Belle Isle, the thousand-acre island park in the Detroit River where you are now, was designed in part by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also shaped New York's Central Park. At the island's western tip rises the James Scott Memorial Fountain, completed in 1925 in gleaming white marble, designed by Cass Gilbert with sculpted lions, turtles, and dolphins spilling water from tier to tier. It was paid for by the bequest of James Scott, a wealthy and notoriously disagreeable man whose gift came with the condition that a statue of himself be included, prompting fierce public debate over whether to accept money from such a figure.
The city took the money and built the fountain anyway. Belle Isle has been the city's collective backyard for well over a century, home to an aquarium, a conservatory, and a beach. Picture the fountain's marble basin and the water beyond it, the Detroit skyline in view, the same scene families have shared on summer afternoons for generations.