DCist’s Monuments series continues our recent swing through Judiciary Square today with the Joseph James Darling Fountain, one of the most hidden-in-plain-sight monuments around town.

For some time, the fountain has rated little more than a sentence or two every few years in the local press. Major newspapers from across the country get around to doing a piece on the District’s statues once or twice a decade — add another sentence. It doesn’t add up to much. Even the most careful readers of all these publications would know about the Darlington Fountain is that: the statue comprises a nymph and fawn; the statue is naked!; the statue honors Joseph James Darlington; the statue is run-down; the statue looks better now! Indeed, why don’t we let the finest newspaper writers of this country narrate its decline, fall, and redemption…