Temperance Fountain

The Temperance Fountain in Tompkins Square Park is a direct product of the nineteenth-century crusade to steer New Yorkers away from alcohol by offering a cold, clean alternative. Dr. Henry Cogswell, a wealthy dentist who struck gold in California, donated this structure in 1888 to combat what he saw as the moral and physical decay caused by public drinking. The fountain was designed as a functional piece of propaganda, intended to provide free, refreshing water to a neighborhood that was, at the time, famously dominated by beer-loving German immigrant communities.