Forsyth Park & Fountain

The Forsyth ParkFountain was created in 1858; restored in 1988 (25% recast). The Fountain is located in Forsyth Park, originally called Forsyth Place, on a direct line in continuation of Bull Street, which is interrupted by the Park and its extension, and continues again at Park Avenue. The Fountain was conceived as the focal point of the landscaped park.

Forsyth Place was the first large park created in Savannah, other than the squares, designed as part of the city plan by General Oglethorpe in the eighteenth century. Stylistically, the Park belongs to a later era, and was influenced by the urban renewal of Paris, in the 1850's. Paris was given broad boulevards and parks for practical reasons: improving access to the new railway stations and important public buildings, clearing slums, increasing fresh air and green space, developing middle-class and working class suburbs, putting in piped water and storm sewers, and financing public works to provide employment, investment opportunities and increase property values in Paris. This greatly influenced city planning throughout the industrial world--every large city in the United States was developing large city parks in the 1850's. Culturally speaking, it is not insignificant that the Forsyth Park fountain was thought to be a copy of the one in the Place de la Concorde, by Hittorff, who completed two monumental fountains in that square only a few short years before Forsyth Place was created. Bull Street was thought of as a boulevard and promenade (both French terms) and the fountain served as a focal point of a long vista, all the way from the Exchange, which was City Hall. In an economic context, the park and the fountain would not have been possible if Savannah were not experiencing economic prosperity. The 1850's were the first consistently prosperous period throughout the South, which admired and emulated the high style of the Frech Empire