The mystery of the Stanford Fountain bluestone seats

In 1872, a fountain was erected near Parliament House in Spring Street in Melbourne. It is in a reserve which had been severed from the Parliamentary Reserve in 1863 as a site for the Burke and Wills statue, and is bounded by Spring Street, Macarthur Street and Carpentaria Place. Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills and their exploration party were the first explorers to cross the continent from south to north, leaving Melbourne on August 20, 1860 and reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria on February 9, 1861 - hence the name of Carpentaria Place. As we all know, they never made it back. A statue, by Charles Summers (1825 - 1878), was made to honour the men and erected, not in the reserve, but on the corner of Russell and Collins Street in April 1865.

This 1872 engraving shows the four bluestone seats, an integral part of the fountain design. There are some sources that say there were originally eight seats, I have addressed that issue further down.

Fountain designed and executed by William Stanford. Artist: Albert Charles Cooke. Engraver: Winston

Published in The Illustrated Australian News February 29, 1872.

State Library of Victoria Image IAN29/02/72/56

The fountain erected around May 1872 was of  bluestone and was created by William Stanford, who was a prisoner at Pentridge at the time. It had been at Pentridge, since it was completed, around September 1871.   The Illustrated Australian News of February 29, 1872 reported on the fountain and also had the illustration of it, above - This work has been designed and executed by Mr. William Stanford, who, for the last seventeen and a half years, has been an inmate of the penal establishment, having been therein immured from the early age of fifteen. It is, therefore, unnecessary to add that he is not merely self-taught in the usual acceptation of the term, but it is an actual fact that he literally never saw a work of art, worthy of the name, previous to his recent liberation from his long captivity. You can read the full article here and more of his life story in his obituary, here.  There are many reports of his life in various newspapers - they differ a bit  -  so here's one version - Stanford had been sentenced in 1853, when he was 15 (some reports say he was 13) for being involved in bushranging, then released and was caught stealing horses, so returned to gaol, but was pardoned by the Government  after he created the fountain and opened a monumental yard in Prahran. One article says that it is not surprising that William Stanford's talent was recognised by prison authorities and others. He was given lessons by Charles Summers (born in 1825), the first artist to practise sculpture in Melbourne, and creator of the Burke and Wills statue. (The Age, March 19, 1949) This makes it rather fitting that Stanford's fountain was located in the space designed for the Burke and Wills statue.

How great is this photo? It is titled, Fountain in the Parliament Reserve, Melbourne.  It is from the State Library of New South Wales collection and is dated c. 1872 -  c.1878,  so not long after the fountain was erected in Spring Street and you can see three of the bluestone seats that originally surrounded the fountain.

Views of Victoria and N.S.W., ca. 1872-1878 - photographic album, Bequeathed by D. S. Mitchell, 1907. State Library of New South Wales Image FL1059770   http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110318895

On January 5, 1933 there was an article in The Herald (read it here) with the headline Mystery of the Missing Fountain Seats - 8 tons of basalt vanishes. The author, B.M.G. writes -
The graceful fountain carved by the prisoner Stanford was originally designed to be surrounded by four seats, each carved in bluestone in a decorative design conforming with the general scheme of the fountain. The seats were part of the whole; the fountain is incomplete without them. Stanford carried out the work on the four seats as part of his conception. They were completed and placed in position in the small open reserve in front of the Old Treasury buildings. They were there for many years, each separated from the coping of the fountain by a few feet. They were certainly in position in 1907.  Between that year and 1924 they had disappeared into thin air— a matter of six or eight tons of solid basalt. Nobody saw them being removed and nobody knows what became of them.

The next day The Herald had a follow up article - Officials of the Public Works Department are unable to throw any light on the mystery of the four stone seats which have been missing for years from around the fountain in the reserve beside the Old Treasury Building. The Public Works Department attends to the reserve.

The day after, on January 7, The Herald published this photograph with the head line There's no doubt the seats were there! But the Mystery remains unsolved.  Some of the article reads - The  mystery of the disappearance of four ponderous seats from the fountain between Parliament House and the Old Treasury Building has not been solved, but the accompanying photograph should remove any possible doubt that they really were there in years gone by.

The  Stanford Fountain photo published in The Herald on January 7, 1933 proving that the seats did exist.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article243190614

This article from January 7 mentions interviews with some 'older public servants' regarding the seats - Like the Secretary for Lands (Mr Fricke), many of the older public servants remember the seats distinctly. But they cannot fix the time when they last saw them any more definitely than that it was "many years ago." They stated that about 30 years ago, when the seats were in their position around the fountain, the garden was fenced. Later the fence was removed, and the lay-out of the garden was changed. It was possible that the rearrangement of the garden was carried out when the present King, as Duke of York, visited Australia. But they could not be certain of this.

