Exhibition „Underground City. 125 years of Warsaw water supply
125 years ago the first inhabitants of Warsaw could drink fresh and filtered water direct from their taps. The modern design based on experience gained in Hamburg and Frankfurt on Main made the Lindleys heroes of the day.
The construction started in 1883 and only three years later the dream came true. On this occasion the Warsaw Municipal Waterworks Ltd. (MPWiK) have planned two majour events: a special edition of a new photo-album and a photo exposition under the same title.
The presentation of the album took place on 31 May, in the mid of the day, on a beautiful location of Warsaw treasure premises – Old Orangerie in Łazienki Park.
On the same day the photo exhibition was opened for the general public. Set on beautifully renovated drawings as well as old photographs from MPWiK collection are to be admired from 1 June in the so called Open-air Łazienki Gallery along Aleje Ujazdowskie avenue.
20 years have passed since our first meeting at the Polish Institute in Darmstadt in 2003, when Ryszard Żelichowski presented the first edition of his book The Lindleys. The history of an engineering family.In following years, the family reunion took place in Warsaw (2007), Hamburg (2008), Prague (2009), Frankfurt am Main (2012), Baku (2014, 2017) and Hamburg (2015 and 2018).
Munich 2023.
At the end of the pandemic mixed team of English and German families, started to think about a new place to meet.The choice of Munich seemed natural. One of our seniors, Ursula Caspar (1931-2023), who turned 90 in 2021, lived there, but due to the pandemic we could not visit her.Secondly, in Munich is located the famous German Museum, which William Heerlein Lindley co-organized with German engineer Oskar von Miller, sat on its Management Board and served there for many years as secretary-recorder (Schriftfüher). The Archive, which is part of the Museum, since 1920 holds materials donated by the wife of Sir William Heerlein, Lady Fanny Henrietta Lindley (1859-1931), in the form of Lindley Stiftung (Lindley Foundation). And least but not last, 170 years ago (1853) William H. Lindley was born. A nice, round date to celebrate.
Unfortunately, fate decided that Ursula Caspar left us in April this year, and before her, both her brothers Alexander and Dietrich.
Margrit and Lorenz Neubauer, Karin Deubner and Tom Lindley. A warm evening in the Hirschgarten, a Bavarian
specialty
After consultation with the Archive and the family, we agreed that we will continue our reunion. The best time to visit Minich, according to the Archive directors, was 12-14 September. The organization of our three-day reunion remained the responsibility of Eugen Deubner from Wiesbaden, who remains in permanent contact with the German part of the family. The English part led by Bill Lindley eagerly joined the project.
Eugen Deubner, Ben Lindley and Alex Egerton
Bill Lindley, Ryszard Żelichowski and Ben Lindley
The chief-goal was accomplished. After five years we met and enjoyed the re-union and had a great time together. The highlights were: the presentation by Dr. Röschner, deputy director of the Archive, some of the treasures of the Archive, including examples of Lindleiana collection and a witty and informative tour of the Deutsches Museum guided by Alexander Lucas.
We look forward to the next family reunion, possibly in England.
Lodz street, whose patron is William H. Lindley, has undergone renovation
and beautifying. The city authorities with great commitment and consistency
change the look of the streets in the so called “Woonerf program”.
Woonerf is a word borrowed from the Dutch language, which in free translation means "street to life" or "place to live." This term was invented in the Netherlands the 1970s for the design of streets to make them more friendly to residents and the passersby.
Photos: Grzegorz Sikora
"Lindley
Street after the reconstruction was divided into two parts. From Narutowicz street to the building of the University of Lodz is an
urban courtyard, while to Węglowa street thre are roadways with authorized local traffic and
parking spaces.
The surface has been laid out of
stone and concrete cubes. The old, antique granite cube
has also been preserved.
