A Guide to the Best of Southern California : LANDMARKS : Splash!

They’re beautiful, they’re wet and they’re everywhere. No, not the beaches. Eclipsed by the Pacific are other, unsung aquatic attractions. From classical to post-modern, tranquil tricklers to mighty gushers, Southern California’s fountains, like its buildings, come in every shape, size and architectural style.

Tucked amid the trees of Litton Plaza, off Rexford Drive and Brighton Way in Beverly Hills, is a century-old classic set against an imposing marble colonnade. A bronze Neptune tops the two-tiered fountain, a transplant from a San Rafael mansion, but the Roman god of the sea barely gets wet.

Over in Monterey Park, an ill-timed real estate development--kicked off just weeks before the Crash of ‘29--left as its legacy only a recreation hall and a skinny waterfall called the Cascades. Modeled on a similar structure in Spain, the 200-foot-long spring, near Atlantic Boulevard and El Portal Place, is inlaid with imported tiles and sandwiched between ribbons of grass. Its pools invite roll-up-your-pants splashing.

The ocean-close fountain in Santa Barbara is more of a spiritual being. “I had a dream about a woman and a dolphin one night. That’s what got me started,” sculptor James (Bud) Bottoms says of the bronze dolphins that arc over the Bicentennial Friendship Fountain on State Street at Stearns Wharf. A break in the city’s Spanish-style orthodoxy, his design draws from a Chumash Indian legend in which dolphins circle the Earth to protect world peace. Water seems an afterthought here; it bubbles, then slips over stone into a circular tank.

For sheer aquatechnics, nothing beats the show outside the Los Angeles Music Center downtown. Beneath its plaza are 160 computer-controlled jets that shoot pillars of water as high as 15 feet. Arranged in four quadrants around the Jacques Lipchitz sculpture “Peace on Earth,” it is a fountain without walls--a great temptation for frisky opera-goers in satin evening slippers.

It’s one thing to remove barriers, quite another to invite interaction. That’s what makes the Pop-Jet Fountain, in Newport Beach’s outdoor mall, Fashion Island, so unusual. Children delight in jumping up and down on the platform, trying to catch the drops--in hands, mouths or cups--that spurt from its holes. “It’s such a great idea,” says Linda Rambis, who visits the fountain with her husband, ex-Laker Kurt, and their children when in town. What’s so hot about this spot? “Oh,” says 4-year-old Jordan Rambis, “getting soaked.”