The plen­ti­ful sup­ply of good and whole­some water to a large city is, per­haps, the first and most impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion which can be named, and upon which so many and such vast inter­ests depend, that too much promi­nence can­not be given to the sub­ject, nor too much light thrown upon the same. In this man­ner, as it regards Boston, we may say in gen­eral terms that our cit­i­zens have abun­dant rea­sons for thank­ful­ness…Edi­to­r­ial, The Boston Daily Globe, March 6, 1872

I am thank­ful today to have been given a rare glimpse at the inner work­ings of the Chest­nut Hill high-service pump­house. More than a glimpse, really. It was a guided tour given by a very knowl­edge­able mechan­i­cal engi­neer from the MIT class of 1959. He is lead­ing the effort to save the incred­i­ble exam­ples of an entire cen­tury of Amer­i­can engi­neer­ing that are located in this unlikely cathedral-like building.

I had offered my ser­vices with the 4×5″ view cam­era to pre­serve, at least pho­to­graph­i­cally, the Holly engines in the low-service pump­house. But it is too late. Just a cou­ple of days ago, the demo­li­tion crew work­ing for the con­do­minium devel­op­ers ripped off the sheet metal cov­er­ing the steam heads and wrapped the engines in plas­tic to begin Asbestos abate­ment. It would take an act of God to con­vince them to let us get a few shots before they con­vert the beau­ti­ful turn-of-the-century iron fly­wheels, arms, link­ages, beams, and sup­ports to scrap metal.

Also, I have to hang my head in shame for know­ing embar­rass­ingly lit­tle of the Rankin Cycle and steam tables. This gaffe prompted our guide to accuse Amrys and me of being part of “the dig­i­tal age”—an appel­la­tion I detest furi­ously.

Cast into the end­plate of the con­denser on the Allis engine is the word “WHEELER.” A steam engi­neer named Andy, from the same com­pany (now known as Foster-Wheeler), once took me on a hard-hat tour of the Mirant Kendall Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion in Cam­bridge. I had sold him an infrared ther­mome­ter to track down some ther­mal irreg­u­lar­i­ties in one of his con­densers there; he solved the prob­lem by draw­ing equi­ther­mal lines in soap­stone on the machine’s sur­face. He, too, crit­i­cized me for not know­ing enough about steam, and couldn’t believe that I never built a model steam engine as a kid.

You can read Amrys’s ver­sion of this story on her weblog.