The existing greenery has also been preserved. There were additionally dozens of new decorative trees and shrubs. We also installed benches, bicycle stands and rubbish bins on the street"
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We encourage our friends and readers to make a short holiday trip to Olsztyn. After being saturated with the beauty of old tenement houses, monuments and beautifully restored secular buildings, it is a must to visit the Center of Technology and Regional Development of the "Museum of Modernity" in that city. One of his sections is devoted to Welsh engineer Isaac Shone (Isaac Shone, 1836-1918), who built in Olsztyn a unique sewage system on the European continent, draining waste ... using compressed air and gravity! Such a pneumatic sewage system functioned in Olsztyn from 1899 and its individual elements were used until the 1990s.
During
standard renovation and expansion of Wojska Polskiego and Artyleryjska streets
in 2010 an old sewage well was found and a historical
"investigation" began by the passionate amateur historian of the
city, Rafał Bętkowski. Today, in the "Modern Museum", one can not
only read about Isaac Shone, but also view various artifacts, photographs and
plans of the city recalling the course of this unusual installation.
Model of ejectory station
We will only add that the advocate of this type of sewage system was the long-time chief-engineer of water supply and sewage system in Warsaw, Alfons Grotowski. Although he preferred the competitive concept of the Dutch engineer Charles Liernur, but eventually Warsaw decided on a general sewerage system designed by the Lindleys. Interesting is that in 1906 a delegation from Warsaw under the leadership of eng. Emil Sokal visited Olsztyn and inspected the installations.
In the United Kingdom Isaac Shone has made this type of sewage system for
the Houses of Parliament, Royal Courts of Justice, Hampton Court Palace,
Eastbourne, Rangoon, & c. and in Russian Kiev.
We do not know if Isaac Shone had a chance to meet William H. Lindley, but it is intriguing to learn that the Welshman died in 1918 in Putney, a small suburb of London, where William Heerlein ended his life a year earlier ...
British Civil
Engineer Hamish Douglas works in Munich since 1979 for an international
engineering consortium. He is also Fellow in the Institution the Civil
Engineering. On the occasion of its 200th anniversary in a short filmed interview
entitled “William Lindley & Hamburg City” he comments on works of William
Lindley in Hamburg and Warsaw.
In this short, less than 9-minute film, he complements Warsaw in these words: “Perhaps the best example of [his achievements] is in Warsaw. So well preserved and so important…This is a biography of William Lindley in Polish [laughing affirmatilvely] You see the importance of the man)”.
View the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LctQLKiPop8
Pleasantly surprised with the Polish book engineer Hamish Douglas is full of admiration for William Lindley's European achievements. It makes us particularly happy because he complements also our city and the book of our author. Thank you Mr. Douglas!
Hamish Douglas, BSc(Eng) Hons, CEng, FICE, FIEI, Member of Bavarian Chamber of Civil Engineers, München, Germany is also member of Editorial Panel for Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering History and Heritage of ICE Virtual Library).
The picture shows (from the left to right) William Heerlein Lindley, Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev and imaginary translator on the construction-site.
We find the picture extremely fine and accurate. The Board of Societas Lindleiana congratulates Mr. Mehbaliyev an excelent idea and great artistic talent!
And artist himself:
Local media enthusiastically published the work and information about the author:
English:
The picture below shows William Lindley sitting on the Boulevard bench with his daughter-in-law, Marie Ladenburg, wife of Robert Searles.
Ryszard Żelichowski, the President of the Societas Lindleyana, was not that lucky. It was cold and rainy day when he sat on the Sandown Boulevard bench at the end of April this year. The bench was almost in the same place, but the old buildings were covered by the new the 20th century additions. However, the charm of the place was still there.
Sandown Boulevard, April 2016. Phot. Hanna Żelichowska
Sandown is a seaside resort town on the southeast coast of the Isle of Wight, England.
Sandown has been a seaside resort town since the Victorian age thanks to its sands and the sunny weather on the Isle of Wight compared to other parts of the United Kingdom. Its success, along with that of other neighbouring Isle of Wight resorts led to the building of a railway connecting Sandown with Ventnor at the south and Ryde on the north coast of the island. Sandown railway station (since 1864) is still on the one remaining operational railway on the island, which now goes from Ryde Pier Head to Shanklin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandown
The 19th century charm: