Port Townsend artists Mark Twain Stevenson and Sara Ybarra Lopez are recasting the Venus figure in the Haller Fountain to replace a sister statue at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego.

“She vanished in 1909,” said Stevenson of the hotel’s Venus. “No one knows what happened to her.”

The history of the statue known locally as Galatea is well documented, though the name of the original sculptor or sculptors has been lost.

Based on the 1490s painting “The Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli, the statue first appeared at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago’s German Pavilion. It was subsequently sold to J.L. Mott Foundry of New York, a company specializing in plumbing fixtures.

In the early 1900s the J.L. Mott Iron Works sold copies of the figure via catalog order, with options for different bases and sprays. The original Port Townsend statue was made of pot metal, which was very fragile.

The fountain was gifted to Port Townsend in 1906 by resident Theodore N. Haller to honor his deceased father and brother. Haller’s father, Granville Haller, commanded Fort Townsend from 1856 to 1860. As part of the dedication speech, Haller read a poem about the Greek sea nymph, Galatea, and the statue has been known by both that name and as the Haller Fountain since that time.

Adventures of Galatea

Following its placement at the bottom of the Taylor Street stairs, a local bar owner by the name of Charlie Lang is reported to have trained trout to jump through hoops in the fountain’s pool.

At one point, a vehicle, which had descended the stairs, collided with the statue and knocked it into the street.

The piece was painted several times over the years, obscuring some of the finer details. Vandals also damaged the original, although most of the missing pieces eventually returned when word got out they were needed for recasting.

In 1958 the statue was removed for repairs, which took about 18 months of work. During the repair process, Dr. Kennith Carter of Port Townsend declared that Galatea “lacked shape,” and chose to increase the size of the figure’s breasts.

In 1990 the statue was damaged by climbing children, who broke off a limb and damaged the cherubs. It was determined that the statue had deteriorated beyond repair, and the Kiwanis Club began a fundraising campaign for a new bronze replica.

Club members Bob Carter and his father, Kennith Carter, were named citizens of the year for their successful efforts to raise $50,000 for the fountain renovation.

Fountain re-cast in ’92

Stevenson and David Eisenhower were commissioned to reconstruct the statue from the assorted parts and dilapidated original. The new bronze statue, which is the current version, was installed in 1993.

In 2010, a memorial in honor of Steve Corra (a longtime city parks foreman) was added at the landing. The park was adopted by the Friends of Steve Corra in 2010 and they hold biannual cleanups.

Several other castings of the same statue survive to this day. The Central Fountain of St. James Court in Old Louisville, Kentucky, and “Venus Rising from the Sea” at Kimberly Crest Gardens in Redlands, California are nearly identical statues to Galatea. The “Venus Rising” piece was remade from the original cast after being damaged. Stevenson was commissioned to complete the replica.

The Jefferson County Museum of History and Art has housed Port Townsend’s 1906 original fountain since 1993. Last March they had the piece moved from the museum to their research center just out of town, where Stevenson and Lopez will make a mold, the first step in the lost wax casting process.

The museum will own the molds and receive a portion of the proceeds of this project.

Welcome to the Hotel del Coronado

Built in 1888, the “Hotel Del” has hosted film stars, celebrities, writers, royalty, and presidents, starting with President Harrison in 1891. The iconic 1959 movie, “Some Like It Hot,” with Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, was also filmed there.

The hotel also hosted a bronze Venus of the same design as Galatea, but it mysteriously vanished in 1909.

In 2019 a major project was begun to return aspects of the hotel, which had been altered over the years, back to the original design. Stevenson and Lopez, under their business name Carapace Arts, have been commissioned to produce a new copy of the Venus for the hotel gardens. They expect to deliver the completed figure in the spring of 2024.

Lopez and Stevenson also made a duplicate in 2000 for a site in California that used to have the same fountain.

“It was 30 years ago when we did this casting the first time,” Stevenson said. “This is my third. I’m very familiar with this Venus.”