REVAMP: A pedestrial Cuba Mall was launched with fanfare by mayor Frank Kitts in 1969.

Divisive: Cuba Mall's bucket fountain, shown in 1971, was an immediate hit with tourists but a flop with many locals.

Long before actor Elijah Wood urinated on the bucket fountain in the 1990s, the eccentric water feature was provoking angry letters to The Evening Post.

Installed in October 1969 as part of a new pedestrian Cuba Mall, the fountain was praised by the paper as modern and fun. Painted yellow and black, the "water-mobile" cost $2000 of the $50,000 mall budget.

" 'Op art' has really come to the Cuba Street Mall now," the Post said.

Letter writers, however, described the fountain as "absurd" and a "monstrosity".

One correspondent dreaded visitors' reactions to the erratic, splashy fountain. But, in fact, it became a tourist attraction.

"Oohs and aahs, in various languages, as the tourists click camera shutters to catch the great moment always amuse the regular shoppers in the street," the Post reported in 1974.

Letter writer Joy Duncan remained unimpressed.

"It is, I think, the sheer ugliness of the thing that fascinates. The fact that it doesn't work efficiently merely adds to the onlooker's incredulity."

Some locals, however, loved the buckets. "I have never felt so pleased or amused . . . I only wish I could watch it for 10 minutes every day," Mary Gertrude Parker wrote in 1969.

The fountain brought viewers back to childhood, another local wrote. "In this world where everything is precise, neat, speedy and always so 'practical', it is sheer bliss to watch the water gloriously and gorgeously slopping about."