One Friday in March 2019, a wind of panic is blowing on social networks. According to Internet users, the Paris City Hall has decided to replace the traditional Wallace fountains with modern equipment, these refreshing toilets that have become one of the capital’s signatures. Runaway. Outcry. In a few hours, the case, born of an article with an ambiguous title, aroused a wave of indignation and several petitions. The late denial of the Town Hall takes weeks to calm things down.
Lovers of Parisian heritage can be reassured. Not only the mayor (PS), Anne Hidalgo, had never intended to make the Wallace fountains disappear. But the Town Hall is going to bring these small monuments to which Parisians and tourists are so attached to the museum. A consecration. An authentic Wallace fountain will be installed in the spring in the Carnavalet gardens (3e), the Museum of the History of Paris which the City recently renovated from top to bottom. A copy will be installed at its current location, place Denfert-Rochereau (14e borough). An exhibition describing the history of these fountains will also be displayed on the Champs-Elysées, from September 24 to October 4, at the same time as the “a weekend of festivities” around this theme.
While the opponents gathered under the hashtag #saccageparis continue to criticize the aesthetic choices of the city, and accuse the Town Hall of ” let Die “ the famous fountains, the socialists in power in the capital thus send an additional signal of their desire to respect the heritage of Napoleon III. Beyond the Wallace Fountains they go “identify and protect all Second Empire furniture”, from Davioud benches to Morris columns and candelabras, promised Emmanuel Grégoire, Anne Hidalgo’s first deputy, on January 18. The next local urban plan should make it possible to reinforce the rules in this area.
For the Wallace fountains, the calendar offers a perfect occasion for celebration: the first was installed in Paris on July 30, 1872, nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. That Tuesday, a crowd of onlookers flocked to the entrance to Boulevard de La Villette to discover the new cast iron fountain. An ornamented pedestal supports a small basin. Above, four caryatids represent both the seasons and the virtues then considered cardinal: kindness, simplicity, charity, sobriety. These statuettes hold a dome from which flows a trickle of water. A pewter goblet, hung on the fountain, allows everyone to drink. The success is immediate.
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