Fountain in Blackstone Square

The Fountain in Blackstone Square  is a view of one of the two similar public squares (Franklin Square being the second one) that are on either side of Washington Street, the main thoroughfare that connected the Shawmut Peninsula with rest of Massachusetts in the early days of settlement in Boston. The watercolor highlights the large cast iron fountain bowl in the shape of a shell allowing the water to flow over each of the scallops and ripple the pool in the wide circular basin. The three lined squares in the South End were designed by Charles Bulfinch who worked on the plan for this new district with its series of residential squares derived from the squares of London. The narrow peninsula was bound by the South Bay to the south and the Back Bay tidal flats to the north and filled in over a period of 30 years to the extent that few realize that much of the land this large historic neighborhood was once water.