The Old South Historical Society dedicated this park to Milo Barnett Howard Jr. (1933-81), a state archivist and a highly respected historian, who lived in a house overlooking the park. A fountain has long been the centerpiece of this triangular park, Old Cloverdale’s smallest.
The original fountain, which was surmounted by the figure of a mermaid, was ordered from Philadelphia and installed in the 1920s. A longtime Cloverdale resident relates that her oldest sister’s boyfriends were known to pull pranks on the Mermaid Fountain, such as placing a brassiere on the mermaid; this prank infuriated her grandfather, whose home was at the crest of the broad lawn overlooking the park. In the late 1920s, vandals destroyed the Mermaid Fountain, which lay broken and dry for three decades. Eventually, the remains of the mermaid were replaced by a Janney crane fountain from Robinson Iron of Alexander City. That two-tiered fountain eventually deteriorated beyond repair and was replaced in 2008 with an identical fountain cast by Robinson Iron from the same historic patterns.
