The Fountains of the Northland

The Northland — the Clay and Platte County portion of the Kansas City metro north of the Missouri River — carries the city’s fountain tradition into a dispersed suburban landscape. Anchored by the Children’s Fountain (Tom Corbin, 1995), the Northland’s fountain presence is less concentrated than the Country Club Plaza corridor but extends KC’s water-feature identity across communities including North Kansas City, Liberty, and Parkville.^1234567 The City of Fountains Foundation documents eight Northland fountains; Kansas City’s own parks inventory owns four of them.¹⁸⁹

Summary

The Fountains of the Northland span several distinct site types across the Northland.

Documented by the City of Fountains Foundation (eight):¹

• The Children’s Fountain — the signature Northland fountain, celebrating children. Six bronze figures 8-9 feet tall by local sculptor Tom Corbin, modelled on children in his neighbourhood; fountain design by Larkin Aquatics. Children’s Fountain Park, North Oak Trafficway and NE 32nd Street. Fundraising began 1991 under Anita Gorman, then president of the KCMO Parks and Recreation Board; $1.7 million raised publicly and privately. Turned on June 21, 1995; renovated winter 2015-16. KCMO Parks & Recreation.²⁸
• The Northland Fountain — North Oak Trafficway and Vivion Road, 1983; designed by the local firm Larkin & Associates, with Homer Williams credited as artist in the City’s inventory. Also called the “Spirit of Cooperation” for its mix of public and private benefactors, from Farmland Industries’ $30,000 to a schoolchild’s three cents. An 80-foot circular base with a centre geyser reaching 35 feet; one of the few KC Parks fountains that runs year-round, freezing into a winter ice sculpture.³⁸
• Shoal Creek Parkway Garden Fountain — median of Shoal Creek Parkway just north of NE 87th Street. Three large saucers of overlapping leaf forms above a 40-foot limestone-bordered pool. Burns & McDonnell, 2002; KCMO Parks & Recreation.⁴⁸
• Shoal Creek Golf Course Entry Fountain — median of Shoal Creek Parkway at the golf course entrance, 8905 Shoal Creek Parkway. Dennis McMan, 2002; KCMO Parks & Recreation.⁵⁸
• Pratt Memorial Fountain — Dagg Park, Armour Road and Howell Street, across from North Kansas City Hall. Dedicated April 23, 1992 to Emma J. Pratt (owner-operator of the historic Clayton Hotel) and Dorothy M. Pratt (political worker and community leader). Architect Homer Williams. Renovated with Dagg Park 2015-16 and re-dedicated May 28, 2016. City of North Kansas City.⁶
• The Courtyard Fountain (a.k.a. Liberty Courtyard Fountain) — courtyard in front of Liberty City Hall and the Clay County Circuit Court, S. Water Street and E. Kansas Street. One large central jet ringed by thirteen smaller ones, cascading between an upper street-level pool and a lower pool. Dedicated 1989; City of Liberty.⁷
• Terry Barnes Memorial Fountain — gateway to William Jewell College at the Mill Street entrance in Liberty. A large walk-in interactive fountain, a gift from the Barnes family memorialising Terry D. Barnes, a 1989 Jewell graduate killed by police in a case of mistaken identity. Installed 2000; William Jewell College.⁷
• Parkville Spirit Fountain — beside the Parkville Chamber of Commerce in the old train depot, 8701 NW River Park Drive, across from Park University. A low round stone basin with a central bubbler ringed by spouts. 1998; City of Parkville (Platte County).⁷

Documented by the City but not by the Foundation:

• François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Fountain — Chouteau Greenway Park, west side of Chouteau Parkway south of I-35 and north of Parvin Road, KCMO 64117. Four larger-than-life sculptures by Kwan Wu, commissioned 2019; limestone, river stone, lighting and landscape emulating the bluffs where Rock Creek meets the Missouri River; developed around the 2021 Kansas City bicentennial. The City’s open-data inventory lists it as a fountain in “Bronze, Stone, and Water”; KC Parks lists it as a monument rather than a fountain, and dates it 2019 with an incomplete-status note.⁸¹⁰

