Pumping through iron

By 1833, Nashville was not a frontier town anymore. But its residents still had to haul their water from springs, just as they had in the days of the early settlements. Various efforts undertaken in the 1820s to draw water from the river had all come to naught. If Nashville was ever going to grow into an important city, it had to do something about its water supply.

A hundred seventy-four years ago this week, something got done. After years of work and the expenditure of $55,000 (raised in the city's first municipal bond issue), the Nashville Water Works began pumping on on September 30, 1833.

"Great was the rejoicing of the people," the National Banner reported, as the firing of a cannon signaled the first release of water into a new network of cast-iron pipes that had been laid throughout the center of the city at a cost of $4 per foot.

The pumping station was located on the bluff above the Cumberland now known as Rolling Mill Hill, which would later become the site of General Hospital. From there, a large party of citizens followed a marching band down to the corner of Broadway and Market St., today's Second Ave. "Here an experiment was made by attaching a section of hose to a fire-plug," the newspaper recounted. "The force was found sufficient to throw the water on and over the tops of the adjoining houses, and the experiment was highly satisfying to all who witnessed it."

In coming years, a tax on water users would defray only a little of the ongoing cost of operations. By 1861, Nashville had spent over $500,000 on the Water Works. According to Metro Water Services, a few segments of the original cast-iron water mains that carried water that day in 1833 are still in use.
Among them are a 6-inch pipe under Church St. between Second and Third Avenues North and a more than half-mile stretch of 18-inch main under the Rutledge Hill area.

The hills have ayes — and nays

Moving on a few decades in Nashville's infrastructure history: Last week's column and a related 1886 newspaper story raised the question of where the places once known as Kirkpatrick Hill and Currey Hill could be found. A political debate erupted in 1886 as Nashville lawmakers took sides on which of these locations should be the site of Nashville's new reservoir.

Ron Taylor, an engineer with Metro Water, was one of several readers to solve the mystery. Kirkpatrick Hill, later named Fort Casino by the Union army when it placed a garrison there, is the site ultimately chosen for the reservoir, which remains in operation today. The facility looms over Eighth Ave. south of its intersection with Edgehill Ave.

Currey Hill, so named because early Nashville Postmaster and Mayor Robert Brownlee Currey had a home atop it, is not much of a hill anymore. It's now the gentle rise north of Edgehill where Rose Park is located. Rock from the Currey Hill quarry, which remained in operation until the early 1960s, makes up most of the massive walls of the reservoir.

Mayor Thomas Kercheval, making a losing case for the Currey Hill site before the city council in 1886, had warned against one possible consequence of choosing the other location: "I give it as my opinion that water forced as proposed from Kirkpatrick Hill would burst nearly every old pipe in the lowlands of the city."

For an account of what happened when the new reservoir went into operation in 1889, we turn to the always lively reminiscences penned in 1930 by Nashville Banner editor Marmaduke B. Morton, recalling his days as a cub reporter decades earlier:

The inauguration of the new waterworks was heralded with many news items. It was said the pressure would be so great that fire engines would not be needed in the central part of the city; that all that would be necessary would be to attach a hose to a fireplug and go ahead. This rosy prediction did not prove exactly correct; but it was true that the pressure from the new reservoir was much greater than that from the old.

There was one startling result. The old water pipes had not been constructed to stand this additional pressure, and besides, many were rusty and dilapidated. When the water was turned into them from the new reservoir many of them burst — not all at one time, but from day to day. Geysers spouted at various points over the city. One was especially notable. The main on Seventh Ave. in front of the First Christian Church burst, and the water spouted fifty or sixty feet high, carrying with it rocks, dirt and other wreckage.

The church and an adjoining residence were badly damaged. Holes were knocked in the roofs by the falling stones, and the interior of the buildings drenched with water, destroying plastering and furnishings. It was said that a live catfish eighteen inches long was thrown out upon the street. This fish was supposed to have got into the main when a baby.

Engineer Ron Taylor, when asked how credible he found Morton's tale, responded that "rupturing of water mains could certainly have happened with the increase in pressure due to the higher elevation of the new reservoir."

But what about the fish story? "The reservoir was uncovered at that time, so it may have been possible for a fish to survive and enter the distribution system," Taylor said. An 18-incher, though, "sounds a bit implausible" to Taylor.

There was more trouble yet to come from the reservoir. Just after midnight on November 5, 1912, part of the wall gave way, sending 25 million gallons of water into the neighborhood below. The property damage was extensive, though there was no loss of life.

A thorough history of water services in Nashville is available from Metro Water at this link.

Birthdays of note this week:

• Entertainer Marty Stuart, attorney Worrick Robinson and former Senator and Ambassador Jim Sasser — September 30
• Bluegrass-nouvelle treasure Gillian Welch and attorney Steve Riley — October 2
• Former state Dem chief Will Cheek — October 4

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