Wise way with water

MY wife Nancy and I have just returned home from New York where I took the picture above of the fountain in front of the Lincoln Centre in Manhattan.

It flows up and down as one mass of water which is contained in a circular area edged by stone – a very simple, effective design. On seeing it I wondered why we could not have installed something similar in front of the railway station in Huddersfield, instead of a hotchpotch of single slender fountains with the water running down the flags and a marble front piece which resembles an overflowing latrine.

The money that was spent could have been used far more imaginatively which could also be applied to the way the piazza in front of the library and the market place have been designed.

Why is it that Kirklees in general and Huddersfield in particular show such little imagination?

But you don’t have to go to New York to see how a fountain should be designed and installed. Our design team – do we have one? – could have gone to towns and cities all over Britain to see how it’s done. For instance just take a look at the fountain in the Birmingham city centre, lovingly nicknamed by the locals as the ‘floozie in the Jacuzzi’.

Stan Solomons

Fixby