Bagley Memorial Fountain

The Bagley Memorial Fountain was Detroit’s first public drinking fountain, created in 1887 with money from the estate of John Judson Bagley.
The Romanesque-​style fountain is the only known surviving work in Michigan of H.H. Richardson, widely considered one of America’s most important architects. That makes the fountain the 19^th-​Century equivalent of something by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The fountain stands more than 18 feet tall with ornate Romanesque details at the top and Byzantine columns. In the middle is a fountainhead with four lion heads.
Today, the fountain stands downtown on Cadillac Square, east of Campus Martius. This is the third place it has stood. Erected at the original Campus Martius on Woodward at Fort Street next to City Hall, it was moved to Woodward and Monroe in 1926. It then went into storage around 2000 during the Campus Martius reconfiguration.
The fountain was added to the State Register of Historic Places on March 3, 1971, and to the National Register later that year, on Nov. 5, 1971.
For more photos and history on this landmark, go to
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