It consists of two parts, a pink granite basin, and a bronze statue of a young boy riding a sea turtle.

[1] In 1986, the Worcester municipal parks and recreation department described the statue with the sentence, "The boy holding the turtle, his hair flying, a sly smile on his face, is charming and disarming.

[3] Burnside had three daughters, Sophia, Harriet, and Elizabeth, who went on to be called by Frederick Clifton Pierce "the most notable figures in the life of Worcester.

"[3] The notability of the three daughters was due in part to the prestige and wealth Samuel Burnside had accrued as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas.

[3] Both before and after Samuel Burnside's death on July 25, 1850, his three daughters were known for charitable works, having donated public gardens and a library to the city of Worcester.

[4] When Burnside bequeathed the money for the fountain, she asked that it be designed for use as a drinking trough for horses and also for dogs.

The sculpture was assigned to Charles Y. Harvey, a graduate of the American Academy in Rome,[3] who had worked with Augustus Saint-Gaudens on the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston.

A paper about restoring the sculpture, written at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in 2011, stated "Harvey began to hear voices coming from the unfinished statue commanding him to take his own life.

A news article on October 11, 1912, stated that Worcester Mayor Philip O’Connell, "believes it will be well to have the fountain placed in use without ceremony.”[7] This lack of a ceremony is presumably due to Harvey's suicide and the desire to not celebrate such an act.

[8] Another apparent theft attempt happened in 2004 when the bronze sculpture was toppled off its pedestal and left dangling off the basin.

[11] A 1986 inventory of public memorials in Worcester, compiled by the municipal parks and recreation department, listed the fountain's problems as "chipped stone, water system, bronze surface corrosion, rust staining, litter,"[12] and the Smithsonian Art Inventories Catalog surveyed the fountain in September 1994 and listed its condition as "treatment urgent.

In 1916, the Burnside Fountain's boy and turtle appeared in The Cloud Bird, a children's book by Margaret C. Getchell in which each chapter was about a Worcester landmark.

[2] In the eighth chapter, "The Adventurer in Armor," a small girl finds a young, Peter Pan-like faun who had agreed to hold back the turtle.

"[16] Kristina Wilson, associate professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Worcester's Clark University, asked people on campus what they thought of Turtle Boy.