House & Garden 
HE FAIRMOUNT WATER¬ 
WORKS, PHILADELPHIA. 
Architectural effects are seldom 
thought of in engineering constructions ; and 
even when they are considered, the result is 
not often a satisfactory one. Occasionally, 
however, a sympathy of usefulness and 
beauty is found in these utilitarian works. 
The Eairmount Water-works, in Fairmount 
Park, Philadelphia, present this harmony. 
Not only should the credit be laid to age and 
the associations of the scene, but to a designer 
who had artistic judgment added to his sci¬ 
entific knowledge. Far from being preten¬ 
tious, its arrangement is imposing. If it lack 
the color and enrichment of more elaborate 
structures, the bareness of surfaces is relieved 
by the stains of weather, and criticism is tem¬ 
pered by a sense of history. While it led to 
a happy result, the part which Nature played 
in the setting placed many obstacles before 
the engineer. After devising foundations at 
the water’s edge, levels had to be formed 
from a rocky hillside, and space for the fore- 
bay gained with the help of gunpowder. To 
such conditions were added the irregularity of 
boundary lines and the requirements of the 
water supply. From all these there grew, 
under skillful hands, an arrangement digni¬ 
fied, simple, and beautiful in the extreme. 
Entering Fairmount Park by Green Street 
the visitor is attracted by the natural scenery 
immediately before him ; and in that direc¬ 
tion he is likely to take his way, unless he turn 
to the left, along the base of the large res¬ 
ervoir which dominates this portion of the 
Park, and comes out to the river front on one 
of the esplanades of the water-works. There 
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