Weird Island

44. BUBBLERS: Cogswell’s Infamous Fountains

Episode Summary

In the middle of downtown Pawtucket, there’s an old, no longer functioning drinking fountain that most people assume is just a statue. But it’s one of only a handful of remaining Temperance Fountains, donated to the city by a man who believed that the solution to drunkenness might just be a glass of fresh, cold water. To Visit: Corner of Roosevelt Ave and Main Street, Pawtucket RI | You can map to 175 Main Street, Pawtucket, RI 02860

Episode Notes

To Visit: Corner of Roosevelt Ave and Main Street, Pawtucket RI | You can map to 175 Main Street, Pawtucket, RI 02860

Episode Source Material:

Episode Transcription

It was 4:00 in the afternoon when a bold reporter from the Rochester Herald knocked, unannounced, at the hotel room door of a famous writer. A voice from inside called him in, and the reporter opened the door to find Mark Twain propped up in bed, dressed only in a nightshirt, scribbling away on some papers that were spread over his knees. The room was in an alarming state of disorder, Twain was hardly presentable, and yet the writer welcomed the reporter to stay and talk, assuring him that on Sunday he often wouldn’t really get up until Monday.
It was December of 1884, and Twain was on a literary tour alongside writer George Washington Cable called the Twins of Genius Tour - which one historian described as a proto-rock-and-roll event. The reporter asked Twain about the tour, about Cable, and about how the writer liked Rochester, NY and the architecture of the city. Just as it seemed the interview was coming to a close, Twain exclaimed, “Oh, by the way, hold on a minute. Speaking of architecture reminds me, by contrast of a thing across the street here. Cable and I have been studying it with a good deal of curiosity but neither of us can get any satisfactory conclusion. What is it?”
Twain got out of bed and walked across the room to a window. It was slightly open and his night shirt flapped around his bare legs.
“There it is!” he exclaimed, “look there! Am I suffering from some nightmare, or is it a reality?”
He pointed to a statue of a bearded man with a scroll under one arm and a cup raised in the other. The man was on top of a fairly tall and ornate pedestal, so his feet were about even with the street lamps.
“That, sir,” replied the reporter, “is the Cogswell fountain–a gift to the city of Rochester from the famous San Francisco philanthropist, Dr. Cogswell?”
“Oh, yes! Is it possible? It’s all clear now. That’s a Cogswell fountain! The same philanthropist tried to work one off on Hartford, but we wouldn’t have it. And the city of Rochester allowed him to leave one here! That’s the best joke I ever heard.”
He went on to say, “I don’t feel like interfering in a matter of this kind–purely local you know–but I would like to advise the citizens to turn out and mob the statue to get even. The man looks as if he’d been nine days drowned. It has a putrid, decomposed sort of look that is offensive for a delicate organism. The only redeeming feature about the doctor, if that is true to life, is his legs–very fair legs those. I would cut that statue off just below the coat skirts and throw the top part into the canal where the water is deepest and the mud in the bottom softest.”
Of course, Mark Twain was likely joking, but just a year or so later, a group of men, armed with crowbars, gathered at the foot of the statue and proceeded to smash it to pieces. And a similar one in another city was torn down and tossed into a lake.
Fountains like this one were donated all over the country, and people were talking about them, because they were pretty widely hated, and newspapers everywhere catalogued all kinds of drama taking place with these fountains. Today, very few still exist. But right in the middle of downtown Pawtucket, one of the few remaining Cogswell Fountains still stands and people drive or walk by it every day without giving it a second thought.
I’m Sara and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be telling you about the Cogswell Temperance Fountain - donated to the city of Pawtucket by a man who believed that people might get drunk a little less often if only they were offered some nice, cold fresh water.
Dr. Henry D. Cogswell was born into a modest life in Tolland, CT in 1820. When he was little, his mother died and his father moved to NY, and Henry Cogswell stayed behind in CT. He was quite young when he picked up and left, walking 50 miles from CT to RI to work in the mills. He describes this time as “eight years of labor in cotton mills, itinerant wanderings, and incarceration in a poorhouse.” But he was able to get an education, and he became a dentist in Providence at age 26. When the Gold Rush happened, in 1849, Cogswell and his wife went out west. Not to do any mining, but to set up what would be the first dentists office in San Francisco–where he was able to take a little of the gold miners would find and turn it into gold fillings. Through his dentistry and some smart investments in real estate and mining stocks, Cogswell became one of San Francisco’s first millionaires, and he was able to retire in 1856.
After retiring, Cogswell could spend his time working on his passion projects. He was an advocate of the temperance movement, which was active and influential in the US from the 1820s through the early 1900s. Temperance advocates argued that alcohol led to crime, poverty, poor health, and violence. And while temperance is often associated with the complete prohibition of alcohol, that wasn’t always the case. Early on, many reformers were concerned with overindulgence and encouraged moderation. Later, the temperance movement would hit its peak with Prohibition.
