Willow Street Pump Station

Along White Oak Bayou just north of downtown Houston, this small complex once handled the city's sewage and trash. It includes a 1902 Romanesque Revival storage building, a pump house built into the bayou bank, a steep concrete staircase, an incinerator built in 1914 and the early 1920s, and a 1930 grit chamber that screened debris from bayou water. Engineer Alexander Potter designed the pump station, completed in March 1902 as Houston's first sewage lift station. Sewage was pumped through cast iron pipes to filter beds about a mile and a half downstream. The facility mattered beyond sanitation: the federal government tied money for ship channel improvements to the city treating its sewage, and that funding helped Houston become a major inland port. The buildings were rehabilitated in 2003, with glass and steel additions joining the storage building and incinerator. Three of the original pumps remain in place as an exhibit, and the site is now used for education.