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September 1940. "Settling tanks in waterworks. Washington, D.C." Medium format negative by Edwin Rosskam. View full size.
This is the Dalecarlia Water Treatment Plant on MacArthur Blvd. in Washington, DC at the Maryland border. Completed in 1928, it's still in use today. The plant treats water from the Washington Aqueduct originating at Great Falls on the Potomac River.
A recent picture shows that the interior has been stripped to the steel girders.
This appears to be the now-abandoned sand filtration unit at the McMillan Reservoir. You can find out more here.
I was able to find a photo of the underside of one of the two the underground sand filtration beds. In the photo they have removed the old dirty sand and are replacing it with new clean material. (Note piles of clean sand dumped in from above.)
I'm gonna bet we are looking here at the water SUPPLY side of the system, not the sewage settling basins. Don't believe I have ever seen a sewage treatment plant with a hall of Doric columns, or one with a roof for that matter. Would trap the gases and be pretty awful, I would think. This looks like a very cool and pleasant place to be, especially given the current outside temp here in Maryland.
Nice architecture for something that handles sewage.
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