Another great post Chuck!

Except for that those green cast iron drinking fountains pre date 1930 (based on archival photos http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~scripts/n… ) which makes them twice as old as your 40 years. And makes your whole “story” irrelevant to them…

But at least your pic didn’t have a blue wash…

There are still some people who believe that the government has two roles: to protect our rights and to provide public resources. Increasingly, there are those who deny - or certainly wish to diminish - the second role. This public drinking fountain is a relic of a time when that role was more broadly recognized.

Even in the oldest times, towns had a well or a fountain that was a public resource. At the very beginning of the idea of community, water was shared.

Amusingly, they were probably bought, paid for and installed by gilded age robber barons long before FDR got his hands on things… Actually, relics from the “bad old days” before your “good old days”…

The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association built the first public drinking fountain in London in 1859, as an answer to some of the pressing problems of their times.

In 19th Century London, private water companies supplied inadequate, poor quality water to the city, as evidenced by the rampant cholera, making beer a safer alternative. The government wasn’t doing much about it, so the private Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association stepped in. Not only were drinking fountains healthier than the contaminated water, but they were seen as a morally necessary alternative to demon liquor.

Those are the days that drinking fountains are a relic of...

limpid, not 'limip'.

A little bit of research (Google!) will quickly reveal that Seattle’s first public drinking fountain was installed by Henry Lohse the (robber baron) owner of the Lohse Brick Co., a successful Seattle concern. He installed it in front of his residence at 617 James Street.

Mr. Lohse identified himself as a Republican in 1939.

@5) thank you. fixed.

@ 1, reading is fundamental: "It is a relic of a public ideal that entered its twilight years 40 or so years ago..."

I think the one outside the downtown post office on Third illustrated Charle's point better. In that setting it really looks out of place with the surroundings. This one, not so much. It almost looks like Wally and Beaver's neighborhood.

@9
Except for that they are more accurately relics of a public ideal that entered its twilight 80 years ago when private organizations and individuals were replaced by government institutions in the provision of such services.

I do not think they speak to the golden age of blossoming socialism that Chuck likes to fetishize as the “public ideal” that was in twilight 40 years ago. They harken back to a much earlier "public ideal."

YGBKM: Nah you just misread his comment about entering the twilight 40 years ago (which tells you doodly squat about when Charles thinks that public ideal began) and are doubling down on being a dick.

@11
No... It was the time of the particular twilight that relic marks that I take issue with. 40 years ago the public ideal that gave birth to the modern public drinking fountain, private organizations stepping up for the public good in place of government, was far beyond twilight. That public ideal dawned in the 1870s, twilighted in the 1920s and was shrouded in inky black midnight darkness by the 1970s.

Chuck's obviously ignorant of the actual social and historical significance of the public drinking fountain. The iconic relic he hung his thought on is wrong for it.

He may as well have chosen the whalebone corset instead.

Here’s an iconic image that much more accurately belongs to the public ideal that Chuck is thinking about. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?Dis…

Of course it’s not “urban” enough for him to probably even be aware of it.

Its a reminder that Genesee/Rainier used to be a thriving business district back in the day. Some remnants remain, the jesus store, tattoo shop on the southwest end, the bakery on the northeast end.

Am I missing something? Public parks and buildings mostly have water fountains, even if they were built recently. Every city library, for example, has at least one water fountain. If you are thirsty before parks or public buildings close, the city, county, and many merchants are still happy to provide water at no additional charge.

The other day I was sitting at my Starbucks after a bike ride on the Soos Creek (Kent-Meridian). While I was sipping my iced tea sans "classic" (i.e. sugar, which you now have to ask them to hold to avoid ) a disheveled grey haired man in black jeans, missing a few teeth, wandered from the parking lot to ask me about pay phones. He seemed inebriated or a stroke victim or both and said he needed a pay phone (or so I surmised after a few minutes). Ignoring that John Quiñones may have been filming me for an episode of "What Would You Do", and that I am supposed to give this guy my smartphone or make a call for him, I took a wild guess and pointed at the nearby Safeway gas station, fondly remembering that they always had pay phones, though I gave it a 25% chance they still existed, especially at a rather new suburban station. Off he went as did my reputation if Quiñones in fact had been taping me. As I rode away after finishing my drink, lo and behold, I saw right in the middle of the plaza...a late model, open canopy, blue and grey pay phone.

I know those aren't strictly Government items, but they have their origin in the idea of the public, always available, service. However, I don't think its so much privatization as middle class wealth that has made these things obsolete. We all have cell phones (except for homeless dissolute stroke victims in skinny jeans) and we can all afford $2 for bottled water. USA. #1.

The disappearance of public drinking fountains has little to do with the decline of the American civic ideal, and everything to do with the polio epidemic of 1952.

But this understanding is only for people who are lost in history; for those who have political needs in the present, this knowledge is inconvenient at best.

i think you guys are all taking charles too literally.

also, @1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, are you implying that private enterprise has somehow been diminished by the intrusion of a pervasive public sector since the 1920-1970 period? and if so do your realize how ridiculous that sounds?

The best drinking fountain in Seattle was removed a few years ago from Occidental Park. It was a gorgeous and unusual fountain that watered horses and humans. It had two spouts; the horse one always ran and if you blocked it with your hand, the water would be forced to the human spout. The short-sighted parks department removed it during the last "renovation" of the park.

@17 They haven't disappeared, though. You can find one at almost every public site, be it indoor or outdoor, new or old, and at many privately owned but publicly open locations. Drinking fountains are most everywhere. Free water is nigh ubiquitous.