Calf Pasture Pumping Station

in Dorchester

The new Main Drainage Works opened in 1884. It included laying miles of large pipes in the city, building the huge Calf Pasture Pumping Station, dredging a channel in Dorchester Bay, and laying a sewage pipe across the bay over Squantum Point and out to Moon Island’s holding tanks.

Eliot Clarke’s Main Drainage Works of the City of Boston plate V, 1888

The Calf Pasture Pumping Station (up on the hill) was a key feature of Boston’s first sewage system. it was the city’s signature 19th-century infrastructure project. Here, colossal pumps raised sewage 35 feet so that gravity could then carry it through pipes, two miles out to Moon Island and from there into the harbor.

Prior to this, raw sewage ran into the harbor through a haphazard system of pipes or down open gutters that lined streets. By the 1860s, as Boston’s population grew dramatically, epidemics had killed hundreds. It was already widely understood that contaminated water transmitted diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. The goal of the Boston Main Drainage Works was to collect all sewage and direct it far away from the waterfront, thus improving public health and Bostonians’ quality of life.

In the 1960s, the 19th-century system could no longer meet the city’s needs and was replaced by a new facility on Deer Island. This, too, proved inadequate. Today’s state-of-the-art Deer Island water treatment plant has transformed Boston Harbor into one of the cleanest in the country.

Built to house extraordinarily heavy equipment, the Calf Pasture Pumping Station was also designed to impress. City Architect George Albert Clough chose the Richardson Romanesque style, characterized by heavy castle-like construction with large stone blocks and round masonry arches.

The Pumping Station included a filth hoist which removed debris, such as tree limbs or animal carcasses, that might clog the pumps. For decades the pumps and hoist ran on coal-driven steam. This required a large work force, as well as a wharf on the peninsula and a rail spur for coal deliveries. In the mid 1920s electricity began powering the pumps.

Eliot Clarke’s Main Drainage Works of the City of Boston, 1888

 

In the 1880s, the two Leavitt pumps handled an average of almost 37 million gallons of sewage per day.  In 1905 they were replaced by pumps with a capacity of 70 million gallons per day. At each juncture, the station’s pumps were the most powerful of their kind built up to that point.

Scientific American, no.28, 1887

Sign Location

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In addition to the sewage project, Boston undertook a massive water works project. Aqueducts brought fresh water into the city from outlying reservoirs.

The city population was growing and so was the adoption of indoor plumbing.  In 1857 there were only 6,500 “water closets” in the city of Boston; by 1885 there were estimated to be over 100,000!

Clough served as Boston’s first City Architect from 1874 to 1883; the Calf Pasture Pumping Station was his final project for the city.  Fourteen buildings designed by Clough, including this one, are included in the National Register of Historic Places.

The original pumping station burned over six tons of coal per day, and had storage facilities for over 2,500 tons to ensure uninterrupted operation.

Community activists. Colonial law. Political will. New state regulations. The combination created the 43-mile Boston Harborwalk–a public path, stretching from Logan Airport through seven neighborhoods to the Neponset River. In 1978, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) sought to improve public access to the waterfront. They succeeded by integrating early Colonial laws into new state regulations.

In the decades that followed, community activists, city and state government, and developers of shoreline projects have worked together to ensure the Harborwalk is always constructed along the waterfront. Some sites also provide public amenities–bathrooms, meeting places, kayak launches,
etc. The result is a fabulous path welcoming residents and visitors to our vibrant clean harbor.

Early Colonial laws established public right of access along tidelands to protect citizens’ rights to fish, hunt, and navigate at sea and along the shorefront. These laws go back even further: They stem from Roman law, which was incorporated into English law and brought over to Massachusetts by English
settlers. Then, in the 1640s, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed laws permitting private docks in the intertidal area (between low and high tide) as long as public access was retained. Almost all of Boston’s waterfront is filled land that was once the intertidal area. This, together with the centuries-old legal right of access, served as the underpinnings for the 1978 CZM regulations.

Resources

  • Boston City Planning Board, Proposed Plan for Future Development of the Calf Pasture Area in the Dorchester District, September 22, 1953.
  • Clarke, Eliot C. Main Drainage Works of the City of Boston. Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, 1888.
  • Frontiero, Wendy. “Calf Pasture Pumping Station: Boston Landmarks Commission Study Report
  • (Draft), Petition #263.18.” Boston Landmarks Commission, Office of Historic Preservation, City of Boston (April 2, 2024).
  • “‘Massachusetts SP Calf Pasture Pumping Station Complex’ Registration Form.” National Register of
  • Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records (June 18, 1990). https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6379686
  • Seasholes, Nancy S. Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston. Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 2003.
  • U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, “Calf Pasture Pumping Station, Boston, Massachusetts,” National Register of Historic Places 

Acknowledgments

  • Friends of the Boston Harborwalk is deeply grateful to the George B. Henderson Foundation for funding the design, manufacture and installation of the signs at Columbia Point.
  • Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind and Thomasine Berg for their partnership in creating the audio files.
  • Our thanks to University of Massachusetts, Boston Professor Nicholas Juravich for his expertise and wonderful support.