[unknown - fountain]

Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy and completed in collaboration with architect John Carl Warnecke, Theodore Roszak’s bronze fountain unites the old and new architecture surrounding Lafayette Park.  Its streamlined form, with conical and saucer shapes that evoke a nascent space age, emerges from a pool lined with river rock. The fountain anchors the courtyard that bridges the stylistic divide between the eighteenth-century row houses and Warneke’s neighboring 1967 U.S. Court of Appeals building.

In the 1960s, a need for additional federal office space near the White House almost resulted in the demolition of the historic row houses that surround Lafayette Park.  First Ladies Jacqueline Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson intervened, and guided a multi-year restoration effort that allowed the row houses to be saved, and modern office buildings to be built behind the historic façades.  A pioneer in the use of industrial metalworking techniques for fine art, Roszak had a successful career as a sculptor and was well known for his artistic collaborations with mid-century architects, which made him a natural choice for the fountain commission.  Two of his best-known projects were collaborations with acclaimed architect Eero Saarinen: the bell tower for the MIT Chapel (1955) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a 37-foot-wide, gilded aluminum eagle (1960) for the façade of the United States Embassy in London.