Carriedo Fountain

Carriedo Fountain (Spanish: Fuente Carriedo) is a fountain in Santa Cruz, Manila, Philippines. It was built in honor of the 18th-century Capitán General of Manila, Don Francisco Carriedo y Peredo, benefactor of Manila's pipe water system. It was moved three times before its current location at Plaza Santa Cruz, right in front of the Santa Cruz Church.

During the old times, Manila residents mainly used the water from the Pasig River. The water was filtered through cloth in a tapayan and then cleansed with alum. According to José Rizal, the rivers and esteros in Binondo were used as bath, sewer, laundry, fishery, transport and even drinking water. This can be one of the reasons for water-borne epidemics during those periods.

Francisco Carriedo y Peredo, (November 7, 1690 - September 1743), a native of Santander, Spain, and general of the Santa Familia galleon, raised funds for the construction of the water system of Manila. He donated ten thousand pesos drawn from his fortune from the Acapulco-Manila investments. He did not live to see his resolve of creating a water system in Manila take fruit.

The system was constructed a century afterwards, through due to the exhaustive research of the Spanish Franciscan friar, Felix Huerta, who was serving as administrator of the San Lazaro Hospital in Manila, using his long-forgotten funds, which Huerta tracked down after going through over 300 documents. Under his urging, the Carriedo Fountain was built in May 1882 as part of the Carriedo water works system and was inaugurated by Governor-General Fernando Primo de Rivera on July 24, 1882. It was named after the man who had conceived of and eventually funded the system, Francisco Carriedo y Peredo (1690-1743).

The fountain was first located at the intersection of Legarda, Lacson and Magsaysay streets in Sampaloc, Manila to mark the inauguration the Manila water works. It was then transferred to the Balara Filters Park, in front of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) building right after they moved from their office in Arroceros, Manila in the latter part of the 1970s.

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