Winthrop University alumni bring new look to school’s iconic, century-old fountain

The fountain suddenly stopped working after 100 years, and couldn’t be fixed.

Winthrop University’s iconic fountain, in front of an historic Rock Hill building, went dry sometime in 2018. That fountain had seen generations of Winthrop University students come and go. It had been installed a century earlier in 1918.

Now, five years later, crews are touching up a brand new fountain with the same design -- still in it’s familiar spot in front of Tillman Hall.

Fountains are centerpieces for many college campuses. Art students sketch the fountains. Photography students capture the images. Sororities and fraternities pose around them.

But for Winthrop over the past few decades, the fountain had largely been where students, faculty and staff simply walk or drive past on the way to other places.

Members of several Winthrop alumni classes want to change that.

The classes of 1970-1974, particularly the class of 1972, have raised more than $488,000, as part of their 50th reunion, to build the new fountain, said Executive Director of Alumni Relations, Lori Tuttle.

The goal is $500,000.

“We, unfortunately were not able to restore the original fountain as we hoped,” Tuttle said. “And so what we are looking at going forward is this to become another iconic symbol of Winthrop’s campus that current students and alumni can enjoy.”

The new fountain will include a brick-paved walkway and seating area that will extend on the university’s front side to Oakland Avenue. There also will be a new new flag pole.

“The new fountain will allow current students to start their own traditions and for alumni to come back and enjoy it,” Tuttle said.

Winthrop President Edward Serna said he has a “catbird seat” outside his office in Tillman Hall.

“The run-up to this project has been a labor of love on the part of so many campus stakeholders who have enthusiastically supported not only getting the water flowing again, but truly making this a distinctive feature with fantastic possibilities for the future,” Serna has said.

Tuttle said neither Winthrop University nor the state of South Carolina has allocated money for the new fountain.

Events happened at the fountain

The Winthrop fountain was the backdrop to several school traditions:

• The Daisy Chain, which started in 1903. Students collected daisies and made them into a chain with rope and ivy, after which the senior class president gave the junior class president her mortar board. The students then placed the chain around the class tree. The tradition was phased out in 1961.

• Students also would dunk the student government association president in the fountain, Tuttle said.
  
  

• Each year since 1935, the Rock Hill community has celebrated the beginning of Christmas by lighting the large historic magnolia tree next to the fountain. Crews have been careful to not harm the tree while constructing the new fountain.
  
  

Other traditions were just shenanigans, said Debra Fetner, a member of the class of 1972.

“There was always a story of somebody putting bubbles in it, or they put dye in it,” Fetner said. Fetner’s class helped raise nearly $115,000 for the project.

The class of 1970 raised more than $50,000, the classes of 1971 and 73 raised nearly $25,000 each and the class of 1974 raised more than $28,000. Other donors have given thousands of dollars.

Fetner said her class of 1972 would “go grand and we’re gonna go big.”

Alumi, memories, pride and the fountain

Susan Swails, also a 1972 alum, said the fountain has “always been here,” despite much change to the university. When she went to the school, it was called Winthrop College and only women attended.

When Swails went to Winthrop, big changes happened, she said. The Vietnam War was taking place, people were rioting, people attended Woodstock and the women at the college had to wear dresses.

“You had to wear dresses everywhere,” Swails said. “You had to wear dresses to class, dresses on the front campus, dresses to dinner Saturday night and to Sunday lunch.”

By the time she left Winthrop, the women could wear pants and men started attending the school.

“The fountain has always been here, and it witnesses all that change” she said. “but it remains the same to remind us that those inner values and different things that we cling to that are always going to be the same, though outwardly we may change... but some things don’t.”

The project will be complete in December.

To donate to the fountain project, visit https://www.winthrop.edu/alumni/fountain-restoration-project-photo-gallery.aspx for details.