The request to 'solve caper' behind mysterious half-century-old SWFL Park Shore fountain
Naples reader Elizabeth Flynn brought up a half-century-old feature that many of us might take for granted.
"I’m curious about the big black water fountain that sits at the entrance to the Park Shore neighborhood," the nearby resident said. "Do you know anything about it? When and who built it?"
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Thank you for the inquiry that I thought might be quickly resolved. I took the hunt to Naples City Hall, checking with some folks and swimming through several hundred public documents, sure that the answer would splash out.
Two tiny pebbles caught my attention in that flood: First, an inventory of city art conducted in 2021 that found 53 artworks. The info must be in there.
Uh-oh. Of all those compiled, only one specifically had "Unknown" listed in the artist column.
Yep, it was the stone fountain, darn it.
Well, how about this city record marked PAAC? Partial Abdominal Aortic Constriction? My gut told me this wasn't what it stood for although you'd be surprised what shows up for that oddly crafted acronym. Precast Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, but that's not what this is. The Program for Avocational Archaeological Certification. Nope, this artifact isn't that old.
Of course, it's actually a city Public Art Advisory Committee report, and there's a photo. Let's get that magnifying glass.
Oh, no. The caption: "Water Fountain, Artist Unknown, Horizon Way, Park Shore."
In the Know asked to 'solve the caper' with 'a little art sleuthing'
Shoot, I wasn't about to be deterred to uncover one of life's mysteries. Well, I had no choice. "Maybe we can help solve the caper?" Naples Daily News Executive Editor Wendy Fullerton Powell cajoled.
And High-Tide Studio Gallery owner Margie White of the Design District also cheered me on.
"I don’t know the answers, but I do enjoy a little art sleuthing," said White, a retired Chicago attorney who's the Naples Art Institute's representative on PAAC and enough of an art history connoisseur that she started a Paris-oriented blog named after a French boarding house for American female artists that dates to the 1890s.
So onward it was on this mission to solve a 50-year-old mystery by diving into a few decades of newspaper files. I kept coming across this Lutgert name. Where have I heard that before? Lutgert. Lutgert. Lutgert. Sounds important.
Why yes, Scott and Simone Lutgert. I saw them on Celebrity Family Feud in a winning effort with their son-in-law comedian Sebastian Maniscalco. They know Steve Harvey. They must be famous.
And, as we first reported, they are part of the focus of Maniscalco's "About My Father" comedy that just debuted this Memorial Day weekend.
But that's not it. Must be more to it.
Was fountain part of Ray Lutgert's award-winning sculpting handiwork?
There's this: The late Ray Lutgert, developer of Park Shore and sculptor of more than 200 pieces that can be found throughout Southwest Florida in shopping areas, street corners and local college campuses, such as his 24-foot Human Race at Florida Gulf Coast University and a replica that resembles an 'h' outside The Village Shops on Venetian Bay.
Was the fountain part of his award-winning handiwork? A bit of a long shot since his interest in art soared later in life.
Let's go interrupt his busy son, game show star and The Lutgert Companies chairman Scott Lutgert. Just a little younger than 79-year-old Robert De Niro, who's starring in that comedy he's tied to, Lutgert hasn't slowed. He's still Scotty on the go and still having fun when I corralled him Wednesday morning, generous with his time.
"I was just at a graduation for my granddaughter going from fifth grade into middle school," said a proud Lutgert, who, among many other responsibilities, is chair of NCH Healthcare System's board. "Now I'm on my way to the hospital. (We) have got an announcement about a major contribution so everything's really good."
My colleague Liz Freeman was all over that historic $20 million story, allowing me to stay on my In the Know pursuit.
His dad had not carved the fountain, confirming what I surmised: Ray Lutgert began his visual works at 65 after taking a class at Appalachian State University near his North Carolina retreat and staying with it until his 2010 passing at 90 years of age.
Not again. Had I hit another wall?
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Who traveled the globe before developing Park Shore fountain vision?
And then Scotty started chirping about what turned out to be one of his first endeavors upon joining his father in December 1969.
"I was there, working with all those guys getting the design going and getting it constructed and everything else. I had just graduated from the University of Chicago business school and came down," Lutgart said. "On Gulf Shore Boulevard, as we went from the Moorings into Park Shore, we wanted a fountain there to show the entry of Park Shore so that sort of demarcates the entry of Park Shore. Horizon House was being built ― it wasn't complete when that fountain was being built ― but the architect at Horizon House was a local architect."
