The fountain was intended to symbolize "the power of religion, the virtues of temperance, and the Irish Catholic love of patriotism and liberty.

[4] Kirn's other work in the park includes the 1883 Willian Penn statue atop Mom Rinker's Rock, titled Toleration, and his Orestes and Pylades drinking fountain of 1884, cast in bronze from a Steinhäuser original design.

[3][9] Kirn exhibited a 12-foot diameter plaster of Paris model of the Catholic fountain as early as February 1874 at the city's Academy of Music.

He stands upon a beehive-shaped mound of marble that signifies the Rock of Horeb, which God instructed Moses to strike with his staff to provide water for the Israelites.

[14] The basin's marble outer wall features six portrait medallions of prominent Catholics who fought in the Revolutionary War – including George Meade,[15] Count Casimir Pulaski and the Marquis de Lafayette – and the seal of the Total Abstinence Union.