A Brookline Fountain for Horse and Dogs

An elaborate drinking fountain for horses and dogs, exactly like these examples in present-day Charlottesville, Virginia (left) and Quebec City, Canada (right) once graced a prominent location in Brookline Village. 

There are many photos of the intersection of Washington and Harvard Streets in Brookline Village (officially called Harvard Square). Together they present a picture of more than 150 years of change  in the center of the town's oldest still-thriving commercial district. 

One of our favorites here at the Brookline Historical Society is this photo from around 1908. (A larger, zoomable version is on our website. Check it out to view the photo in much more detail.)

Almost all of the buildings in the photo are still standing, making the location easily recognizable. (The major exception is the nearer of the two church spires. It burned on New Year's Eve 1960-61.)

 On the left of the photo is the Rhodes Brothers grocery store in a building that was constructed in 1905. The building still stands, though it has lost some of its ornamentation. Rhodes Brothers occupied the space until after World War II when it became New England Food Fair. A bank and a health club are in the space today.

There is plenty of activity in the street. On the left a woman and boy are crossing the square behind a cart, one of several horse-drawn vehicles in the picture. (There are no automobiles, although automobiles were increasingly seen in town by this time.) On the right, workmen are replacing bricks in the pavement in front of James Rooney's shoe shop and the Rooney Block of three buildings.

One woman appears to have just disembarked from a streetcar coming down Harvard Street while another is about to board. (There are tracks coming down Washington Street, as well.) Elsewhere in the photo men, women, and children can be seen crossing the street, walking on the sidewalk, or standing in front of various stores.

One of the most delightful elements of the whole picture is the horse, at the front of a cheese delivery wagon, drinking from a fountain in front of Rhodes Brothers right in the middle of the photo.

Amid all of this activity, one thing we did not pay much attention to was the fountain itself.

Until now.

A Widespread and Award-Winning Design
While looking through issues of the Brookline Chronicle on microfilm in the basement of the main library recently, I came across an article from July 16, 1887. It provides an illustration and a detailed description of the new fountain to be placed "in a prominent place in Harvard Square." (See the full article at the bottom of this page.)

A cast iron column, reported the Chronicle,

....supports a larger or upper basin (which holds 40 gallons), at a height of four feet three inches above street grade, or at sufficient height for horses to drink with ease, without the driver being obliged to uncheck them. At the top and in the centre of this basin is an ornamented post. At the base of the post, four mythical aquatic figures are attached, and from the mouths of these the water flows into the larger basin. The waste water supplies the dog trough below. 

These closeup views of the Charlottesville, Virginia, fountain show the spouts shooting water into the upper basin (left) for horses and the lower trough (right) with water for dogs and other small animals. The same design was on the Brookline Village  fountain.

The Brookline fountain, noted the article, was manufactured by Henry F. Jenks of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Its design had won awards from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Assocation and the Cotton Centennial Exhibition in New Orleans. Copies could be found in different parts of the country and as far away as Copenhagen, Denmark and Adelaide, Australia.

Looking up Henry F. Jenks I found three articles on the excellent Memorial Drinking Fountains blog where I first saw the pictures from Charlottesville and Quebec City. You can read more on that blog about the Charlottesville and Quebec fountains. There is a third article about another example in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (There is no photo of the Cambridge fountain, which is no longer there, but the same illustration as appeared in the Chronicle is shown, only this time with a lamp attached to the top of the post.)

Another good source is an article about Jenks and his fountains in the January 2018 newsletter of the Blackstone Valley Historical Society. It includes a photo (right) of Jenks with one of his fountains in an unidentified location.

Other sources mention Jenks fountains of this and other designs in Pawtucket, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Menominee, Michigan. The trade journal Building Age in 1885 described a Jenks fountain that provided people with ice water through a system involving ice cubes in a specially designed ice box with coils of tin-lined pipe.

One of these ice water drinking fountains was dedicated in Boston's Bowdoin Square in August 1889. The Boston Globe reported that:

"The ceremonies, which lasted about an hour, were witnessed and participated in by a large crowd that blocked the street from curb to curb."

The End of the Brookline Fountain...and One More Surprise
The 1887 Chronicle article tells us when the Brookline Village Jenks fountain was installed. (An earlier photo shows a simpler, less ornamental watering trough at the same location.) It's uncertain when the fountain was removed. It can be seen in photos as late as 1915, but probably did not last much beyond that date as gas-guzzling automobiles replaced water-guzzling horses on the streets of the town.

One of the joys of local history research is the way serendipitous discoveries, like the Chronicle article, lead in unexpected directions, like the story of the Brookline fountain, Henry Jenks, and the fountains he designed in the U.S and around the world.

In this case, I had one more surprise in store. While working on this blog post, I remembered seeing another fountain, a small element in a large photograph of Beacon Street looking east from the tower of the S.S. Pierce Building. (We obtained the photo, taken some time between 1903 and 1907, from the Iowa State University Library.)

On the right side of the photo, between the sidewalk and the street, there's another fountain, easy to overlook amid the dramatic view of still largely undeveloped Beacon Street and the streetcar shelters. Here it is in closeup:

It certainly appears to be same design as the Brookline Village fountain. Fortunately, there's an even better view, this one from the collection of the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.

This view is a section of a larger photo of Coolidge Corner. (The automobile has just come north on Harvard Street and is turning east onto Beacon Street.) It leaves no doubt; Brookline had two Henry Jenks designed horse-and-dog fountains in town.

Photo credits: 

• Charlottesville and Quebec City fountains: Memorial Drinking Fountains blog. https://memorialdrinkingfountains.wordpress.com/
• Fountain illustration: Brookline Chronicle, microfilm, Public Library of Brookline
• Closeups of Charlottesville fountain: Creative Commons License, Bill McChesney. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bsabarnowl/2759649151/in/album-72157606988713083/
• Henry F. Jenks with fountain: Blackstone Valley Historical Society Archives. http://www.bvhsri.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/01-18-Newsletter.pdf
• Beacon Street looking east: Iowa State University Library Special Collections. http://cdm16001.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15031coll16/id/6353/rec/6
• Coolidge Corner fountain with automobile: National Park Service. Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. https://www.flickr.com/photos/olmsted_archives/14868761718/
• All other photos from the Brookline Historical Society

Brookline Chronicle, July 16, 1887

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