Chestnut Hill Reservoir Historic District

Chestnut Hill Reservoir and its surrounding buildings form a municipal waterworks complex in Brighton, Boston, with one outlying structure in Newton. The reservoir was built from 1865 to 1870 to supplement the supply from the Cochituate Aqueduct and later received water from the Sudbury Aqueduct. Around it stand three gatehouses, a connection chamber, the Sudbury Terminal Chamber and two pumping stations. The High Service Pumping Station, designed by city architect Arthur Vinal in Richardsonian Romanesque style, opened in 1887-88 and housed a Leavitt triple expansion engine. The Low Service Station, by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, is a restrained Beaux Arts building of white limestone. The gatehouses are granite and classical in character. The complex was the main distribution point for the metropolitan Boston system for about a century, until a city tunnel opened in the 1950s and the pumping stations were phased out. It is valued for its history in water supply and for its varied but cohesive architecture.