The water supply museum

The aim to rebuild a pumping station building and transform it into the Mmseum of water management conceived in the Severočeská Vodárenská Společnost in 2000. At that time the pumping station had been out of action for more than 20 years and the object was severely damaged. The gradually made reasonless reconstruction absolutely debased the architectural design of the building. After the pumping station was out of order the object devastation continued very quickly because of only minimal services. The reconstruction and the new utilization of the building helped to save the representative example of an industrial architecture of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Investor: Severočeská Vodárenská Společnost a. s. Teplice
General designer: Báňské projekty a. s. Teplice
General contractor: INSKY s. r. o. Ústí nad Labem construction activity
Beginning of construction: August 2002
Completion of construction: April 2003
Investment costs: 5,4 million CZK

Inauguration of this object took place on 5 May 2003 – almost exactly 100 years after the inauguration and opening of the original pumping station bulding.

The pumping station building was constructed in 1902 as a dominant construction on the water conduit which supplied Litoměřice with the water from subterranean resources in Vrutice. The preparations for the construction started on 12 September 1998 when the city council of Litoměřice entrusted the architect Ing. Alois Niklas (who was an owner of the important water resources company in Teplice – Šanov) with the construction of the water pipelines. The building of water supply building itself was started on 28 November 1901 and was completed and put into operation including the pumping station on 3 May 1903.

At that time when water supply was put into service it was a very important building in the region and because of this fact it was entitled (by request of city Litoměřice and by the courtesy of emperor František Josef I.) „Franz Josef Wasserleitung“. By the construction of the water supply pipelines the town of Litoměřice solved a long-term problem of drinking water supply into the town. According to the extant materials the buiding was very important in the region not only in light of technical aspect but also in light of social point of view and political circumstances.

No documentation was preserved for the pumping station building. Only two photographs from the year 1903 which were made shortly after the putting into service of the water supply and the pumping station remained. The only existing document is probably the first draft design of Adolf Niklas which was, however, never at a later time implemented. This documentation is dating back to the year 1898 and there is as a pumping station realized another object, dispositionally and architecturally different from the later realized building. The main reason was above all a change of technology. The original draft design included two rather robust steam generators to drive the pumps. The designed steam drive was replaced with a gas one. Eventually, the mechanism (the distribution was ordered on 17 June 1902 to Škoda´s plant in Plzeň) was driven by technical gas engines and the technical gas was produced directly in the pumping station object from charcoal

Over the years there were several substantial changes in connection with this object. It was especially in the year 1930 when the obsolete original driving unit was replaced by a modern engine (diesel aggregate produced by the German company Deutz, Kolín nad Rýnem). The engine is still located in the museum and it is undoubtebly the pearl of the exhibition. After a complex reconstruction the engine is completely functional. Especially from the technical point of view (nowadays of course from the historical point of view) it is high-value unique object. Another substantial change of the pumping station building was the first reconstruction which is said to be probably in the thirties or fourties of the 20th century. The accurate dating was not able to find out and we can infer only from the used material and structures. It is possible that this construction was somehow connected with the change of technological development of the pumping station. During the reconstruction there were several interferences with the supporting roof structure, also the wooden joist ceiling was built and it created the second floor approximately in the middle of the ground area of the operational centre. The resemblance of an object was also subjected to several changes during the reconstruction, first of all the window change, dormer-window construction and decomposition of chimneys. This construction work is non-reversible especially because of static stability and the changes are respected during the present object reconstruction.

Other construction work were busily realized in process of the sixtieth and seventieth of the 20th century. The changes were mostly concerned with the internal dispositon of an object but also there were done some interferences with the resemblance of an object and from the architectonic aspect especially these construction work were the most devastating ones. Due to these destructive changes the object was absolutely degraded from the architectonic point of view. In the middle of the seventieth the new water preparing plant was built near by and the heating oils store was absolutely irrationaly built directly next to the pumping station object. The pumping station object was deserted after the new water preparing plant was put into operation and since then it was used only partially as a workroom or garage. Almost no service was done there and the object gradually dilapidated and its stage rapidly worsened.

Today the pumping station is again in excellent condition, the same as it was hundred years ago at the moment of opening. We may say that the main goals were achieved. It was especially the preservation of a historically valuable building including the restoration of its original design as well as the creation of an interesting exhibition as an evidence of the water service history in the Litoměřice region. This all was done because we tried to compliment the generations of water managers who worked in the region of North Bohemia before us.

The water management museum is registered in the cataloque of historical monuments and events published on the occasion of the European Heritage Days 2003.

A visit to the building need to be arranged in advance – at least one day before.

Contact: Rudolf Wlodárek, telephone number: 416 733 057, WTP (water treatment plant) Litoměřice

Picture gallery by SVS a.s. and Radek Neruda