In 1892, Providence resident and Irish immigrant James Hanley opened the American Brewing Company. Beer was as big a business then as it is now. Hanley teamed up with Philadelphia architect and brewmaster engineer Adam C. Wagner to build a state-of-the-art, industrial-scaled brewery. The two men utilized the latest brewing techniques that required precisely controlled temperatures by way of new steam-powered De LaVergne mechanical refrigeration equipment that came on to the market in 1890. The American Brewing Company built two climate control systems for the lagering of beer, which required longer and more controlled cooling and aging than the ales and porters that had long dominated American tastes. The plant was a massive three-story building with a temperature-controlled basement level “stock house” for cooling, a process once done in underground caverns or above-ground ice houses. The American Brewing Company was one of 17 brew companies in Providence that supplied the city and surrounding region with America’s drink of choice.

But not all was smooth sailing for the grand brew masters of pre-WWI America. One big issue for the industry was the temperance movement, and in Rhode Island, John F. Collins, a man who would eventually become the mayor of Providence during the Great Depression.

In the 1890s, Collins was a fresh-faced graduate of St. Charles College in Maryland, who returned to his hometown of Providence to look for work. He took a job working at American Brewing, where he learned about the beer industry first hand. Collins left the company, going back to school, and eventually earned a law degree from Boston University.

At the same time, the temperance movement that sought to restrict the consumption of alcohol was gaining steam and targeted ethnic and working class men’s drinking as a social problem. Further, during WWI many Americans viewed beer as “German” and beer drinking as unpatriotic.

After WWI came the passage of Prohibition in 1920. At the time, John Collins took a job as special assistant to the United States Attorney for Rhode Island, prosecuting the law banning the sale of alcohol. John Collins did his job well and successfully prosecuted The American Brewing Company, which shut its doors in 1922. After the repeal of Prohibition, Collins went on to become a one-term Mayor of Providence from 1939 to 1941.

Throughout the ordeals of the temperance movement, WWI, and Prohibition, James Hanley bided his time and eventually opened another brewery in Providence in 1934, shortly after the passage of the 21st Amendment ended the unpopular prohibition against alcohol.

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All across America people ridiculed and smashed Henry D. Cogswell’s fountains, but this one survives in downtown Pawtucket.

Cogswell – a dentist, millionaire, and crusader in the temperance movement against alcohol – had not always been a wealthy man. Born in Connecticut in 1820, young Cogswell sunk into poverty after his parents died. As a teenager he walked fifty miles to Pawtucket to start work in the mills. He managed to become a dentist, and in 1847 he set up a local practice. Lured to California by the Gold Rush, he made a fortune in real estate.

The newly-minted millionaire assumed an ancestral coat of arms and began to call himself a “capitalist,” but he never forgot his penniless past. He determined to uplift the working class through charitable deeds.

As Cogswell saw it, drunkenness led to pauperism. If poor people had an alternative to alcohol – like clean, cold water to drink – they might renounce liquor. And so, starting in 1878, Cogswell arranged to send free drinking fountains to towns throughout the United States.

Cogswell’s actions might have been well-intentioned, but he made some regrettable design choices. His fountains often came topped with a statue that resembled Cogswell himself. This figure, which he referred to as the “Guardian of the Fountain,” held a scroll in one hand and a glass of water in the other. Engravings at the base commanded passersby to work hard and avoid dissipation.

The fountains proved irresistible targets for vandals. Drunken revelers, rowdy art lovers, and citizens who deemed the statues to be in poor taste all moved to destroy them. Wherever he appeared, the “Guardian” suffered attacks, including topplings with a lasso, lake immersions, and a kidnapping.

When Mark Twain spotted a Cogswell fountain in Rochester, New York, he remarked, “It has a putrid, decomposed sort of a look that is offensive for a delicate organism.” Others agreed. In 1885 an unidentified party dispatched the Rochester statue by bashing it to bits with crowbars.

The Pawtucket fountain escaped the mobs, perhaps because it came decorated with a heron rather than Cogswell himself. Residents welcomed it with speeches and song when it arrived in 1880. The fountain provided water, “God’s Free Gift to Man and Beast,” from high spouts for humans and lower spouts for horses, dogs, and any other animals in need of refreshment. On the foreheads of the cat-like gargoyles, one can still see marks made by rings where drinking cups once hung.

When the fountain became inconvenient downtown, the city transferred it to Oak Grove Cemetery. But mourners deemed it too cheerful for that spot, even after they had the word “Welcome” removed from the bottom of the base. The fountain moved to Slater Park in 1904 before the city finally restored it to its original location in 1990. At that time, a time capsule found embedded at the top of the column yielded soggy papers and an Indian Head penny.

Today Pawtucket’s Cogswell fountain is one of few still in existence. It stands defunct, a monument to a man who excelled at making money but botched giving it away.

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