H. D. Cogswell had this specific idea. The premise was that people might drink less if only they were offered some cold, fresh water. And so he came up with the idea of public drinking fountains that would supply people and animals with ice cold, clean water. He would donate the fountain itself, but the city would be expected to keep it well lit, in good condition, and supplied with ice in this reservoir underneath that would keep the water cold. His goal was to construct one temperance fountain for every 100 saloons across the United States.
It was a pretty noble idea. He was able to sponsor about 50 between 1878 and the 1890s. They were found in San Francisco (where his first fountain was placed), in Washington, DC, in Boston, in New York, CT, Iowa… all over.
The problem was, these fountains were not well received.
It’s a little difficult to tell why. I think it was a confluence of factors. So, to start, not everyone agreed with the anti-alcohol sentiment, which these fountains represented. And then, people started to say how ugly these fountains were, like Mark Twain said. But you can go see the Pawtucket fountain, and, honestly, I don’t think it’s that ugly.
What people really seemed to dislike was the statue on top of many of them. Cogswell designed each fountain himself, and most were topped with a statue of a man he called “The Guardian of the Fountain.” The Guardian represented an ideal member of the temperance movement, and he held a temperance pledge under one arm, and offered a cup of water with the other. But the model of the ideal member of the Temperance movement, he looked awfully familiar. In fact, he looked just like Cogswell himself. People hated this blatant egomania. Hated it. Who puts statues of themself up all over the country?
I think that, more than anything, caused problems. Because today, the few Cogswell fountains that still stand tend to be the outliers that didn’t include a statue of Cogswell on top. Pawtucket’s fountain is topped with a heron, as is the fountain still standing in Washington, DC. Although, that didn’t stop D.C. from naming theirs “the city’s ugliest statue.”
But the fountains topped with Cogwell’s likeness, they suffered some comedic and unusual fates. There was, of course, the Rochester, NY fountain, which was smashed by a crowd armed with crowbars and immortalized by Mark Twain’s description of it as “putrid.”
Then there was a fountain in Rockville, CT which had it’s Guardian stolen during the night and tossed into a lake. The local paper wrote, “This act, while it cannot be approved by law-abiding citizens, removed an unsightly object, and in this view of the matter people will say that the end justifies the means.”
A statue in Dubuque, Iowa was rumored to have been pulled down by a group of vandals and buried under the ground of a planned sidewalk. The next day, the sidewalk was poured and the statue was entombed. When a new sidewalk was laid in the early 2000s, they looked for the statue and couldn’t find it. But, who knows, maybe it’s still down there somewhere.
In San Francisco, a drunken mob of “self-professed art lovers,” tore down another statue and tore it limb from limb.
Cogswell, of course, wasn’t pleased with the treatment of his gifts. He would write letters to local papers, reprimanding citizens for not thanking him for the fountains.
He would show up to check on the fountains, only to find them missing from their original locations, either destroyed or just moved and hidden away somewhere out of sight.
Some cities were able to avoid violence towards the statues by moving them from public squares into cemeteries, where they were largely overlooked. That’s actually what happened to the Pawtucket fountain. It was donated in 1880, and at the time, residents gathered to welcome it with songs and speeches. It was initially located where it is today, in the heart of downtown, but over time it became more and more unpopular. In the early 1890s, it was moved out of sight to Oak Grove Cemetery. A Boston Globe article from the time described how many found the new location to be very appropriate, while others felt it was a bit disrespectful. The relocation of the fountain actually broke the initial agreement between Cogswell and the city, so now Cogswell could come and take the fountain back at any time.
“Should he desire to take the fountain he will not encounter the slightest obstacle,” the article notes, “for it has never been appreciated, either as a fountain or a work of art.”
But, actually, the Pawtucket fountain managed to find its way. It was moved in 1904 from the cemetery to the entrance of Slater Park, where it stood for almost 90 years. Then in 1991, as part of a project revitalizing the Blackstone River waterfront, the statue was restored to its original site on the corner of Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street.
Today, the whole story has an air of comedy to it from the treatment of the statues to the original concept itself. I laughed when I first read that Cogswell thought the solution to overindulgence of alcohol was water. It just seemed silly.
But, truthfully, even though it’s funny today, he actually was on to something. Clean water hasn’t always been as available as it is today in most parts of the country. In fact, Jersey City, NJ was the first city in the US to begin routine disinfection of community drinking water - and that didn’t happen until 1908. And because the water people had access to prior to then was often muddied and bad tasting, many Americans drank alcohol for health purposes.
For a long time, beer and cider were the main alternatives to water, and were generally considered safer to drink. By 1830, the average person over 15 years old in the US drank over 7 gallons of absolute alcohol a year. Compare that to today, with the average person drinking just over 2 gallons of absolute alcohol a year, and you might start thinking Cogswell was right, to some degree.