Water features at Worlds of Fun — amusement-park water elements at the Northland’s major regional attraction. **** — no Worlds of Fun water feature appears in the City of Fountains Foundation inventory, the City of Kansas City’s open-data inventory, KC Parks’ fountain listing, or Wikipedia’s metro fountain list, as checked on 2026-07-31.¹⁸⁹¹¹

Water features at KCI Airport — the airport’s documented water feature is Double Monopole by Keith Sonnier, commissioned 2006 under Kansas City’s One Percent for Art program: two steel monopoles 60 feet tall (the south 60 feet wide, the north 80 feet wide), each containing a 30-foot fountain/waterfall fed from the reservoir across Cookingham Drive, lit in neon blues, pinks and yellows dusk to dawn. The waterfalls also aerate the reservoir. The work is currently off view undergoing conservation and will be reinstalled adjacent to the reservoir.¹² No interior KCI water feature is documented.

North Kansas City municipal fountains — the Pratt Memorial Fountain in Dagg Park is the one documented municipal fountain owned by the City of North Kansas City.⁶ Any others:

Various suburban residential and commercial fountains across Northland communities — no institutional inventory of private Northland water features was located. Wikipedia’s metro list names several unsourced Northland-area commercial entries (Ameristar, a Silverbrooke community waterfall, a Thousand Oaks fountain, a “waterfall, Park University,” and an auto-dealership “car fountain” on NW Prairie View Drive at I-29) but the list is unsourced at the item level.¹¹

Gladstone and Riverside were named in the original draft of this page as fountain-bearing Northland communities. No fountain in either is documented by the Foundation, the City, or Wikipedia’s list.

The Northland fountain collection is geographically dispersed in a way that reflects the area’s postwar suburban growth pattern, with installations spread across multiple municipalities rather than concentrated in a single commercial district.¹

Background

The Northland developed rapidly through postwar suburban expansion, particularly from the 1960s through the 1980s, as Kansas City’s population spread north of the Missouri River into Clay County. Fountain installations followed this development in a piecemeal fashion — civic fountains, commercial water features, and residential installations appearing across the Northland’s growing communities rather than as part of a coordinated civic program. The documented dates bear this out: nothing before 1983, then a cluster of civic installations in 1983, 1989, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2002 across five different municipalities and one college.^1234567

The Children’s Fountain, installed in 1995, stands as the most intentional and prominent Northland fountain statement — a dedicated civic monument rather than an incidental commercial or residential feature, funded by a $1.7 million public-private campaign led by Anita Gorman.²

Significance

Extension of the City of Fountains identity northward

The Northland fountain collection carries the KC “City of Fountains” identity into the suburban north, demonstrating that the fountain tradition is not confined to the central city or the Plaza corridor. The dispersed character of Northland fountains reflects the area’s suburban fabric rather than the dense commercial concentration found south of the river. The Foundation’s Northland gallery reaches across municipal lines — Kansas City, North Kansas City, Liberty and Parkville — and across counties into Platte.¹

Civic investment in a growing area

The Children’s Fountain in particular represents a deliberate civic investment in the Northland as a full participant in Kansas City’s fountain heritage — not a secondary area but a community with its own landmark water feature. It is described by the Foundation as one of the largest fountains in Kansas City, and its campaign was led by a Northland resident who chaired the city parks board.²

Sites associated

• Children’s Fountain — primary Northland fountain anchor²
• Northland Fountain, N. Oak Trafficway and Vivion Road³
• Shoal Creek Parkway Garden Fountain and Shoal Creek Golf Course Entry Fountain⁴⁵
• Pratt Memorial Fountain, Dagg Park, North Kansas City⁶
• The Courtyard Fountain and Terry Barnes Memorial Fountain, Liberty⁷
• Parkville Spirit Fountain, Parkville⁷
• François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Fountain, Chouteau Greenway Park⁸¹⁰
• KCI Airport — Double Monopole (Keith Sonnier, 2006), currently off view¹²
• Worlds of Fun — asserted, not documented

