This summer, Warsaw’s artistic landscape has been enriched by the new effigy of William Heerlein Lindley. It is the the bust of W.H. Lindley sculptured by professor Jan Pastwa from Warsaw Fine Art University. He is also the author of the full sculpture of W.H. Lindley standing next to the bench dedicated to him at Warsaw Podzamcze Park. The bench has been designed by Dr Norbert Sarnecki with assistance of Anna Sarnecka.
The bust of W.H. Lindley stands in the latest addition to Warsaw Supply Company - water ozonation and water filtration on the activated carbon.
The relief depicting William Lindley-father on the pediment of the building is visible from Filtrowa Street but the bust of William Heerlein is not publicly accessible. It can be admired only by the guests of the Company.
We are very glad of the fact that W.H. Lindley is also commemorated in the new Water Supply Company building, but we regret that Professor Pastwa has not benefited from our iconography and gave his sculpture the profile (intuitively rightly) of the author of this note, who tirelessly do research into career and life of the Lindleys, the family of the great English Civil engineers...
About the artists see: http://sculpture.com.pl/files_NS/index.htm
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The Family on the Lindleystreet in Frankfurt on Main. From l. to r.: Hanna Żelichowska, Karin Deubner, Ma Neubauer, Ursula Caspar, Beatrice Caspar, Alexander Caspara and Eugen Deubner
Day one – 30 August (Thursday)
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From that day on we followed a master plan prepared by Eugen Deubner. We visited HESSENWASSER, MAINOVA and the municipal SEF (Stadtentwässerung, FFM), which supply the water, power and sewage respectively to the population of Frankfurt. Dr. Rödel, historian and retired monument preserver, gave us some information about civil engineering in Frankfurt between 1806 and 1914, as well as interesting information about the biographies of the Lindley’s in Frankfurt. Presentation took place in Goldstein Waterworks, where William and William H. Lindleys worked on the first modern water supply system for Frankfurt.
The same day was to the combined heating and power plant, Heizkraftwerk WEST. Extensive tour was conducted by a passionate man Mr. Joachim Siebenhaar. And there was a lot of history as well. William H. Lindley built his first electric power plant in Frankfurt (1892-1896), with Oskar von Miller.
Day two – 31 August (Friday)
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On all locations we were treated with great esteem and were able once more to realize how important the Lindleys were also for this city.
After the tour we went to the city and met Mr. Volker Harms-Ziegler, an historian from the City Archive, who gave us brief historical tour of Römer and Zeil.
Day three – 1 September (Saturday)
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This day was organized by Ryszard Żelichowski. We went to Evangelical Reformed Church - West (Deutsch Evangelisch-Reformierte Kirche) on Freiherr vom Stein Strasse No. 8, (former Church of England) founded by William Heerlein Lindley. It was very disappointing since the church is gone and replaced by a big modern religious center of Evangelical Reformed Church. However, the commemorating stone has been preserved and exposed in front of a new religious center.
Next we went to former Blittersdorffplatz 29. It was another disappointment. The historical place is gone and the square is now called François-Mitterrand-Platz (he became a honorary citizen of Frankfurt a.M. in 1986).
We gave up walking through the Neue Mainzer Strasse (to No. 51, where the Getz family used to live). There was nothing to see either. The number 51 is incorporated into huge new Frankfurter Sparkasse and the street has become mainly a brick-canyon for the mass city traffic.
Later we took tram No. 11 to Lindleystrasse, and it was rewarding. It has been built-up with many decent houses and the East Harbour (Osthafen) has been renovated and decorated with a monument dedicated to the city-mayor Franz Adickes (1890-1912), under whose authority W.H. Lindley worked until 1896.
Departures, 2 September (Sunday)
Afteer the breakfast we went to our own destinations. We have planned next family-reunion for 2014 in England. Full report on the family-reunion you can see : E-library on this page |
On July 23, 1881,
William Heerlein Lindley, authorized by his father, signed a contract with the
Warsaw Magistrate for the execution of sewage and water supply plans and to
supervision of their construction. Agreement between the Magistrate and William
H. Lindley is deposited at the state archive in Warsaw and consists of 42
paragraphs and additional points regarding the relationship between engineers
with the city authorities. The contents of the contract was revealed to the residents of Warsaw only in October with the publication of details in
"Technical Review" monthly.
William Heerlein Lindley in Warsaw
The citizen
committee for the construction of sewage and water supply system of the city of Warsaw was gathered two days
later. As "Kurier Warszawski" wrote on 26 July: "The first
meeting [of Committee] was held yesterday under the leadership of the city
President in the presence of Mr.
Lindley, the son. The President presented the main points of the
contract". For "supervision
and executing of works on the construction of sewage and waterworks" the
municipal authorities were obliged to pay Lindley annual remuneration of
equivalent of 2000 Pound Sterlings (paid quarterly in Rubles).
