Parisian Bubblers

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Australian bubblers. These are the Parisian equivalents.

There are 103 Wallace fountains in Paris, supplying fresh drinking water in the streets. They were a gift to the City of Paris by long time resident Sir Richard Wallace, an Englishman. Wallace, the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess of Hertford had inherited a fortune in 1870. 

Installation of the fountains started in 1872. They are cast iron and painted in the dark green approved for streetscape furniture by the City. The biggest ones are 2.71 metres tall and weigh 610 kilograms. Wallace himself sketched his idea of how they should look, and decided on their size, construction and cost before taking his design to a professional sculptor for refining. Their principle design feature is the four caryatids, in four slightly different stances or attitudes.

Today visitors and residents of Paris are encouraged to use the Wallace fountains to refill their water bottles, and reduce plastic waste. At the moment the fountains run a continuous stream of water into their basin and users simply put their bottle underneath to catch it. But in today's world that is wasteful so experiments are underway to see if pressing a button to dispense set quantity of water will work.