Sources

Footnotes

1. City of Fountains Foundation — “Northland” (regional fountain gallery). https://cityoffountains.org/northland-fountains/ — asserts: the Foundation’s complete Northland inventory, eight entries: Children’s Fountain, Northland Fountain, Parkville Spirit Fountain, Pratt Memorial Fountain, Shoal Creek Golf Course Entry Fountain, Shoal Creek Parkway Garden Fountain, Terry Barnes Memorial Fountain, and The Courtyard Fountain. No Worlds of Fun, KCI, Gladstone or Riverside entry appears. (Read via Firecrawl 2026-07-31.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. City of Fountains Foundation — “Children’s Fountain.” https://cityoffountains.org/childrens-fountain-northland/ — asserts: six bronze figures 8-9 feet tall by local sculptor Tom Corbin (Joy; Meeting Challenges, a boy with crutches; a ballerina; a boy playing soccer; a boy standing on his head; a girl wading), modelled on children in his neighbourhood; fountain designed by Larkin Aquatics; one of the largest fountains in Kansas City; Children’s Fountain Park, North Oak Trafficway and NE 32nd Street; fundraising began 1991 led by Anita Gorman, then president of the KCMO Parks and Recreation Board; $1.7 million raised by public and private donations and dedicatory brick sales; turned on June 21, 1995; renovated winter 2015-16; owner KCMO Parks & Recreation. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. City of Fountains Foundation — “Northland Fountain.” https://cityoffountains.org/northland-fountain-northland/ — asserts: North Oak Trafficway and Vivion Road; 1983; designed by local firm Larkin & Associates; also called the “Spirit of Cooperation”; benefactors from Farmland Industries’ $30,000 to a schoolchild’s three cents; 80-foot circular base with centre geyser reaching 35 feet plus surrounding jets; becomes an ice sculpture in winter; one of the KC Parks fountains kept on year-round; owner KCMO Parks & Recreation. (The Foundation’s page names no individual artist; the City’s inventory credits Homer Williams — see ⁸.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. City of Fountains Foundation — “Shoal Creek Parkway Garden Fountain.” https://cityoffountains.org/shoal-creek-parkway-garden-fountain-northland/ — asserts: median of Shoal Creek Parkway just north of NE 87th Street, a few blocks north of Highway 152; three large saucers of overlapping leaf forms feeding a roughly 40-foot rectangular pool bordered in cut limestone with flanking garden beds; designer Burns & McDonnell; 2002; owner KCMO Parks & Recreation. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. City of Fountains Foundation — “Shoal Creek Golf Course Entry Fountain.” https://cityoffountains.org/shoal-creek-golf-course-entry-fountain-northland/ — asserts: median of Shoal Creek Parkway at the Shoal Creek Golf Course entrance, 8905 Shoal Creek Parkway; a small pool fed by multiple small waterfalls amid trees, flowers and limestone blocks; designer Dennis McMan; 2002; owner KCMO Parks & Recreation. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. City of Fountains Foundation — “Pratt Memorial Fountain.” https://cityoffountains.org/pratt-memorial-fountain/ — asserts: Dagg Park, Armour Road and Howell Street, North Kansas City, across from North Kansas City Hall; dedicated to Emma J. Pratt, owner-operator of the historic Clayton Hotel, and Dorothy M. Pratt, political worker and community leader; architect Homer Williams; dedicated April 23, 1992; Dagg Park and the fountain renovated 2015-16 (repairs, safety grate, pergola and benches) and re-dedicated May 28, 2016; owner City of North Kansas City. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

7. City of Fountains Foundation — three Northland entries: “The Courtyard Fountain” https://cityoffountains.org/the-courtyard-fountain/; “Terry Barnes Memorial Fountain” https://cityoffountains.org/terry-barnes-memorial-fountain/; “Parkville Spirit Fountain” https://cityoffountains.org/parkville-spirit-fountain/ — assert, respectively: the Courtyard (a.k.a. Liberty Courtyard) Fountain in the courtyard in front of Liberty City Hall and the Clay County Circuit Court at S. Water Street and E. Kansas Street, funded by businesses, agencies and private citizens, one large central jet ringed by thirteen smaller jets cascading from an upper street-level pool to a lower pool, dedicated 1989, owner City of Liberty; the Terry Barnes Memorial Fountain at the Mill Street gateway to William Jewell College, Liberty, a large walk-in interactive fountain with a central pedestal, a gift of the Barnes family in memory of Terry D. Barnes, a 1989 Jewell graduate killed by police in a case of mistaken identity, installed 2000, owner William Jewell College; and the Parkville Spirit Fountain beside the Parkville Chamber of Commerce in the old train depot at 8701 NW River Park Drive, across from Park University, a low round stone basin with a central bubbler ringed by spouts, dedicated to the spirit of the city in its citizens, leaders and founders, 1998, owner City of Parkville. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

