Downtown Detroit's oldest surviving public structure is this granite fountain, and you're beside it. The Bagley Memorial Fountain, a granite drinking fountain in the Romanesque style, was designed by the famous architect Henry Hobson Richardson and dedicated in 1887. It was a gift from John J. Bagley, a former Michigan governor who made his fortune in tobacco, who left money in his will for a fountain of pure, cold water that ordinary people, and their horses, could drink from freely on a hot day.
In an age before refrigeration and indoor plumbing for all, public fountains like this were genuine acts of civic care. The fountain has been moved several times as downtown was rebuilt around it, and today it sits in Cadillac Square. Lean in and notice the carved stone arch and basin, modest beside the towers around it, but more than a century older than nearly everything you can see, a small kindness in granite.