Reservoie Hill: (3D Satellite)
Filtration Plant: (3D Satellite)
WTP = Water Treatment (Filtration) Plant
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| Billy Cunningham posted Reservoir Park in Fort Wayne with the water pumping station on top of the hill. When the city was growing back in the day this Reservoir was built as a water supply for the city. Richard Fletcher: I remember sledding on it in the late 60s. Paul Menefee: Richard Fletcher me to and ice skating also, and playing hockey to! |
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| Janice Moore-lanucilli posted Here is a good shot of the reservoir. Ken Gillian: What year did they construct the reservoir? Dennis DeBruler: Ken Gillian 1880 At that time, this area was south of the town. http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/.../mayor-hoseys... |
Because Fort Wayne was the summit of the Wabash & Erie Canal, there was a dam and feeder canal to supply water to that canal. When the city water supply became an issue for the City Council in 1875, the owners of the feeder canal advocated that the city buy their water from them. They even offered to build the pumping station, 21 miles of pipe and a 200' tall standpipe. But the citizens were against it. So in 1880 the above reservoir-on-a-hill was built along with a large steam-powered pump next to Spy Run Creek. But a year later the creek dried up because of a drought and the city ended up buying water from the owners of the canal. But within a few years, the city replaced the canal source with several "deep rock wells." That served the city's need for half a century. [HistoryCenterFW]
Trees have grown around the edge of the hill so that it is now hard to get a view of the hill itself. I did find this gap. The concrete tank was filled in. So the hill was probably taller but the top dirt was used to fill the tank.
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| Street View |
A pond was dug to supply the dirt that was needed to build the hill. According to some comments on Jancie's post, up until the 1950s kids used to sled down the hill. And there was ice skating on the pond. In fact, some people talked about sledding down the hill and across the ice on the pond. But now, thanks to insurance companies and the threat of law suits, the pond is drained during the Winter.
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| Jacqui Carroll comment on Janice's post Mike Carrier: There used to be a building that housed the mechanicals for the old multi-colored lighted fountain that you could go inside to warm up and put on your ice skates. My mom said that when she was a kid that they would let them switch the colors of the fountain in the summertime. |
Now the GE fountain has been replaced by a couple of "lawn sprinklers," to use the term used in one of the Facebook comments. These are similar to what we have on our Prince Pond. They are needed to aerate the stagnate water to prevent the growth of algae.
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| Street View |
Several years of severe draught in the late 1920s proved that the deep wells had limitations. By then water filtration technology had matured so the Three Rivers Filtration Plant was built during 1931-33. The St. Joe Dam and pumping station were also built to supply the needed water with two 42" diameter pipes. Expansions in 1954 and 1979 maintained the architectural elegance of the initial plant. [HistoryCenterFW] A different source puts the expansions in 1955 and 1981. The initial capacity was 24 million gallons per day, and each expansion added an additional 24 MGD. [CityOfFortWayne] "The three sections of the Plant can be operated
independently, allowing maintenance work to be done
while the Plant continues to provide treated drinking water." [CityOfFortWayne-2013]
The designers were supposed to design a simple water supply factory. But they realized that for just 2% more they could add an architectural flourish. So they designed it in a Collegiate Gothic Style and chose to use Indiana limestone for the finish. [ArchFW]
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| CityOfFortWayne |
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| CityOfFortWayne-process, p2 This document describes how the water is treated. |
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| Utilities Jesse Jesus Galvan posted Water Works 1953 Fort Wayne Indiana |
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| Carson King posted Water treatment plant Mamiya 7, 80mm f4, Portra 400NC |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Carson's post This looks like the filtration hall of the Fort Wayne Indiana WTP. The original 24mgd plant was designed with the Collegiate Gothic Style and used Indiana Limestone. Furthermore, the 24mpd expansions in 1954 and 1979 retained the original architecture. |
I remember from a tour or some other source that there is a huge underground tank west of the filtration plant that is a reservoir of treated water. I presume it is under the Three Rivers water filtration park. I can't find any information on it. Probably because of 9/11 precautions. In particular, I can't remember how many days it can supply clean water from that storage. I do remember that when a semi-truck crashed on the Coliseum bridge over the St Joe River, it spilled diesel fuel into the river and they had to shut down the pumping station at the dam. The clean water reservoir was big enough to mitigate that outage of the river water. Now that I'm thinking about it, that incident may have been when I learned about the clean water reservoir from the news reports.
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