Preserving the majesty of old works

New uses for water pumping stations will draw on their glory days

A Chestnut Hill pumping station, designed in 1887 by Boston city architect Arthur Vinal, will house condos and a museum when it is fully restored. (Chuck Choi)

When our ancestors built infrastructure, they built it as architecture. Sometimes great architecture.

Infrastructure is the word for the network of utilities and other public services that keep America moving: highways, bridges, tunnels, dams, sewers, water mains, power lines.

We don't usually think of infrastructure as architecture. But in Brighton at the edge of the Chestnut Hill reservoir, back in the 1880s and '90s, our forbears created two of the city's remarkable buildings for the sole purpose of pumping water. They cared that much about the quality of the civic world.

The Chestnut Hill Pumping Stations performed their task for nearly a century. Then in the 1970s, they were retired. Empty and abandoned, they were in real danger of demolition.

So there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that you can't imagine us building this kind of building so well today. The good news is that at least we've got enough sense to preserve what we have. Chestnut Hill is today returning to life and use after a commendable restoration.

The two pumping stations - sometimes collectively known, as in the game of Monopoly, as the Water Works - have been converted into condo apartments. Architect Graham Gund, working with developer Edward Fish, has created spacious units, many of which look through the original great arched windows out over the reservoir park.

The most dramatic of the interior spaces won't be condos, though. They have been saved to become a museum of the old Boston world of steam and water. A private group, calling itself Metropolitan WaterWorks Museum Inc., hopes to open the museum by the end of 2009.

This museum should be something to see. In our pallid digital age, we sometimes lose touch with the physical world, the disappearing world of powerful machines. The museum space feels like a dinosaur hall. It's a high volume filled with great industrial machines that loom like ancient monsters. One of those, the so-called Leavitt steam engine - created by Erasmus Darwin Leavitt of Lowell - is considered so remarkable that a replica stands in the Smithsonian in Washington. I believe this space will one day be among the most famous in Greater Boston. I know of nothing like it anywhere.

Chestnut Hill served a simple purpose, that of pumping fresh water, which originated in Lake Cochituate, into the homes and fire hydrants of Boston. The two pump buildings are very different. This was the Victorian age, when architects liked to experiment with any style they felt like.

The older structure, now to be known as the Hall of Machines, is the great one. It will house some condos, but also the museum. It was designed in 1887 by the Boston city architect, Arthur Vinal. Vinal knew he wasn't a great architect, and he had the good sense to rip off someone who was. The building is a replay of the manner of H.H. Richardson, the architect of Trinity Church. Vinal does Richardson so well that the master himself would be proud. One of the things I love about this marvelous building is the rich physical mass and texture of the materials. Even the words feel poetic: Rockfaced Milford granite, Longmeadow freestone.

The other building, of 1899, to be called Whitehall, is in a style best called Beaux-arts Classical, meaning the architecture taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, imitative of Greek and Roman originals. It too is a fine work, though it pales beside Vinal's. It is filled with condos, and architect Gund has added others in a new wing tucked into a garden courtyard.

Both buildings are designated Boston landmarks and both are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. As a result, Gund was not allowed to make significant changes in the exterior appearance. Even a tall brick smokestack, which served the coal-fired steam engines that drove the pumps, has been meticulously restored.

Gund was able to add a handsome second floor to a less significant building on the site. And where he could, he had fun with the interiors. One huge apartment in the Vinal building extends through three floors, then rises further, inside an old tower, to an open viewing platform at the top. There are 81 condos in all, of which all but eight have been sold. Prices range from $1.1 million to $4.6 million.

Things don't happen quickly in the world of preservation. For years, Chestnut Hill was a football passed back and forth among state and local agencies, none of which wanted to take responsibility. Back in October 1997, this column first reported on the situation. At that time, a chunk of granite had just fallen from the roof of one of the buildings, a warning step in the process that architectural preservationists call "demolition by neglect." The Globe headline read: "Famed waterworks crumbles as a patchwork of agencies mumbles about someone else's responsibility." Chestnut Hill, we wrote, was on its way to an undignified demise.

But a preservation movement was already afoot. It never ceases to amaze me what a few dedicated people can accomplish. Newton native Didier Thomas led a citizens' group called the Friends of the Waterworks. Architectural photographer Steve Rosenthal produced unforgettable images of the buildings and their internal machinery. Slowly, state and city agencies got their act together, eventually seeking a developer to restore the buildings.

People's eyes glaze over when they hear the word "infrastructure." But there was a lot of talk about it in the recent election campaign, because so much of it is neglected and falling apart.

Levees fail in New Orleans. A bridge collapses in Minnesota. Atlanta worries about the future of its water supply. A once proud national rail system falls into abandonment and decay. The Longfellow Bridge over the Charles is a local example, now in such bad shape that traffic must be restricted. The bill to repair America's infrastructure, authorities estimate, is now in the trillions of dollars.

As Chestnut Hill proves, our ancestors saw these things differently. They paid attention to the civic world. They built durable buildings here and also a park. They ringed the lovely reservoir - it is infrastructure, too - with an 80-foot-wide carriage path. It became a prized site for a Sunday drive, and still today serves walkers and joggers.

Why was the architecture so lavish? Should we worry, perhaps, that corruption was at work? Did officials receive kickbacks in return for spending too much public money on the buildings and their builders? This was, after all, the age of notorious political bosses in American cities, including Boston.

Maybe that happened, maybe not. When you look at the result, it's hard to feel puritanical about the process. Sometimes it's better to spend too much than to spend, as we usually do today, far too little.

Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.