Where can you chill in an Adirondack chair and see "Wisdom" and "Felicity" in a sun-spangled waterfall? At Grand Army Plaza, where a pair of the "Park It" project chairs face the spectacular Bailey Fountain. I've been lagging in my resolve to shoot the view from all ten locales; these refreshing shots were taken on August 22, after a hot trudge through the nearby Greenmarket.
In these chairs, you must steel yourself to the incessant swirl of traffic. Calvert Vaux created GAP to transition between hurly-burly Flatbush Avenue and Prospect Park.
This glorious traffic island is still hard to reach, and gets love mostly from wedding parties using it for photo backdrops. The fountain is named after its benefactor, philanthropist Frank Bailey (1865-1953), a college treasurer who started out in title insurance.
From such bland beginnings came a $125,000 grant and the wild abandon of Neptune and Triton, sculpted by American artist Eugene Savage (1883-1978). Triton blows on a shell...
...while Neptune leers at passers-by. From this self-portrait of Savage, he was the very picture of a WPA artist.
Sitting in the chairs with a powerful zoom lens, one can also capture the joy of water falling on mere mortals.
For the record, here are the plaque quotes on these two chairs: "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." Native American Proverb
"Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet." Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen master, poet, and peace activist.
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