James Pugh Kirkwood, ASCE Second President, Water Filtration Pioneer, and His Scottish and U.S. Engineering Practice

James Pugh Kirkwood, after schooling, began employment with Thomas Grainger, Edinburgh civil engineer (Institution of Civil Engineers), from 1825-1832. Kirkwood worked on roads, stone bridges, canals, water tunnels, and Scotland's first `inter-city' railway the Edinburgh & Glasgow . He and fellow Scot James Laurie, recruited by American railroader William Gibbs McNeill, began working on American railroads (Boston). Later, Kirkwood worked for the 1849 Erie Railroad (General Superintendent), Missouri Pacific Railroad (1850-52), Brooklyn water (1857-65), St. Louis Water Engineer (1865- 1867), designed the first U.S. water filtration system (Poughkeepsie, 1872), and engineered water systems in Pittsburgh, Salem, Portland, Fall River, Albany, Hempstead, Boston, Newark, and Lynn. Significant Kirkwood publications include: 1. Kirkwood, James Pugh 1869. Report on the Filtration of River Waters, for the Supply of Cities, as Practised in Europe, (City of St. Louis), D. Van Nostrand; 2. Kirkwood, James Pugh 1872. Address of the President.......December 4, 1867, Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. I, pp. 3-6 (first ASCE paper); 3. Kirkwood, J.P. 1876. A Special Report on the Pollution of River Waters, Massachusetts, 405 pp., Arno Press (reprinted in 1970). Kirkwood was a co-founder of ASCE in 1852, serving as Director from 1853-1867. After ASCE President James Laurie, James Pugh Kirkwood became the second President. Kirkwood died in 1877. In 1997, historical society delegations from: Kirkwood, MO and Kirkwood, NY placed a headstone at JPK's Greenwood-Brooklyn grave. James Pugh Kirkwood was a productive, scholarly, outstanding civil engineer who worked on roads, bridges, canals, tunnels, railways, buildings, harbors, water filtration, water supply and distribution, river pollution, and other projects in Scotland, the U.S., and Canada.