(Text from 19th Fiesta in the City Exhibit)
The four female figures carrying the top basin of the Arroyo Fountain on their shoulders were originally bare-breasted. But due to public outcry from the conservative ladies in the city, the government was constrained to cover the figures’ naked breasts with Grecian garbs in concrete.
The details as to how and when the bare-breasted female figures were covered were already lost to history but pre-war photographs of the fountain showed they were already clothed by the late 1930s.
The Arroyo Fountain was built in late 1927 in memory of Senator Jose Maria Arroyo, author of Act 3222 that created the Iloilo Metropolitan Waterworks System.
Governor Jose B. Ledesma, and board members Domingo Mabunay and Engracio Padilla moved for the fountain’s construction following Arroyo’s death in Ventimiglia, Italy on 12 March 1927.
Designed and erected by M. Machuca and Co., it occupies a 26.5 square-meter space, replacing the original flagpole of the Casa Real de Iloilo.
Arroyo Fountain was constructed in 1927 and named after former Senator Jose Maria Arroyo who authored Republic Act 3222 in the Philippine Legislature establishing the lloilo Metropolitan Waterworks in 1925.
Read also: List of Iloilo City Cultural Heritage Sites