The Montebello Water Filtration Plant I Clean Water for City & Suburb Alike

Editor & Layout: ADAM J. YOUSSI Vol. 43 Summer 2012 Numbers 3 & 4 The Montebello Water Filtration Plant I Clean Water for City & Suburb Alike By: Martha A. Hendrickson “Bird’s Eye View: Montebello Filtration Plant: Baltimore, MD.” A hand rendered conceptual drawing by E. Eardley, c. 1912. (Image in the possession of the author.) The Historical Society of Baltimore County is funded in part by grants from the Baltimore County Executive, County Council, and Commission on Arts & Sciences. PAGE 2 History Trails The Montebello Water Filtration Plant gave the County are inextricably linked to the water system Baltimore region national acclaim when it was that is run by the City, and the two voices were the completed in 1915. It was a significant achievement same in demanding reforms in the early twentieth in both engineering and architectural design. In century. Not only is the water from these reservoirs 1912, engineers began the architectural and and filtration plants what the majority of county engineering plans for the landmark which was a citizens drink, but their watersheds provide boon to the health and well-being of both county recreation for city and county residents and visitors and city residents. Many experts combined their alike. knowledge to design Baltimore’s first water Several factors contributed to the nationwide filtration facility, and the facility is still in use today. movement of municipal water filtration plant The Montebello Water Filtration Plant I in construction and the innovative designs of the Baltimore is notable in several ways. Locally, as Montebello Filtration Plant: the Urban Progressive Baltimore’s first water filtration plant, it was a Movement, the acceptance of Germ Theory, and significant accomplishment towards improving The City Beautiful Movement. Each of these living conditions, and it was a cornerstone of independently notable topics occurred toward the Baltimore’s modern water supply. In a larger end of the 19th century. This article will briefly context, it was part of a nationwide movement to touch on these topics, and hopefully shed light on build the first generation of municipal water how they influenced the construction of Baltimore filtration plants at the turn of the 20th century as a City and County’s first water filtration plant. result of the Urban Progressive Era. At the time of its completion, The Montebello Filtration Plant was Urban Progressives and City Conditions the second largest of its type in the nation and the most modern. In addition, its attractive architectural With the Industrial Revolution came massive design and landscaping was an ideal of the national immigration to American cities resulting in a "City Beautiful" movement, giving it national population increase that was neither planned nor distinction. anticipated. Baltimore was no exception. Between The Montebello Filtration Plant I is one of three 1870 and 1900 the population of Baltimore major municipal water filtration plants in Baltimore, increased from a quarter-million to a half-million providing clean drinking water to residents of people.1 Even without considering the city's Baltimore City, and parts of Baltimore, Howard and population increase due to annexing parts of Anne Arundel counties. It is located in Baltimore Baltimore County in 1888, other factors amounted City at the intersection of Hillen and Harford Roads, to about one third of the total. There were just north of Lake Montebello. It was the first immigrants from overseas, an influx of emigrating filtration plant in Baltimore and marked the African Americans from farmlands, ex- beginning of the region's modern municipal water confederates from Virginia, and farmers from the supply as we know it today. With the completion of countryside all looking for employment in the filtration plant and water system, water was industrializing cities.2 piped from Loch Raven Dam on the Gunpowder Meanwhile, cities were not well prepared for River (completed in 1914 at the elevation of 188 their surge in population and industry. Protective feet above mean tide), to the Montebello Plant, labor laws were virtually non-existent, there were where it was purified and sent to a distribution few housing codes, and little-to-no government aid system for residents and businesses. we are accustomed to today. Education was The significance of the filtration plant to both primarily for those who could afford it, while the Baltimore City and County cannot be overstated. poor often lived in cramped, overcrowded While there is a demarcation on the map between conditions, and commonly worked long hours in Baltimore City and County, that line essentially dangerous environments. Slums and tenement disappears in terms of municipal services. The houses covered a great portion of Baltimore City.3 growth and well-being of the citizens of Baltimore “The Montebello Water Filtration Plant I” PAGE 3 Compounding the problems was the prevalence sand water filtration