File:Historical Marker, Old Nichols Pumping Station, Gorham Street and Franklin Street, Tenney-Lapham, Madison, WI.jpg

English: Built in 1917, this Prairie School-style building was designed by Balch and Lippert to serve as the Nichols Pumping Station, part of the Madison Water Works. It was built around an earlier pumping station, and was part of the transition of Madison’s municipal water system from being supplied by artesian wells to being supplied from water drawn from Lake Mendota and processed through a filtration system. It housed two large steam engines that pumped water from the lake into the city’s water reservoirs, one of which remained in service for the entire time the building was in use for its original purpose. The building ceased to function as a pumping station in 1976, and has since been adaptively reused as an apartment building. The building is clad in cream brick with stone trim, and features guttae, false turret gables, steel frame windows, recessed window bays, a truncated smokestack, a parapet enclosing a low-slope roof, a stone parapet cap, and a concrete base. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, owing to its historical engineering and architectural significance.