The surrounding area, once the location for Montgomery's bustling slave trade, has seen most of its historical buildings torn down; the fountain's statues were replaced with aluminum ones in the 1980s.

[4] The fountain was long believed to have been the work of Frederick MacMonnies; the director of the Alabama Archives and History in 1935 asked him if it was his design, and he denied.

[7] The historical buildings around the fountain, which was known as the "romantic center" of the city, have mostly been demolished, one entire block of them in the 1960s to make way for a Pizitz department store, which opened in 1972.

Section 486 of the Montgomery City Ordinance (1888 version) forbids the interfering with fish and fowl in the basin of the statue, or the disposing of liquids or solids in it; violators could be fined $100.

[12] Zelda Fitzgerald played here as a child,[13] and poet Andrew Hudgins located one of the poems in A Clown at Midnight (2013) at the fountain.