USA > Wisconsin > Milwaukee County > Milwaukee > History of Milwaukee from its first settlement to the year 1895 > Part 54
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95
In 1876, membership in the Chamber of Com- merce was made transferable, and an initiation fee established with a view to create a building fund. Within two years the chamber was in pos- session of about forty thousand dollars, and when Mr. Alexander Mitchell made a proposition to provide suitable quarters for the chamber at the moderate rental of three thousand dollars a year, for twenty years, from 1880, the terms were ac- cepted.
This brief sketch of the Chamber of Commerce and its important transactions would be greatly defective in a historical point of view were no mention made of its secretary, Mr. W. J. Lang- son. He has held that position of responsibility and trust for thirty years, wanting only a few months, having been elected in 1865, and possibly, with but one exception, is the oldest Chamber of Commerce secretary, in point of service, in the United States. It is not necessary to say here that he has been ever faithful and efficient. His twenty-seven volumes of reports, illustrating in a painstaking way the growth of the trade and commerce of the city, and his almost unprece- dented term of office, are a much higher com- mendation of his services than any personal men- tion which can be written.
CHAPTER XLII.
PUBLIC WORKS, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND FEDERAL OFFICES.
BY THOMAS BOYLE.
M ILWAUKEE is rightly called a city of homes ; and it has become such through the public spirit and enterprise of its citizens and the tireless energy and efficiency of the men who have had in charge its public improvements. Her splendid water works and sewerage systems, her well paved streets, her public buildings and beautiful parks, begun and maintained by municipal taxation under control of the Board of Public Works and City Engineers' Departments, have been brought to a high state of perfection as the result of many years of diligent and faithful study and conscientious work on the part of her public servants. The origin of the present water-works system is of comparatively recent date ; thongh nearly fifty years ago, when the United States hotel-which was destroyed in the great fire of August 24, 1854-was built at the corner of Huron and East Water streets, the need of an abundant supply of pure fresh water arose. To meet this need the enterprising proprietor laid mains made from tamarack timber, cut into proper lengths and bored by hand, from the hotel to a living spring located on the south side of Wis- consin street, midway between Jackson and Van Buren streets. The experiment was a decided success, and these primitive water works furnished the hotel with an ample supply of pure water as long as it stood, and were utilized by residents along Michigan street for many years. It is interesting to note that when the excavations for the new Chamber of Commerce were made in 1879, these tamarack tubes were found still preserved, and pieces of them were carefully kept by old settlers as precious mementoes of early days. From one of these a cane was made and, at a meeting of the Early Pioneer Association of Mil- waukee county, held January 5, 1880, was presented to Mr. William P. Merrill, who cut the timber in 1840 from land which he owned in what is now the Eleventh ward of the city. The increase of population in the city and the
growing importance of her thriving indus- tries made imperative the demand for an ample water supply, and led to much discussion and many proposed plans. This agitation of the sub- ject assumed tangible form in June, 1857, when the City Council authorized an issue of city bonds to the Milwaukee Hydraulic Company. No prac- tical results came from this action, but the agita- tion continued; and in the spring of 1859, a Boston firm proposed to construct the requisite works and lay twenty-five miles of pipe before Jannary 1, 1861, at a cost of four hundred and fifty thon- sand dollars. Long-cherished hopes seemed about to be realized; but whatever might have come of this proposition, all was lost sight of in the tur- moil and need for money incident to the opening of the War of the Rebellion, and not until the fall of 1867 was the matter again brought to general public notice. At that time, two propositions, one from a local firm and one from a firm in Cin- cinnati, were presented, but they were not acted upon. In 1867 the question again came before the Common Council, and the services of Mr. E. S. Chesbrough of Chicago, were secured to make an examination and report plans for supplying the city with water and also a system of sewer- age. His report was referred by the Common Council to a special committee in 1869.
