Beside you is the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain, one of the most photographed landmarks in Kansas City and a fitting centerpiece for a city that calls itself the City of Fountains. The fountain's history is itself a story of reinvention: it was originally created around 1910 for a private estate in New York, then exhibited in Europe, and eventually purchased by the Kansas City Art Commission in 1951 and installed here on the edge of Country Club Plaza. Four equestrian figures representing the great rivers of the world — the Rhine, the Seine, the Volga, and the Thames — rear above roiling sea creatures and cascading water.
The bronze work is exuberant and dramatic, the scale monumental. It was renamed in honor of J.C. Nichols, the Plaza's founder, in 1960. Kansas City has more than 200 working fountains scattered across the city — more per capita than any other city in the world and second in total number only to Rome.
That is not an accident: it reflects a genuine civic commitment to public beauty that dates to the City Beautiful movement of the early 20th century. This fountain, glittering at the entrance to the Plaza, is the most visible expression of that tradition.