When the City of Rochester Public Market opened in 1905, it was one of only 125 prominent public places around the country to receive a limited edition, six-ton granite fountain. 

Once the horse and buggy days were replaced with cars, the fountain was removed.

The fountain’s whereabouts are still unknown.

A Rochester Public Market employee spent years looking for it and recently found a similar granite fountain in the backyard of a home in Binghamton.

After some back-and-forth negotiations, the City of Rochester was able to acquire it, haul it to Rochester and is now renovating it to place back at the market.

 “It is amazing and something that we wanted to do for a number of years and we never thought we’d be able to locate one,” said Jim Farr, the market’s director.  “We are just so happy that we have come together and partnered with a lot of different folks in the community. Soon we will have it up and running here at the market.”

The Friends of the Market is the not-for-profit partner with the market and has been watching behind the scenes as the work to return to fountain continues.

“The idea that people and horses could drink out of it and the dogs could drink out of the bottom basins — it was a fountain for all humanity so everyone at the market would drink out of this one fountain,” said Margaret O’Neill with Friends of the Market. “When we do yours this year we are excited to say that this is one of the original fountains."

The oldest part of the Rochester Public Market is the brick road.  About 350 of the bricks were salvaged and stored during the market’s renovation-expansion project of 2016-2017. Those bricks can now be purchased and engraved for $300 and placed around the new fountain to help support the project. Fountain installation is expected to be complete by the end of September.

To order a brick head to marketfriends.org.