Water Works Pumping Stations in Massachusetts & Rhode Island 1870-1920

This heavily illustrated volume attempts to be the first catalog raisonne of every identified municipal water works pumping station for which there is an image, built in Massachusetts and Rhode Island during the half century following the Civil War. It may be the first such attempted catalog for this building type in any location. The time period selected, covers from when this building type first came into general use until its technological obsolescence in the forms illustrated, because an overwhelming majority of these buildings housed and responded to the requirements of piston driven steam pumping engines. At the end of this period extremely compact electric motor driven centrifugal turbine pumps, needing almost no attention, quickly and almost entirely replaced steam powered piston pumps, essentially terminating the construction of this form of pumping station. Subsequently, for most uses and locations, the same function could be house in little more than a sturdy windowless hut. As it happens, a substantial portion of these buildings are best or only illustrated by the skillfully hand colored photographic postcards that were produced in Germany and Austria between about 1900 and 1915, at the height of the picture postcard craze. To some extent, the popularity these often romantic views may reflect the good government spirit of community improvement to be found in New England during the Progressive Era prior to the First World War. This volume’s preface briefly discusses the component functions of a typical steam powered pumping station building as well as some ancillary structures that might have been visible on the site, and that appear in some of the illustrations. It also briefly touches upon is some terminology related to steam pumping engines. And, two civil engineers and one architect, each whom designed a number of these pumping stations, are also identified. The first of book’s two appendices lists the few known Massachusetts and Rhode Island pumping stations of the period of which there are no known images. The second lists the numerous municipal water systems that operated solely by gravity — excluding than any ancillary pumping capacity that they might have had for fire fighting. Read more