Lake Whitney Water Filtration Plant, Filtration Plant, South side of Armory Street between Edgehill Road & Whitney Avenue, Hamden, New Haven County, CT

Significance: Use of the slow sand filtration process for purifying water dates back to a plant in Paisley, Scotland which was built in 1804. The first United States plant was built in Louisville, Kentucky in 1875. The Whitney plant operated from March 28, 1906 to August 1991. A typhoid outbreak in 1901 resulted in construction of a filtration plant at Lake Whitney. Professor H.E. Smith and George W. Fuller developed the technology for the New Haven filtration plant in 1901. Based on recommendations of A.B. Hill and his associate, Charles Ferry, reinforced concrete was selected as construction material. First used in 1866 in England, this material had the advantage that semiskilled workers could place it. The Lake Whitney Water Filtration Plant represents an early use of reinforced concrete in Connecticut, preceding the Cos Cob Power Plant, HAER No. CT-142-A, built between 1905 and 1907, which also used this material. Success at Lake Whitney encouraged Ferry to use reinforced concrete elsewhere in New Haven on the Yale Bowl, a National Historic Landmark, (1914). Rapid sand filters and chemical flocculation processes have largely displaced the slow sand filtration process for water purification. Slow sand filtration is still used for small water systems having a relatively pure, clear source. The configuration of the Lake Whitney plant and the methods for cleaning sand differentiate it from other slow sand filtration plants.
Survey number: HAER CT-186-A
Building/structure dates: 1902-1905 Initial Construction