A 19th-century industrial village continues to emerge in the Broadway East neighborhood. Building by building, what was once the Baltimore City Eastern High Service Pumping Station is finding a new life as an incubator campus for non-profits and entrepreneurship.

Located just south of the landmark American Brewery (the structure that looks like some fantasist vastly enlarged a cuckoo clock) this grouping of public utility structures fell on excruciatingly hard times. The city of Baltimore gave up on the place and illegal dumpers took over. Its four acres became heaped with old tires and construction debris. The cost of the environmental remediation was $3 million.

The place has a new name, Baltimore Pumphouse, and there’s plenty of room here for commercial tenants and nonprofits. There is no housing on the site, which includes the intersections of Wolfe and Oliver Streets and Llewelyn Avenue.

Elaine DiPietro, executive interim director of American Communities Trust, first visited the site nearly 11 years ago.

“People told me to be careful where I parked. The place was abandoned… I thought it would take a lot of vision and money to get it done, but we are making it,” she said of her mission.

“The current restoration of the pumphouse is $6 million,” she said. “Restoration is not inexpensive but it’s worth it.”

The pumphouse campus once had a machine shop, storehouse, carriage house and stables and a brick-making kiln. Several years ago, as part of the current redevelopment, a community kitchen structure called City Seeds was added.

The current tenants include H3irloom Food Group, Codetta Bake Shop, Double Bunny Bakery, Chef Dad (pot pies) and Charming Vegan. Photographers Opticon and Cap2ure Kreative lease space here.

Blue Water Baltimore, the environmental group, has its headquarters on the campus and uses it as a basis for its water testing and tree planting efforts, among other initiatives.

The old pumping station had been an attractive 1891 grouping of brick structures. The place had horse stables where public utility workers kept the brawny animals that pulled the construction wagons as Baltimore built a water and sewer system.

The big stationary steam engine pumped water from the Lake Montebello reservoir using a gravity feed system down the hill. The water then was pumped throughout the city via a circuitous network of huge pipes, many of them buried under Greenmount Avenue and York Road. The water — being pumped up a steep grade — eventually reached the Guilford Reservoir on Cold Spring Lane. The water then flowed to homes through a maze of pipes and plumbing.

But the city grew and times changed. In 1928, this pump house was rendered obsolete by newer electric pumps on Hillen Road.

What followed was an architectural beheading. Architect Jackson Gott’s ornamental tile roofs and dunce-cap-like decorative towers got chopped off. The big steam boiler chimney (fired by coal) was demolished. There were no historic preservationists around when the massive slate roof and handsome cupulas were summarily trashed.

After its life as a pumping station, the city’s street lighting operation moved here. The commodious site allowed for ample room to park municipal work trucks.

The Pumphouse had a brief moment of (un)recognition. Without being credited, the then crumbling campus filled in for “Cutty’s Gym” in scenes in “HBO’s The Wire” about 20 years ago.

The nonprofit American Communities Trust agreed to take on the restoration of the property (the buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places) in 2014. It paid the city $500,000 for the property, but the city, in return, provided the same amount toward the cleanup.

The goal was to bring jobs and amenities back to this neighborhood.

The Pumphouse joins other Gay Street corridor landmarks, including the American Brewery, the Hoen lithography plant and the Southern Baptist Church, which are key components in rebuilding this neighborhood.

The branding of Baltimore Pumphouse began last year. It’s a means of putting a name on this campus. A sign painter will soon be lettering “Baltimore Pumphouse” across the side of the incubator food structure.

You think of this as a restored Victorian industrial park, located in an old city neighborhood alongside East Baltimore’s MARC and AMTRAK right-of-way.