In the woods between the Wyman Park Dell and Johns Hopkins University sits this old fountain stone. I’ve seen it for years without actually knowing what it was. Apparently this spring was in use for many years but didn’t have a name until the 1930s, when it was refurbished with this stone, which came from a different spring. It reads, “Presented by H.S. Rippel 1895”. Though the spring was heavily used in the 1930s and ‘40s it dried up about 25 years ago. I got some good leads on this fountain stone from Monumental City and went to the Maryland Room at the Pratt expecting to find little or nothing on this fountain. But, I lucked into some old newspaper clippings in the vertical files, mostly from The Baltimore Sun.
H.S. Rippel was a Baltimore businessman who donated money for this spring, which originally belonged to a location in Druid Hill Park. Rippel was the builder who erected an early City College building at Howard and Centre streets. According to the Sun, the fountain stone was likely cut by Rippel’s own workmen. The original Rippel’s spring was in Druid Hill Park and according to an October 19, 1941 Baltimore Sun story, it was shut down in the 1920s by the health department due to contamination. Water pollution was a fear and problem in Baltimore from the beginning of the 1800s, when “progress” began to cause problems with the water supply. In the early to mid-twentieth century, the Baltimore Health Department worked diligently on shutting down unsafe public fountains. Like Rippel, the springs and fountains in Druid Hill Park were shut down but later many were converted to piped in city water.
The spring in the Wyman Park Dell had no name until this stone was moved and the spring refurbished. Photographs from the 1941 Sun story show a “bubble fountain” (what we know as a modern drinking fountain) near the bridge over Stoney Run. This fountain fed from Rippel’s Spring. Also according to that Sun article, Rippel’s Spring was “once popularly regarded as highly valuable for it’s radium content.” Kids often made pocket money bottling and selling this water in the neighborhood. In 1983 The Baltimore Sun Article interviewed a man named Web Kefauver. He related that in 1925, when he was a boy, he lived in the Tudor Arms apartment building and sold water from Rippel’s spring. He bottled the water and loaded up his wagon, taking it to local apartments. The water was then hauled up via the dumbwaiters, a common feature in those old buildings. Mr. Kefauver charged 50 cents a week for his services.
Even though the Wyman Park spring was never shut down, public spring fell from popularity after World War II.A 1947 Sun article warns against drinking from springs and streams because of the threat of typhoid fever. It mentions threats of severe contamination and dysentery, among other things. Officials at that time concluded that even springs like Rippel, which were in wooded areas, were still probably contaminated because they passed through areas of the city with poor sanitation. A 1952 Baltimore American story echoes these fears of contamination and typhoid and was still reporting cases of illness.
The 1983 Sun article also reported Mr. Kefauver’s regrets that the spring was drying up. Then, a representative from Johns Hopkins University said that the water table was dropping. Also, there was a high nitrate content in the water and there were traces of coliform bacteria, probably from animal waste. Currently the spring is no longer working, but it still remains an interesting bit of neighborhood history.
Resources
Monumental City, "Hope Springs Eternal"
The Sunday Sun, October 19, 1941
The Baltimore Sun, February 6, 1983
The Baltimore American, 1952
(Exact authors and article titles will be updated soon.)
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