Conservancy Projects
Lighting the Moses Fountain
In 2017, the Washington Park Conservancy began a long-planned project to restore evening lighting to the park’s iconic King Memorial Fountain (familiarly known as the “Moses Fountain”), which has been dark for decades.
When completed in the summer of 2019, the lighting design and installation project will aesthetically illuminate the sculpture and fountain, and provide additional lighting for the safety of pedestrians during the evening hours. The design will also use a sustainable, energy- efficient lighting system to keep costs low.
The Conservancy engaged Polaris Lighting Design to produce the plan for this project, and Schenectady Hardware and Electric to handle the electrical work, in coordination with the City Electrician’s staff. The housings for the lights are being fabricated by Jamestown Bronze Works in western New York.
As the project has progressed, the Conservancy has continued to work closely with the City of Albany Department of General Services to ensure that all recommendations made by the consultant comply with the electrical capacity of the park, and that the finished project can be easily maintained by DGS staff.
We are looking forward to the conclusion of this exciting project, which will stimulate renewed interest in this major public sculpture, and create a pivotal focal point for the park.
This project has been funded in part by a grant from the Bender Family Foundation.
Last autumn at the start of construction we expected to learn more about the fountain’s electric pump system. To our surprise, Schenectady Hardware and Electric discovered that in fact there ISN’T any electricity powering the fountain; its water pressure comes from the city’s water delivery system – which is a branch of the historic Beaver Kill, and also forms the bed of Washington Park Lake.