Central Park In Bronze

Location: 105th Street, east side

Artist/Designer: Walter Schott

Materials: Bronze

Installation: 1947

Funding: Sons and daughter of Samuel and Minnie Untermyer

 

This beautiful statue depicts three distinctly different yet cohesive, fancy-free young women dancing joyously in a water spray. Situated in the center of the French garden section of Central Park’s Conservatory Garden, this German sculpture fits in perfectly with the slightly oval garden design.

 

In 1947 the fountain was gifted to Central Park from the estate of Samuel Untermyer. A self-made millionaire lawyer, Untermyer was well known for support of Zionism and for breaking up American monopolies. It is not known how Untermyer got the cast copy, or possibly the original fountain, to his estate in Yonkers, a New York City suburb.

 

Designed in 1903 in Germany, the original fountain was in front of the Berlin estate of Rudolf Mosse, a Jewish liberal and newspaper publisher. The Mosse family estate was across from the German Chancellery, and Adolph Hitler is said to have had a view of this fountain. The Mosse family had to flee Germany in the 1930s, leaving everything behind, including this sculpture that celebrates the innocence of youth.