Depew Memorial Fountain is a freestanding fountain completed in 1919 and located in University Park in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...

 within the Indiana World War Memorial Plaza

Indiana World War Memorial Plaza

The Indiana World War Memorial Plaza is an urban feature located in Indianapolis, Indiana, originally built to honor the veterans of World War I. The five-city-block plaza was conceived in 1919 as a location for the national headquarters of the American Legion and a memorial to the state's and...

.

Description

The fountain is composed of multiple bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 figures arranged on a five-tier Stony Creek pink granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 base with three basins. The bronze sculptures depict fish, eight children dancing, and a woman on the topmost tier dancing and playing cymbals. The overall dimensions are approximately 25 x 45 x 45 feet (13.7 m).

A memorial plaque is located on south side of the large granite basin. It reads:

Artists

• Alexander Stirling Calder
  Alexander Stirling Calder
  Alexander Stirling Calder was an American sculptor and teacher; son of the sculptor Alexander Milne Calder, and father of the sculptor Alexander Calder...
  
   (1870–1945, American)
• Karl Bitter
  Karl Bitter
  Karl Theodore Francis Bitter was an Austrian-born United States sculptor best known for his architectural sculpture, memorials and residential work.- Life and career :...
  
   (1867–1915, Austrian/American)
• Henry Bacon
  Henry Bacon
  Henry Bacon was an American Beaux-Arts architect who is best remembered for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. , which was his final project.- Education and early career :...
  
   (1866–1924, American)

History

University Park was redesigned in 1914 by George Edward Kessler for the park and boulevard system

Indianapolis Park and Boulevard System

The Indianapolis Park and Boulevard System is a group of parks, parkways, and boulevards in Indianapolis, Indiana that was designed by landscape architect George Edward Kessler in the early part of the twentieth century. Also known as the Kessler System, the district includes and has shaped the...

 he had developed for the city of Indianapolis. Depew Fountain was an original component of the plan and was designed by the sculptor Karl Bitter

Karl Bitter

Karl Theodore Francis Bitter was an Austrian-born United States sculptor best known for his architectural sculpture, memorials and residential work.- Life and career :...

 in the same year.

The Depew Memorial Fountain was commissioned in memory of Dr. Richard J. Depew by his wife, Emma Ely, following Dr. Depew’s death in 1887. When Mrs. Depew died in 1913, she had bequeathed $50,000 from her estate to the city of Indianapolis for the erection of a fountain in memory of her husband “in some park or public place where all classes of people may enjoy it.”

An information plaque, located on the north side of the fountain, reads:
In 1926 young women from the Albertina Rasch

Albertina Rasch

Albertina Rasch was a naturalized American dancer and choreographer.-Early life:Born in Vienna in 1891 to a family of Polish Jewish descent, Rasch studied at the Vienna State Opera Ballet school and became leading ballerina at the New York Hippodrome in...

ballet performed an interpretive dance around the fountain, mimicking the bronze sculptures thereon, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the fountain.