was used on small and large of major communicable diseases. The deadly scales in Britain and Scotland with the main diseases of pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhoid, objective of removing suspended matter. In the cholera and yellow fever were common conditions areas where slow sand filtering was used there was a affecting anyone within their reach. With the rapid lower incidence of cholera, indicating the disease increase in population, city services were strained to was directly the result of contaminated water and capacity. Proper sewage disposal was unheard of, food.5 Slowly, acceptance of germ theory grew, and and clean drinking water was not readily available. author M. N. Baker stated in his book, Quest for Two of the most dreaded and preventable Pure Water, that “by the 1890’s even the majority of diseases, cholera and typhoid, commonly spread by the skeptics had recognized that, instead of being a food and water contamination, were not well mere straining process for the removal of suspended addressed because germ theory was relatively new matter, filtration removed deadly germs of and not widely accepted by scientists or the public. disease.”6 Although slow sand filtration was Although tuberculosis, an airborne disease, claimed established in England, Scotland, and parts of a higher death rate (its vaccine was not developed Europe, no slow sand filtration type plant existed in until 1906, and did not come into wide use until the North America before the Civil War.7 1920s), typhoid was one of the most dreaded of epidemics. Turning Points for Germ Theory in America Germ Theory & Water Supply With many cities looking to improve water supplies in the 1890s, city planners and engineers The now widely accepted fact that bacterial debated the best methods to accomplish their goals. microorganisms in water and food were the cause of The turning point in convincing Americans to use disease was not so evident to doctors or the public, filtration plants for combating disease came in 1893, even as late as the 1890s. Prior to the 1870s, a with the Lawrence experimental station on the widespread belief was that disease was spread by Merrimac River in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The vapors and atmosphere arising from filth - it was State Board of Massachusetts established the station known as the miasma theory of contamination. Even in 1887 to study water and sewage treatment in after 1880, when two German scientists working order to give advice on water supply and sewerage.8 independently of each other identified the typhoid Lawrence was one of the cities that had high typhoid bacilli, there were still those that held-fast to rates (4 times the amount of the rest of miasma theory.4 Massachusetts due in part to upstream pollution).9 In Baltimore, the prevalence of belief in miasma The results of tests and experiments were put into theory is reflected in both the water system and city practice by the building of the Lawrence Filter Plant growth patterns. To avoid the conditions of in 1893. After the plant went into operation the rates “miasmic” disease, many wealthy and privileged of typhoid were markedly reduced.10 Allen Hazen, citizens had second homes to escape the bustle of Chief Chemist at the Lawrence Station of the the city; the Estates of Belvedere, Clifton and Massachusetts Board of Health, wrote the first Montebello are examples. They were built on treatise on water filtration in connection with public elevated land far from the more populated areas health. It was based on the experiments and where the miasmic vapors of the inner city allegedly successes at Lawrence and also a study of plants in lingered. Because these estates had their own water Europe. It was published in 1895 and had a supplies which were, for a while, uncontaminated, it convincing affect on skeptics of germ theory while appeared to prove the miasmic theory. promoting the positive effects of filtration.11 Meanwhile, in Europe, evidence resulting from Improvements were developed, and several years the use of sand filtration to clean and clarify water later, in 1895, the Louisville Water Company, and helped to disprove the miasmic theory. In the late its Chief Engineer, Charles A. Hermany, set up the 18th century, before the discovery of bacteria, slow station to test a new type of sand filtration on the PAGE 4 History Trails turbid Ohio River called mechanical or rapid filtration. George W. Fuller, Chief Chemist and Bacteriologist, conducted the tests under the direction of Hermany from 1895 to 1897. In 1897, George W. Fuller published results of the experiments in a report which became a landmark document on the new mechanical method of filtration.12 These two new alternate methods of water purification - slow sand filtration and mechanical sand filtration - emerged as the most recommended View of Montebello Water Filtration Plant I from the for large scale use. Both factored into the decisions southwest.

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