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Timeswoman Susan Dominus discovers that the water fountain in Grand Central is both free of charge and relatively free of germs.

There, just a 30-second walk from the saleswoman, who surely must occasionally feel thirst, was the perfect water fountain. The spout juts out from the cool, beige Botticino marble wall of Grand Central, a handsome basin below it, a marble relief of some natural harvest above. Water was arcing above the spout, so high that I felt reassured no thirsty germy toddler had mouthed the metal at the base. A fluid piece of accessible history, that fountain, I later learned, has conveniently been spouting water almost continually since the terminal opened in 1913.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed this small wonder. Just across the way from a store where someone was charging $20 for a few hundred sheets of paper, the water fountain was proffering its goods free. Here it was, the ideal nourishment — nonfat, ice-cold, high-fructose-corn-syrup-free.

If it’s good and it’s free in New York, you usually have to get there pretty early to get it. But at Grand Central Terminal, which 700,000 people hustle through every single day, there was not even so much as a line for the water. I took a drink, stood back, admired the carvings of oak leaves and acorns — a Vanderbilt family symbol — and drank some more. Then I looked up. A police officer was looking at me as if I’d just lapped up some water on one of the tracks.