Chicago Wooden Water Pipes

Wooden water pipe - This water pipe is made up of two sections of hollowed-out wooden logs joined together by a smaller wooden tube that cuts through the center of each log. The two large wooden logs measure ten inches in diameter. The smaller connecting tube has a diameter of five inches.

Fort Dearborn was built in 1803 on the Chicago River's confluence with Lake Michigan (now Michigan Avenue at Wacker Drive). During the early nineteenth century, settlers relied on the river to meet their water needs. When Chicago was founded in 1833, it had only 350 residents. Within a year, Chicago's population grew to over 2,000 people. The village trustees arranged for the construction of a public well at the intersection of Hubbard Street and Wabash Avenue.

Residents brought water from this well home in buckets. Water was delivered in mule-drawn carts and sold door to door for ten cents a barrel. A private organization, the Chicago City Hydraulic Company, began a water distribution system in 1842 with a pumping station and several thousand feet of wooden water pipes. The system cost around $24,000 to build. The system's intake pipe extended 150 feet into Lake Michigan from Lake Street.

The water was delivered to an elevated tank by gravity through wooden pipes beneath the streets via a steam-powered twenty-five horsepower pump in a station on Michigan Avenue. Fish clogging the pipes, filthy water after storms, and ice during the winter were all issues. The Chicago Hydraulic Company was purchased by the City of Chicago in 1852.

By 1861, the Chicago Water System consisted of approximately 600 feet of wooden intake pipes extending from Lake Michigan to the pumping station's suction wells. The wooden intake pipes pumped water into elevated wrought iron reservoirs, each with a half-million-gallon capacity. These reservoirs pumped 4,842,000 gallons per day, providing water to 120,000 residents. These wooden pipe sections are typical of those used in late-nineteenth-century urban plumbing systems in the United States.