Boston Water Works, Chestnut Hill High-Service Pumping Station, 2450 Beacon Street, Boston

Source document Quoted word for word from HAER MASS,13-BOST,75-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

With the construction of the Roxbury Standpipe in and a small pumping station nearby, the Boston Water Board had introduced water to the higher elevations of Roxbury and other parts of Boston. The original works, however, had been designed to supply an ^rea of about 760 acres. By with the annexations of Dorchester, Charlestown, Brighton and West Roxbury, the area requiring high-service water supply had grown to over acres. To meet these demands, the city constructed at Chestnut Hill the existing pumping station, and about a thousand yards to the east in Brookline , a large distributing reservoir. The work was designed and executed under the direction of City Engineer Joseph P. Davis The station, in the Richardsonian Romanesque style of the period, was designed by City Architect Arthur H.

Vinal and completed in Oldest engine extant is the triple-expansion steam pumping engine designed by Erasmus D. Leavitt of Cambridgeport, then one of the country's leading mechanical engineers. (The engine was designated a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 197 3.) With the Boston Water Works: Chestnut Hill High-Service Pumping Station HAER No. MA-24 (Page 2) creation of the Metropolitan Water District in the high-service requirements of the region were divided into northern and southern systems, the northern to be supplied by an entirely new plant at Spot Pond, with the southern region, extending as far as Quincy and Hyde Park, to be supplied from Chestnut Hill. The pumping station was extended to the west in according to plans of Boston architects Wheelwright & Haven.

A new triple-expansion pumping engine (No. 4), built by the E. P. Allis Company, was installed This engine also remains in place. The station pumped water from the Chestnut Hill Reservoir into the Fisher Hill distributing reservoir, some 125 feet above the level of the receiving reservoir. The engines remained in use until when oil-fired turbines were installed. Transmitted by: Jean P. Yearby, from data compiled by Peter Stott ADDENDUM TO HAER No. MA-24 BOSTON WATER WORKS, CHESTNUT HILL HIGH SERVICE PUMPING STATION M# $ Beacon Street , ' Boston ^~CO^T; Suffolk County ^ Massachusetts XEROGRAPHIC COPIES OF COLOR TRANSPARENCIES HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Washington,