PERSISTENCE FOR FOUNTAIN REPAIR
City Water Department attorney Bill Cloonan catalyst in rebuilding Academy Green attraction
Water is in Bill Cloonan’s bloodline.
So it’s no stretch to ask him if such a family history with the Kingston Water Department had anything to do with the 71-year-old lawyer’s persistence in helping to bring back a water foundation to an Uptown park.
Cloonan says, with a hint of a smile, “that’s just a coincidence.”
But what was not left to chance was the Cloonan’s determination to deliver a new aluminum-cast fountain, a now popular summer attraction, to Academy Green Park, bordered by Albany Avenue, Clinton Avenue and Maiden Lane.
“It is wonderful,” Cloonan said recently. “The people in the area come with their children on a hot summer day and sit out there and it’s a very peaceful place and people are very respectful.”
Cloonan, a grandfather of two, has captured a “Local History Award” from the Friends of Historic Kingston for his efforts.
His father, Edmund T. Cloonan, who died about 25 years ago, was superintendent of the Kingston Water Department for 47 years. The department’s Woodstock filtration plan bears his name.
His great uncle, John F. Cloonan, was the lawyer who negotiated the deal that put a private water company into the hands of the publicly-run Kingston Water Department in the 1800s.
Bill Cloonan himself has been the department’s lawyer for the past 37 years.
The original Academy Green fountain was purchased by Edward Tompkins, superintendent of the Newark Lime and Cement Co., for the garden at his home in Kingston’s Ponckhockie district.
After Tompkins’ death, his home and its grounds on
Grove Street were acquired by the Sisters of St. Ursula, founders of the Academy of St. Ursula, where the fountain continued to operate.
“Last spring (2016), the original cast iron fountain, manufactured in New York City in 1873, was accidentally damaged beyond repair,” said a press release issued by Annie Schultz, historian for the Ulster Garden Club, and Tildy Davenport, chairwoman of the Academy Green Committee, in June, 2017.
“When the school closed
its doors in 1967, the property was sold to the Children’s Home of Kingston,” the Ulster Garden Club account reads. “At this time, the fountain was removed from the grounds and stored in a barn.”
The fountain was installed at Academy Green in 1979 as part of a redevelopment of the park. It was placed at the spot where
a former wading pool had been abandoned and ultimately filled in.
“The neglected wading pool was removed, and the cast iron fountain was installed as a centerpiece to surrounding bluestone benches and pear trees,” according to the garden club.
After the fountain was damaged in the spring of 2016, Cloonan, spearheaded the effort to replace it.
Cloonan said that the old fountain needed to be tilted in order to clean out a pump.
That maneuvering, he
said, lead to the fountain accident two years ago.
“In the process of doing that when they tipped it over the base of it snapped and the entire fountain tumbled over and smashed,” Cloonan said. “The reason it snapped because it was rusted at the base. I cried when it broke.”
But Cloonan was determined to find another fountain, similar to the old one.
He led a team that researched companies that manufacture fountains similar to the damaged one. Cloonan found that company in Georgia then coordinated the delivery and installation of the new $4,000 fountain.
The new fountain was paid for by the garden club and a private donation.
In the warmer months, Cloonan say she drags a water hose from one end of Academy Green to the fountain to replace evaporated or splashed water from its base.
He does this every four days but says he doesn’t mind it at all.
“It’s a pretty park,” Cloonan said.