Mecom Fountain alterations alarm local preservationists
The Texas Historical Commission has asked that work be halted on alterations to Mecom Fountain after preservationists complained that the changes are inconsistent with the iconic fountain’s midcentury design.
Workers have been applying slabs of limestone to the base of the fountain at Main and Montrose, a favored spot for wedding and quinceañera photos. The work is part of a longdelayed “Grand Gateway” project for nearby Hermann Park.
Architectural historian Anna Mod, a member of the city’s Archaeological and Historical Commission, said she was dumbfounded last week when she drove by and saw workers drilling holes to apply limestone to the retaining wall that encircles the fountain. The discov-
ery alarmed Mod and other preservationists.
Design plans also call for the addition of a feature a top the wall, akin to a kitchen countertop with a rounded surface, that would match the gateway project’s new limestone planters. It would jut out 5 inches over the wall.
“This alteration is overly decorative for the refined design of the fountain,” Maverick Welsh, chairman of the historical commission, wrote Tuesday in a letter to Mayor Sylvester Turner and Pat Walsh, the city planning director. “In addition, it will change the sight lines for the beautiful water pools.”
The fountain was built with concrete, amaterial celebrated by mid century architects. It’s wrong to make the fountain look as though it belongs to the modern era, preservationists and design experts say.
“‘Suburban mall’ is one of the complaints I’ve heard,” said Margaret Wallace, the city’s deputy director of planning.
Because the project uses funds from the Texas Department of Transportation, the Texas Historical Commission was required to approve it.
But the application is vague about the fountain, and Commissioner Linda Henderson said that if she’d realized the project included the fountain, not just the area around it, she’d have re- quested more information.
Now, the historic commission has asked that TxDOT halt its contractors. Work was still under way Wednesday, however.
The city, which is leading the effort, “is still determining the best course of action for this project,” Walsh, the planning director, said Wednesday via email.
In December, then-Mayor Annise Parker signed paperwork to nominate the fountain as a city-protected landmark, which would give it the highest possible level of protection. The nomination would have required the city’s historic commission to review the plans, but this did not happen because the work was authorized years before Parker’s action.
Since it was first conceived, what would become the Mecom Fountain has been closely tied to Hermann Park.
In the original Hermann Park design, from 1915, the fountain’s site was a sunken garden, the beginning of a grand entrance to the park. But with the addition of slanting Fannin Street, the garden was cut off.
In 1962, oilman John Mecom bought the Warwick Hotel (now Hotel Zaza), next door to the sunken garden. The hotel was already the playground of millionaires, but Mecom and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, proceeded to make it an even grander symbol of Texas excess: They filled it with paneling and furniture stripped from European palaces.
As part of that upgrade, the Mecoms paid to redo the sunken garden. For the center of the traffic roundabout, architect Eugene Werlin designed the fountain: three circular bowls set inside a low oval wall. The oval lined up with Main Street, on which the hotel was located.
In 1964, the Mecoms donated the fountain to the city. A halfcentury later, the changes to its base were included in plans for the Hermann Park gateway project, a $4 million package of streetscape improvements intended to improve pedestrian safety and to restore a sense of drama as one enters the park.
Despite the concerns about the changes to the fountains, everyone involved has good intentions, said Doreen Stoller, executive director of Friends of Hermann Park.
“There are no villains,” Stoller said. “TxDOT followed the letter of the law. Joe Turner (head of the Parks Department) is trying to do the right thing. I really think everybody’s on the same side. We all want preservation.”
She paused: “You know, it’s exciting that people care.”