Foxborough Pumping Station

Foxborough's first public water supply is preserved at a 26.6-acre waterworks district off Chestnut Street. Its centerpiece is a one-story, L-shaped pumping station of Taunton brick, completed in 1891 to plans by Boston architect Ernest N. Boyden and built by William O'Connell of Canton. Each of its three rooms, for engine, boiler and coal, has its own pyramidal slate roof, and the engine room has a large Romanesque arched window. Other resources include a 1953 storage garage, three 1948 driven wells, man-made Fales Pond and the abandoned original well field of about twenty-four pipe heads. A 1989 chemical building and a 1972 well are noncontributing. The district reflects a long local effort: a waterworks vote failed in 1890 and passed in 1891 after the charter was changed to allow a majority vote. Boyden had designed several other Massachusetts pumping stations, and the Foxborough station follows his typical Queen Anne approach. The town still owns and uses the site for water supply.