Temperance Fountain

Temperance Fountain

NPS / Claire Hassler

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The Temperance Fountain, located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventh Street NW, is one of Washington’s most distinctive small monuments, reflecting a period when public art, social reform, and civic improvement were closely intertwined. Erected in the late 19th century, the fountain stands as a reminder of the temperance movement, which sought to curb alcohol consumption and promote moral reform during an era of rapid urbanization and social change.

The fountain was donated to the city in 1882 by Dr. Henry Cogswell, a wealthy dentist from San Francisco and a proponent of the prohibition of alcohol. Cogswell viewed access to clean drinking water as both a public health measure and a symbolic alternative to the city’s many saloons. Placed along Pennsylvania Avenue, the ceremonial main street of the nation’s capital, the fountain offered passersby free, fresh water while quietly reinforcing the temperance message that sobriety was essential to personal virtue and civic order.

Historically, the Temperance Fountain also reflects the broader City Beautiful movement that shaped Washington in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Reformers believed that attractive public spaces could uplift citizens and encourage orderly behavior. Though modest in scale, the fountain contributed to this vision by combining utility with ornamentation and by asserting a moral purpose within the everyday life of the city.

The pavilion is crowned by a bronze sculpture of a great blue heron, while its interior houses a sculpture of two entwined fish. Originally, bronze cups were chained to the fountain for use by passersby to catch the water flowing from the mouths of the fish. Overflowing water was captured by a trough below for horses to drink from and a reservoir below the fountain was filled with ice to cool the water. The fountain proved costly to operate, however, and it stopped working shortly after it was completed.

Temperance fountains were widely unpopular nationwide, and Washington’s example drew particular scorn. While similar fountains elsewhere were torn down or removed amid public outrage, the D.C. fountain was largely ignored and, in an irony not lost on critics, stood for years after Prohibition in front of the Apex Liquor Store. Long ridiculed for its appearance, it was labeled a “monstrosity of art” in a 1945 Senate resolution, though Ulysses S. Grant III successfully argued against its destruction, calling it “ugly, but interesting.”

Even after its relocation in 1987, the fountain continued to attract criticism, including being dubbed “Washington’s ugliest statue” by The Washington Post. The backlash it inspired helped spur the creation of fine arts and planning commissions to oversee and assess gifts of public art. Today the once-derided fountain is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, preserved as a rare surviving artifact of a once-powerful social reform movement.