Clio Logo

The brick building on the north edge of Quackenbush Square on Montgomery St. was built as the Albany Pump Station in the 1870s as part of the city's Water Works. Its function was to pump water from the Hudson River. The building was expanded later in the nineteenth century and was also called the Quackenbush Pumping Station.

The building was abandoned as a pumping station in xxxx and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The renovated building has been converted into a restaurant and brew pub, C. H. Evans Brewing Company. Other parts of the structure house a visitor center for Albany and a planetarium.


Albany Pump Station exterior in 2009 view (Daniel Case)

Car, Wheel, Land vehicle, Building

Albany Pump Station (green arrow) on 1908 Sanborn map (Vol. 1 p. 6)

Property, Map, Rectangle, Architecture

Here's how the city's water supply system worked in the early 1910s: water was pumped from the Hudson River to a five-acre settling reservoir with a depth of nine feet. Next, the water passed through filter beds with four feet of white sand and three feet of gravel. The water next went to a storage reservoir, and then to the pumping station at Quackenbush St., where it was next forced to distributing reservoirs. The filtration plant was capable of producing 24 million gallons of filtered water every 24 hours.

Albany Chamber of Commerce. Albany New York. Albany, NY. Brandow Printing Co., 1912.

Image Sources(Click to expand)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albany_Pump_Station.jpg

Library of Congress (LOC): https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn05725_002/