Singing Fountain

Between Passyunk Avenue, Tasker Street, and 11th Street, a small city square grew out of a concrete wedge. A gas station and a snack bar succeeded one another here before a fountain ensemble recalling the neighborhood's Italian roots was placed in the middle of the tight triangle. A mermaid sits in the bowl, with storks and cherubs holding musical instruments beside her, and music once came from hidden speakers. Benches, trees, and chess tables appeared after the fence was removed and access to the fountain was opened.

In the late nineteen nineties, City Council member Jim Kenney pushed to create a place to meet on Passyunk Avenue. He loved Roman piazzas: people lingered there between home, a shop, and a restaurant instead of leaving immediately after a purchase. For South Philadelphia, he imagined a smaller version of such a square—with a fountain at its center.

The suitable site looked hopeless: a concrete triangle between Passyunk Avenue, Tasker Street, and 11th Street. A gas station had stood here earlier, followed by a steak-sandwich shop. In two thousand one, the nonprofit Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods bought the land, demolished the shop, and paid about fifty thousand dollars for a ready-made fountain ensemble. The plot itself cost another eighty thousand.

The fountain opened in two thousand four. A mermaid with a bowl, storks, and cherubs with musical instruments were meant to recall the neighborhood's Italian roots. The fountain was called the Singing Fountain because of speakers hidden nearby: recordings by Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett were played through them. The water and music were the draw; Kenney wanted people to arrange meetings and stay after lunch on the previously empty triangle.

Five years later, this installation nearly came to a halt. A federal court found state senator Vincent Fumo and the organization's executive director Ruth Arnao guilty of corruption. Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods lost its funding, laid off fifteen employees, and stopped even cleaning the streets. The fountain's pump broke down, the mermaid and two cherubs stopped working, and half the speakers disappeared. The organization was going to be dissolved, and there was no one to pay for repairs to its property.

Then Lynn Rinaldi, co-owner of the restaurant Paradiso, took up the fountain's cause. She had grown up two blocks from here and now earned her living on the very street the fountain was meant to enliven. Along with the owners of neighboring establishments, Rinaldi organized a Save the Fountain evening. More than a dozen restaurants and shops contributed food, drinks, and their employees' work; residents bought tickets and raised four thousand dollars—the amount needed for a year's upkeep. The pumps were brought back into service, and the fountain waited for a new owner.

In two thousand eleven, the Passyunk Avenue Revitalization Corporation, the successor to the previous organization, took over the site. Its director, Sam Sherman, ordered the iron fence removed: behind it, the fountain had remained an ornament that people could not approach. Workers dismantled the bowl, restored the waterproofing, and replaced the pipes and pumps. Benches and chess tables were installed around it, and trees were planted. That was when the triangle finally became the square for which Kenney had started the fountain project.

Upkeep still requires money and decisions. In two thousand twenty-four, the same corporation replaced more than two hundred twenty lost tiles and created new drainage. The current benches stand where the fence once ran; new pipes lie beneath the restored bowl, and recordings play from speakers that once also had to be saved along with the pumps.