Bailey Fountain

The 11-acre Grand Army Plaza is located at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 59th Street in Brooklyn, New York. It is across Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. The oval plaza, designed in concentric rings of streets, is the work of Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted in 1867. The outer ring is known as Plaza Street, and the inner street is named Flatbush Avenue.

From the Grand Army Plaza was originally known as the Prospect Park Plaza. It was renamed in 1926. The park’s most prominent elements is the classical-style Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch, which is Brooklyn’s version of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe. Its cornerstone was laid by William Tecumseh Sherman on October 10, 1899. After three years of construction, it was unveiled by President Grover Cleveland.
 

To the north of the arch is Bailey Fountain, which is a popular background for wedding pictures. It is the fourth fountain to stand on its current site, and is the longest-lasting fountain in the plaza. It is over seventy years old. The Bailey Fountain was designed and built by architect Edgerton Swarthout and sculptor Eugene Francis Savage in 1932. It was built as a memorial to Brooklyn-based philanthropist and financier Frank Bailey’s wife Mary Louise.