Paul's House Diary

With free admission (a $5 donation is encouraged) and a perch on the walking path I travel daily, the Waterworks Museum is a place I’ve taken for granted; never visiting, despite living around the corner for more than a decade. 

I’ve got countless pictures of the building’s exterior on my phone, characterized by H.H. Richardson’s signature Syrian Arches, Roxbury puddingstone facade, open-air turret and–until recently–a smoke stack that seemed to have a tree sprouting from the top. As much as I’d interrogated the building from afar, however, I’d never stepped inside. 

That all changed recently, when I was fortunate to have a week-long staycation between gigs in early August and finally stopped in for a self-guided tour. I was pleasantly surprised to see I wasn’t the only visitor stopping by on a random Wednesday in August; I was beyond surprised, however, at just the scale and power of the main Engine Hall. 

You don’t have to be an architecture or engineering buff to appreciate what’s inside the Waterworks Museum (although you’ll probably be one after visiting 😉). The massive pumping engines wrapped around a Richardsonian Romanesque castle are awesome in every sense of the word, with function and philosophy dictating every detail of the space.

For what’s technically just a single hall of exhibits, the main museum space–which houses multiple generations of water pumping engines–feels behemoth. The natural light coming in through the massive gridded window bays and around successive interior arches that span the towering hall give high drama to engineering marvels that were all business back in the day. 

While the building is Richardsonian to a tee, its architects were Arthur H. Vinal, who took a pass at the originally structure in 1886-1887, before it was “seamlessly expanded by Edmund M. Wheelwright in 1897-1898,” according to the Museum’s smartly curated website. I highly recommend you go straight to the source for the history lesson if you want the comprehensive deep dive into the epic undertaking that was building Boston’s Metropolitan Water Works at the turn of the century. 

What I recommend even more is just visiting with an open imagination and making your own assumptions about the space–machinery and all–before digging into the literature or facts. It’s a transportive experience, placing you either in a steampunk fantasy (if that’s your vibe), a real-life set piece from the Gilded Age, or just a maze come to life. 

And of course, the view…