The McMillan Sand Filtration Site

So.. if you haven’t gotten to this scene of Never Saw Me Coming yet, you probably won’t understand why I am talking about a pre-World War II water treatment facility, but if you have finished the book, I think this will be pretty interesting to see what I was talking about. Once I learned what this thing was, I thought “oh this is the perfect place for something terrible to happen.”

I had lived in DC for years and driven past the McMillan many many times, often wondering what the hell it was. It was just this strange place overgrown with weeds with these bizarre round, mini-silo like buildings—I wondered if they were some form of urban apiary. I learned about it a few years ago, and when I started writing NSMC I knew it was the perfect place for a major “set piece.” The McMillan Sand Filtration Site used to be a place where water was purified before it could be used in households.

From the original McMillan plans in the early 1900s. I had no idea sand could be used to filter water to make it potable. McMillan was a “slow sand" filtration site (as opposed to rapid.) Water was filtered via a layer of biofilm that formed at the top layer of sand. The biofilm is a gelatinous layer of all kinds of living things.

From the original 1902 plans for the site.

Sand storage bin— what I initially mistook for giant apiaries. Early 1900s

From 1910. Note the dude in the bottom left to give you a sense of scale. The “catacombs” are beneath those manholes.

1944

The site is raised up considerably from the road. The black building to the left is Children’s Hospital.

This picture must have been taken during the day, but gives you a sense of just how dark it can get there.

A view of the sand that is still there.

Door to a filter bed around the building of the site. Those train tracks are no longer there, as far as I know.

The same door?? (picture is contemporary)

Actually sort of pretty.

McMillan was featured on Atlas Obscura, if you’d like to see some amazing photos.

The place has remained a nonproductive construction site for years—plans were drawn up to change it into a combination park, historic site, and and housing complex. But then it got tied up in years of litigation. Some people—not clear on exactly who they are—are dead set against the construction plans going through. Pretty much standard NIMBY stuff. DC really needs housing and the site is has been doing nothing since World War II. Below is a video of what they want to build (I do hope they don’t clean the ivy off the storage bins though).

The New Park at McMillan from Interface Multimedia on Vimeo.