Metropolitan Waterworks Museum
- Year
- 1888
- Style
- Richardsonian Romanesque
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collection
- richardson romanesque
The Waterworks Museum occupies the former Chestnut Hill Waterworks building, a high-service pumping station built for Boston's Metropolitan Waterworks system. At its busiest the station pumped as much as a hundred million gallons of water a day; it was decommissioned in the 1970s and later restored as a museum, reopening to the public in March 2011.
the building
Preserved pumping machinery. The museum preserves well-kept mechanical engineering equipment from the station's working life, housed inside its original Richardsonian Romanesque building.
From pumps to museum. After decommissioning in the 1970s, some of the surrounding buildings became condominiums while the pumping station itself sat disused, until the Waterworks Preservation Trust was formed in 2007 to oversee its conversion into a museum.
the style
The station was designed in 1886 in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and came online in 1887, only a few years after the world's first station of its kind, a building substantial enough to double as civic architecture for a piece of everyday infrastructure.
More on Richardsonian Romanesquesignificance
The building is a National Register of Historic Places contributing property.
nearby
- Ebenezer Heath House
- Kingsbury House
- Hammond House
- Perkins Estate
- Reginald A. Fessenden House
- Timothy Corey House No. 1