The improvement of most of the gardens around the Treasury and Parliamentary buildings was carried out under the supervision of the late Mr Carlo Catani, who was then Chief Engineer for Public Works. The early records of this department might reveal some trace of the seats, but so far no examination of them has been made.

A Letter to the Editor on January 11, 1933  from Mr E. Wilson Dobbs of Caulfield, confirms they weren't there in 1927 and they are also not in a photograph published in Isaac Selby's "Memorial History of Melbourne" which was published in 1924.

In the end The Herald could offer no solution to the mystery of the bluestone seats. As  a matter of interest, one report (Weekly Times, May 4, 1872) says that the seats were in fact to have been pedestals for the reception of marble statues, but the Government refused to supply so expensive a material. How grand would that have been?

You can see one of the bluestone seats (or pedestals)  on the right. Beautiful photo, it's a shame the photographer is unknown, so we can't give them credit.

Stanford Fountain, 1910. 

Harold Paynting collection, State Library of Victoria Image H2009.60/52

I have included this photo as I have a crop of it below - it shows General Gordon's statue, with the Stanford Fountain, behind on the left - showing only four bluestone seats.

Spring St. from the Treasury steps Melbourne, c. 1891 - c. 1897. Photographer: J.W. Lindt

State Library of Victoria Image H2009.48/23

Was the fountain surrounded by four bluestone seats or eight bluestone seats? The Victorian Heritage Database entry on Gordon Reserve says that there was originally eight seats, but doesn't list any sources (read the report, here) The 1872 illustration looks like it had an octagonal base and according to The Illustrated Australian News of February 29, 1872  there were also eight drinking fountains, which form the principal ornaments of the lower basin: these are zinc castings of a complex character, consisting of eagles standing on shells, in the act of seizing lizards. So were there eight seats to match the eight eagles, which were cast by the talented Mr Stanford? If so, why do people only remember there being four seats in 1933? Had four already disappeared, pre-1907 when The Herald states the four seats were certainly in position? I find this unlikely, I believe there were only ever four seats, not eight. The photo from the 1870s, Fountain in the Parliament Reserve, Melbourne, only shows three seats, the fourth being obscured by the fountain; the photo from the 1890s - Spring St. from the Treasury steps (above, and with cropped version below) - clearly only shows four seats. Happy to be proven wrong, but where is the evidence that there were originally eight seats?

This photo from the 1890s, clearly shows only four bluestone seats surrounding the fountain, and I believe there were only ever four seats, not eight. See the original photo on the State Library of Victoria website, here.

Cropped  version of - Spring St. from the Treasury steps Melbourne, c. 1891 - c. 1897. Photographer: J.W. Lindt

State Library of Victoria Image H2009.48/23

Gordon Reserve was formally named in 1961. It also has also a statue by Hamo Thornycroft (erected in 1889) of Major-General Charles Gordon who died at Khartoum in 1885 and a statue of the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon erected in 1932. This statue was done by Paul Montford, who also did the Carlo Catani bust at the foot of the Clock tower in the Catani Gardens in St Kilda. You can read Montford's entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here. The poet's statue replaced the Eight Hours Day Memorial that was erected in 1890 and then moved to its current location intersection of Russell and Victoria Streets.  This information, and the information at the top of the post about the severance of the reserve for the Burke and Wills statue comes from Melbourne's Historic Public Gardens: a management and conservation guide by Rex Swanson. (City of Melbourne, 1984.)

The Victorian Heritage Database also lists two other items of significance in Gordon Reserve - a series The women's underground public toilet is one of a group of eleven such facilities built by the City of Melbourne between 1902 and 1939. Underground toilets were then thought to be more discreet than street level toilets, as they were out of direct public view. This group is now unique in Australia.  The other feature are the Canary Palms - The five Canary Island date palm trees that can now be found at the site were planted in the early 20th Century when the plantings were rationalised and the link fences were installed that delineate the site and cordon off the General Gordon Memorial. This coincides with the time that Carlo Catani worked on the Treasury Gardens (see here) and he was an advocate of palm trees, so it is possible that they were planted under his direction. The Victorian Heritage Database citation can be found, here.

This is the fountain taken in 1949. Photographer: Colin Caldwell.

State Library of Victoria Image  H84.276/1/4C

Trove list - I have created a short list of articles on Trove, on the missing seats and the Standford fountain, you can access it here. All the articles referenced here are on the list.

I originally posted this on my Carlo Catani blog, http://carlocatani.blogspot.com, but there is only a very tenuous connection to Carlo, the post is a  better fit on this blog.