Friendship Fountain

I decided to take a quick trip down to Friendship Fountain on Saturday to get some shots from the perspective of those passing by the construction site…

You can view all the pictures here:
http://jaxfountain.com/Gallery/Outside

But here are some quick views…

From the Main Street Bridge.

Peaking in from the Southbank Riverwalk.

From a small rise next to River City

Finally through the fence from the main entrance to the Fountain…

If you look at earlier pictures you can see progress even when looking from the outside and this Friday I should be able to get inside pictures with more details on the recent progress…

Till then…
Bob

Finally after a number of Friday afternoon misses (heck it was the holidays and I can understand the Construction workers wanting to bail early on Fridays..) I took my bi-weekly trip to Friendship Fountain and not only found a few folks around this time but over a dozen workers, all over Friendship Park, hard at work, grading, laying block and other tasks.

Since the last official updates there has been much accomplished…

New retaining walls for landscaping are being put into place.

The accent pavers are delivered and expected to start being laid next week.

Additional accent work is being done.

Grading of the land continues however it appears that the majority of fill needed may be in place.

Larry, the on site foreman took a few moments of his time to bring me up to date on how things were going which appears to be very well.

They expect to start laying the accent pavers into the poured walkway slots this week.

The tops of the Light Towers have been refurbished and delivered back to the site:

They expect to be able to start the final work on the Riverwalk adjacent to Friendship Park in a few weeks which will allow that portion of the Riverwalk to be completed.

There are a number of concrete pads that have been poured in the Park areas

and additional concrete pouring will probably be completed in the next few weeks as well.

However everything isn’t good news… The recent freezes apparently resulted in some portions of the water main feeding the Fountain to start failing and it was reported to me that when exposed the water main pipe appears to be greatly deteriorated and some issues cropped up in the pump house so we will have to see where those lead…

All in all some great progress in the last few weeks and hope to be able to see even more in a couple of weeks…

Till next time,
Bob

The Friendship Fountain Bi-weekly update 😉

The portion of the Southbank River Walk immediately in front of Friendship Fountain has been restored and is open for foot traffic again.

It also appears that all underground drainage has been put into place, all the open pipes seen two weeks ago have been covered and there are a number of new drain boxes clearly marked and in place. Today was the quietest I have seen the construction site since the renovations began.

Look for another update in two weeks…

Bob

I got down to the Fountain area this afternoon to see what progress had been made and well, WOW 😉

First thing that jumped out at me was the Commemorable Plaque in the concrete near
the entrance of Friendship Fountain park…

Yep as you can see it has been removed, mostly intact, but some damage is evident. I contacted Eric Lindstrom with the JEDC as after reviewing the plans I have available to me it wasn’t clear what the plans were for the plaque.

Eric replied promptly with the following:

“The plan is to place a new plaque back within 50 feet of the original location. Due to the condition of the plaque, our plans call for the plaque to be replicated exactly the same as the original. We wanted to keep the plaque at the site until the contractor can properly document the exact layout, materials used, letter types and sizes, etc. Originally, we wanted to use the original, however, the age and condition of the plaque will make this difficult. We are doing everything we can to replicate the plaque exactly as it was, but also making sure it lasts another 40-50 years with all new materials.”

Sounds good to me 🙂

Also got some rare shots of inside the pumphouse where the pumps themselves have been removed leaving only the pipe connections…

Oh and I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Jacksonville Maritime Museum is OPEN during the Fountain renovations and would urge anyone that has a chance to visit the Southbank to make sure you stop by and get exposed to another rich part of Jacksonville’s History.

As the rest of the pictures attest to there has been lots of work, this isn’t the Courthouse 😉 project, and we will continue to try and keep things updated.

Once again my our thanks to the Folks of AC General who just have been great about access and Eric who has been extremely supportive with information.

-Bob

I received an email the other day from Patricia Lellouche who was secretary to Frank W. Sherman, President and Chairman of the Board of the American National Banks. back in the day…

The fountain was originally the idea of Frank W. Sherman,
President and Chairman of the Bd. of the American National
Banks at the time. He got the idea at a bankers’ convention
in St. Louis. He wanted Jacksonville to have something
similar to their arch. It was named after Dallas Thomas so
that the fountain could be built.

How do I know this? I was
Frank Sherman’s secretary at the time. This information was
also included in an article in the Times Union about Sherman’s
death.

Thanks for the information Patricia…

For those saying who is Dallas Thomas, he was a City Commissioner back in the 60’s who was later involved in a scandal…

From wikipedia.org…

The Fountain was originally called the “Fountain of Friendship in Dallas Thomas Park”; friendship at the suggestion of a Rotary Club member and Dallas Thomas after the city’s parks and finance commissioner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_Fountain

Hope everyone is enjoying their Labor day Holiday and just think next year on Labor Day we should be looking at a completely restored Fountain and renovated Park…

-Bob