On Patriot Day — September 11th — it makes sense to talk about a Memphis war memorial that has disappeared.
Does anybody even remember the polished aluminum fountain (shown here) that was installed in 1962 at the entrance to the Front Street Post Office? It seems a local group called the Gold Star Mothers raised some $50,000 for a memorial to their sons, who had died in the war, and recruited Memphis architects to design one. What they wanted was a traditional, shrine-type structure — something with nice bronze statues and granite columns.
What they got, though, was a gleaming rectangular trough, with water dripping into a big marble pool below. The Gold Star Mothers were dismayed, calling the flashy thing “a monstrosity.” The designers (whose names I can’t recall) defended their work, saying the fountain was “the first example in Memphis of non-representational civic sculpture.” In other words, it was some of that “modern” art, and some people here didn’t appreciate it. This was 1962, remember.
