Image courtesy Don Prout’s "Cincinnativiews"
In 1901, Cincinnati City Engineer Louis Gustave Frederick Bouscaren appeared before the Water Works Board with a rather expensive request. Bouscaren asked the Board to approve a $500,000 brick cover for the Eden Park reservoir.
That immense artificial lake, covering 13 acres and more than 30 feet deep, held 100 million gallons of water, divided into two basins. Exposed to sunlight, the reservoir blossomed with algae that imparted a nasty flavor to the city’s water. Running the Water Works in 1901 was August “Garry” Herrmann, one of George “Boss” Cox’s chief lieutenants. Herrmann and Cox cared not a whit about the taste of the municipal effluent and so Bouscaren’s request was denied.
Thirty years later, with Cincinnati’s government now completely reformed by a new charter, Alber S. Hibbs, Water Works superintendent, repeated Bouscaren’s proposal but, according to the Cincinnati Post [May 7, 1931] added a most peculiar clarification to his request:
“Hibbs favors the expenditure not on saving lives of persons who want to drown themselves, but rather for the sake of keeping Cincinnati’s water supply pure.”
Say what? Superintendent Hibbs said the quiet part loud, admitting that a human corpse ended up in the city’s water supply about once a year. Ever since the immense reservoir had gone operational in 1878, the Water Works had fished a body out on a regular basis, and considered it no big deal. According to City Health Commissioner Dr. William H. Peters, as quoted in the Post [April, 26 1933]:
“Peters said that two bodies found in the 54,000,000-gallon east basin in Eden Park within the last week did not pollute the water particularly because of its great volume, but the idea of drinking from a source containing the bodies of two human beings was naturally offensive to the public.”
It appears that the public was naturally offended on a regular basis due to the scenic but inviting pools in Eden Park.
From "Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper", September 28, 1878
Charles Bachman left his home on Prospect Hill one August night in 1906 to hear a Sunday concert in Eden Park. His body was found several days later, floating in the reservoir, half-eaten by fish. The Water Works was uninspired to do anything, according to the Cincinnati Post [August 22, 1906]:
“The fact that the body of Bachman, fish-eaten, was found in the Eden Park reservoir does not pollute the water anymore than it is polluted, according to Chief Engineer Hill of the Water Works Department.”
Apparently unfazed by corpses floating in the water supply, the Water Works seemed more concerned about fish. The Water Works didn’t care that the fish were there, pooping in the drinking water. Rather, they were outraged that someone had allowed anglers to fish in the reservoir. The Cincinnati Post [August 18, 1894] reported:
“Supt. Willis Tharp, of the Water Works Department, has discovered that someone is permitting people to fish in the Eden Park reservoir. Among other evidences, a trot line was found in the reservoir. To whom it belongs no one seems to know. It was also learned the people allowed to fish in the reservoir nightly amount to a crowd. Tharp will make a searching investigation and some of his subordinates may lose their jobs.”
Although the Water Works worried more about fishing than drowned bodies, the Cincinnati public was fascinated by the macabre discoveries. The body of George Sankey, a prosperous carpenter, had marinated in the depths of the reservoir for more than four months when it popped to the surface in 1919.
Sankey was no suicide. When his body was found, several acquaintances remembered him flashing a large wad of bills every time he paid his rent or settled a restaurant bill. It appeared that someone murdered Sankey for his money. The murderer then trussed Sankey up like a turkey, strapped on a weighted suitcase, and tossed their victim into the water. When he was found, a suitcase handle remained attached to his ankle. As the east reservoir was drained, huge crowds gathered to watch the water slowly drain, curious about what that suitcase might hold if it was found. When, after several days, investigators located the suitcase, it contained nothing more than five paving bricks, just enough to keep Sankey’s corpse submerged. His murder was never solved.
Some people demonstrated a meticulously obsessive urge to drown amid the beauties of the park. In 1927, Wiley Nicodemus, 65, walked up to the reservoir, slashed his wrists with a pocketknife, refolded the knife and put it in his pocket, climbed the reservoir fence and jumped. He missed the water and landed in some bushes on the bank but scrambled to his feet and crawled into the depths and oblivion.
Sometimes, the Eden Park reservoir got a little crowded. Cincinnati Police Officer Edward Boenke, aged 42, drowned himself there in April 1933. It seems Patrolman Boenke caused a fatal traffic accident a few years back when he was driving in hot pursuit. Although he recovered from physical injuries caused by the crash, the guilt precipitated a nervous breakdown. It had become standard procedure to drain the reservoir and clean it after a body was removed, and so the long process was underway when a second body, that of 79-year-old George Walker of East Walnut Hills, was found submerged in the muck. Mr. Walker’s remains had been soaking for about three weeks before he was extracted.
Within days, the city received an order from H.G. Southard, Ohio health director, ordering Cincinnati to cover its open reservoirs. “Public health of water consumers in Cincinnati is endangered by these open structures,” Southard wrote, reminding the city that the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, established to fund public works projects to ease the effects of the Great Depression, had money available to pay for the project. Cincinnati ignored the order.
The body of a Hyde Park teenager, Elaine Ludlow, was pulled from the reservoir in 1940. A wadded note, with its ink almost dissolved away, offered no motive. A week later, Harry L. Hamilton ended his life in the reservoir. Hamilton was an agent for Warner Brothers Motion Pictures and a former vaudeville promoter. He stuffed cotton in his nostrils before he consigned himself to the deep and wrote a note asking that an undertaker in Maysville be notified.
From "Cincinnati Post", November 18, 1940
The drive to cover the reservoir revived in 1952 when a Cincinnati Post investigation revealed that the west basin of the Eden Park complex contained measurable levels of bacteria. Spot checking found bacterial contamination at several locations in the city, but the Water Works insisted the contamination did not require an order to boil water. The Water Works blamed autumn leaves falling into the reservoir and rotting for the presence of bacteria.
Water Works Superintendent Carl Ebberling recalled an effort to cover the reservoir in the 1930s, when opposition halted the project because it would ruin the scenic beauty of the open pools of water. It’s true. And that opposition was led by the Cincinnati Board of Realtors.
The Eden Park reservoir was finally drained, reconfigured, and covered over through a $4.5 million project in 1964. The large reflecting pool we see today in Eden Park is a decorative flourish that has nothing to do with the city’s water supply. The new reservoir is still there, buried beneath Mirror Lake. The gargantuan cistern holds 80 million gallons of water, is 39 feet deep and contains 780 concrete columns, each two feet wide. And not a single body for the past 60 years.
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