This was then: The Standpipe

Photos of long-ago Martha’s Vineyard.

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Horace Tilton, Dr. Orland Mayhew, Carey Luce, Frank Bodfish, and horses Domion and Dick pose near the site of the new Tisbury School in the spring of 1929. Looming across Spring Street is a 50-foot-tall iron standpipe erected in 1887 by the Vineyard Haven Water Co., a private corporation, to hold a growing town’s supply of fresh water. It was the first of its kind on the Island. When the great coal-burning steam engine was fired up at the pumping station at the head of Tashmoo, an employee would ride horseback in intervals from Tashmoo Spring to the standpipe and back to check on the water level as the tank slowly filled to its 117,000-gallon capacity. As the late Walter Renear remembered, “It often overflowed and froze solid curb-to-curb. In the nearly level part, between Look Street and Franklin Street, there was often good ice skating.”

The standpipe was replaced in 1938, and toppled on its side. Former resident Seamond Roberts remembers, “The old standpipe was down and in their backyard when I would visit with ‘Aunt and Uncle’ Ruth and John Olsen. Their son John Jr. had a horse we would ride back there around the standpipe. I remember the horse was a pinto and the pipe was rusty at the time, say 1948 or so.” The empty, sideways tank was used as a storage shed by the town for decades afterward.

Chris Baer teaches photography and graphic design at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. He’s been collecting vintage photographs for many years.