HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

In the last episode, we talked about Boston’s first water sources, from rainfall and natural springs to a simple wooden aqueduct connecting Jamaica Pond to downtown Boston. This time, we’re picking up where episode 292 left off. As Boston grew in the early 19th century, it quickly outgrew its existing water supply, which was dreadfully polluted anyway. The city was left looking outside its boundaries for a water source that was large and plentiful enough to supply the needs of a growing American city, and debating whether that source should be owned by a governmental entity or a private company. This week, we’ll look at the celebration that came with the solution to that problem, and the drawn out debates and hard work that enabled Boston to supply its citizens with a truly public source of water.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/293/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Cochituate Water for Boston Charts of Long and Spot Pond during the debate October 25, 1848 Water Festival on Boston Common A schooner is hauled up Tremont Street as part of the festival

• • Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston, Michael Rawson
  • City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, Carl Smith
  • Nov 1, 1847 Boston Advertiser: Walking through a finished aqueduct section
  • Nov 27, 1847 Springfield Republican: Mayor Quincy’s comments at the halfway point
  • Oct 17, 1848 New York Herald: The first Cochituate water arrives in Boston
  • Oct 26, 1848 Boston Evening Transcript: Reporting on the grand water celebration
  • Report of the commissioners appointed under the order of the City Council, August 26, 1844 : to report the best mode and expense of bringing the water of Long Pond into the city of Boston
  • The financial history of Boston from May 1, 1822, to January 31, 1909
    by Huse, Charles Phillips
  • Celebration of the introduction of the water of Cochituate Lake into the city of Boston, October 25, 1848
  • Walking on the aqueducts in Wellesley
  • A suggested route on the aqueducts in Newton
  • Boston’s Sudbury aqueduct is reactivated during a 2010 emergency
  • Water for Early Boston from Jamaica Pond
  • Loammi Baldwin also surveyed the Middlesex Canal
  • ED Leavitt and the Chestnut Hill Waterworks
  • Daniel Dain and his History of Boston

A 14 mile route on the aqueducts in Newton and Wellesley from my marathon days: