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| - The most majestic fountain in the US. The Fountain at Point State Park in Pittsburgh
From Carnegie Magazine, Summer 1985. Derived from Thomas E. Morgan's essay, "The Plume of Pittsburgh".
No other large American city has a spectacular fountain as its symbol and visual focal point. St. Louis has its arch; Philadelphia, Independence Hall; New York, the Statue of Liberty; San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge; and Seattle, the Space Needle. The one European city boasting a fine fountain as a main attraction is Geneva, Switzerland, where a jet of water rises out of Lake Geneva to perhaps 400 feet, the highest such fountain in the world.
But the fountain in Pittsburgh is conceived as one of the most dramatic displays of water to be seen anywhere. It is unique in its use of great jets of water, its computer-controlled water height, its changes in illumination at night, and in its building materials. However, its most remarkable and least understood feature is its construction. It stands anchored at the confluence of the three rivers in such a way as to keep it "down," resisting the surrounding pressure of the river waters to force it "up," and it draws its water supply not from the visible waters which pass by it, but from an unnamed fourth river, subterranean, passing from the north to the south 54 feet below the surface of the Pittsburgh Point.
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