It was found, however, that by the terms of the Readjustment Act, passed March 19, 1861, the city was prohibited from issuing any new bonds until the municipal bonded indebtedness should be reduced to five hundred thousand dol- lars, and at the end of June of that year, there were outstanding bonds to the amount of seven hundred thousand dollars. The prospects for im- mediate relief were not flattering, but in 1870 the subject was revived, and the city's financial affairs were such that a special committee appointed by the mayor made a favorable report on the project. Following this report, in 1871 a special act was passed by the legislature authorizing the
285
288
HISTORY OF MILWAUKEE.
city to issue water bonds to the amount of one million dollars and naming a Board of Water Commissioners, comprising Messrs. Edward O'Neill, president; Matthew Keenan, secretary ; David Ferguson, treasurer ; and Edward H. Broadhead, George Burnham, Alexander Mitchell, John Plankinton, Fred Pabst and Guido Pfister, members. Prior to the first report of this com- mittee in December, 1871, the then city engineer, the late Mr. Moses Lane, and Mr. Keenan made a tour of inspection through many Eastern cities examining the various water systems. What was known as the "lake shore plan," based on the reports and estimates of Mr. Chesbrough, was finally adopted, and in 1872 the construction of the water works of the city was commenced. Twelve acres at the foot of North avenue, having a water frontage of one thousand feet, were selected as the site. The buildings, consisting of an engine house seventy by eighty-four feet, a boiler house forty by forty-two feet and a coal shed forty by one hundred feet, are built of brick and roofed with iron and slate. The chimney, one hundred and fifty feet high, is built apart from the main buildings. From the engine house, extending two thousand feet into the lake, was laid a cast-iron conduit with an interior diameter of three feet, and at the outer end a crib to protect it was built, and so constructed that the water supply was drawn from a depth of some twelve feet below the lake's surface. The water-works tower, which encloses the stand-pipe, was built of stone, circular in form, and stands on an eminence back from the other buildings, and is one hundred and seventy-five feet high of itself. Its summit, which is reached by means of winding stairs around the standpipe, is two hundred and fifty-five feet above the lake. It is a model of architectural skill, and reflects much credit upon its designer, Mr. C. A. Gombert, architect, who also planned the other buildings. In order to protect the works against the lake storms, a fine wharf nearly six hundred feet in length was built at great expense. The engine house, which was built to accommodate four engines was supplied with two, which were then sufficient to do the work required, and these were coupled to one fly-wheel, and could be oper- ated singly or together. Each of these engines has the capacity to raise eight million gallons of water every twenty-four hours, and force it through five hundred and twenty-five feet of cast-
iron pipe, three feet in diameter, to the stand-pipe, whence it flows through a conduit thirty inches in diameter, and extending five thousand seven hundred feet westward across the Milwaukee river to the reservoir. This main pipe crosses the river on an acqueduct bridge built for that pur- pose and for travel, and is placed under the road- way and supported by iron girders and securely protected against freezing by a proper encasing. The reservoir, which has a capacity of twenty-one million five hundred thousand gallons, covers an area of three and a half acres, though the grounds, a part of which were the gift to the city of Hon. Byron Kilbourn, now deceased, in honor of whom they were named Kilbourn Park Reservoir, cover thirty acres. The depth of the water in the res- ervoir, when full, is twenty-five feet, and its sur- face is fifty feet above the lake. The inlet on the east side of the reservoir is so arranged that it can be connected with the outlet on the west by a main pipe laid across the bottom, so that, when necessary, the reservoir can be emptied and yet the water supply to the city be kept up direct from the stand-pipe. In 1873, before the pump- ing works were finished, but when the reservoir was ready for use and more than fifty miles of pipe had been laid through the city, the demand for a pure water supply was so urgent that tem- porary pumping works were built on the west side of the Milwaukee river, and supplied with an engine capable of raising a million gallons of water into the reservoir in twenty-four hours. This was put in operation in October, 1873, and worked uninterruptedly until the regular works at. North Point were started in September, 1874. On December 23, 1874, the reservoir was filled through the main conduit across the acqueduct bridge, and on the 1st of June, 1875, the water works were transferred to the city by the Board of Water Commissioners under whose di- rection they were built. The water works had not been long in operation before it was found that the pressure would not be sufficient to force the water to the high points in the west division of the city, where the highest established grade was nineteen and a half feet below the flow level of the reservoir. It was to remedy this that, in 1878, the West-side pumping works, located on Eight- eenth street, were built at a cost of one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, and an engine with one million gallons capacity put in. The
289
PUBLIC WORKS, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND FEDERAL OFFICES.
