Merry
September 12th, 2009, 05:08 AM
Big Town, Big Picture: The Delacorte legacies
http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/09/12/alg_delacorte_clock.jpg
Central Park's Delacorte Clock in 1969
http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/09/12/amd_george_delacorte.jpg
George T. Delacorte with his Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park that same year.
From the 1920s into the 1960s, George Delacorte made millions publishing movie magazines and comic books and paperback novels and then in his semi-retirement he turned to philanthropy. Not the social-worker kind:
Delacorte had no use for the usual bunch of charities. Instead he began to shower the city with curious little whimsies. "Not everything has to have a practical function," he said.
"What do we remember about Rome? We remember the fountains and the statues. There has to be a place in life for the eye's pleasure."
First, in May 1959, he gave Central Park its delightful sculptures of Alice and the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse. Then he put up the Delacorte Clock at the Children's Zoo. Then he installed the fountain at Columbus Circle.
George Delacorte, the town's civic pillars agreed, was to New York what Lorenzo de Medici had been to Florence.
And then, in 1969, he unveiled his masterwork: A spectacular 400-foot geyser in the East River off 49th Street, a great night-lighted spray of water rivaling the Jet d'Eau in Switzerland's Lake Geneva. It cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this time the civic pillars wrung their hands. Why couldn't Delacorte do something more socially useful with his money, for God's sake? Hospitals needed beds. Schools needed classrooms. His own wife scratched her head. "What good is it?" she inquired.
"What good is the Eiffel Tower?" he replied serenely.
As it turned out, the geyser was grand folly. Basically the thing did nothing but spew filthy river water onto passing boats and it cost a fortune to maintain and it usually didn't work anyway. Shortly it disappeared, and this was mostly the end of George Delacorte's public gift-giving, though he dabbled for a time with the idea of building a huge fountain in Times Square.
That didn't work out either.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/09/11/2009-09-11_big_town_big_picture_the_delacorte_legacies.htm l#ixzz0QsSYlc6K
http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/09/12/alg_delacorte_clock.jpg
Central Park's Delacorte Clock in 1969
http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/09/12/amd_george_delacorte.jpg
George T. Delacorte with his Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park that same year.
From the 1920s into the 1960s, George Delacorte made millions publishing movie magazines and comic books and paperback novels and then in his semi-retirement he turned to philanthropy. Not the social-worker kind:
Delacorte had no use for the usual bunch of charities. Instead he began to shower the city with curious little whimsies. "Not everything has to have a practical function," he said.
"What do we remember about Rome? We remember the fountains and the statues. There has to be a place in life for the eye's pleasure."
First, in May 1959, he gave Central Park its delightful sculptures of Alice and the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse. Then he put up the Delacorte Clock at the Children's Zoo. Then he installed the fountain at Columbus Circle.
George Delacorte, the town's civic pillars agreed, was to New York what Lorenzo de Medici had been to Florence.
And then, in 1969, he unveiled his masterwork: A spectacular 400-foot geyser in the East River off 49th Street, a great night-lighted spray of water rivaling the Jet d'Eau in Switzerland's Lake Geneva. It cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this time the civic pillars wrung their hands. Why couldn't Delacorte do something more socially useful with his money, for God's sake? Hospitals needed beds. Schools needed classrooms. His own wife scratched her head. "What good is it?" she inquired.
"What good is the Eiffel Tower?" he replied serenely.
As it turned out, the geyser was grand folly. Basically the thing did nothing but spew filthy river water onto passing boats and it cost a fortune to maintain and it usually didn't work anyway. Shortly it disappeared, and this was mostly the end of George Delacorte's public gift-giving, though he dabbled for a time with the idea of building a huge fountain in Times Square.
That didn't work out either.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/09/11/2009-09-11_big_town_big_picture_the_delacorte_legacies.htm l#ixzz0QsSYlc6K