Chapter 10 of The Water Works of the City of Philadelphia: The Story of their Development and Engineering Specifications
Compiled in 1931 by Walter A. Graf (Staff Engineer, The Budd Company, Philadelphia), with the assistance of Sidney H. Vought and Clarence E. Robson. This online version was created from an original volume at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Catalog No. WZ 23591 (4th Fl. Folio).
Walter Graf History Home Page
(With Notes on the Text, Preface, and Acknowledgements)
Reading the Preface will give a quick overview of the beginnings and expansion of the Philadelphia water system.
IN 1854 THE CITY of Philadelphia annexed the entire area of Philadelphia County. The census of 1860 showed the population to be 565,529, an increase of 444,153 over the population of 1850 which was 121,376. This growth in the area and population of the municipality naturally led to the desire for improvements in the outlying districts.
In 1856 the Chestnut Hill water works was incorporated as a private corporation with Charles Heebner as president and co-manager with John Stallman, Enoch Rex, W. L. Hirst and Owen Sheridan. The engineer was Joshua Comly and the contractors for the construction and installation were Gordon McNeil and John F. Rumer.
The company purchased a tract of land on the east side of Ardleigh Street extending north to what is now Gravers Lane, south to Hartwell Avenue, and east to the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad. On this site a reservoir was built with a storage capacity of 5 million gallons. A spring on the property fed the reservoir at the rate of 350,000 gallons per day. A well on the same property supplied an additional 80,000 gallons each day, thus assuring the residents of the district a daily total of 430,000 gallons of spring water, somewhat more than required. At frequent intervals the surplus water was furnished to the Mount Airy reservoirs. FIGURE 36 is a map of the works.
The necessary head of water for satisfactory gravity flow was obtained from a 40,000 gallon tank into which the water was pumped from the reservoir and the well through a 10-inch main. The tank was made of cedar wood and surmounted a circular stone tower 110 feet high. The stone work of the tower was covered with a protective coating of cement. FIGURE 37 is a photograph of the tower and the adjoining section of the district looking west across the reservoir.
The Chestnut Hill works contained two independent horizontal engines of a type known as the Wilbraham Rotary engine. There is no record of the name of the builder. These engines were jointly connected to one and the same double acting pump. The pump cylinder was seven inches in diameter and its stroke 48 inches. Operating at 40 revolutions a minute it had a capacity of approximately 432,000 gallons per day. Steam was supplied by two 30-inch diameter cylindrical boilers 30 feet long provided with steam drums.
In 1873 the city purchased the Chestnut Hill water works from the original private company, and on January 20, 1873 the Water Bureau took charge of their operation. They were used in conjunction with the Roxborough works from 1875 and the Mount Airy works from 1883 until they were abandoned in 1911. The water supplied from the Roxborough water works was carried through a main which crossed the Wissahickon Creek to the Mount Airy reservoir, and through a further main from Mount Airy to the Chestnut Hill reservoir. During 1873, the first year these works were under the jurisdiction of the Philadelphia water works, they furnished 22 million gallons of water, the maximum daily demand being 153,480 gallons, and the minimum 76,740 gallons.
As soon as the city obtained the works, reconditioning of the buildings and equipment commenced. In 1876, a Knowles pump that had been formerly used at the Roxborough station was removed from the Roxborough station and installed at the Chestnut Hill station as a reserve in case of accident to the other machinery. Eventually it was used for irregular service, and the original engines and pump were shut down. This Knowles pump could deliver 250,000 gallons a day. It had a steam cylinder of 24 inches bore with a stroke of 21 inches. The pump was of the piston type, its bore 18 inches and its stroke 21 inches.
By 1880 demand had increased to such a point as to require the continuous operation of pumps, and while it was found feasible to keep the pumps in such repair as to achieve this, the boilers proved inadequate for the work required of them. The demands also outgrew the capacity of the storage tank and any shut down by reason of accident or repairs to the boilers, if for more than five or six hours, resulted in emptying of the tank, with hardship and inconvenience to the citizens of the district.
This brought about an appropriation for additional boilers and to improve the condition of the works. One of the original pumping engines of these works was removed to make room for a new Worthington duplex donkey pump. The low pressure cylinder of this pump was of 14 inches bore and 10½ inch stroke and the high pressure cylinder of 10 inches bore and 10½ inch stroke. During 1886 and 1887, the remaining one of the original engines was removed and set up in the new machine shop of the Water Bureau. The Knowles engine and Worthington served this station until their permanent shutdown in 1911.
The spring and well at the Chestnut Hill water works failed to supply the demands of this station during the summer of 1875, and made it necessary to lay the main mentioned above from the Mount Airy reservoir to supply the Chestnut Hill district. This showed the possibility and advisability of regularly supplying this district with water pumped from the Roxborough pumping station on the Schuylkill River, but this was not fully consummated until 1907.
As the population of the district increased, the inadequacy of the spring and well to supply the demand began to appear. The construction of a pumping plant and standpipe at the Mount Airy works was advocated in 1878, This proposal continued to be urged until 1883, when there was a pumping station erected adjacent to the Mount Airy reservoir, and special supply mains were arranged so the pumps at that station could supply the Chestnut Hill district in case of failure of its own station to do so.
By 1884, the Chestnut Hill district had grown to such an extent that the water supplied by the spring and well was sufficient to supply only the demands of the higher elevations of this district. Then the lower sections were regularly supplied with water pumped from the Mount Airy station.
The Chestnut Hill station continued to operate more or less fully, though under increasingly unfavorable conditions on account of its lessened importance, until 1896, or shortly after the Roxborough high service pumping station went into service. From this time on the station was used very little. During 1897 one engine was run less than six days in the entire year and the other engine was shut down entirely. This kind of service continued for a number of years. In 1900 the pumps were used for but a few hours, for example for six hours during 1904, for 20 hours in 1905, for three hours in 1906; and so on until 1907, when both engines were shut down entirely, though steam was carried in the boilers throughout this last year of service. The station was finally abandoned and the ground and buildings turned into a playground during the year 1911.
When the Mount Airy pumping station went out of service in 1911, the work which it had been doing was taken over by the Roxborough High service station. The Roxborough station continued this service to Chestnut Hill for approximately 13 years (i.e., until about 1924) when it was decided to erect an independent station for supplying the then quite populous Chestnut Hill high area. The purpose of this station was to boost the pressure of the water delivered by either the Roxborough or Queen Lane Pumping station, to adequately supply those of the adjacent districts which were situated on higher elevations.
The independent station was built on the east side of Germantown Avenue a short distance below Gravers Lane and a distance of about one block from the old or original Chestnut Hill Water Works pumping station. This location had the advantage of being closer to the district which it served whereas the Roxborough station had to force the water through several miles of mains from Roxborough across the Wissahickon Creek and Valley. This crossing of the valley in itself constituted a constant menace.
The new station building, although small, is of substantial stone construction. The original equipment consisted of two 1 million gallon daily capacity, DeLaval six-inch double-suction single-stage, centrifugal pumps, each driven by a General Electric Company 20 H.P., 1750 rpm motor. In 1927, one of the 1 million gallon units was removed and two 2 million gallon Fairbanks-Morse double-suction, single-stage centrifugal pumps, driven by 50 H.P. 1800 rpm Fairbanks-Morse, ball bearing, electric motors, were installed. This and the remaining 1 million gallon unit constitute the total pumping equipment of this station today.