The granite Pump House was designed by City Engineer and Civil War veteran Colonel W. Cutshaw in the Gothic Revival style, with long vertical lines and sharply arched lancet windows that draw the eye upward in a form derived from medieval Europe. Its first floor housed pumps driven by water falling from the upper canal through water wheels and later turbines to the lower canal, with water exiting through openings at the base after driving the pumps. The second floor served as an open-air gathering space for dances and concerts, and windows added around 1900 to reduce the effects of weather have been removed on one side to reveal the original design. In 1905, the building was extended on the left to house a boiler and generators for experimental electric pumps. In the 1890s, people could arrive by canal boat on summer evenings for fancy dress balls above the sound of rushing water. The Pump House was replaced in August 1924 by the flat-roofed stucco building to the right, which uses electric pumps and still provides drinking water for the city, while the long white building farther right, built in 1881, houses the old Worthington steam pumps once used to push water up to the reservoir when the canal was low or frozen.
