{"nrhp_refnum":"05000019","name":"Montgomery Water Works Building","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"239 Ward St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Montgomery","county":"Orange County","state":"NY","lat":41.52522691200005,"lon":-74.22675842699994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2005-02-09","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Health/Medicine"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A one-story brick pump house at 239 Ward Street in the Village of Montgomery, Orange County, New York, built in 1895 to house pumping equipment for the village's new water system. A 1937 brick cistern building stands behind it.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the building is locally significant in architecture and in health/medicine. It reflects the village's effort at the end of the nineteenth century to improve public health through a centralized water supply. It was designed and built by local contractor Chauncey Brooks and, though modest and utilitarian, retains some handsome detailing.","narrative":"Built in 1895 on Ward Street in the Village of Montgomery, this one-story brick building housed the pumps for the village's first centralized water system. Local contractor Chauncey Brooks, who also headed the water commission, designed and built it in about six months. The structure has load-bearing red brick walls, a cut-stone watertable, a corbelled brick frieze, symmetrical windows on the front and a rounded apse-like bay on the west side where the engineer worked. The system replaced hand-dug wells that could be contaminated, and it supplied hydrants for firefighting. Seven brick-lined wells were sited on land sold to the village by the Crabtree and Patchett families. A brick cistern building was added behind it in 1937, and Civilian Conservation Corps crews planted conifers on the grounds in the 1930s. The building is valued as a modest but intact reminder of the village's late nineteenth-century public health improvements.","period_of_significance":"1895-1937","architect_builder":"Brooks, Chauncey; contractor","architectural_style":"Late Victorian","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The building stands much as built, apart from changes to the south elevation for Village Department of Public Works use and removal of a chimney in 1937. The village owns the property.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:52.958017-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/05000019.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/05000019/337511088e-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/05000019/337511088e-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Daniel Case at English Wikipedia","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Montgomery_Water_Works.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Daniel Case at English Wikipedia</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Montgomery_Water_Works.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75320696","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Water_Works","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6905831"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/orange-county/montgomery-water-works-building-05000019/"}