Le château d'eau du Peyrou, Montpellier France 2005
©EOP
One of the great and continuing challenges of human society has been the supply of water in urbanized areas and the associated issue of removing sewage (an issue we shall not investigate in any detail). Located in a Mediterranean climate, the city of Montpellier in southern France, long a center of medicine and science, was annually faced with the summer drought associated with its climate. Its response was an old one for cities near the shores of the Mediterranean, construction of an aqueduct from a nearby river to the center of the city. Not far away is the famed Pont du Gard, a Roman aqueduct crossing the Gard one of the larger rivers in southern France. That aqueduct brought water to the city of Nîmes, an important Roman settlement which continued to use water brought by the aqueduct long after the fall of the Roman Empire. On a first view one might also attribute the aqueduct and associated works in Montpellier to the Romans, but in fact they were constructed during the ancien regime. Montpellier, world renowned for its university and the associated medical school and also a city that was a hotbed of Protestant religious activity, was a particular focus for the Paris government and resources were freed for construction of its waterworks a couple of decades before the Revolution.
Montpellier was something of a pioneer, for construction of large urban water supply systems was fairly uncommon from Roman times until the 19th century in Europe and the Americas. Most cities used water from adjacent streams along with water from wells or surface seeps and rain collected in cisterns. Much of that water was fouled with wastes from upstream users and sewage from the cities themselves, and water borne illnesses including cholera and typhoid were not rare. Only a few cities sought water from purer sources to meet their needs. The rapid increase in urban populations beginning in the late 18th century along with increasing knowledge about the importance of water (clean water came later) for health was a goad to construction.
Philadelphia's waterworks, also using a classically inspired building as one of its centerpieces (see posting above) was in some degree inspired by two Francophiles who spent significant time in the Pennsylvania city, Thomas Jefferson and especially Benjamin Franklin, both of whom were familiar with Montpellier, Nîmes and waterworks in France.
