A century after a Carbondale jeweler purchased a large, granite fountain from the city and relocated it to Susquehanna County, that same fountain will return to Carbondale as the focal point of a proposed pocket park.
“The fountain is going home,” said Joan Esherick of Kingsley, the current owner of the fountain after her great-great-uncle Edgar Ely bought it from the city — likely in the 1920s — and relocated it to his property in Kingsley.
Esherick decided to donate the fountain back to Carbondale after receiving a phone call from Mayor Michele Bannon, who hopes to eventually restore the fountain and set it up at the site of the former Hotel Chellino on River Street as part of a pocket park.
“It’s the right thing to do. It’s a way to enhance the community of Carbondale and to give another window into history,” Esherick, 64, said. “I think it really would’ve pleased Uncle Ed.”
The fountain was once located around Main Street and Lincoln Avenue, where it was used as a source of drinking water for horses, dogs and even humans, Bannon said. At some point, it had to be removed so that a nearby house could be relocated from around Main Street and Lincoln Avenue to what is now the Greater Carbondale YMCA Community Park, Bannon said.
Bannon learned of the fountain when city resident Lee Ann Cerra contacted her after seeing a news article in The Times-Tribune about a postcard collector from California sending the city a 1907 postcard of City Hall. Cerra had seen the fountain about 20 years ago at the Girl Scouts Heart of Pennsylvania’s Camp Archbald in Susquehanna County, Bannon said. The Girl Scouts temporarily owned the land that the fountain resided on until Esherick said she purchased it in 2018 when it went up for sale.
The article reminded Cerra of a postcard showing the fountain, so she did some research online and reached out to Bannon, suggesting that the mayor ask to see if she could bring it back to the city, Bannon recalled.
So, Bannon made the call.
A fountain in Kingsley that will be donated back to the city of Carbondale. (COURTESY OF JOAN ESHERICK)
A fountain in Kingsley that will be donated back to the city of Carbondale. (COURTESY OF JOAN ESHERICK)
A fountain in Kingsley that will be donated back to the city of Carbondale. (COURTESY OF JOAN ESHERICK)
A fountain in Kingsley that will be donated back to the city of Carbondale. (COURTESY OF JOAN ESHERICK)
A fountain in Kingsley that will be donated back to the city of Carbondale. (COURTESY OF JOAN ESHERICK)
A fountain in Kingsley that will be donated back to the city of Carbondale. (COURTESY OF JOAN ESHERICK)
A fountain in Kingsley that will be donated back to the city of Carbondale. (COURTESY OF JOAN ESHERICK)
A fountain in Kingsley that will be donated back to the city of Carbondale. (COURTESY OF JOAN ESHERICK)
Esherick admitted she felt a bit conflicted at first. The fountain was a treasure that her family enjoyed, and while they don’t have many memories directly tied to the fountain itself, it was always there, she said.
“My entire lifetime, it’s been there. We spent our summer years — every summer — all summer long on the south side of the lake,” Esherick said. “The fountain was always right here, and it was just part of the landscape.”
She conferred with her cousins, and they agreed it would make their late uncle happy, Esherick said.
“It would please him to know that future generations would be appreciating the history of Carbondale, and that future generations would be appreciating a historical piece like that fountain,” she said. “And that it would be in a park where an awful lot of people would be able to enjoy it, and that it would be maintained.”
Ely was a jeweler and prominent businessman in Carbondale with a house in the city and a summer home at Ely Lake, where the fountain is now. Referencing a 1933 news article, Esherick said her uncle had purchased from the city both the fountain and an iron statue of a woman nicknamed the “Iron Maiden” and relocated them to his property in Kingsley. Esherick doesn’t know what eventually happened to the maiden, though she has old photos of it sitting atop a different fountain on her great-great-uncle’s property.
Ely died around 1956, and two years later, his heirs gave 70-plus acres of his land to the Girl Scouts for $1, which included the fountain, Esherick said.
In 2018, the Girl Scouts Heart of Pennsylvania decided to downsize, and the land went up for sale, she said. She made an offer in hopes of preserving the land, and the Girl Scouts accepted.
“We bought the land back, and (the fountain) has been sitting here since then, unused,” she said. “We’ve kind of thought, ‘Well, I don’t know if we’ll ever get to repairing it. There’s so much else to do on this property.’ ”
The fountain is still in great shape, Esherick said. It has a large upper bowl that horses drank out of, with smaller bowls on the bottom for dogs and cats, she said.
Bannon hopes to bring the fountain back to the city “very soon,” though the proposed pocket park where it will reside is at least two years away.
The pocket park cannot be built until the state Department of Transportation completes its project to replace the Sixth Avenue bridge, Bannon said.
The Sixth Ave bridge next to Carbondale’s City Hall on Thursday, May 22, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
The Sixth Ave bridge next to Carbondale’s City Hall on Thursday, May 22, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
The small bridge over the Lackawanna River connects North Main Street to River Street, but it’s been closed to vehicle traffic for more than 20 years due to its poor condition. City officials have discussed replacing it since at least 1989, but decades of problems have delayed the replacement, ranging from outdated computer files requiring redesigns to the structure becoming the last “Melan arch-style” bridge in Pennsylvania, requiring a historical review before the project could move forward.
Ancillary to the bridge replacement, demolition crews ripped down the former Hotel Chellino next to the bridge, with the river wall being part of the former hotel’s foundation. Once a swanky feature of downtown Carbondale, the four-story, red brick Hotel Chellino was built in 1913 but fell into disrepair over the years and became a blighted eyesore, leading to its demolition in early 2023.
PennDOT anticipates awarding a contract for the bridge replacement in spring 2027, with construction taking place that year and finishing in the winter of 2027, department spokeswoman Jessica Ruddy said in an email.
“As we progress into final design over the next few months, new design and construction schedules will be developed by the design team and will provide a more defined timeline and cost estimate for this project,” Ruddy said.
Bannon wants to build a pocket park at the site of the former hotel, but that has to wait until PennDOT finishes the bridge replacement to avoid inhibiting construction crews, she said.
In the interim, Bannon plans to restore the fountain and, ideally, make it functional again for the pocket park, though getting a water supply to it could be a challenge.
“I’m a firm believer in respecting your past, but at the same time, looking toward your future,” Bannon said.