‘Fountain of Eternal Life’, Downtown Cleveland

This large fountain on the Cleveland Mall is both a memorial to honor veterans and a sculpture which celebrates peace.

Key Details:

The original concept for the memorial was to create for Vietnam Veterans.  The group eventually recognized the need to create a memorial which honored all those who died or were declared missing in wars fought from 1900 until now.  The granite base surrounding the fountain includes 4,177 names of Cuyahoga County residents who died during WWII or Korea.  The base will eventually include the names of those who died during the Spanish American War, WWI, Vietnam War, and Gulf Wars 1 & 2.

Marshall Fredericks described the sculpture by saying “This Figure expresses the main theme of the Fountain, namely, the spirit of mankind rising out of the encircling flames of war, pestilence, and the destructive elements of life, reaching and ascending to a new understanding of life. Man rising above death, reaching upward to his God and toward Peace.”  

Fredericks grew up in Cleveland and graduated from the Cleveland School of Art in 1930.  He has numerous significant public sculptures throughout the Great Lakes region.

If You Go:

The Cleveland War Memorial is located at the southern end of the Cleveland Mall and is close to Public Square and the Terminal Tower.  The Mall is currently under construction, but the memorial itself is still open and unaffected.

Sources:

http://www.clevelandvetsmemorial.org/GCVM_History.html

This work by Matt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.