Maybe not as complicated as the 15-story Horizon House, completed in 1971 as the first of two dozen Lutgert high-rises in Park Shore and Bonita Bay, but tight parameters nonetheless.
"The deal was, there wasn't much room there because Gulf Shore Boulevard takes up most of the area, and there's a small narrow median so there wasn't much" to work with, Lutgert said. "We went to Nelson Faerber, 'What do you think? What can you design there?' He came up with something that was relatively narrow and tall that would just be there and be able to show the transition from what was Moorings to Park Shore, and that's where Gulf Shore Boulevard starts curving out toward the bay."
Indeed, the late Nelson Arthur Faerber Sr., who came to Naples in 1954 after traveling the globe as the son of a National Geographic Society worker, had the vision for St. Ann's Catholic Church and a lot of Southwest Florida housing, quite a bit up and down Gulf Shore and creations appearing in Popular Mechanics magazine. Too many of his other various government and commercial spots, with touches of mid-century modern and Frank Lloyd Wright inspiration, had been demolished during the region's building boom.
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"He featured his own artwork on or near every building he designed, usually done in steel," said his son and Realtor Karl Faerber, confirming the fountain's originator with me Thursday night. "I have countless stories of him and his buildings, both inspecting progress with him and doing some work, usually landscape related, starting when I was 12 years old or so."
So how did the water feature come together?
"The fountain was constructed in various pieces and was put up there," Lutgert said. "There was a local masonry contractor, Fred Alander years ago, and he built all the block structure and the cladding that's on there and all the stone."
A Korean Confict veteran and restauranteur, Alander operated a construction firm for 20 years before his death in 2013.
The fountain, often used in early promotions for the 750-acre Park Shore construction, has been the center of an adventure or two over the years.
For example, in 1979, it helped a driver get out of a ticket after hitting a bicyclist, who got scraped up but not hospitalized, as concluded in the Naples Daily News: He "was unable to see the bike crossing the street because of the fountain in the median, police said, so his car struck the bike."
What about Naples art 'tragically washed away' by Hurricane Ian?
But Hurricane Ian presented its biggest challenge, and disabled the fountain for several months. The Sept. 28 storm was center to another question Flynn had.
"While you’re digging, would you have any info (on the) sculpture on our lobby wall in 1974?" the Gulfside condo resident asked. "This wall was tragically washed away in Ian."
Lutgert fielded that as well.
"That lobby there, there's no residential floors there, but I'm sure the whole lobby and downstairs area, furniture and everything else got ruined when that water came in," said Lutgert, who also explained the team behind the original work. "There was an architect from the East Coast we used before in that building, Schwab and Twitty. I don't think they're in existence anymore, but Schwab and Twitty ― they came up with that. It was part of their interior design."
State data shows the 2011 dissolving of the 40-year-old company, about which the Palm Beach Post said, "There was a time in Palm Beach County where it seemed that every construction project had the name “Schwab & Twitty Architects Inc.” attached to the site plan." Ronald D. Schwab, who died in 2015, worked with Lutgert on numerous enterprises.
Where was the original fountain, and what led to its demise?
Lutgert, who lives less than a half-mile from the fountain, also was prodded about his encounter with Ian, which arrived at high tide with a storm surge measuring at least 6 feet above the tidal level to parts of Gulf Shore Boulevard, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"The living area is up like 17, 18, 19 feet so that's OK, but underneath the house, we got a garage so that got flooded, lost cars. Stuff got messed up down there," he said. "Nothing happened with the living area."
While this fountain continues to trickle, it's not Park Shore's original.
"That was a fountain that was on U.S. 41 and Park Shore Drive (that was) built first, and it sort of was the entrance to Park Shore," Lutgert said. "It's not there now. It's changed. The Park Shore Association changed the structure there, mainly because kids were going there and putting soap suds in it all the time."
Dedicated on Dec. 28, 1968, the fountain, and subsequent antics, had made it into news accounts by October 1969 in a story about tossing truants into jail.
Earlier this year, a sculpture of two Great Blue Herons in flight by artist David H. Turner was erected at that site next to the monument that's there now.
Based at the Naples Daily News, Columnist Phil Fernandez (pfernandez@gannett.com), who grew up in Southwest Florida, writes In the Know as part of the USA TODAY NETWORK. Support Democracy and subscribe to a newspaper.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Who created Park Shore fountain? City says unknown but we found out
