The most famous sculpture in the AT&T Building at 195 Broadway is obviously Evelyn Beatrice Longman’s Golden Boy (1914). Officially titled Spirit of Communication, the monumental winged, gilded figure decorated with telephone cables and lighting bolts. It used to stand on top of the building downtown. Then it filled the lobby of AT&T’s midtown building, until that got gutted. Then it moved to New Jersey, and nd now it’s apparently on some Dallas street corner. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
The second most famous sculptures at 195 Broadway are still there, kind of: replicas of Paul Manship’s Four Elements gilt and bronze reliefs are installed over the Broadway revolving doors. The originals are somewhere.
Which I guess means this drinking fountain is likely to max out as only the fifth most famous Paul Manship sculpture from the AT&T Building, and at best the sixth most famous Manship sculpture ever. But unless you’re buying Rockefeller Center, and until we find out about those panels, it IS the best one you can buy.
Drinking Fountain Boy is like a baby Kouros, with Greek dolphins on his shoulders and the bubbler goblet balanced on his head, and can you even imagine drinking from this at the office?
Imagine a little bit harder. This fountain is currently 18 inches tall, which is at least 20 inches lower than standard drinking fountain height. It has little feet, but what did it stand on? Was it in a marble niche? It should be again. And the custom display stand being sold with it at Toomey & Co needs to go.
And about those dolphins. They are not just ornamental, but strucutural, and seem to have pipes coming out of their mouths. Did water flow out of them, too? Are they the drains? That’d be gross. Are they for refilling your Hydroflask?That seems ahistoric. Are they just for soaking the pants of whoever was leaning in for a drink?
[Next Morning Update]: Claudio suggests the dolphins might function like some drinking fountains in Milan: “Water flows out of the dolphins, down into the basin below. When you want to drink, you tap your finger onto one of these pipes, and the water starts gently flowing out of the top nozzle. You want a stronger flow – you close also the other dolphin.”
9 Oct 2025, Lot 197: Paul Manship, AT&T Co. HQ Drinking Fountain, est. $4-6,000 [update: sold for $6985][toomeyco]