Skidmore Fountain

The Skidmore Fountain features a bronze basin supported by two iron caryatids. When it began flowing in eighteen seventy-five, it offered cool water to both humans and horses in the dusty heart of Portland. Stephen Skidmore, a local druggist, left five thousand dollars in his will to build a public drinking fountain. Olin Levi Warner designed the bronze figures, which he modeled after a woman he met in Paris. Today, the water still pours from the mouths of two gargoyle heads into the basin.