Temperance Fountain - Cogswill Fountains

Cogswill Fountains

Henry D. Cogswell believed that if people had access to cool drinking water they wouldn't consume alcoholic beverages. It was his dream to construct one temperance fountain for every 100 saloons across the United States and many were built. These drinking fountains were elaborate structures built of granite that Cogswell designed himself.

Cogswell's fountains can be found in Washington, D.C., Tompkins Square Park New York City, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and Rockville, Connecticut. Other examples were erected and then torn down at: Buffalo, Rochester, Boston Common, (removed 1900) Fall River, Massachusetts, Pacific Grove, California, San Jose, California, and San Francisco. The concept of providing drinking fountains as alternatives to saloons was later implemented by the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

These grandiose statues were not well received by the communities where they were placed. Washington, DC's Temperance Fountain has been called "the city's ugliest statue" and spurred city councils across the country to set up fine arts commissions to screen such gifts.

Although the D.C. statue survived mostly unscathed, the San Francisco one was torn down by "a lynch party of self-professed art lovers" including Gelett Burgess (who was subsequently fired from his job at University of California at Berkeley) and one in Rockville, Connecticut, was thrown into Shenipsic Lake. In Dubuque, Iowa, a statue of Cogswell that sat in Washington Park was pulled down by a group of vandals in 1900 and buried under the ground of a planned sidewalk. The next day the sidewalk was poured and the object was entombed. However, when new sidewalks were recently laid, the statue was not found.