Harvard Pump Primers Initiate New Year as Water Flows from Yard Pump

Harvard did some pump priming of its own yesterday morning as the Maintenance Department worked feverishly over the Yard pump. After half an hour's labor its efforts were rewarded; pure water from the Cambridge Water Works gushed out at exactly 8:45 o'clock.

The previous day workmen had primed the pump in vain. For the pump handle had not been attached to the connecting rod, and no amount of priming could remedy such a fundamental error.

The original pump was constructed in 1764 over a 35 ft. well to accomodate students in Hollis Hall. But so many others took advantage of it that about 35 years ago it fell into the last stages of decay. Several sporadic attempts to blow it up in 1904 and 1905 did not remedy the situation and the University was finally forced to remove it.

For over thirty years the Yard struggled through an unnatural existence without its pump. Finally in 1936 the University took action; a new pump was resurrected for the Tercentenary Celebrations and was duly christened and primed with a silver-plated dipper before an enthusiastic delegation of old graduates.

The new pump was made of an old log piling from a Boston wharf. It was "turned" by the Maintenance Department and provided with a modern drinking fountain.

Years ago when the Yard cops were uniforms and Duchesses did not bathe in gold tubs there was an old pump on the corner of Matthews. Torn down in 1885 this pump existed long enough to provide workers in the old Coop with water for washing.

In those days students used to get water in pails from both pumps. They carried the water in pails up to their rooms where they bathed luxuriously in their tin bath tubs.

"Olim meminisse iuvabit," reads the appropriate inscription on the new pump. Certainly even the new pump already has several good things for which to be remembered. On Wednesday, January 20, 1937, real beer flowed from the pump.