The Central Park Fountain, Washington, Iowa

This fountain in Washington, Iowa was built in 1939, and the design and construction was supervised by the water works supervisor, Perry Jordan. The nozzles are controlled by a manifold of butterfly valves which are operated by a camshaft.

Perry ran the water works in Washington back when it was powered by a Corliss engine, and later, when the current water works was built, which is powered by electricity. Perry started his stationary steam career in the power plant at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri. When he came into work one morning, he found that his boss had met a grisly end. The big engine in the plant had a long belt around the flywheel to power the generator, and half of the belt ran in a channel below floor level. The workers in the plant would step over this channel to cross from one side to the other, and the boss had stumbled, fallen into the channel, and had taken a trip around the flywheel. Perry soon found himself in charge of the plant, and later moved to Washington, Iowa to run the water plant there. He was a fascinating man who really knew his way around machinery of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. There aren't very many people around today that think of him when they watch his fountain, so that's why I am telling you about him here.