Tidy presentation album of richly-printed cyanotypes documents the construction of the Collins Company power plant on the Farmington River in the Collinsville section of Canton, Connecticut. The photographs are dated from March 30th, 1912 through June 3rd, 1914. In the back of the album, there is a photograph of Edwin Pliny Ball, the project’s chief engineer. Ball, a hydraulic engineer from Springfield, MA, worked with Collins Company civil engineer Lawrence Johnson to design and construct a dam and power plant about seven-eights of a mile below the company’s existing plant.

A lengthy article, published in the Hartford Courant in August of 1913, thoroughly describes the endeavor, about a year into construction, beginning with the dam and dam site:

“As one approaches the place he first sees an area of about three acres of land north of the dam, which a year ago was covered with timber, now covered from two to fifteen feet deep with over eighty thousand yards of earth excavated from the canal and the forebay, making a level open field lying beside the river above the dam. The entire dam, including the fore-bay wall at the east end and the waste gates at the west end, is 400 feet long.”

The article goes on to lay out the specs for the plant itself:

“The building Itself will be 50 feet 4 inches by 38 feet 8 inches, and one story high. The concrete foundation from its base to the top of the concrete rings on which the two generators will rest is 39 feet 3 Inches high, and is built on solid ledge. The power will be generated by two large vertical water wheels within the walls of the powerhouse, the wheels resting on solid concrete. Two openings, each 14 by 9 feet in size, will admit the water through the foundation walls to the wheel. The floor on which the wheels will rest Is about the same level as the bottom of the canal…The powerhouse building will be of brick with a flat parapet roof, and is being built by the Torrington Building Company of Torrington.”