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We Farm /6400.4 (S." United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 2� North Pumping Station NARRATIVE STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE OW AWOVW ea 1024 -MIS St. Joseph County IN The City of South Bend North Pumping Station is eligible under Criterion C as a fine example of Classical Revival architecture housing functional public works. highly typical of such buildings in the early twentieth century. The well-known local architectural firm of Freyermuth and Maurer designed the pumping station "with due regard for the location in one of the city's most beautiful parks." The building rests in its original setting and essentially still serves its original function. Although the machinery within has been replaced. the decorative elements of the interior are essentially intact. The building has been designated a South Bend Historic Landmark. In 1912 South Bend architects Freyermuth and Maurer prepared plans for a new North Pumping Station to replace an earlier structure erected in the 1890s. The firm.'organized in 1898, was responsible for a large number of South Bend residences and several public and institutional buildings, including_ the Citizens National Bank on Jefferson Street. designed around the same -time as the pumping station. While R. Vernon Maurer (1874- 1963) was a trained architect, educated at the Chicago Athenaeum and the Art Institute, George W. Freyermuth (1869-1958; some sources say he was born in 1868). initially a contractor. was self-taught. Largely because of fire -safety concerns and urged on by Mayor William Miller (elected 1872). the city of South Bend established a waterworks and in 1873 constructed a huge standpipe with a pumping station and a limited distribution system. South Bend was blessed to be built upon "water -bearing strata not duplicated in any city" and so.a series of artesian wells supplied the growing city's needs. A second pumping station was built in the 1890s near the river at the north end of Michigan Street. It was this structure that the edifice designed by Freyermuth and Maurer replaced. A part of the old foundation was incorporated into the new building on the northwest. At the time of the new pumping station's construction in 1912. South Bead had laid about a hundred miles of water mains. After World War I. the city's expansion (both residential and industrial) to the southwest necessitated an additional pumping station at 915 Olive Street. Built in 1924, the Oliver Park Pumping Station reflects the revival style popular at the time and is the only other extant historic pumping station in the city. • •