{"nrhp_refnum":"76000177","name":"Pumping Station No. 2 San Francisco Fire Department Auxiliary Water Supply System","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"N end of Van Ness Ave","address_restricted":false,"city":"San Francisco","county":"San Francisco","state":"CA","lat":37.807814517000054,"lon":-122.42683625299998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1976-05-13","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Engineering"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A steam-powered fire-fighting pumping station and generating plant at the northern foot of Van Ness Avenue, on the Fort Mason reservation beside San Francisco Bay. It was built mainly in 1912 and went into service in 1913.","why_significant":"The nomination argues local significance in Engineering and Community Planning. The station is the portion on federal land of San Francisco's \"earthquake-proof\" auxiliary high-pressure fire water system, designed after the 1906 earthquake fires. It could pump salt water from the Bay when fresh sources failed.","narrative":"Pumping Station No. 2 is a Mission Revival building of steel and reinforced concrete at the foot of Van Ness Avenue, on bedrock at the edge of San Francisco Bay within the Fort Mason reservation. City employees working under City Engineer Marsden Manson designed it, and Caldwell & Company built it in 1912. It served as one of two emergency stations in the auxiliary water supply system created after the 1906 earthquake and fires broke about 300 water mains and left many districts without water. The station could draw salt water from the Bay into a separate high-pressure pipe network. Inside are six Babcock and Wilcox boilers, four turbine-driven pumps and three turbine generators, which also supplied electricity to Fort Mason until 1942. The plant has kept steam up in two boilers around the clock since 1913. Its significance rests on the engineering and planning of the whole system, of which this building is the portion on federal land.","period_of_significance":"1912 to the present","architect_builder":"Marsden Manson/Caldwell & Co.","architectural_style":"Mission Revival","criteria":[],"status_note":"Occupied and operational as of 1975, with the plant maintained in excellent condition. The city planned to replace the steam pump turbines with diesel engines and demolish the smokestack.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:31.81265-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/76000177.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/76000177/b6ae7f70d8-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/76000177/b6ae7f70d8-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Sanfranman59","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pumping_Station_No._2_(San_Francisco).JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Sanfranman59</a>, <a href=\"https://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:Pumping_Station_No._2_(San_Francisco).JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"72000109","name":"Fort Mason Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/california/fort-mason-historic-district-72000109/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123861259","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_Station_No._2_San_Francisco_Fire_Department_Auxiliary_Water_Supply_System","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60747365"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/san-francisco/pumping-station-no-2-san-francisco-fire-department-auxiliary-water-supply-system-76000177/"}