It’s hard to move forward toward the future without understanding our history and where we have been. In 1776, America declared its independence from England and, in doing so, defined freedom in a way the world had never known before. However, freedom alone did not build our towns and cities. Freedom did not immediately provide clean water, nor did it create systems people could rely on every day. Freedom gave us a country, but the standards of the building trades made it livable.

As we arrive at our 250th year as a nation, it is worth slowing down and recognizing that the story is not only about how we became free, but also about how we learned to build something that works: consistently, safely and at a scale that could support millions of people living together (https://bit.ly/4wGj5L0).

The first 75 years (1776 to 1850): Building without a playbook

For roughly the first 70 to 80 years after independence, America grew without a unified system for how buildings, water and sanitation should function. There were no national plumbing standards, no public rulebooks and no consistent way to verify that a system built in one place would perform the same in another. What existed instead was the discipline of craft. 

Tradespeople relied on apprenticeship, observation and hard-earned experience. They built systems based on what had worked before and adjusted when those systems failed. It was not clean, it was not consistent, but it was progress, and craft was carried forward by people who understood that their work mattered.

Nowhere was this more visible than in New York City, where early water systems were built from hollowed-out logs laid beneath the streets. A practical solution at the time and one I’ve come across relics of a handful of times working in the Big Apple. 

As the city expanded, so did the demand for better systems. Gas lighting began to take hold in the early 1800s, introduced to illuminate streets and eventually buildings, effectively creating an entirely new gas-fitting trade alongside plumbing. 

In 1842, the Croton Aqueduct system in Westchester County, New York, was completed, bringing fresh water from more than 40 miles north into the city. New York City had learned, through failure and fire, that it could not survive without a reliable, large-scale water system. The Great Fire of 1835 exposed the limits of what existed, and Croton became the answer (www.ualocal1.org/history.aspx).

For families like mine, who were part of those early labor efforts tied to Croton, this was more than history on paper; it was real tradesmen building the foundation of a modern city. With that, water brought something new: indoor plumbing at scale and a new way of American life.

Nearly 50 years of hard lessons (1850 to 1900)

For nearly 50 years, from the 1850s through the end of the 19th century, New York City and Boston became the proving ground for modern plumbing. With indoor running water now available, plumbers built businesses, systems expanded and demand exploded. Master plumbers organized to control pricing and wages, while journeymen began forming their own protective societies, meeting in back rooms, organizing labor and defining their place in the industry. 

By 1854, a group of journeymen plumbers in New York, called the Master Plumbers Society, had formally organized, adopting constitutions and bylaws and laying the groundwork for what would eventually become a major labor organization in the pipe trades. At the same time, civil engineers such as Julius W. Adams were solving problems with no textbook answers, designing sewer systems from scratch and publishing their findings so that other cities could follow (https://bit.ly/4nEZg2R). 

It was only in 1881 that New York City adopted a plumbing law requiring all master plumbers to register with the board of health for approval and review. Not long after, in 1883, the National Association of Master Plumbers held its first official meeting. This group would later become the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors.

More than a century in, still not aligned (1900 to 1920)

By the early 1900s, after more than 100 years of growth without alignment, cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago had developed advanced systems, but the country itself remained inconsistent. 

Even with licensing requirements introduced in the early 1880s, “standards” still varied widely from one place to another. Labor battles over wages, hours and apprenticeship rules shaped the workforce, while technology continued to evolve, leaving the plumber to learn and adapt.

100 years later, the shift happens (1921 to 2026)

In 1921, nearly 150 years after independence, Herbert Hoover stepped into the role of U.S. Secretary of Commerce and recognized what cities such as New York had already proven. The trades knew what they were doing, but lacked code. 

This is when Hoover issued the famous Hoover Code, or as it’s formally titled, “Recommended Practice for Arrangement of Building Codes,” and that is really when it kicks off for the plumbing industry as we know it today. (Note that Hoover was elected president of the United States in 1926 and served until 1933.)

Through the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Bureau of Standards, Hoover pushed for a unified approach to construction and infrastructure. In 1926, the first Uniform Plumbing Code framework emerged in Los Angeles, but adoption would not occur until 1945.

At the same time, engineers such as Roy B. Hunter introduced the science behind the systems, bringing measurement, probability and consistency into design. It took nearly 150 years of lessons learned in cities on both the East Coast and West Coast, and miraculously managed to turn them into a system that could be shared across the entire country. Standardization would not remain a government function alone; it would become a shared responsibility, including consensus and transparency.

In 1926, before the Hoover Code formalized national alignment, the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO) was formed. This year, IAPMO celebrates its 100th birthday, marking a critical shift in our industry as stewards of public health. IAPMO took the lessons built over decades — the knowledge developed by tradespeople, engineers and inspectors — and turned them into living codes. Codes meant to evolve, codes that could require debate and codes that could be improved without humility. 

Before long, we had plumbing-related committees all over the country, code hearings and technical discussions that continue to this day. Not only writing standards, but also maintaining them, refining them and ensuring they continue to serve the people who rely on them.

250 years of American ingenuity 

It took nearly a century and a half, from 1776 to the late 1920s, for America to move from individual discipline to shared standards. Much of that work was driven by cities such as New York and organizations such as IAPMO, where the stakes were high enough to force real decisions.

As America celebrates 250 years as a nation, this is the story worth remembering. We did not only build a country; we built systems that work. We took lessons from cities, from projects like Croton, from generations of tradespeople who met in rooms, argued, failed, took responsibility and turned those lessons into something real.

If the last 250 years have shown us anything, it is that when we choose to do things the right way and take responsibility for what we build, there is no limit to what we can create. This is what built America and what will carry us forward. Not only as a country, but as humans, continuing to design, build and improve the world around us for generations to come.