Effort Underway To Return Historic Falmouth Fountains To Original Sites
Efforts are underway to return the antique water fountain troughs from the Water Department on Gifford Street to their original locations at the Village Green and in Woods Hole.
The effort, mainly spearheaded by Woods Hole resident Arden Edwards, has so far been supported by the Falmouth Historical Commission, the Woods Hole Community Association, the Falmouth Chamber of Commerce, and the Woods Hole Historical Collection Museum.
“Some people see them, some people don’t,” Ms. Edwards said of the fountains’ current location. “But nobody really knows what they are. I would love to see both of them have water in them three seasons out of the year, and I think that we could get both of them working.”
The first fountain was originally presented to the town by John S. Bleakie after he opened the original Long Pond Pumping Station in 1898 in association with the Falmouth Water Corporation. As the first public water in town, this station was ground-breaking, and the drinking fountain served as a sort of commemoration of the milestone. It was placed at the eastern apex of the Village Green.
Four years later in 1902, the town bought the water company and commissioned a second fountain for Woods Hole. That fountain was completed and installed the following year.
The fountains have a round main basin for horses to drink out of and an annular ring around the base for smaller animals like dogs or cats to enjoy as well. There were once drinking cups that hung from them for people to use, as they were initially marketed as “drinking fountains for both man and beast.” They were originally black but were painted Hartford green during 2017 as part of a restoration project commissioned by the water department.
Shortly after Stephen D. Rafferty was hired as Falmouth’s water superintendent in 2014, it was suggested that the fountains be restored to celebrate and maintain their historical significance. Up until that time, the fountains had been located at the entrance of Pumping Station Road near Goodwill Park. It is not known when the fountains were moved from their original locations in Woods Hole and at the Village Green to that spot, but they had been there for some time until Mr. Rafferty took charge of the restoration efforts and had the freshly restored fountains moved to the Water Department facility on Gifford Street at the end of 2017.
Ms. Edwards said her involvement with the fountains began about 30 years ago when she was working on developing Cahoon Park in Woods Hole, named after Sam Cahoon’s Fish Market that once stood at the corner of Railroad and Luscombe avenues. The park that previously stood in its place had been demolished, and Ms. Edwards, having recently graduated from Conway School of Landscape Design in the Berkshires, jumped at the opportunity to help design the park.
Ms. Edwards said that Mary Lou Smith, editor of “The Book of Falmouth” and head of the historical commission at the time, asked William Owen, then-head of the Department of Public Works, if they could have back the fountain that used to be in front of the fish market, and he said yes.
“We were going to put it in and we wanted to put it right where it had been, and the Steamship Authority said, ‘You can’t do that because it’s going to get run over by the trucks,’ ” Ms. Edwards said. “They needed a big turning radius to get in and out of the ferry. But he did say because we couldn’t put it there, when we did have a place to put it, we could have it back.”
Now that a new steamship terminal is in the works, Ms. Edwards again seized the opportunity to try to get the fountains back to the original sites. In 2017, she and Woods Hole resident Albert (Ted) Fitzelle went to Steamship Authority manager Robert Davis, and he encouraged them to try to get the fountains back.
“I don’t think that they went about it the right way by going through the town and surprising everybody by just putting them at the pumping station,” Ms. Edwards said. “Nobody really knows what they are out there; they’re ornamental. They’re just not appreciated.”
With the support of various local organizations and people, including Falmouth Historical Commission chairman Edward Haddad and Falmouth Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Michael Kasparian, Ms. Edwards hopes to get the matter before the select board as soon as possible. She submitted letters of support along with other documentation of their plans for relocation in June, but never heard back and has not seen the item on any of the upcoming agendas.
“I want to get it before the select board, I think that’s the next thing to do,” she said. “The gist of it is that a lot of us feel that [Gifford Street] is not the proper place for these historical items to be.”
Ms. Edwards is also working on getting the fountains properly registered with the right state and town historical asset databases. She hopes that doing this will help further their case for relocation of the two fountains, as well as getting them fully up and running as they once were.
“They’re just in the town’s garden,” Ms. Edwards said. “There’s no water in them and there is no electricity to them. They’re just there, sitting there unhappily. And we should be proud of our history, not hide it amongst the bushes. I just would like to get the town more interested.”