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Under Pressure: Installing the High-Pressure Pumping System
A high-pressure pumping system was installed in 1909 to provide water for the NYFD from City Hall to 25th Street.
Metropolitan Street Railway Co., 23rd Street Car Barn
The High-Pressure Fire-Service Pumps were fed by cast-iron pipes 12" to 24" in diameter.
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South Street Pumping Station
The pipes were fed by two pumping stations at Gansevoort and South Street. Each pump station consisted of five Allis Chalmer five-stage centrifugal pumps.
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213 Mulberry Street
Each pump had a capacity of 3,000 gallons a minute with a suction lift of 20 feet. The delivery pressure of each hydrant was 300 pounds per square inch.
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Union Square Park
To adequately protect over fifty blocks of Manhattan with fire pumps, fifty-five miles of cast-iron pipes were used, plus additional lengths of 8-inch branches to feed individual hydrants.
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106-108 Seventh Avenue
The pumps used water from Croton rather than seawater. Efficiency tests found that freshwater was a better option.
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127-129 Fifth Avenue
The new pumping system had finished installation in 1909. This was the same year that the Fire Department received its first motorized Fire Apparatus (or - the fire trucks we know today). These new changes all began due to the Fire Departments' unification a decade earlier.
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