Fort Hill with Standpipe, BPL photo / by Jason Turgeon

I love this old, undated photo of the standpipe.  It’s got lousy composition, cuts off the top of the tower, has some smears of water or something all over it…but it’s so evocative.  Oh, and it appears to have been taken right outside or across the street from my front door.

The date’s hard to guess at, but the path to the left would not have existed in 1895, when the ward map shows a building from the St. Elizabeth Hospital in that location.  It might have existed in 1915, when the ward map shows that the hospital was gone and there was then a playground on the space, but it’s hard to say.