Joseph Rosenberg Fountain

Growing up in Chicago in the mid-nineteenth century, Joseph Rosenberg worked as a humble newsboy. While hawking newspapers on hot summer days, he always failed to persuade the city’s merchants to spare him a drink of cold water to quench his thirst. Consequently, Rosenberg pledged that if he ever became wealthy that he would erect a drinking fountain where thirsty newsboys and others could ascertain a free, healthy, and refreshing drink to quench their thirsts on hot summer days. When his newsboy days were behind him, he left his hometown of Chicago and moved out west to San Francisco, where he resided for the remainder of his life. There in the California city, Rosenberg amassed a considerable fortune. Remembering the promise that he made decades earlier, he allocated $10,000 in his will for the construction of a drinking fountain and asked that it be installed on a prominent corner on Chicago’s South Side. 

In the wake of Rosenberg’s death on July 26, 1891, the executors of his estate went to work to fulfill his wish. They commissioned Chicago architects Augustus Bauer and Henry Hill to design the fountain’s base and hired a relatively unknown German sculptor named Franz Machtl to create a sculpture that would sit on top of it. Dedicated in the city’s Grant Park near the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Park Row (now 11th Street) in 1893, the fountain features a sixteen-foot-tall, ten-foot-wide monopteros with fluted Doric columns made of Italian granite. It once housed an elaborate illuminated drinking apparatus with metal drinking cups chained to it to allow visitors to quench their thirst. Atop the monopteros stands an eleven-foot-tall bronze statue of Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera in Greek mythology. The goddess of youth and the cupbearer for the gods, she holds a cup in one hand and a pitcher in the other. Machtl’s original design portrayed Hebe in the nude. Fearing that visitors to the fountain might be offended by the sight of her and that Rosenberg’s memory would be sullied as a result, the executors of the estate decided that the artist should go with a more conservative portrayal of the Greek goddess. Thus, Machtl sculpted her partially clothed her, leaving only one of her breasts exposed. Installed before the close of the World’s Columbian Exposition, the fountain provided drinks to thirsty fairgoers as they traveled through the city’s downtown area. 

Today, the fountain appears much as it did back in 1893, with one major exception. The monopteros no longer contains the elaborate illuminated drinking apparatus that it once did. Since it no longer functions as a drinking fountain, the chain of metal drinking cups is gone too. In their place, a thick metal pipe sprays small streams of water about a foot and a half into the air. Passersby, particularly those exercising in Grant Park on hot days, often stop to splash some water on their faces, heads, and necks to cool themselves. In 2004, the Chicago Park District conducted a full restoration on the granite monopteros and the bronze sculpture. 

Borzo, Greg. Chicago's Fabulous Fountains. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017.

"Joseph Rosenberg Fountain." Chicago Park District. City of Chicago. Web. 23 March 2021 <https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/joseph-rosenberg-fountain>.