18 | LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN and steel. Named after Ulysses S. Grant, it began operating in 1872. It could remove 17,000 gallons of water a minute from a depth of 300 feet and served all five mines. Of course, a structure had to be built to both support and house the engine. Cornish engineers had that covered as well. Three stories tall, it had a 9-foot-thick back wall and 3-foot-thick side walls. The foundation goes down 110 feet to bedrock. A sturdy structure was needed to support the massive engine. Two brick chimneys were brought down in the 1950s for safety reasons. A third floor made of wood is gone. The engine’s life was brief. Economic conditions, the high cost of water removal and the development of alternative ore sources caused the mines to close in 1876. They reopened in 1881 under new management and operated again until 1893. When New Jersey Zinc bought the property in 1899, it sold the President Pumping Engine for scrap. The building was so strong, it was left alone. New Jersey Zinc never mined in the Friedensville area again until 1958. In 1984, after shutting down mining operations, it sold the property to the Stabler Land Company. “The property, which includes the engine house, is really kind of a 19th-century time capsule,” says Connar. “When they ceased to mine there in the 1890s, nothing else happened. The property was unused.” Connar says this is one instance where “neglect” was a good thing. “The engine house was just sitting there. It was too big to take down. That’s why it’s there. If somebody in the 1960s had decided to develop the property, it probably wouldn’t be there. Hence the opportunity.” In one fortuitous development, a boiler, one of 20 required to operate the President Pumping Engine, was found in the basement of a shuttered furniture factory in Allentown, where it had been for more than 100 years. When the engine was scrapped in 1900, Gottlieb Buehler had acquired the boiler, using it as a water tank for his new furniture factory. The factory eventually closed, but the boiler remained. When the factory was scheduled to be demolished, the boiler was acquired for the project. In January, it was removed from the building via a tricky process that required specialized lifting and moving equipment. Lehigh contractors did the work, moving the boiler to a storage location the university owns at the former New Jersey Zinc mine headquarters. The plan is to have the tank restored and on display in front of the engine house where it was once located. Lehigh Connections Lehigh’s history with the Ueberroth Mine goes back to even before Lehigh was established in 1865. In 1845, Roepper, the local mineralogist, combined the zinc-rich ore with copper to make brass and attempted to commercialize the find. In 1866, he became Lehigh’s first professor of mineralogy and geology. Miles Rock, one of Lehigh’s first graduates, was employed part-time in surveying the mines. The maps and Rock’s graduation thesis—“The Lehigh Zinc Mines. Their Geology, “IF SOMEBODY IN THE 1960S HAD DECIDED TO DEVELOP THE PROPERTY, IT PROBABLY WOULDN’T BE THERE. HENCE THE OPPORTUNITY.” —MARK CONNAR ’84 MBA KELLEY VERSOCKI
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