File this between Croton, NY and the Baltimore World Fair. Kind of.
(Link to the Bmore Great Fire and World Fair)
I found this while finishing up an essay on the RR strike of the late 1870’s. Hampden Res was built by the same guy that built the Lebanon RR Bridge that was destroyed during the strikes. Except he didn’t build any of it, he just put his name and date on it.
There are 2 Hampden Reservoirs. One in Reading and another in Baltimore. Both places are locations of significance during the RR Strike of 1877, These are fractals of each other and the way they camoflauge them is similar to what they do with Starforts, theres about 10 names Ft George.
James Nolan, president of Reading Trust Co. and a railroad and bridge contractor for many years, was born in Ireland in 1844. His dad moved to New York in 1849 where he worked as a stone-cutter. In 1855, part of the family relocated to Wernersville where senior James Nolan engaged in stone-bridge-building for the Lebanon Valley Railroad. Young James Nolan stayed in New York for some years to learn stone-cutting and at 17 worked on St. Patrick Cathedral as an apprentice. In time he joined brothers Charles and William and, as the Nolan Brothers, the firm contracted with the Pennsylvania Railroad and the P & R for various projects – for 30 years. Their specialty was bridges. Locally, they constructed the Hampden Reservoir and extensive sections of Reading’s storm-sewer system. The large brownstone apartment house on the northeast corner of 4th and Walnut was a Nolan project. James Nolan was a director of the Farmers National Bank, Reading Steam Heat & Power Co., Reading Brewing Co., Reading Stove Works, Reading Academy of Music (Rajah, later), Reading Electric light & Power Co., St. Joseph’s Hospital, and president of Reading Trust Co. James Nolan, who died in 1914, was the father of 3 children, one of whom was James Nolan, III – better known as attorney and local historian J. Bennett Nolan.
So the local historian and lawyer is decended from the person he claimed built the res and holds all those titles. If half those claims were true Nolan would be more powerful than the politicians. Really it is a single entity that uses Nolan for a face and name to humanize the system. Im pretty sure this would constitute self-validation
The Hampden reservoir had a capacity for 30 million gallons of water at a depth of 27 feet. The reservoir at the top is 570 feet long by 342.5 feet wide, and at the base 450 feet long by 237.5 feet wide. The slanting walls are covered with a rock lining 18 inches thick. The overflow pipe for the water in the Hampden Reservoir stood 102 feet above the water in the reservoirs at Eleventh end Penn streets, and 274 feet above the river at the foot of Penn street.
The Hampden reservoir was completed in 1861 three years after it began at a cost of $206,643.50 by John W. Maxwell and Company. Maxwell, along with Joseph H. Hoblitzell and F.C. Crowley, constructed the dam at Lake Roland, the conduit, and the new reservoirs at a total cost of 1.3 million dollars. The conduits construction consisted of the excavation of three separate tunnels totaling over 5,000 feet, and over 6 million bricks. All of the pipes used in the project were manufactured in the Poole and Hunt foundry and presumably rolled up the hill. (?) The work was done by mechanics and day laborers. The water was conducted from the reservoir by openings 24×27 inches, through a wall 8 feet thick into an open chamber 7×9 feet, in which were placed the screens and the ends of effluent pipes, and from which the water is conducted to the city. The pipes ran through a wall 13 feet in thickness into an open valve culvert in which were placed the valves for the service and drain pipes. This culvert was 9 feet wide and 10 feet 6 inches high to the arch.
The valve house, from where the water was drawn for the supply of the city, was an admirable piece of work. Though the contract called only for rubble masonry in its construction, the Nolan Bros., at their own expense, in order to turn out a creditable job, constructed it of dressed stone laid down in regular layers, of the most substantial character.
There are different accounts of the cleanliness of the water. Some say it was a contaminated sludge pool and others say it was good water, just not enough, so a solution was sought elsewhere.
The Hampden Reservoir remained in operation until 1915, when the municipal water supply was reconstructed once again, and the polluted 40,000,000 gallon reservoir was reduced to a neighborhood ornament. In 1930 it was drained and cleaned, and the pipes were cut off entirely from the city water system to prevent any contamination through seepage. Though the city threatened to drain it for years, Hampden residents managed to block all proposals for more than forty years.