8. City of Kansas City, Missouri — “Monuments, Fountains, Sculptures and Attractions” open-data inventory (dataset 6x5f-7sf4; 230 records). https://data.kcmo.org/d/6x5f-7sf4 (machine-readable: https://data.kcmo.org/resource/6x5f-7sf4.json) — asserts: Northland fountain records for Children’s Fountain (artist Tom Corbin, Bowman Bowman Novick Inc. and Larkin Associates; bronze; 1995; N. Oak Trafficway and NE 32nd Ave; owner KC Parks, operator City of Fountains Foundation), Northland Fountain (artist Homer Williams; 1983; NE Vivion Road and N. Oak Trafficway), Shoal Creek Parkway Garden Fountain (Shoal Creek Pkwy and NE 87th Street), Shoal Creek Golf Course Entry Fountain (8905 Shoal Creek Pkwy), and the François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Fountain (artist Kwan Wu; medium “Bronze, Stone, and Water”; typed as a historical monument/memorial; date field “2019 (NOT COMPLETEN 7/19”). The dataset’s Northland KCI entries — Chandelabras and Three Figures/Fifteen Elements — are typed as public art, not fountains, and no Worlds of Fun record exists. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

9. Kansas City Parks and Recreation — “Fountains” (place-type listing of the department’s fountain inventory). https://kcparks.org/place_types/fountains/ — asserts: KC Parks’ own catalogue of the fountains it owns and operates. Its four Northland entries are Children’s Fountain, Northland Fountain, Shoal Creek Golf Course Entry Fountain, and Shoal Creek Parkway Garden Fountain. No Worlds of Fun, KCI, Gladstone or Riverside fountain appears. (kcparks.org is reported to block some automated fetches; read via Firecrawl 2026-07-31.) ↩ ↩²

10. Kansas City Parks and Recreation — “François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Monument.” https://kcparks.org/places/francois-chouteau-native-american-heritage-monument/ — asserts: located on the west side of Chouteau Parkway, south of I-35 and north of Parvin Road, along the Chouteau Greenway near the Chouteau Rain Gardens; an historical interpretation destination depicting the French trader François Chouteau and the Native Americans who founded the city with a trading post here in 1821; emulates the river bluffs where Rock Creek and the Missouri River converge through limestone, river stones, lighting and landscape; sculptor Kwan Wu, Kansas City resident, commissioned in 2019 for four larger-than-life sculptures; three statues atop the bluff depict a trade encounter and a Native American trapper stalks prey elsewhere. KC Parks files it as a monument, not a fountain. ↩ ↩²

11. Wikipedia — “List of fountains in the Kansas City metropolitan area.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fountains_in_the_Kansas_City_metropolitan_area — asserts: a list of fountains “now officially recognized by the City of Fountains Foundation.” Its Northland-area entries include Children’s Fountain, Northland Fountain, Parkville Spirit Fountain, Pratt Memorial Fountain (Dagg Park), Barnes Memorial Fountain, Liberty Courtyard Fountain, Double Monopole, Ameristar, Silverbrooke Community Waterfall, Thousand Oaks fountain/sculpture, and “Waterfall, Park University.” No Worlds of Fun entry appears. The list is unsourced at the item level and is cited here only for what it does and does not name. ↩ ↩²

12. Kansas City Aviation Department — “Public Art,” Kansas City International Airport: Keith Sonnier, Double Monopole. https://flykc.com/public-art — asserts: previously located in the median of Cookingham Drive just south of Paris Street; two steel monopoles each 60 feet tall, the south 60 feet wide and the north 80 feet wide; each monopole contains a 30-foot fountain/waterfall fed by water pumped from the reservoir to the north, which the waterfalls also aerate; lit in neon blues, pinks and yellows from dusk until dawn; commissioned in 2006 as part of the Kansas City, Missouri One Percent for Art Program; currently undergoing conservation and not on view, to be reinstalled adjacent to the reservoir, viewable from Cookingham Drive and Brasilia Avenue. ↩ ↩²