Keller Fountain Flows Again After More Than a Year of Repairs

The Ira Keller Fountain’s dry spell has broken.

After more than a year of maintenance, Keller Fountain’s landmark waterfalls roared back to life on Wednesday, July 17. Keller Fountain’s internal pump system broke in May 2023, and efforts to replace it in December were unsuccessful, resulting in delays. Keller Fountain last ran dry in 2021, after its seasonal reset was delayed by the pandemic’s onset.

On its debut in 1970, New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable declared Keller Fountain “one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance.” Architecture Digest named Keller Fountain one of the world’s most beautiful public fountains last November.

The Halprin Landscape Conservancy—a nonprofit organization stewarding the Portland Open Space Sequence, a series of downtown parks redesigned by Lawrence Halprin and Associates in the 1960s—is among the hosts of an opening ceremony to be held at 11:30 am Friday at Keller Fountain Park, where food and live music will be provided.

Also hosting? Our Next Keller, an advocacy group pushing for a renovation of the existing Keller Auditorium, rather than a new concert hall elsewhere. (John Russell, a prominent real estate developer who owns property nearby, is one of the movement’s most aggressive backers. You can find context here.)

Political jockeying aside, the fountain’s reset comes on the perfect weekend, and not just for LGBTQ+ Pride festivalgoers or incoming high school seniors who want an iconic class portrait. The National Weather Service projects that Saturday’s high temperature could reach 95 degrees, which will make climbing Keller Fountain’s gushing staircase all the more relaxing.