Vintage color postcard entitled "210 - Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain at sunset, Chicago, Ill."
Obverse marked "copyrighted Henry Fuermann & Sons Chicago Ill., pbl. by Kunz Greeting Card Co. Chicago, Ill."
Condition: unused, very good.
Funded by philanthropist Kate Buckingham in memory of her brother, Buckingham Fountain is one of the nation's finest fountains and a public icon of Chicago. It is the centerpiece of Grant Park, the city's grand "front yard," and is set within a handsomely landscaped garden, one of the city's finest examples of a Beaux-Arts-style landscape design.
The fountain is distinguished not only for its exquisite decorative details and finely wrought bronze sculpture, but also for its innovative use of technology which creates a dynamic light and water display on a massive scale.
It is the work of architect-planner Edward H. Bennett, a significant figure in the creation and execution of the 1909 Plan of Chicago, which encouraged the creation of lakefront amenities such as the fountain.
Henry Fuermann & Sons were Frank Lloyd Wright's first photographers. Clarence Fuermann, Henry's son, has been called "the perfect choice for Wright's vision of graphic art," as his photographs are perfectly balanced between the pictorialism of the late nineteenth century and the coming modernism of the early 20th.