water tower at this point was built one hundred and thirty feet high, and the water was drawn from the Chestnut street main. Up to the time when the works were transferred to the city, July 1, 1875, the cash receipts from all sources, including the sale of bonds and assessments for water pipes, aggregated one million nine hundred and fifty-four thousand six hundred and ninety- three dollars and sixty-nine cents. Within the next five years more than ninety miles of pipe were laid; and the reports for the year 1880 showed that the works had become almost self- sustaining, the receipts of that year being one hundred and thirty-eight thousand, five hundred dollars, while the annual cost of maintenance was then about one hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars. The increased demand for water service at this time necessitated greater pumping force, and the city entered into a contract with Messrs. E. P. Allis & Company, a local firm, to provide and put into operation by June 1, 1881, an engine with a capacity of twelve million gallons. The pumping capacity was still further increased ten years later by putting in place a triple expansion pumping engine with a capacity of eight million gallons, which, like its predecessors, does its work marvelously well. The results of a test of this last mentioned engine, made by Professor R. C. Carpenter of Cornell University, and re- ported in Sibley's Journal of Engineering in June, 1893, were made the subject of a special paper by Professor R. H. Thurston of the same university to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and have attracted much attention. The test showed that the duty developed was one hundred and thirty-five million seven hundred and seventy thousand foot-pounds for each one hundred pounds of moist coal actually used in furnaces. Based upon the coal being dry, the duty was one hun- dred and forty-three million three hundred and six thousand four hundred and seventy foot- pounds. As shown by the latest published report of the water department, the total cost of con- struction at the close of the year 1893, had been four million one hundred and sixty-eight thousand eight hundred and fifty-six dollars and thirty-five cents; which amount covered the expenditures for the reservoir, North Point pumping works and engines, River and West-side pumping works, pipe distribution, North street bridge, engineer- ing, salaries, auxiliary and new tunnel intake, and
high service works and engines. According to the same report the receipts of the department, including those of the water fund and the new construction fund up to that time, had been eight million six hundred and twenty-six thousand four hundred and fifty-five dollars and six cents. Thus far the city's water has been drawn from the orig- inal intake, which, as stated, extends two thousand feet into the lake. To guard against all possibility of contamination and insure a pure water supply, the city, in 1891, decided to build a new intake tunnel, and entered into a contract with Messrs. Shailer & Schniglau to do the work. The con- struction was commenced, and for a time carried on with varying success under many difficulties, which finally became so great that the contractors decided they could not be overcome and forfeited their contract. But there were those who believed that the work, though beset with obstacles seem- ingly unsurmountable, could be accomplished, and accordingly, under direction of the city engineer's department, the city undertook the work and is prosecuting it with results that verify the opin- ions of those whose confidence in the feasibility of the project has never wavered. This new intake, simply described, will consist of a short shaft one hundred and forty-two feet deep; a brick tunnel, seven feet in diameter, extending from the bottom of this shaft thirty-two hundred feet into the lake and connecting with the bottom of a shaft sunk one hundred and thirty-six feet below the bottom of the lake from the top of this lake shaft, which is protected by a crib; two iron pipes, each five feet in diameter and laid three feet below the bottom of the lake, extend five thousand feet farther into the lake with their ends turned upward at a depth of sixty feet below the water's surface, their openings being protected by submerged crowns or cribs. These pipes are now laid, both shafts are sunk, and the connecting tunnel is rap- idly approaching completion ; and it is confidently expected that, before the close of the year 1895, this, the crowning achievement of the city's mag- nificent water-works system, will be in full opera- tion.