Throughout the 1800s, the New York Times was regularly running op ed pieces asking for the installation of public drinking fountains, and the first one in the city was constructed much later than I would have guessed. It was placed in New York’s City Hall Park 1859, and the Times reported that crowds gathered to watch it get turned on. It is likely because of the Temperance movement that public drinking fountains like that one started to be found all across the United States, as individuals like Cogswell and groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement began donating fountains to what they considered the “most at-risk areas” for alcoholism. In addition to Temperance Movement advocates, the ASPCA (aka the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was also instrumental in the proliferation of drinking fountains.
The Pawtucket Cogswell Fountain is kind of hidden-in-plain-sight. I think a lot of people have seen it, but very few people realize it’s a fountain or know its story. Now, if you go back, the words “God’s Free Gift to Man and Beast,” which run across the front will make more sense. If anything, you might have noticed the heron on top, which is the newest part of the fountain. It had to be replaced after the original was lost during the hurricane of 1938. There’s a horse carved into one side, above a small basin, and a cat on another side. And if you look closely at the cats, you can see marks made by rings where drinking cups once hung.
These fountains weren’t like drinking fountains of today. There would be a metal cup attached by a chain, and people would come and all drink from the same cup. Of course, now we’re living through a global pandemic and would be horrified by the idea of sharing a cup with potentially hundreds of other people, but at the time it was believed that the water running over the metal cup would clean any germs off.
This idea would quickly fall out of favor. In 1902, MIT professor William Sedgwick recognized the danger of the common cup, and Ban the Cup campaigns influenced cities to start passing laws banning common cups. Initially, there was a lot of push back, but there were a couple of inventions that helped move the campaign forward. First, was the paper cup, which was initially called the Health Kup before it was renamed the Dixie Cup. And another solution was the invention of more sanitary drinking fountains, which shot a small jet of water straight up into the air, creating bubbles as the water came back down. These fountains were called Sanitary Bubblers to help differentiate them from the old cup-dependent water fountains.
Yeah, everyone used to call them bubblers at one point! Today, most people have gone back to calling them water fountains or drinking fountains. The word bubbler has kind of disappeared from common use, except for in two places in the US.
According to a study done by a researcher at the NC State University Department of Statistics, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are the only states that refer to them as bubblers today. No one is quite sure why the word has stuck in just these two places, but it has.
And the Cogswell Fountain has stuck around as well. Today, there are just a few of these fountains remaining across the country. Some that escaped vandalism were melted down for scrap during the wars. The remaining ones can be seen in Pawtucket, Fall River, Washington DC, New York City, San Francisco, and Rockville CT - though that one is a replica that was donated in 2015 to replace the original that was thrown in the lake.
Next time you’re in downtown Pawtucket, stop by and check it out. It doesn’t function as a fountain anymore, but it’s an interesting snapshot of a moment in time. And speaking of which, Cogswell actually placed time capsules in many of his fountains. They would include things like photos of Cogswell and his wife, descriptions of Cogswell’s inventions, copies of his will, newspapers, periodicals, advertisements, business cards, directories, pamphlets, railroad timetables, books, you name it. The Pawtucket fountain did have a time capsule embedded in the top of the column, and it was there for over 100 years undisturbed, this hidden treasure that almost no one knew was there. In 1990, when the fountain was being moved to where it stands today, the Rhode Island Historical Society opened the time capsule and found some soggy papers and a penny. It doesn’t sound that exciting, but there’s something captivating about the idea of treasures and secrets and notes to the future that might be hidden in the world around us, waiting to be discovered.
Thanks for listening, and a big thanks to Aldona for suggesting this week’s episode! I wasn’t planning on featuring this topic right away, but after your email, I went down the rabbit hole researching these fountains, and had to share this story while I was excited about it. If you liked this episode, it would be awesome if you could leave a rating or review. If you’re listening from Spotify, you might have noticed that within the past couple of weeks they’ve added the ability to rate podcasts. It would mean a lot to me if you could take a few seconds to help me out and add a rating! And if you listen on Apple you can do that there as well. And thanks to all of you who’ve already left a rating or review. It not only helps other people find the podcast, it really means a lot to me personally. If you’ve got an episode idea, I’d love to hear it. You can find me on Instagram at weirdislandpodcast or you can send me an email at Weird Rhode Island @ gmail.com. See you next week as we uncover more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!