Jane Owen commissioned the Grandparents’ Baptismal Fountain in 1995 from architect, artist and designer William Schickel of Loveland, Ohio. The inscription reads: “In celebration of all grandparents for the great goodness that flows through and from them.”
Schickel’s renovation of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where he worked personally with Thomas Merton, won the American Institute Architects Gold Medal Award in 1968. His downtown Cincinnati wall mural Eighty Foot Love Letter to the Queen, completed in 1978, is perhaps Cincinnati’s most frankly modern work of public art of its era. On other commissions, he collaborated with Marcel Breuer, Pietro Belluschi, Emil Frei, and Philip Johnson. His works can be found in numerous private collections and museums, including the Brooklyn Museum and the Vatican Museum. The Grandparents’ Baptismal Fountain, located against the southeast interior wall of the Roofless Church, is available for baptisms Sunday morning between 9 & noon.