One of Cleveland's greatest nineteenth century engineers, Scowden was hired by the City in 1852 to design the city's first modern waterworks system, in order to combat periodic cholera and other disease epidemics that were spread by drinking contaminated water. During the period 1853-1856, Scowden designed, and the City built, a complex waterwork system with iron intake pipes extending several hundred feet into Lake Erie that conveyed water to the shoreline, and then by means of pumps in an engine house, up the bluff to the new Kentucky Street Reservoir, located on a six acre site on the southeast corner of Kentucky and Franklin Streets. Upon his retirement, Scowden and his wife Rosetta moved into the Luther Moses House at 1220 (now, 5611) Lexington Avenue, where he lived for the final two years of his life. | Source: Maurice Joblin, Cincinnati Past and Present, or its Industrial History as Exhibited in the Life-Labors of its Leading Men (Elm Street Print Co., Cincinnati, 1872)Download Original File
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Maurice Joblin, Cincinnati Past and Present, or its Industrial History as Exhibited in the Life-Labors of its Leading Men (Elm Street Print Co., Cincinnati, 1872)