Closely allied to Milwaukee's water-works system, and quite as essential, is the sewerage system, than which, no city can boast a more perfect one, and few, one equally complete and satisfactory. As in the case of the water works, this branch of the city's public works has been
290
HISTORY OF MILWAUKEE.
brought to its high state of perfection in recent years. Prior to 1869 the city had no definite plan of sewerage; and although the population then numbered sixty-eight thousand, but little more than three miles of sewers had been built. The healthfulness of the city was being imperiled ; the demand for relief was imperative. In that year, a general sewerage system covering four and a half square miles in the heart of the city, and designed by Mr. E. S. Chesbrough, city engineer of Chicago, was adopted. This system has been extended from time to time and now-1895- covers the whole area of the city. By this system the sewage was emptied into the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnikinnic rivers to be thence carried by them into the lake : and as a conse- quence of this discharge of the sewage into these sluggish streams, which received also the refuse of numerous factories situated along their banks, their waters became so poluted that within ten years after the adoption of the system, the offensiveness became a subject of earnest public complaint. Various plans to remedy the evil and abate the nuisance were suggested, and the solution of the difficult - problem was finally left to a committee of experts, comprising Messrs. E. S. Chesbrough, Moses Lane and George E. Warring, Jr. Following their recommendations, which were made in 1880, a plan was adopted which provided for the construction of an intercepting sewer from the lake at a point south of the harbor, westward into the packing house district, and the next year the work of con- struction began. In 1882. at the suggestion and under the direction of Mr. G. H. Benzenberg, who then, as now, filled the office of city engineer, the size and grade and location of the unfinished part of this intercepting sewer was changed so as to keep it below the surface of the terminal canals, and so as to reach every sewer outlet on each side of the Menomonee valley. The purpose of this change was to aid in removing the stagnation of the canals by increasing the flow of pure water, which also would help to dilute the sewage in the sewers on its way to the lake. In accordance with this amended plan that portion of the inter- cepting sewer which remained unfinished was con- structed ; and with the exception of a small por- tion, which was made of beveled timber, it was built of brick with an internal diameter of five faet and four inches. For the two river crossings rendered necessary, wrought-iron inverted siphons
were used-that across the Milwaukee river, lead- ing to the pump-well, being five hundred and twenty feet long, four feet and two inches in diam- eter and laid twenty-six and a half feet below the river's surface. The other, which crosses the north Menomonee channel, is two hundred feet long, forty inches in diameter and twenty-four feet below the surface of the water. This interceptor receives and carries off the sewage of more than ninety miles of sewers, through twelve connections so constructed that the sewage proper flows through an opening into the interceptor below, over which the storm water is carried to the out- let of the sewer into the streams. The pump, which is situated on a neck of land south of the harbor, is of the centrifrugal type, and has been operated with an average lift of fifteen feet and an average discharge of nearly forty thousand gallons per minute. The pumping engine, designed by Mr. Edwin Reynolds and built by Messrs. E. P. Allis & Company, has a lift of eighteen feet and a capacity of seventy million gallons every twenty- four hours. The pump disc, twelve feet in diam- eter, makes about seventy revolutions per minute, and the sewage which is sucked from below is discharged into a brick conduit, six feet in diameter, and carried over a weir into the lake. This outflow, amounting to fifty-six million gallons per day, about one-fifth of which is sew- age and refuse from the packing houses and other establishments in the valley, and the remainder river water, flows southward with the lake cur- rent. This work completed stopped the discharge of sewage and foul refuse into the canals, but the causes of their offensiveness were only par- tially removed. For more than twenty years an almost liquid sludge had been accumulating at the bottom of their sluggish waters, which, under the heat of summer, developed nauseous gases that were given off in sickening odors. A partial remedy for this evil was found by utilizing the excess capacity of the intercepting sewer in drain- ing water from the upper end of the canals, which was replaced by the cooler water flowing in. This relief, which was afterward made complete by the flushing works, hereinafter described, in a great measure stopped the formation of gases, produced a perceptible current, and made the waters fit for boiler use and even for bathing pur- poses While this work of improving the condi- tion of the canals and other waters in the valley
291
PUBLIC WORKS, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND FEDERAL OFFICES.
