2-752-335 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Fairmount Water-Works', 1874. Reservoir and waterworks, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The waterworks, designed by engineer Frederick Graeff, utilise a 'scheme of elevating and turning into it the river Schuylkill, by means of an immense dam...over fourteen hundred feet long, which backs the water up the river about six miles, creating a power sufficient to raise into the reservoir ten million gallons a day; the immense forcing-pumps...worked by cranks on the water-wheels; and the vast net-work of mains and pipes...convey the water to all parts of the city. The buildings containing this ponderous machinery are open to the public...Projecting from the Reservoir, there is a massive stone belvedere...The view of the Water-Works from the opposite side of the Schuylkill is quite unique, a pleasant architectural effect being produced by two little Grecian temples which overhang the water, and by the symmetrical colonnade of the larger of the half-dozen buildings'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. II, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1874]