Qualla: Dupont Circle Fountain

Dupont Circle Fountain: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. The same two men who made the Lincoln Memorial also made this fountain. Henry Bacon, the architect, designed the marble shell. Daniel Chester French, the sculptor whose seated Lincoln watches the Mall from inside Bacon's temple, carved the three allegorical figures who hold up the upper basin. The Sea, the Stars, the Wind. They face out in three directions across a busy traffic circle in northwest Washington, eight feet tall, twelve tons of marble apiece. The fountain has stood at the center of Dupont Circle since 1921. It replaces an earlier bronze statue of the man whose family paid for the marble. The statue is in a park in Delaware now. The fountain stayed.

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Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dupont Circle Fountain: An Admiral and a Failed Attack

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont was born into the chemical and gunpowder family in 1803 and joined the Navy as a midshipman at the age of twelve. By the Civil War he was one of the senior officers in the service. He led the squadron that captured Port Royal Sound in South Car...

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Image: APK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dupont Circle Fountain: Pacific Circle Becomes Dupont

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Army Corps of Engineers began laying out the traffic circle at the intersection of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire Avenues in 1871. It was called Pacific Circle at first because it sat at the western edge of the city's residential development. In February 1882 C...

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Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dupont Circle Fountain: The Family Replaces the Statue

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. Within a generation, the Du Pont family decided the bronze statue was not the memorial they wanted. The admiral's niece, Senator Willard Saulsbury Jr.'s wife, led the campaign for replacement. The family insisted on two conditions: no government funds, and the Commission of Fine ...

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Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dupont Circle Fountain: Sea, Stars, Wind

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nickomargolies at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. The completed fountain was dedicated on the afternoon of May 17, 1921 in a ceremony described by reporters as simple but impressive. First Lady Florence Harding attended. So did Secretary of War John Weeks and Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby. Sailors served as ushers. The Navy ...

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Image: Nickomargolies at English Wikipedia | CC BY 2.5

Dupont Circle Fountain: The Streetcar Years and After

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Washington Star staff, Public domain. In 1949 the District began building a streetcar underpass beneath Dupont Circle to relieve the traffic that already congested the intersection. The fountain was carefully disassembled and put in storage. Two years later, when the underpass was complete, the marble was reassembled...

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Image: Washington Star staff | Public domain