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Jackson Memorial Fountain

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1903. City Park (Park Ave. and 17th St.)
  • (West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

This large and decorative cast iron fountain, now bronzed, provides a handsome focal point at the entrance to Parkersburg's fifty-five-acre City Park. The fountain is topped by a female figure pouring water from a vase into a basin. Only the lower two of three original tiers remain, but even so, this is West Virginia's largest and most significant civic amenity of its type. The fountain memorializes General John Jay Jackson, who served on Andrew Jackson's staff and was later a leader in Virginia's secession from the Union. One of his sons became West Virginia's governor, and a grandson provided the $5,000 bequest for the fountain, purchased in New York from an unknown manufacturer.

Writing Credits

Author: 
S. Allen Chambers Jr.
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Data

What's Nearby

Henry Cooper House
Carman Houses
Emmanuel Baptist Church
American Foursquares
Oakland (James M. Stephenson House)

Citation

S. Allen Chambers Jr., "Jackson Memorial Fountain", [Parkersburg, West Virginia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WV-01-WD20.

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