Home sweet sewage pump station home

How a functional sewer asset was hidden within this homey bungalow for decades

In the 1970s, this quaint one-story suburban brick bungalow went up on Beech Hill Road in Mayfield Village. There it stood, nestled between a split rail fence and spacious attached two-car garage, for nearly 20 years.

Pumping millions of gallons of sewage a day.

Welcome to the Beech Hill house.

This Beech Hill house wasn’t actually a home, it was a sewage pumping station behind a homey façade. Originally built by Cuyahoga County, this pump station was designed to blend into the neighborhood.

We recently found this 1982 newsletter story about it. We also found the floorplans.

County commissioners approved sewer Improvement No. 346 in 1960. The plans included a pump station at the residential neighborhood corner of Beech Hill and Wilson Mills Roads, a station that would pump local sewage to higher ground.

Pump stations of the 1960s are not known for having warm and cozy appeal. Consider a similar but larger pump station on Jennings Road: industrial, utilitarian, efficiency prioritized over personality.

Beech Hill was different.

The façade was designed as adequately suburban. A porch, a fenced patio, trimmed windows, even a two-car garage complete with a spacious turnaround driveway.

But inside, and underground, the building operated fully as a sewage pump station.

Raising the roof and exploring the floorplan would have earned this house its own HGTV series.

• Six sewage pumps in the “living room”
• A car-sized engine in the “garage”
• An electrical transformer on the back porch
• Three wet well access hatches in the front lawn

The only interior element most like a real home? The half bath just inside the foyer.

On average, the Beech Hill house pumped more than 5 million gallons of sewage a day during heavy storms.

But where is the Beech Hill pump station house today? Long gone.

We assumed control of Beech Hill in 1974. Our Hilltop Interceptor later improved the regional sewer network, eliminating the need for the pump station altogether around 1992.

This is where the house stood. We have several sewer assets there today instead.

Our team confirmed we don’t build pump stations like this anymore. But do design aesthetics matter, even for a sewage pump station? They sure do.

One of our recent pump station projects is this one on Superior Avenue. Its accents, iron fence, roof and flourishes complement the architecture along the bank of the Flats to combine function and form and prevent 16 million gallons of pollution a year.

Every home has a story.

So does every pump station.