was progressing, the condition of the Milwaukee river was gradually growing worse, until its stench finally became almost unendurable. Inter- cepting sewers were recommended; but to con- struct these would require a vast expenditure of money, which the city was not then in a condi- tion to incur, and still worse, years would elapse before such work would be finished. A commis- sion of members of the American Society of Civil Engineers was appointed to devise plans and esti- mate the cost of works for disposing of the city's sewage and furnishing a supply of pure water. Their comprehensive report was made in May, 1889. But speedy relief was demanded and such relief was at hand, although the plans sug- gested aroused almost universal opposition on the part of the city press and public. This plan, which was recommended by Mr. Benzenberg, city engineer, and championed by Mr. Edwin Reynolds, who has achieved distinction as a mechanical engineer, was, as results have shown, most prac- tical and feasible. The waters of the rivers were almost stagnant, full of putrefying matter; con- stantly emitting noxious gases and foul-smell- ing odors. The plan proposed was the simple one of introducing into the upper waters of the river a volume of cold, clear lake water that should not only lower the temperature of the river water and prevent the formation of gases, but also create a current that would be uniformly down stream; now the current, when there was any at all, was quite as apt to be in one direction as the other. In the face of all opposition, which never ceased until the practical utility of the plan was demonstrated, Mr. Benzenberg's project of flushing the river was adopted, and on December 8, 1887, the work of construction was contracted for. The shortest distance between the lake and an available point on Milwaukee river, which is a little less than half a mile, was found to be from a point within and near the upper end of the harbor to a point on the river just below the dam, some five miles above the river's mouth. Between these points was selected as the line of the tunnel-whose size was fixed at twelve feet diameter-it being ascer- tained by careful experiments of the effect of clear lake water upon the gaseous sludge and water of the river, that a tunnel of that size would be re- quired to furnish a sufficient supply to purify the river. The inlet of the tunnel consists of two strongly built, parallel piers, placed one hundred
and ten feet apart and extending six hundred and ten feet from the beach into ten feet depth of water, every precaution being taken to prevent the sand from entering the tunnel, into which the water enters through a rectangular conduit built of timber and piling lined with matched flooring. The tunnel is constructed of brick, and has an average depth of ninety-five feet below the sur- face, which brings its crown some two feet below city datum or supposed low water. Its grade is level. Before reaching the river the tunnel is curved south ward and approaches the stream in a nearly parallel line, so as to facilitate the flow; and the outlet is built of stone through an offset in the dock that faces down stream.
The screw-pumping engine used was designed by Mr. Edwin Reynolds and built by Messrs. E. P. Allis & Company. It is of the vertical, steeple compound type, with the high-pressure cylinder thirty-eight inches in diameter, with a forty-eight- inch stroke. The pump wheel fourteen feet in diameter, with a cone-shaped hub six feet in diam- eter, is a true screw and has a pitch of eight feet. At a speed of fifty-nine revolutions per minute the pump displaces nearly six million gallons per twenty-four hours, being the largest quantity of water handled by any machine in the world. There are four horizontal tubular boilers, one of which is held in reserve, each sixteen feet long and four and a half feet in diameter, and containing thirty-four four-inch tubes. The engine and boilers occupy a neat brick building, to which is attached a brick coal shed and tool room, and a smoke- stack one hundred and twenty-six feet high, with a uniform interior diameter of four and a third feet. Twelve days after the contract for this proposed improvement was made its construction was begun; and such was the energy with which the work was prosecuted under its six divisions, viz .: outlet, tunnel, inlet, engine and boilers, founda- tions therefor, and the buildings, that it was finished and ready for use within a period of nine months, the tunnel being filled and the machinery started on September 14, 1888. The predictions of failure had never ceased since the flushing pro- ject was proposed. But witness the result. That which had been denounced as an extravagant and worthless experiment was at once demonstrated to be a marvelous triumph and success. Within fifteen minutes after the pump was started the current of the river, which just before was up-stream was
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.