DC -- U.S. Capitol Grounds -- Senate Park (Fountain, Reflecting Pool):
Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider. IP Address: 3.80.4.147 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
SENPK_170511_024.JPG: Lights in the fountains around the Capitol building
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: Senate Fountain
The display fountain in the park between the U.S. Capitol and Union Station is located over the Senate underground garage.
The Basics
Artist: Architects Bennett, Parsons and Frost
Materials: Minnesota Pink, Minnesota Green & Mount Airy Granite
Year: 1932
Location: U.S. Capitol Grounds
Authorization for its construction, for that of the terraces, and for landscaping was given on March 4, 1929. The fountain was designed by architects Bennett, Parsons and Frost and built under the direction of Architect of the Capitol David Lynn. It operated for the first time on July 16, 1932.
The Senate Fountain, a hexagonal granite monolith with high jets of water spouting from its center, is surrounded by six smaller jets on a lower level. Lion-head spouts on the faces of the hexagon project streams of water into a large circular basin with a scalloped stone rim, over which the water spills into a larger oval basin. The hexagon is 25 feet across and the basin measures 85 feet by 100 feet.
From the oval basin the water is piped underground to three sculpted stone bubbler fountains in the north wall of the terrace. The scalloped rims of their tiered basins repeat the pattern of the large fountain above. From there the water is again piped underground to the lower level of the 180-foot-by-80-foot reflecting pool.
The present lighting display is comprised of 114 underwater light fixtures with red, green, blue and clear lenses controlled by a computer running a program that repeats every 20 minutes. This system began operating on July 4, 1980, replacing the original lighting, which had been in use for nearly 50 years.
The lighting system is energy efficient because the lights are not on at full intensity at all times. The use of solid-state dimmers eliminates the need for frequent maintenance. Safety features include an automatic shutoff activated by the water level dropping below the surface of any light fixture or by a ground current rising above 5 milliamps; thus, any danger of shock is removed.
Recirculating pumps ensure water conservation, and fresh water is added occasionally to replace any losses. The mechanical equipment for operating the fountains is located directly under the main fountain. The water is circulated by pumps, passes by gravity through a 24-inch cast-iron pipe to the lower fountains, and then flows to a concrete 30,000-gallon surge tank under the section of the terrace containing the bubbler fountains. The water from this tank is returned to the circulating pumps. Of the three circulating pumps, two have a capacity of 3,000 gallons per minute; the other can pump 1,650 gallons per minute. It is possible for all pumps to discharge against a 40-foot head.
The main fountain is fabricated of Minnesota Pink granite, with a basin of Minnesota Green granite. The piers and other granite elements facing the Russell Senate Office Building terrace are made of Mount Airy granite, which blends visually with its surroundings.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!