Public place
William
Lindley-father did not come to Warsaw to sign the contract, officially due to
the illness. In reality, because two years earlier he retired and withdrew from
undertaken obligations making a place for his successor, his eldest son. From
all his rights and obligations resulting from the contract with the Warsaw
Magistrate he resigned on August 26, 1881.
With signing of the contract the uncertain situation in Warsaw concerning the fate of this great project finally came to an end. Tsar Aleksander II, who died on March 13, 1881, in a bomb assault directed by the Polis anarchists, was succeeded by his son, Alexander III. In his inaugural speech (manifesto of 14/2 March) he promised “to follow the footsteps of his father and finish all what he began". In the case of Warsaw, the tsar kept his promise and signed relevant documents enabling the construction of local sewage and modern water supply system. The works could have been started, but it took five long years before the inhabitants of Warsaw could enjoy filtered water.
On March 14, Jakub Lewicki, the Masovian Voivodeship Conservator of
Monuments, informed that the Water Tower of the Polfa Tarchomin Pharmaceutical
Works was registered as a historical monument.
The water tower building was
erected in the complex of pharmaceutical plants in Tarchomin, on the premises
of Ludwik Spiess' plants nationalized after World War II. In 1957, the final project of the tower's crowning by Ing.K. Bohatyrewicz, was
developed by the BIPROFARM company.
The Tarchomin Water Tower, present day
Phot. Małgorzata Łoś
For more photographs of the tower visit:
Małgorzata Łoś, https://wiezecisnien.eu/mazowieckie/warszawa_polfa/
We have received the very sad news of the death of Alexander Caspar, one of the oldest descendants of William H. Lindley.
Alexander Caspar with wife Beatrice (on the left) and Hanna Żelichowska
in Blackheath (2015)
Alexander Walter Horst Caspar (6 April 1934-26 February 2021), was the great-grandson of W.H. Lindley and the grandson of his daughters Julia Fanny Elizabeth and Robert Boveri. He spent his childhood in Germany and worked in Swiss banks. There he met his wife Beatrice Spotti, with whom he has two daughters.
He showed a deep interest in the history of the family and was an outstanding source of knowledge about their many connections with famous European families.
Alexander Caspar's grandmother, Julia Fanny, stayed with her father, W.H. Lindley in Warsaw in 1901.
Alexander Casper visited our city with his wife in 2006, took part in family reunions, incl. Baku and London (2015), where a memorial plaque on the Lindley family home was unveiled.
Alexander Caspar and the family (from left:) wife Beatrice, sister Ursula (in the background) and Heinke Peschke with Karin Deubner
Alexander Caspar's family has long musical traditions, many of its members played different instruments. This tradition is continued by the youngest daughter Julia, a talented Swiss violinist.
With his passing, a very important chapter in the history of the Lindley family has been closed. He was a living link between the distant past and the present. I owe him a lot of invaluable information about the past. It is regrettable that the epidemic took our time to continue these fascinating journeys into the times of the pioneers of civilization's progress at the time.
May He rest in peace.
Hanna and Ryszard Żelichowscy, in the name of Societas Lindleiana
February 2021
In the history of Warsaw, the capital of the liquidated Kingdom of Poland, he has been assigned the ungrateful role of the military president of Warsaw. He held this function as a major general of artillery in the Russian army in the years 1875-1892. He liked Warsaw and stayed with it for the rest of his life. He died on August 23, 1902. His character was viewed positively by Poles from the very beginning. The Monument to Starynkiewicz at the Filter Station and the square bearing his name are the only commemorations from the period of the Russian partition preserved in Warsaw, and his grave in the Orthodox cemetery in Wola is under the care of the capital MPWiK S.A.
He became famous for his responsibility and honesty. His out-of-pocket
payments to the municipal treasury for damages caused by improper investment
purchases have become legendary. During the years of his term in office, there
were great investments in infrastructure, including the construction of water
and sewage systems, the launch of the first public horse-drawn tram line, the opening
of a large Bródno cemetery and the construction of a new gas plant in Wola.
Without diminishing the merits of Starynkiewicz in building the largest investment in Warsaw - water supply and sewage systems - the Russian sources unknown to the then national journalists reveal that it could only be possible thanks to the successful appeals to Tsar Alexander II and Alexander III by two Russian governors-generals - Paweł Kotzebue and Piotr Albedyński - placed higher in the hierarchy of military power administering Warsaw than the provisional president!
Literature:
Sokrates Starynkiewicz, Dziennik 1887-1897, PWN, Warszawa 2001.
Ryszard Żelichowski, Lindleyowie. Dzieje inżynierskiego rodu, Biblioteka Societas Lindleiana, t. I-III, Warszawa 2019.