Buffalo’s Big Steam

AS A LIFELONG STEAM-MACHINERY BUFF and engineer, I was delighted to read about the Col. Francis G. Ward Pumping Station, on the Buffalo waterfront. In the early 1960s I visited Buffalo, and it was my luck to learn that early the evening I was there one of the steam engines was going to be put in service. Standing on the balcony next to the enormous machine in the dim light, I was almost hypnotized by those flashing rods and whirling flywheels. Using the built-in cat-walks, we were soon standing on top of the 98-inch-diameter lowpressure steam cylinder nearly 30 feet above the balcony floor. It wasn’t until I was down next to the pump end below the balcony floor, watching those three pump plungers flash up and down as they pushed 947 gallons of water into the Buffalo water system with each revolution, that I really felt the enormous power of the machine.

The Holly Manufacturing Company, which made the engines, was organized in Lockport, New York, in 1859. It moved to Buffalo and joined forces with the Snow Steam Pump Works in 1902, and the resulting Snow-Holly Works continued to make reciprocating steam pumping machinery well into the 1920s.

Buffalo has a treasure in the Col. Ward Pumping Station. It should be designated a National Historic Site and opened to the public.