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Fresh Pond: Resort and Resource

Spring Fundraiser

Sunday April 19, 2009

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A PLACE TO PLAY

· Jill Sinclair, Author

Fresh Pond has been described as a “landscape loved to death.” Certainly it is a landscape that has been changed by its various uses over the years and one to which Cantabrigians and Bostonians have felt an intense attachment. Henry James returned to it in his sixties, looking for “some echo of the dreams of youth,” feeling keenly “the pleasure of memory”; a Harvard student of the 1850s fondly remembered skating parties and the chance of “flirtations with some fair ankled beauty of breezy Boston”; modern residents argue fiercely over dogs being allowed to run free and whether soccer or nature is a more valuable experience for Cambridge schoolchildren.

In her talk, Jill will explore the history of Fresh Pond as a refuge, resort, and place of recreation. Using historical maps, drawings, photographs, poetry, and memoirs, her lecture will reveal the richness of the landscape's past. We will learn about Fresh Pond’s once-famous hotel, its gentlemen’s farms and country retreats, the nineteenth-century pastoral parkland, and the twentieth-century playgrounds.  

Fresh Pond has been a Native American hunting and fishing ground; the site of an eighteenth-century hotel offering bowling, food, and wine, and impromptu performances by Harvard men; a summer retreat for wealthy Bostonians; and a training ground for trench warfare. Future presidents have skated here, famous writers strolled, students sailed and feasted, and citizens enjoyed lively fairs and rather drunken picnics. We will join them in celebrating Fresh Pond as the perfect place to play.

The parkland features an Olmsted design, albeit imperfectly realized. The pond itself—a natural lake carved out by the retreating Ice Age about 15,000 years ago—still supplies Cambridge with fresh drinking water.

Jill Sinclair is a landscape historian, writer, and lecturer now living in Paris.

WHEN ICE WAS KING

· Jean Rogers, Chief Ranger
Office of Watershed Management

Although ridiculed by fellow New Englanders, Frederic Tudor had a vision. Almost a century before a commercially viable, mechanical refrigeration method was created, he believed that he could cut and store naturally occurring ice in the Northeast, package it to prevent it from melting, and ship it around the world. In 1806 he sent the brig Favorite from Boston harbor to the Caribbean packed with blocks of ice. This first endeavor was less than a success. Much of the ice melted along the way, and the residents of Martinique, having never seen ice before, had no idea what to do with the ice that survived the journey.

Tudor was not easily discouraged. He continued to experiment with ways to preserve the ice and to look for better markets for it. After a difficult period, Tudor perfected the process of packing large blocks of ice in sawdust and storing them in insulated icehouses. With this success, he was able to preserve ice for years, which created the possibility of a year round supply.

He also continued to develop new markets for his products, eventually seizing on the potential of the British Empire and the thousands of Brits stationed around the globe in hot climates who were familiar with the benefits of ice.

The ability to store ice, to create markets, and a number of technical advancements in the harvesting of ice made Tudor rich and created an industry. Soon he had competitors, including Cambridge’s Nathaniel Wyeth.  

Because of this thriving industry and fierce competition, Fresh Pond became one of the main ice producing bodies of water in the world. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Fresh Pond ice was in the cocktail glasses of New York socialites as well as in the gin and tonics of the elite members of the Raj in Calcutta, trying to stave off malaria.

Beyond its use at social gatherings, ice was used by doctors to help reduce fevers and slow inflammation. Ice was also used to preserve foods for household use, and it revolutionized agriculture in America, allowing highly perishable crops to be shipped great distances.

The industry was eventually supplanted by the development of mechanical refrigeration, but its legacy continues to interest and affect us today.

Jean Rogers, the Chief Ranger for the Cambridge Water Department, will talk about the development of this industry, the importance of Fresh Pond and ice harvesting today.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE WATER WORKS

· Stephen S. Corda, Managing Director
Cambridge Water Department

The Cambridge Water Department has been managing the city’s water supply since the mid nineteenth century. a municipally owned and operated utility it delivers an average of 15 million gallons of water a day to the residents of Cambridge.

Cambridge’s water is primarily supplied from two upcountry reservoirs—Hobbs Brook and Stony Brook. They hold more than 3 billion gallons of water and are located within the communities of Lexington, Lincoln, Waltham, and Weston.

The Cambridge city water begins its journey to your tap in these reservoirs. They are fed by a 24-square mile watershed which is part of the Charles River Basin. The water in Hobbs Brook Reservoir flows to Stony Brook Reservoir and then through a seven-and-a-half mile conduit to the Fresh Pond Reservoir.

The water is then treated at the state-of-the-art Walter J. Sullivan water purification facility. This 24-Million-gallon-a-day facility blends form with function by combining public art, landscaping that meets the objectives of the Fresh Pond Master Plan, distinctive architecture, and cutting-edge technology. Your water is purified through an innovative process that includes “pre-treatment through dissolved air flotation, primary disinfection by ozonation, filtration through dual media biologically active carbon filters and secondary disinfection by chloramination.”

Once purified, the water is pumped to Payson Park Reservoir in Belmont, which is high enough to allow the water to flow via gravity to the residents of Cambridge through the city’s 180 miles of water mains.

Stephen S. (Sam) Corda, the Managing Director of the Cambridge Water Department will give a behind the scenes tour of the treatment facility and explain the history of the Cambridge water works.

 

Sam Corda, Jean Rogers, Jill Sinclair and Gavin Kleespies