Neary-Sighted

I know you are sitting there, waiting for Post No. 498 about community policing. Well, we do talk about other things from time to time. Like local history, for example.

I've heard for awhile that there was a story about the fountain in front of Washington Mutual on Gravelly Lake Drive. Somehow the fountain came up in conversation with Dennis Higashiyama, one of the city's parks and recreation staff. Dennis provides support to the new arts commission. So perhaps it is not surprising that Dennis knew all about the fountain, and sent me in the direction of some informative URLs.

I bet a lot of you know the story, but just in case: The fountain was designed by the Northwest artist George Tsutakawa, who is profiled on this great site about UW alumni and professors. He designed dozens of fountains, which are found from the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. to the University of California, Los Angeles. Tsutakawa was also profiled on HistoryLink, in an essay titled, "Master of Fountains," where I thought this sentence was a good summary: "Tsutakawa's fountains look as if they are shaped by the water itself."

Of course, the alert among you may have known of this treasure in Lakewood thanks to the Tacoma Public Library's photo series in The News Tribune. This photo and caption from a January 2007 issue shows the fountain at its original location in 1970, at Pacific First Federal Savings in Tacoma. You can get a better sense of how the fountain fit into its original location by looking at another photo at a wider angle from the Tacoma library, though you have to peer a bit at the bottom of the photo to see the fountain. The fountain was moved to Lakewood in 1974 when the bank opened the branch here. How great that we have it in Lakewood!

Perhaps it is a tribute to this artist's popularity that you can even find a video taken outside a WaMu in Bellevue and now posted on YouTube, of, well, a Tsutakawa fountain:

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