Beacon Hill is known for its ritziness, laying claim to the likes of the colonial Boston Brahmin establishment and current Secretary of State John Kerry, most of whom lived, and still do to this day, in massive brownstone mansions on beautifully-laid cobblestone streets. But did you know that Beacon Hill was so pretentious that on November 23, 1849 that they funneled funneled in their own water supply? That’s right, on this day in Boston History, 164-years ago, the Beacon Hill Reservoir was complete.

Actually, it was part of an aqueduct system that helped quench the entire city’s thirsts by transporting water form Lake Cochituate directly into the city and neighboring Brookline. The Beacon Hill Reservoir though, in classic Beacon Hill fashion, “was an elaborate facility constructed of granite” according to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.

Ground broke on the facility in 1847 but was halted when the cornerstone, according to History of the Introduction of Pure Water Into the City of Boston, “gave way, slightly injuring a little boy, and breaking the leg of a little girl, by the name of Frances Maria Hobbs, and doing considerable damage at the works.”

Upon completion, water was siphoned into the reservoir by way of a “30-inch pipe at half past nine o’clock on the morning of November 23d, 1849, and it was filled in 18 ˝ hours.”

At an unprecedented 28,014 square feet, the feat of then-modern masonry held 2,678,961 gallons of water.

Eventually rendered obsolete by 1880 the aquatic facility was “demolished to build the addition at the rear of the State House.”