Planning for an Alpha Delta Pi Fountain began in the mid-1960s as the sorority began to plan for the 50th anniversary of establishment of its chapter on the UT campus in 1920. A fund was started for a gift from the chapter to UT, and when leaders suggested a fountain, UT proposed that a fountain be placed in a nook of the Carolyn P. Brown Memorial University Center Plaza, which was then under construction. A small-scale model of the fountain was constructed and presented to Chancellor Charles Weaver.
When the plaza was completed, the sorority was amazed to find that no fountain had been included—the architect did not include plumbing for a fountain and stated that no one had signed a contract with him to pay for work to include a fountain. With the failure to build the fountain, Alpha Delta Pi began again to consider what its gift could be. In 1973 UT campus planning personnel suggested seats around a flagpole in Circle Park, and Alpha Delta Pi agreed. In March 1974, after a 13-month period, director of the physical plant C. T. Nunley contacted Alpha Delta Pi saying that campus planner Henry Morse and landscape architect Bill Oliphant were working with him on plans to improve Circle Park and that a fountain was included in the plans. More delay ensued, and on May 30 the sorority’s gift committee met with Nunley, Morse, and Oliphant and was shown the plans for Circle Park, including a brick fountain, planned to be located to the east near the Communications Building. The fountain was to be 20 feet in diameter and surrounded by a circle of bricks 60 feet in diameter.
The planners changed their minds, however, on the location of the fountain before releasing plans for the upgrading of Circle Park—they placed it in the exact middle of the park. Students immediately reacted negatively to placement of a fountain in the middle of the park. Petitions were circulated, and in two days’ time, more than 750 students signed them, wanting to keep the park available for informal use.
In a week’s time the fountain had been scrapped, although brick paths remained. Within a month UT suggested a third site—on the plaza in front of the Clarence Brown Theatre. Alpha Delta Pi agreed to apply its $6,000 fund to construction of the fountain, and construction began in winter 1974.