Sinsinawa
Spectrum
A Congregation News Magazine
Fountain Restored at Sinsinawa Mound
by Tricia Buxton
The restored fountain at Sinsinawa Mound
near the Academy building.
After decades of drought, water is dancing through the fountain in the gardens below the Academy Apartments thanks to Sisters and staff at Sinsinawa Mound.
General Operations Officer Sara Trapkus said she had been approached by Sisters about the possibility of cleaning the fountain and making water run through it again. She became curious about the origins of the fountain and enlisted the help of the Archives Department. In 1889, three issues of The Young Eagle, a monthly paper edited by the students of St. Clara Academy, detail the purchase of the fountain. “St. Clara’s ‘old pupils’ claim the privilege of making this offering to their alma mater―of adding a fountain to the attractions of Sinsinawa,” the paper stated. “Lovers of beauty assert that this is the one thing lacking to make St. Clara a spot where nature and art have done their best.”
This spring, Mound staff dismantled, cleaned, painted, and made the fountain functional once again. It has been restored to its 1889 splendor. And, in the words of The Young Eagle editors, “we now wish to express our thanks to those dear, scattered children who have so generously contributed to our pleasure and comfort, as well as to the beauty that surrounds their alma mater. The musical flow of the water will sing to us their names, and in the sunlit spray we will see their faces shadowed forth.”