Sligo Hill Standpipe a testament to early industrial engineering
MARLBOROUGH – At a peak of 1500 feet, Sligo Hill is the tallest point in Marlborough. Seen from miles around, the cylindrical water tower sitting down on best is riveted to eight diagonally-braced legs. Neither woodland nor structures blocks observing Boston Harbor and Mount Wachusett.
In 1675 John Bowker from England procured most of the land in this article, thus it was called Bowker Hill. About a hundred a long time afterwards, Lieutenant Ephraim Barber, a clockmaker, purchased a parcel on the best point of the hill. Ella A. Bigelow wrote in her “Historical Reminiscences of Marlborough,” that Barber normally explained that he “could get as in close proximity to Heaven as any person on his have land.”
She also mentioned that “a charming look at is often in advance of the visitor, and the most beautiful sunsets to be relished. Marlborough has the attractiveness of hill and dale, and from Mt. Sligo, Mt. Nice, Boyds, Prospect, West or Chestnut Hills, you will ever find stretching out just before you as quite a photo as anywhere to be discovered.”
In agreement is Henry David Thoreau, who wrote: “Yonder on that hill is Marlborough, a town which in autumn, at minimum when I visited it, wears a wealthy visual appeal of rustic loads and comfort―ample farms, good homes, profuse apple heaps, pumpkin mountains in each enclosure, orchards left ungathered…”
The title “Sligo” belongs to a picturesque spot in Ireland. Its hills, pastures, streams, ponds, oak, larches, beech and flowers perhaps inspired the identify bestowed by early settlers. Immigrants arrived from the British Isles, adopted by French Canadians in the mid-1800s. Most arrivals worked in huge shoe factories springing up all over Marlborough, and lived in densely populated neighborhoods on French Hill.
Fireplace protection was of fantastic issue contemplating the development of multi-storied wood buildings, mechanical manufacturing unit parts and hay for livestock. Positioned on top rated of the hill, Sligo Reservoir was compact. Lake Williams, formerly named Gates Pond, could not pump considerably up hill.
The Division of H2o launched its to start with massive-scale municipal task. Town engineer B.R.Felton made a tank to hold 200,000 gallons of water at the top of Sligo Hill, where its substantial altitude utilized gravity to disperse drinking water as a result of lower pipes. Lake Williams below was as well lower.
By producing the tank spherical, even stress ensured that its partitions would not cave in from outside winds or major rains. In 1895 the Chicago Bridge and Iron Organization completed making the first tank. H2o department staff linked a few miles of pipes leading to the community’s hydrants.
For a week ahead of Marlborough’s 250th anniversary celebration in 1910, lights decorating the standpipe captivated much away guests when energy was a new invention. Charlotte Howe Stevens donated 9 acres of her land on Sligo Hill for the Stevens Howe Playground, named for both equally her spouse and father, the City’s initially mayor. A stone monument by a flat enjoying discipline there honors Angelo “Angie” Martino, a caretaker who served Marlborough for 41 decades.
Though the Sligo Hill Standpipe stopped supplying drinking drinking water to the metropolis in the 1960s, it continues to be a testament to early industrial engineering. There are several cylindrical h2o tanks like this continue to standing.
