The Belgrade Hotel’s Water Tower
The iconic Belgrade Hotel is pictured at right in its heyday, complete with twin boat houses, breakwater and large dock. The hotel was opened about 1902 and burned in October of 1956.
No one seems to notice (and why would they), the white square in the upper right corner of the aerial photo. A marvel in itself, this is the large water tank on high legs that supplied the hotel all the water needed, in addition to several houses in the village when excess was available. Believe it or not, the pump that filled the tank on an “as needed basis,” was located downtown by the dam, in what is now Carol Johnson’s back yard adjacent to Long Pond. An early vintage make-and-brake engine propelled a large piston pump, which pushed the lake water up main street pipes to fill the tank. The rest was easy; gravity fed the hotel and houses below.
After the hotel closed in the late fall, the tank was drained for the winter. One of the rights of passage for the local boys, was to climb the steel service ladder that ran up the outside and peek down inside. The BRAVEST few even went down inside with the interior service ladder!
The original concrete slab where the blockhouse that housed the pump sat, is still very visible in Carol’s yard, and now around 125 years old. The old tank sat proudly yet empty for the next couple of decades. It was eventually pulled over and cut up for scrap iron.
(Webmaster’s Note: You can see a colorized postcard of what appears to be the same photo here. To read a longer article about the hotel itself, go hither.)Rod Johnson, a.k.a. “The Luckiest Boy,” sits on the board of directors for the Belgrade Historical Society.
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