There's really a cool old 19th century monument up at St. Nicholas Place and 155th Street that we didn't really know much about until discovering the architectural sketch at top from 1894. Labeled as the Hooper Fountain, we figured it was the original drawing of the structure found in upper Harlem and one can see that the fountain provided water for the thousand of horses that used to pass through the area. Research reveals that there was another twin structure in Bedford-Stuyvesant and both were set up around 1894 by the request of banker John Hooper after he passed away in 1889. The Brooklyn version was dismantled long ago and Harlem's ionic columned horse trough would meet a similar fate in 1981 when vandals "toppled the shaft, damaged its capital, and destroyed the lantern on top." Luckily the city placed the remaining elements in storage and rebuilt the monument after the area was designated a landmark over a decade later:
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