Pocket Park and Fountain

The pocket park and the fountain within it have a detailed history across the time of Maryville. Despite the park itself being a generally new contribution to the town of Maryville, the fountain that resides within it has seen numerous different locations across its lifetime in Maryville. This storied history helps give a better understanding of how a small town was involved in greater national events and organizations, as well as giving insight into the general changes in its layout over time.

While the pocket park is a relatively new addition to Maryville, the fountain and schoolhouse can be used to trace the town's history, whether that includes older layouts or the contemporary area that the park and its inhabitants take up today. The story of how this park and what lies within it was filled with numerous different bodies and organizations of the town, including the National Humane Alliance, Northwest Missouri State University and its Administration Building, the Maryville Downtown Improvement Organization, and many local businesses and individuals. The way that this was accomplished was through the other structures that were placed within the park, more specifically the fountain that stands at the east end of the park, but also the restored schoolhouse that was placed on its west end. The pocket park was merely an idea in 2014, but nearly 10 years later it is an idea that has come to fruition.

This history begins with its centerpiece, the fountain, which found its way into the town through a request made to the National Humane Alliance and was put into the town in 1911 and dedicated to Hermon Lee Ensign, the founder of the National Humane Alliance. Initially, however, this fountain was placed at the intersection of Fourth Street and Market Street so that the horses, dogs, and other animals could have more readily accessible drinking water. Much of the work that went into getting the fountain donated seems to have been done by a single woman, Mrs. E. G. Orear, who spoke with Louis Seaver from New York City in order to arrange its placement into Maryville. In 1925, the fountain was moved to a park at the corner of Fourth and Dunn, where it became the subject of numerous pranks by students who dyed the water red or mixed soap into it. This marked the beginning of the move of the fountain to the college campus, as in 1970, the fountain was moved to the east entrance of the Northwest Missouri State University admin building, where it became one of two that guarded the entrances of the building. Somewhere in its history, the fountain lost its lion head spouts, but it was during its stint at the university that it was fixed and returned to working order by September 7, 1970. The fountain remained there until 2017 when it was moved into the storage of the University while construction was occurring beneath its old resting place. When the pocket park began construction in 2019, the University gifted the fountain back to the town so that it could be the main attraction of the pocket park.

Also of importance to the pocket park is the Happy Hollow Schoolhouse. This schoolhouse was located east of Xenia, a colony that was seemingly lost to time; however, Happy Hollow Schoolhouse was not. The Happy Hollow Schoolhouse served as a Christian School, often offering a place where people of the Christian faith could congregate. Sometime after the Civil War, Elder Thornton Fakes, a devout preacher, settled in Xenia and created his own congregation which eventually found its way into the Happy Hollow Schoolhouse before once again relocating and leaving the Happy Hollow Schoolhouse empty. On August 25, 1959, the Happy Hollow Schoolhouse building was bought by Mr. and Mrs. Ed Reynolds, who planned on giving it to the community for use as its community center. Sometime during the construction of pocket park, the Happy Hollow Schoolhouse was fixed up, with help from the University’s students, and placed within the park to serve as an open shelter for rest or a place where people could host events.

The pocket park itself, removing old historical buildings, was an idea floating in the heads of the Maryville Downtown Improvement Organization since 2014 and 2015, where they hoped to gather funds and private donations to fund the park in its entirety, which they did. In 2019, construction began on the park, eventually incorporating both structures that were previously mentioned. However, the park remains a work in progress, as a mural spelling out “Maryville” with the “y” missing is absent in its current state, despite being initially proposed and outlined in the plans. The goal of the mural was to have people stand within the missing “y” becoming it themselves to spell out the town name.

The pocket park's location is also historied, but not as a park. In 1886, what is now a park used to sit a barber, and dry goods store run by Charles Q. Smith and J. Woodson Smith, who were credited with running the largest dry goods store in Maryville. In 1909, this space was still occupied by a barber, but also housed a clothing store, electric supplies store, piano store, club and lodge, and a vacant building. The pocket park, then, has been a way of stringing different histories together into one place, whether they are entirely purposeful or not, where those who proposed the idea hoped to bring people together and make use of parts of the town’s history uniquely. 

Sanborn Maps: 1886 Sanborn Map: Maryville, MO, https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/mu/islandora/object/mu%3A142612

Sanborn Maps: 1909 Sanborn Map: Maryville, MO https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/mu/islandora/object/mu%3A142631

Nodaway County Historical Society - https://www.nodawaycountymuseum.com/exhibits

National Humane Society Fountain in Maryville, MO - https://electronicvalley.org/derby/Greenway/Fountains/Maryville,%20MO.htm

"Pickering Christian Church to Hold 75th Homecoming", The Maryville Daily Forum, July 30, 1965

Mrs. Richard Mooney, "Gaynor", The Maryville Daily Forum, August 25, 1959

"Public Fountain to be Shipped Soon", The Maryville Daily Forum, July 12, 1911

The Maryville Forum - https://www.maryvilleforum.com/news/pocket-park-opens-with-ribbon-cutting/article_5bb1540a-591b-11ec-b4b6-cb0b115175eb.html?utm_campaign=blox&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

The Northwest Missourian - https://www.nwmissourinews.com/news/article_957d1022-00e2-11ea-bcfc-e7255b4b6c63.html