I found the same person in 2 different reports involving legal cases surrounding the res.
“In 1957 the Hampden reservoir was drained as investigators searched for a .32 caliber automatic weapon they believed was used in the murder of sandwich-shop proprietor Vincent DiPietro. A few weeks before it was drained, a youth laborer named Donald Coleman was charged in the killing of DiPietro after making “certain admissions” following four days of interrogation. Though DiPietro was a known hot-head, and had stabbed a man in his shop a year earlier, for some reason revenge was discounted as a motivation by the investigators; nor was a robbery mentioned in any report.
Only minutes after the investigators pulled the gun out of the mud of the drained reservoir, DiPietro’s widow (who he had also stabbed in a separate incident several months prior) married John C. Lloyd in the Hampden Methodist Church (now known as the United Methodist Church) directly across the street from the muddy pit. When the Rev. Leslie Werner, who was conducting the ceremony on short notice—unaware of the woman’s connection to the victim—told the couple that the gun was discovered, there wasn’t much of a response. Only after reading their names on the marriage certificate and directly questioning her relationship to the slain man did Rev. Werner realize it was her deceased husband. A week after the marriage the reservoir was once again filled back in with water to the delight of Hampden residents“
Rev Leslie Werner returns and led public opposition to the installation of a helipad, not of the draining of toxic waste.
“In 1960 the Bureau of Water Supply began draining the reservoir without announcement. The city then revealed plans to fill the muddy pit and turn it into a Department of Aviation heliport. Neighborhood residents, led by Rev. Werner from the nearby Hampden Methodist Church (now known as the United Methodist Church), responded with an immediate outcry. The irate citizens protested that helicopters would be a major disturbance to the school, recreation center, and churches in the immediate proximity. Werner called the ordeal “an infringement on our territorial rights without due recourse to a public hearing.” Eventually the city retracted its proposal for the heliport. The draining did continue, however, as the city conveniently had an arrangement with the contractors excavating the new Jones Falls Expressway nearby. In exchange for a local site to dump the excavated soil, the city would receive a discount on the cost of that stretch of highway. So it was settled, the mud from the Jones Falls Expressway filled the giant hole, and the reservoir has been largely forgotten.“
The reservoir constantly leaked because of the slanting shape of the underground rock formation and fissures in the rocks. Water from the reservoir would flood basements of nearby homes. Engineers occasionally drained the reservoir in an attempt to seal the fissures but were unsuccessful.
In 1934, City Recreation Director Thomas W. Lantz recommended building a stadium in the Hampden reservoir bowl with Works Progress Administration funds. One variation of the plan called for a stage along one inside embankment for plays, pageants and concerts with a seating capacity of 25,000.
The leaky reservoir was taken out of service in 1936 and is currently used as an athletic field.
Baltimore is also home to the Guilford Reservoir.
And Loch Raven Reservoir.
Notice anything different about this one and the rest? This one was just damming up a river and flooding the whole valley, erasing anything that was in the vicinity. The other reservoirs were symmetrical geometric shapes elevated above ground level with high banks.
Diameter: 12 ft, Length 8 miles. Depth below surface 65 to 360 ft. Two miles arched with brick. Five miles through solid rock not arched. Fall 1 ft per mile. Capacity of discharge per day 80,000,000 gallons.
History states when the Gunpowder River was dammed it drowned a village known as Warren (link)
The thing is, it was a mill town. This translates into a pre-repopulation industrial center that was flooded to erase evidence of the network of centers that facilitated the repairs needed during the dig out and clean up.
In 1920, Warren was one of the most thriving towns in Baltimore County. Two years later it had disappeared. That’s because it was 45 feet beneath the water—water which had slowly covered it when the 52 foot high addition to Loch Raven Dam, located a few miles to the south, was completed. Warren was a mill town. It was owned by the Summerfield Baldwins, whose Warren Manufacturing Company generated the big cotton-duck mill.
The nearby town of Phoenix, MD was also sold but was eventually spared of flooding and still exists today.
Site is claimed to be a UFO hotspot. Spooky people and spooky things
