Leavitt-Riedler Pumping Engine

The Leavitt-Riedler Pumping Engine (1894) is a historic steam engine located in the former Chestnut Hill High Service Pumping Station, in Boston, Massachusetts. It has been declared a historic mechanical engineering landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.^[1] The pumping station was decommissioned in the 1970s, and turned into the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum in 2011.

The engine drew steam from a coal-fired boiler, and had a pump valve mechanism which allowed its high-speed operation at a hydraulic head of 128 feet (39 m).

The engine was designed by engineer Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, Jr., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a pump valve invented by Prof. Alois Riedler of the Technische Hochschule in Berlin (now Technische Universität Berlin), Germany. It was built by N. F. Palmer Jr. & Co. and the Quintard Iron Works, in New York.

In 1894, it was installed as Engine No. 3 of the Chestnut Hill High Station, later named the Boston Water Works. At its normal speed of 50 revolutions per minute, it pumped 25 million gallons of water in 24 hours. According to Carol Poh Miller, when first brought into operation, the engine attracted national attention as "the most efficient pumping engine in the world".^[2]

The engine was taken out of service in 1928 but remains in its original location and it is open for public viewing as an exhibit in the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum.