Anyone entering by the main gate met the Fountain of Energy head-on. It stood in the center of the South Gardens on the axis of the Tower of Jewels, and its job was to announce the reason for the fair. The Official Guide calls it "a joyous aquatic triumph, celebrating the completion of the Panama Canal." A lean horseman, "Energy, the Lord of the Isthmian Way," rode a snorting horse on top of an Earth sphere, with small trumpeting figures of Fame and Valor perched on his shoulders. Todd compared his seat to Verrocchio's Colleoni.
Below him a frieze of mermen and mermaids carried the sphere, with writhing figures climbing toward the horse's feet. Breaking out of the sphere were the two Hemispheres, the Eastern "a human tiger-cat," the Western "a man-bull." In the big quatrefoil pool, groups at the cardinal points personified the Atlantic and Pacific and the Northern and Southern Seas, riding sea monsters, and nereids frolicked on "some perfectly willing fish." When it ran, jets burst from the top of the sphere and swept far out toward the rim.
Critics were split. Barry's architect-companion called it "an ideal example of what is expositional," sensational and full of "a nervous liveliness, characteristically American, not altogether healthy," and thought Fame and Valor did not read from a distance. Todd conceded they "may have been a misfortune" pictorially, but concluded the whole made "on every beholder a deep and unforgettable impression." At night, floodlit in silver, the horseman "loomed above his darkened sphere like a ghost of frost and ice."
