Corning Fountain is a fountain with sculpture located in Bushnell Park

Bushnell Park

Bushnell Park in Hartford, Connecticut is the oldest publicly funded park in the United States. It was conceived by the Reverend Horace Bushnell in the mid-1850s at a time when the need for open public spaces was just starting to be recognized....

, Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...

.

The two-tiered fountain was designed by sculptor J. Massey Rhind

J. Massey Rhind

John Massey Rhind was a Scottish-American sculptor. Among Rhind's better known works is the marble statue of Dr. Crawford W. Long located in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington D.C...

 and dedicated in 1899. It was given to the city by John J. Corning in memory of his father, John Benton Corning (1811–1896), a Hartford businessman who operated a grist mill on the site. It is 28 feet tall, made of bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 and granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

, and features stylized Saukiog

Saukiog

The Saukiog tribe was an Native American people who lived in the Hartford, Connecticut vicinity circa the early 17th century....

 and Oneida

Oneida tribe

The Oneida are a Native American/First Nations people and are one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in the area of upstate New York...

 Indians topped with the figure of a stag

STAG

STAG: A Test of Love is a reality TV show hosted by Tommy Habeeb. Each episode profiles an engaged couple a week or two before their wedding. The cameras then follow the groom on his bachelor party...

(hart) as Hartford's emblem.

The fountain features four bronze Saukiog braves around the lower basin, a center pedestal surrounded by four bronze Oneida maidens, and an upper basin topped by a bronze hart. The Saukiog braves are: (west side) holding a spear; (south side) wearing a feathered headdress and scanning the horizon; (east side:) raising a tomahawk; (north side) holding a peacepipe and lifting his hand in a gesture of peace. Below the upper basin are four animal heads as water spouts (a catamount, a bear, a fox, and a beaver). Below the lower basin are four lion heads, also water spouts. Water flows over the edges of each tier and into a large concrete basin at the base of the fountain. Text on bronze plaque in front of base reads: THIS FOUNTAIN IS/ERECTED AS A TRIBUTE/TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN B. CORNING BY HIS SON/JOHN J. CORNING 1899.