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: LINK
I just saw this for the first time when I biked up Edgecomb to Highbridge Pool, and was wowed. I didn't know it had been toppled and restored. I was also surprised to see "Willie Mays Way" across the street, for the grim onramp to the Harlem River Drive, but then realized it's where the Polo Grounds were. What was the relation of this fountain to the Polo Grounds!?
ReplyDeleteThat’s a great observation on the Polo Grounds which was built nearby in 1890 so there was probably a lot of horse carriage traffic in the area. This was before automobiles so the Hooper Fountain with have been a fill up station of sorts.
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