The theme of Light Dispelling Darkness is combating the darkness of evil through the enlightenment of knowledge. The central pillar of the fountain depicts images of education, industry, and science in a deco relief style, and supports a globe of the Earth that is finished in a hand-painted glaze, rising from the center of a 40-foot diameter pool. It was created in 1937 by Waylande Gregory, a ceramic sculptor who was the head of the Works Progress Administration Sculpture Project in New Jersey. It is in Roosevelt Park.
Radiating from the central pillar there are six concrete arched viaducts that buttress the fountain’s base. Each terminates in a glazed terra cotta sculpture that illustrates the dispelling of an evil of society. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are represented, all mounted on horses; the additional two sculptures represent Greed and Materialism.
War: a Trojan soldier on horseback carrying a shield emblazoned with a skull and wearing a WWI gas mask.
Famine: a cadaverous woman with deep sunken eyes who carries the scales of justice.
Pestilence: a lustful blue character covered in festering yellow sores and riding a horse with a dollar sign on its hindquarters.
Materialism: a serpent with five grotesque human faces, trailing a ribbon of Stock Market ticker tape.
Greed: two hideous octopi writhing in battle with each other.
Death: a scythe-wielding skeleton riding a lightning bolt.
The fountain, which is apparently permanently dry now, was restored in 2005. “Light Dispelling Darkness” was also intended as a nod to neary Menlo Park, NJ, where Thomas Edison had his original lab and invented the electric light bulb.
