At the dedication, Mrs. Palmer's husband, Senator Thomas W. Palmer, orated on the need for fountains: "As men were crowded into great cities and denied the frequent sight or contact with water in agitation or repose, a craving for it, as a feature of the landscape, has led to the construction of artificial lakes, cascades and fountains to cool the air, please the eye and soothe the ear, as well as supply the physical wants of the people. For Palmer and his audience, the agrarian past was a fresh memory. Speeches and editorials frequently invoked the same kind of romantic pastoral nostalgia that Palmer elicits with the word craving. At the same time, the answer to this craving is not a return to Nature, but a further reduction of it into "artificial lakes, cascades and fountains".
Glistening white on a sunny summer day, the fountain is only a few years old in this photo. Behind it is the Detroit Opera House, the focus of Detroit culture for half a century.
The Opera House would soon be converted to expand the
burgeoning retail trade. The improved efficiency in manufacturing
techniques that put automobiles within the reach of millions of Americans
also made retail goods more plentiful and
cheaper than ever before. Shopping, the American cultural
institution, was only in its infancy.
The fountain itself would be removed in the twenties to relieve traffic congestion. It now sits in Palmer Park, six miles up Woodward, in northern Detroit, on land donated by Senator and Mrs. Palmer.
Today, the Bagley Fountain, moved from Fort and Woodward in a 1930's widening of Campus Martius, occupies more or less the same ground.
