Discover our city’s origins in this new video about the Bottomless Well of Water Street
About a year ago, I read an odd article from a 1909 newspaper about a “bottomless well” that was, supposedly, somewhere in downtown Springfield. I dug a little deeper, assuming this was merely a tall tale. I was wrong. Not only was this bottomless well real (although it wasn’t actually bottomless—or a well), it was the founding site of Springfield. What’s more, a vestige of it still remained accessible through a hole in the foundation of the National Audio Company on Water Street.
This spring, we returned to the site of the “bottomless well” with cameras rolling in order to obtain fuller documentation of the site. At first I was planning to edit that footage down into a virtual tour, but then one thing led to another, and I ended up with what is essentially a short documentary about the well and its place in Springfield’s history. I hope you all enjoy!
Transcript and sources: https://www.thelibrary.org/post/video-the-bottomless-well-of-water-street
Learn more about the “bottomless well of Water Street”: https://www.thelibrary.org/post/the-bottomless-well-of-water-street