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
On the 22nd of April 2015 in Blackheath (London Borough of Greenwich) was unveiled a plaque funded by English Heritage Blue Plaques, dedicated to William Lindley and his eldest son, William Heerlein.
In this way, we have completed long-lasting process to bring to the Pantheon of those with outstanding imerits for the British Empire, two engineers, natives of the County of Yorkshire, the pioneers of hygiene, who had worked most of their life in the three empires-Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian.
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.