Turtle Boy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
| Burnside Fountain A.K.A. Turtle Boy |
| Charles Y. Harvey, 1912 |
| Bronze |
| Worcester, Massachusetts, |
The Turtle Boy, officially designated the Burnside Fountain, is a bronze statue of a boy riding a sea turtle by sculptor Charles Y. Harvey that stands on a pedestal by architect Henry Bacon (who later designed the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC) in Worcester Common in Worcester, Massachusetts. The fountain was given to the city in 1912 by Harriet Pamela Foster Burnside.
Turtle Boy has become a kind of mascot for the city, in the way the The Little Mermaid (statue) is in Copenhagen or the Manneken Pis is in Brussels. Unfortunately, it is so beloved by the city that it has been repeatedly carried off its pedestal by vandals.[1] [2] A local music contest is called "The Turtle boy Music Award." [3]
The designation "fountain" is puzzling because there is no water in the basins of the fountain today. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a philanthropic movement centered around the difficult lives of the many horses that provided transportation in cities. Philanthropists wishing to ease the lives of these animals provided public watering troughs. Some were simple, but others were works of art featuring handsome sculptured, of which the Burnside Fountain is a fine example. The sea turtle was an appropriate element for a watering trough. Originally, water poured from the turtle's mouth into a series of four dringing basins for horses. There is also a lower trough for dogs to drink from at the rear of the pedestal.[4]
[edit] Outside links
- http://turtleboy.claudiasnell.com/tb/
- http://www.ci.worcester.ma.us/dpw/parks_rec/city_parks/common/monuments.htm
