MANSFIELD — The 143-year-old Vasbinder Fountain is again flowing in Central Park.
And the city has big plans for the cast-iron structure originally donated to the city on July 4, 1881, by David and Jane Vasbinder.
Public Works Director Louie Andres said this fall or winter the fountain will be taken part and shipped to a company for a “complete restoration” of the historic structure on the south side of Park Avenue East.
“It will take 12 to 18 months to complete the process,” Andres said Tuesday morning. “We hope to have it back in time for the completion of the Main Street improvement project in late 2025, early 2026.
“The timeline goal is to have it back at the same time. The fountain is incorporated into the Main Street design,” he said.
(Below are photos taken Monday of the historic Vasbinder Fountain in Mansfield’s Central Park. The story continues below the gallery.)
The $16.5 million Main Street Corridor Improvement Project is scheduled to begin in early 2025 and will take 18 months to complete, according to city engineer Bob Bianchi.
Andres said Blair McClenathan in the city engineer’s office is researching prospective companies for the fountain project, which he said has an estimated $250,000 price tag.
“The original cost of the fountain was $2,500, so you can how costs have risen,” Andres said with a laugh.
It won’t be the first time the fountain has left the park. In fact, the fountain was gone for two decades at one point.
The city “sold it for scrap” in 1958 to James Pugh, who owned land that is now part of Malabar Farm State Park near Lucas, including the famous “Pugh Cabin.”
The city made the decision to get rid of the fountain when it paved the road through Central Park, breaking it into two halves, south and north of Park Avenue.
Pugh, fortunately, never scrapped it.
“James Pugh today would be considered a hoarder. He never threw anything away,” said Andres, who was the manager at Malabar Farm for 22 years.
Instead, he gave it to his friend, Louis Bromfield, who placed the fountain in a lower terrace garden near the pond before donating it back to the city when it requested it in 1979.
The city, led by Councilman Dan Stevens, had the fountain restored and placed back in the park. It was rededicated on July 4, 1979.
Andres said there were a couple of pipe links that had to be repaired before the pump could be fired up to again get water flowing a few days ago.
“We put some paint on it. We knew this would be its last year of operation before we get it restored, so we did enough to have it flowing this year,” Andres said.
“We are looking at how we can redesign how the water flows into the fountain for when it comes back. Technology has changed a lot since 1881,” he said.
He said the fountain outside the Municipal Building, located on the Diamond Street side, should also be operational by the end of May. That fountain is maintained by the maintenance department at the city building.
