Metro Waterworks Museum. Leitz Summicron 35mm V4

Back on August 17th, I went for a stroll at the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, Boston's first serious attempt at a water supply for the growing city.  From across the water, I photographed the beautiful 1880s building which houses the pump station for the reservoir.  Today, I went to visit the building which is now a museum.

Inside, there are three massive steam pumps: they stretch up three storeys and, the docent told me, are all smaller than the steam engines which powered the Titanic.  The biggest and latest pump dates from 1912, the same year that the Titanic was lost.  I'm assuming here, that the older pumps were not superseded, but worked in tandem to pump water into the city's supply pipes.

I had a tough choice to make as to which image to use for the Main; the flywheel of one of the engines won the day.  It's fully twenty feet in diameter, the single biggest structure of all the moving parts.

The first Extra endeavors to show the scale of these machines stretching from the basement floor, three storeys up, linked by catwalks for the engineers to have access to things. 

I had to include one Extra of the building's exterior, constructed of granite with red sandstone details.  The workmanship is spectacular.

The plaque outside giving the history of this major public works project.

The last three are shapes and details which I found particularly pleasing to the eye, in the way that so many Victorian and Edwardian machines and structures are; the perfect melding of form and function, with energy left over for decorative details.