High Pumping Station
3201 Jerome Avenue | Bedford Park | built 1939
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1901
The city lets contracts for a pumping station to push Jerome Park Reservoir water across the Bronx
In the summer and fall of 1901 the Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity awarded contracts for the station's foundations, engines, boilers, tank, standpipe and coal house. The building is credited to George W. Birdsall of that department. The station was meant to pump water from the new reservoir to the west with enough pressure to reach the upper floors of Bronx buildings, but an unfinished drainage sewer meant only the foundations were started that year.
“Contracts for the foundations, engines, Boilers, tank, standpipe, and coal house for the station were given out in the summer and fall of 1901.”
- 1904
Photographs of the half-built pumping station go on display at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition
While the station was still rising on Jerome Avenue, photographs of it were shown at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. The Landmarks Preservation Commission later suggested that the plain form and careful detailing of its Romanesque Revival design were the qualities admired there.
“…admired at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 which exhibited photographs of the then rising pumping station.”
- 1906
The High Pumping Station starts work once the reservoir's western basin is finished
After delays, the station was still being fitted with equipment in 1905, and it ran for the first time in 1906, when the western basin of the Jerome Park Reservoir was complete. The planned eastern basin was never built; in 1911 the state legislature instead approved putting the Kingsbridge Armory on part of that land.
“By 1906, with the western basin of the reservoir completed, the High Pumping station was used for the first time. The eastern basin was never finished.”
- 1906
A utilitarian pump house gets a red brick Romanesque Revival dress
The station is a long, narrow red brick building under a steep roof on the west side of Jerome Avenue, south of Mosholu Parkway. Its walls are divided into bays of paired arched windows between shallow buttresses, each window capped by a corbelled half-round brick lintel, and three round medallions sit in each end gable. The Commission noted it is unclear how much of the design was Birdsall's own, since his name generally appears as an engineer for the water department.
“…the High Pumping Station is a long and narrow red brick building topped by a steeply pitched roof.”
- 1981
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the High Pumping Station a city landmark
The Commission had held its public hearing on July 12, 1979, where nobody spoke either for or against designation; the Bronx County Historical Society sent a letter of support. The designation, made on July 28, 1981, covered part of Block 3251, Lot 401, and credited the 1901-06 building to George W. Birdsall.
“No witnesses spoke in favor of designation. There were no speakers in opposition to designation. There was a letter in favor of the designation from The Bronx County Historical Society.”
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