Towards the end of the 19th century, this was the only undeveloped portion of land between St George's Hall and the buildings in William Brown Street. In 1877 Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Fell Steble offered £1000 (equivalent to £ as of ) to the Improvement Committee of Liverpool City Council towards the erection of a fountain on the site. Steble had been Mayor of Liverpool from 1845 to 1847. The fountain was designed by Michel Joseph Napoléon Liénard and was unveiled in 1879. The casting from which the fountain was derived had originally been designed for the Paris Exposition of 1867 and has been reused with minor variations multiple times across the world, such as in the Brewer Fountain in Boston (USA) or the Tournoy fountain in Quebec City. At the opening ceremony in 1879 the mayor turned the fountain on with a silver key presented by Steble, but the water pressure was low and the effect was "dismal". The water was pumped by a steam pump in the basement of St George's Hall, and the noise from this tended to disrupt the proceedings in the courts above. The steam pump was later replaced by an electric pump. The fountain was restored in 1992 when the Tall Ships' Race came to Liverpool.