The folly of Ozymandias

A folly is a whimsical structure built to serve as a conversation piece, or to lend interest to a view, or maybe to commemorate a person or an event. A folly is not a bad thing, just extravagant and ... out there. Today, I bring you some minor follies, some over-blown structures that are in one’s face on turning a corner, or breasting a rise, In this era of economic rationalism and financial discipline, it is a joy to find structures so essentially ... useless.

Below Left: The Victor Chang memorial opposite St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst Below Right: Oxford Square near the intersection with Riley Street

The design for a cast-iron canopy drinking fountain was chosen from a Glaswegian catalogue by Mayor Renny in about 1870. Altogether, he had ten specifically forged for Sydney, complete with the coat of arms of the city at that time. Wherever they were originally located, many have been moved, and some ... lost. The book ends for this post show the canopy in Macquarie Place down at the Quay although it is missing its fountain, and looks a trifle naked. The only original location to still be graced with an ornate canopy fountain is Beare Park, in Elizabeth Bay.

Top: Gothic folly in Hyde Park Below both: The Albert Square folly that is a traffic hazzard!

Then we come to the redoubtable John Frazer, who must have been a Methodist with a strong dash of wowser. He had a wholesale grocery store down on York Street and gave the council a thousand pounds in the 1880s to erect drinking fountains for the citizenry. A thousand pounds! If money doubles every seven years ... that is a lot of dollars! Two were constructed, a gothic style one in Hyde Park which had to be moved a couple of times but now leads down to Sydney Grammar School on College Street. The other, in the Italian-Renaissance style this time, should be moved as it stands in the middle of Albert Square at the head of Art Gallery Road. It is a danger to drink from and, anyway, the water mechanism is long gone. A folly of a folly, I hear you say. Move it, I say. Down into the Domain and put the water mechanism back in.


And finally, the memorial fountain to Lewis Wolfe Levy, a Member of the Legislative Council who died in 1888, erected in the Royal Botanic Gardens by his bereft family. This has four (four!) water fountains, one on each corner. They all work, and water spouts out the mouths of lions on the super-structure. Who was he? He was born in London in 1815, died in Sydney in 1885 and had 15 children – sufficient one might think. What did he do? A businessman, pastoralist and mercantilist, he became a Director of Prince Alfred Hospital and the Industrial Blind Institution, as well as the President of Macquarie Street Synagogue - a pillar of the establishment, in other words.


Middle ranking citizens, worried that their deeds would not suffice, needed a more permanent reminder of their existence. ‘The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

Source: 'Water, water, everywhere' - City of Sydney