to another pool which is clover-shaped with three marble blocks in the center, each with a water spout. At the top of the fountain is an arch carved into cattails and water lilies over a niche containing a marble turtle straddled by two stylized fish. From the mouths of the figures water spouts lead to a vase-like pool beneath. Three steps lead from the clover-shaped pool to a balustrade on either side of the arch. The balusters are decorated with glyphs, four lion heads, and two gargoyles at the huge end posts; all of which spout water into the clover-shaped pool. Two scrolls dip from each post to the wall which surrounds the lower circular pool. Another small pool lies behind the arch and two small fountains hang off each end post of the balustrade.
caption: Merrill Humane Fountain, in front of the old Detroit Opera House
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