Steven;
It sounds similiar to the Allis-Chalmers vertical pumping engine in the Hackensack Water Company site on an island in the middle of the Hackensack river in Bergen County, New Jersey. I linked to a picture of it below. From what I have read on the net, these are two of nineteen such engines remaining in the country.
It was voted by Bergen County to donate the Hackensack Water Company site to the Water Works Conservancy, Inc. (link below.) This was over the objections of environmentalists, who wanted the pumping station razed and the entire island returned to nature. (Yep, Rail to Trails type arguement all over again.)
According to their website, the Historic Sites Council's Resolution is now in the hands of Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell, who will make the final decision. He had granted a one-year extension for a final determination of the County's request, to allow the County to reassess the preservaton of this important National Historic Site. Bergen County and all other stakeholders, including the WWC and the State and National Coalition to Save the Water Works, agreed to that request. The new deadline was June 2003.
That was now a year ago; I wonder what the final outcome was here.
A proposal was also floated yesterday in a meeting in Boston to preserve the Hi Service room of the Chestnut Hill Pumping Station as a formal museum, while the rest of the station is adaptively reused for comdos. I am waiting to hear the outcome of the meeting.
Finally, in case you didn't read it in the Flimsies, we lost our battle to save the compressor house at the Solvay Coke Plant site in Milwaukee. We are still waiting for a more definite word; but it sounds like NOTHING was set aside. ALL of the steam engines along with everything else may have been demolished.
All just a reminder that general preservation of historic structures and machines is under the same gun as railroad perservation.
-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a
> This is from 1999:
> "The property also includes a former
> water company building that
> houses a rusting but massive Allis-Chalmers
> steam engine, built in
> 1913 to provide power for water pumps
> supplying Phillipsburg and the
> surrounding area.
> The Friends of the New Jersey Railroad and
> Transportation Museum are
> hoping to strike a deal with the county
> allowing the group to restore
> the four-story-high steam engine and open it
> to visitors of the state
> museum proposed in Phillipsburg.
> The pump, nicknamed "Big Alice"
> for its size, could move 6 million
> gallons of water a day, said Daniel Preston,
> vice president and
> division manager of Consumers New
> Jersey."
> Anyone know if an agreement was reached? No
> luck finding a picture, yet.
The Water Works Conservancy, Inc.
james@survivingworldsteam.com
