page_title: Burnside Fountain
section_title: "Turtle Boy"
hierarchical_section_title: Burnside Fountain / "Turtle Boy"
caption_attribution_description: English: The Burnside Fountain aka Turtleboy with scarf. Worcester City Hall and Common, Worcester, MA.
context_page_description: The Burnside Fountain is a non-functioning drinking fountain at the southeast corner of Worcester Common in Worcester, Massachusetts. It consists of two parts, a pink granite basin, and a bronze statue of a young boy riding a sea turtle. The basin was designed by architect Henry Bacon, who later designed the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the figure was created by sculptor Charles Y. Harvey. Harvey committed suicide before finishing the sculpture, and Sherry Fry completed the bronze. The Burnside Fountain was commissioned in 1905 by the city of Worcester after Harriet F. Burnside bequeathed US $5,000 to create a fountain to provide fresh water for people, horses and dogs, in the memory of her father, a prominent lawyer. The fountain was installed in 1912 in Central Square, then moved in 1969 to its current location on Worcester Common. In 1970 the statue was stolen, and was re-installed two years later. An attempted theft occurred in 2004.
  The bronze is officially named Boy with a Turtle but is known to locals as Turtle Boy. Turtle Boy has become an unofficial mascot for Worcester, much in the same way the Manneken Pis is for Brussels.
context_section_description: The statue that sits atop the Burnside Fountain is now commonly referred to as Turtle Boy. In the tradition of the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Turtle Boy has become an unofficial mascot for Worcester. Much of the local popularity of the statue is due to bawdy insinuations about how the boy and the turtle are portrayed. Anonymous members of the Worcester community sometimes dress the statue in festive clothes for holidays, local bands write crowd-pleasing songs about it, and the statue has even graced postcards of the city.
  The popularity of Turtle Boy began around the time it was installed in Central Square. In 1916 the Burnside Fountain's boy and turtle appeared in The Cloud Bird, a children's book by Margaret C. Getchell in which each chapter was about a Worcester landmark. In the eighth chapter, "The Adventurer in Armor," a small girl finds a young, Peter Pan-like faun who had agreed to hold back the turtle. They later go on an adventure upon the turtle's back, but return at the end of the day. By the late 2000s "Turtle Boy" was a common term used to align events and objects with Worcester. 
  A local music contest was named the "Turtle Boy Music Awards," and the Wormtown Brewing Company in Worcester began selling a "Turtle Boy Blueberry Ale."
  Kristina Wilson, associate professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Worcester's Clark University, asked people on campus what they thought of Turtle Boy. One person replied "Oh, that's Worcester's monument to bestiality." Wilson said the sculpture is intended to portray "innocence, joy, and rebirth," and that historically Charles Y. Harvey came from an artistic tradition in which "the human figure is the apex of beauty, and how well you can capture that is the demonstration of your artistic talents." Regarding the artistic merit of the work, Wilson said: "It's unfortunate, because it really does look like something untoward is going on."
  Mostly because of the ambiguity in what the Burnside Fountain is depicting, Turtle Boy pops up occasionally in social media. The sculpture also appeared on comedian Daniel Tosh's Tosh.0 blog.
caption: Turtle Boy wearing a winter scarf
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