City Water

On October 25th, 1848, Bostonians gathered on Boston Common for a spectacular moment in the city's history. Mayor Josiah Quincy Junior gave the signal, and workers opened the valve — and a gush of water shot toward the sky — towering about the trees and buildings, reflecting the crimson rays of the setting sun.

Boston's public water supply was born.

Carl Smith, professor of English and American Studies and history at Northwestern University. He's the author of City Water, City Life: Water and the infrastructure of ideas in urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago.

Boston Globe "It is easy to see such a massive piece of hydraulic engineering—a complex system of bridges and tunnels, reservoirs and pipes—as a great technological feat. But infrastructure is also the expression of an idea about how we should live. And supporters of a publicly owned waterworks for Boston took a strong position in a key debate that is no less fraught today."