Waterworks
1762
“They have a Sett of Pumps which go by Water, which force the water up through leaden Pipes, from the River to the Top of the Hill, near an hundred feet.”
John Adams to Abigail Adams
1777
A bountiful spring supplied Bethlehem's water needs from 1741 to 1912. At first the Moravians carted this springwater in buckets and wagons up the hillside to the residential area of the town.
In 1754, millwright Hans Christoph Christensen designed and experimented with a pumped system housed in a small log building on this site. The system and building were both enlarged in 1762.
Three pumps, powered by an undershot waterwheel turned by the Monocacy Creek, forced the spring water to a water tower at the top of the hillside above where Central Moravian Church now stands. From the water tower, the water flowed by gravity into four cisterns at various locations in the town and from the cisterns by gravity into many of the buildings. Bethlehem's system is regarded as the first pumped municipal water system in the American colonies. It operated in this building until 1832 when the pumping system was moved to the adjacent oil mill.
The waterworks was restored in 1976. It is an American Water Landmark, an Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and a National Historic Landmark.
[Marker is damaged]
Courtesy hmdb.org
