N&W Concrete Water Towers

[NW Mailing List]

I would like to thank everyone who has responded to my query about
locations of N&W concrete water tanks. In the last few days I have received
a number of very useful leads in addition to some wonderful photographs
both on the listserve and off. With regard to an earlier response about my
misuse of the term "purification," the use of that term in my overall
project is in fact correct. The larger project deals with railroad
chemists, chemical engineers, and the occasional bacteriologist who worked
on both water softening for locomotives and various online industrial
applications and also water purification for human consumption along the
right of way. The use of the term "purification" here has obvious
ideological (not to mention epistemological) meanings as one examines the
cultural and environmental history of American industrialization.

As a historian of science who often deals with the history of industrial
chemistry, I am well aware of the complexities of water softening and the
evolution of the correct chemical nomenclature beginning much earlier in
Scotland. Aside from the technical and architectural aspect of this story
the public health aspect of railroad infrastructure is one that has
received very little academic study. The most famous is of course the work
on water purification and safety done at the Pennsylvania RR bacteriology
laboratory located within the larger analytical chemistry and testing
laboratory complex at Altoona, Pennsylvania. In the early 20th Century
following the bacteriological revolution of the late 19th, when railroads
built new lines into rural/remote areas that had little if no existing
civil infrastructure, the railroad often acted as a public health lifeline
to area residents who could gain access to clean water (and in some cases
electricity) for the first time. The meaning behind this “exchange” for
both sides is one I am continuing to work on. On my next trip to the
archive I will look more into bacteriology on the N&W as part of the larger
story of railroads and industrial chemistry

Thanks again everyone!

Gerard


Gerard J. Fitzgerald

Department of History and Art History

George Mason University
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