Welcome to the Lehigh Valley landmarks with Leon podcast series, celebrating 250 years of independence. I'm your host, Rachel Leon. Since being elected in 2022 and serving as Vice President of Bethlehem City Council, I'm humbled by the opportunity to serve the diverse communities that make up our great city. But to understand where we're going, we need to understand our past. Each week, I'll share a short feature with a big story about the 250 years that made the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, known as the Christmas City, as we explore historic landmarks.
Did you know that George Washington and other early American leaders considered making Bethlehem, Pennsylvania the nation's capital, in part because of the technological leadership exhibited by the city's water system? The Moravians, a German-speaking Protestant group that traced their origins to the 15th century Bohemia and Moravia, which is now the Czech Republic, may be best remembered for an innovation that has to do with how they satisfied their most basic need: water.
In 1741, the Moravian settlers purchased 500 acres of land in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania from William Allen. Later that same year, they purchased a larger 5,000-acre tract in Nazareth from George Whitefield. The Moravians strategically chose these locations because of the proximity to the Monocacy Creek and the Lehigh River to harness the power for their mills and trades and the spring that provided portable water. This spring was not centrally located, so assigned water carriers would haul water up the hill to the town daily.
The waterworks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was designed and built by millwright Hans Christoph Christensen from Denmark in 1755 to more efficiently bring water from the spring at the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill where most of the living quarters could be found. The system was considered state-of-the-art at that time and served as a model for later waterworks projects. A wooden water wheel driven by the flow of the Monocacy Creek drove wooden pumps, which lifted the water through wooden pipes to the top of the hill where the water was distributed by gravity.
Persistent issues with leaking and bursting pipes kept this first structure from being fully completed, despite switching from wood to lead pipes. By the 1760s, the Moravian community had grown to nearly 1,000 people, and demand for water and a more efficient system was required. Hans then built the limestone waterworks in 1762 to meet these needs. But in the early part of the 1900s, serious health problems due to the contaminated water caused epidemics of typhoid and dysentery, prompting the Pennsylvania Commissioner of Health to permanently close the waterworks in 1913. While these waterborne illnesses would have caused deaths, these events were not directly linked to the 1762 waterworks building, but to the water supply it pumped.
As our nation approaches the 250th anniversary of our independence, we celebrate the 1762 Waterworks, recognized as a National Historic Landmark, Historic Civic Engineering Landmark, and an American Water Landmark, as the first pumped municipal water system in America. The 1762 water works is also a part of the Moravian Church settlements Bethlehem World Heritage inscription, the 26th World Heritage Site in the United States.
For an in-depth tour about the history of the 1762 Waterworks, visit their website at historicbethlehem.org, or call 1-800-360-TOUR. A special thanks to the Moravian Archives, the Historic Bethlehem Museum and Sites, and the Invention and Technology Magazine for providing information for this episode.
