Old Towne Orange — with its neat row of vintage shops and Victorian houses built around a grand town square and landmark fountain — looks so Americana that Hollywood studios have flocked there for generations to use as backdrops for small town America.
It was the stand-in for a Midwestern town in Tom Hanks’ “That Thing You Do” and for a southern burg in “Big Mama’s House,” among many others.
But increasingly, the peace — and safety of its landmark fountain — have come under threat from a far more modern culprit.
Time and time again, speeding cars have plowed through Plaza Park’s grassy expanses and vibrant rosebushes, demolishing wood benches and slamming into the beloved 88-year-old fountain.
“The whole plaza — people consider that the jewel of Orange,” said Jeff Frankel a resident of the Old Towne neighborhood in the Orange County city. “Now is it treated that way? Sometimes I don’t think so.”
The water feature has suffered its share of abuse over the decades, but the collisions in the last few years have been particularly damaging. They’ve left officials and residents puzzling over an intractable question: What can be done to stop people from crashing into the fountain?
Early Sunday, the fountain got into its first scrape of the year.
Caution tape marks the area at the center of the circle in Old Towne Orange was damaged by a suspected DUI driver.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Just after 2:20 a.m., a driver failed to navigate the turn at the roundabout where Glassell Street meets Chapman Avenue and plowed through bushes and barriers surrounding the water feature before scraping the tile on the fountain. The motorist, who was on probation from a prior DUI charge, was not injured but was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, said Orange Police Lt. Phil McMullin.
Residents say, if history is any indication, the crash won’t be the last. Cars battered the plaza four times in 2023 — one of the incidents was DUI related — and once in 2024 after the fountain had undergone a massive restoration project, authorities said. The driver in the 2023 incident suffered moderate injuries, but survived the crash.
The most severe crash in recent memory happened in March 2023 when a man driving a stolen vehicle was fleeing police and slammed into the fountain. The car flipped and went airborne before landing on the grass in what Councilmember Arriana Barrios called a crash straight out of an episode of “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
It crushed the side of the fountain, causing roughly $225,000 in damage and forcing its closure for months. When the Plaza reopened in April 2024, the City Council celebrated the occasion by tossing coins into the fountain. In a fun twist of fate, Mark McCandless, the grandson of the original tile designer, installed the red and blue stoneware on the fountain using his grandfather’s tools.
City officials, apparently anticipating future damage, purchased extra tiles. The city will likely need to purchase more tiles for repairs after this week’s crash, officials said.
As part of last year’s restoration, the city also installed bollards at the entrances to Plaza Park, changed the lighting and modified the entrances of the traffic circle to deter vehicles from speeding.
But it hasn’t kept cars from flying in.
In November 2024, an 18-year-old plowed a vehicle into the park, hitting the fountain and destroying some of the tiles, resulting in about $7,000 worth of damage. The driver, who was not seriously injured, managed to avoid the bollards that had been installed to prevent such incidents.
“Unsurprisingly — or surprisingly, I’m not sure which one it is, quite honestly — somehow all these fools keep getting around the bollards,” Barrios said. “They’re coming in sideways, going through the rosebushes. … It’s just absolutely bizarre.”
And it’s not just cars that have damaged the fountain.
In 2008, a group of scantily clad Chapman University students frolicked in the water fixture during the college’s biannual Undie Run, a tradition where students strip off their clothes and run through downtown to blow off steam during finals week. The fountain was damaged and, though the university doesn’t sanction the student event, it picked up the tab for the repairs.
Now, the city blocks off access to the fountain during the Undie Run to avoid any future mishaps.
Plaza Park has been home to a water feature since March 1887, when a prominent women’s group raised funds to place a three-tiered cast-iron fountain at the center of the park. The fountain quickly became a gathering place in the growing commercial district.
In 1937, the current fountain, by Westinghouse Electric Co., replaced the cast-iron version, with the original fountain eventually finding a home at the Orange Public Library.
Department stores, antiques shops and an old-fashioned soda fountain visited by generations have come and gone from the city’s historic core, but the park and its electric tile fountain have endured.
The area is known as a go-to spot for filming movies, TV and commercials. Location scouts have said it’s charm is versatile enough to stand in for different parts of the country. Among the varied movies shot there are “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “Small Soldiers,” and “First Daughter.”
It’s the site of generations of prom photos and engagement pictures, gatherings for weddings and people coming together as a community.
“It’s the heart and soul of the city,” said Rob Boice, president of the Old Town Preservation Assn. “People that come to Orange to see the plaza and the area around it are really looking back in time. It’s an amazing thing that we were able to hold onto it while other cities bulldoze their old downtowns.”
Residents and city officials have for years been throwing out ideas to protect the public space.
Some have suggested adding additional bollards, but the large concrete barriers could turn a high-speed crash into a fatal incident. Others have proposed speed bumps or rumble strips to slow drivers down. The idea of turning it into a pedestrian-only paseo has been floated but rejected by many residents who say it would compound parking problems in the area.
Doug Redding, an Orange traffic commissioner who has lived in the city for two decades, suspects installing traffic lights a block away from the circle could slow motorists as they enter the roundabout and lessen the possibility of significant damage.
“It’s a weird trade-off between literally preserving Old Towne Orange and not making the fountain look like a fortress versus concern over personal injury to protect property,” he said. “We can’t have some sort of metal or cement post that’s going to rip right through a car and hurt someone. So, it’s kind of tough to find that balance.”
Officials seem far from a solution. But after the most recent incident, Redding had one thing he knew he could check off his to-do list.
He updated the sign that he created when the crashes started happening with uncanny frequency.
In an image on Facebook, in a group for Old Towne residents, he stands next to the fountain with a sign that says: “This Old Towne Plaza Park has survived __ days without a car crash accident.” Using Photoshop, he fills in the number of days.
Much to his chagrin, this week the number on the sign is back to zero.
