Stork Fountain

Did You Know?

• The fountain was a present to Crown Prince Frederik (later Frederik VIII) and Crown Princess Louise in connection with their silver wedding anniversary in 1894.
• In early 2009, a Facebook protest group against the demolition of the Stork Fountain attracted 27,000 members in two weeks, but the cause was purely fictitious.
• Danish folk singer Cæsar's protest song 'Storkespringvandet' about police brutality became mainstream, with lyrics by Thøger Olesen set to the Scottish nursery rhyme 'Ally Bally Bee'.

History

In 1888 the Society for the Beautification of Copenhagen announced a competition for a fountain on the square to mark the silver wedding anniversary of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Louise on 28 July 1894. Edvard Petersen and Vilhelm Bissen won the competition. Other entries included Thorvald Bindesbøll and Joakim Skovgaard's Dragon Fountain, later erected at the City Hall Square, and Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint's proposal of a fountain with a merry Amager farmer sitting on a cabbagehead. The fountain was inaugurated in 1894.

Design

At the center of this fountain, a nine-sided stone basin collects water that spills from a bronze bowl above and from three small cascades around the central pedestal. The pedestal features carved reliefs of water plants, while frogs perched on dock leaves in the basin shoot streams of water. Three storks stand on a pedestal shelf, each poised to fly off in a different direction. Though a common story claims the birds are herons, experts from the Danish Ornithological Society confirmed in 2008 that they are indeed storks.