The 154ft-tall, turreted tower is a defining city icon: it was the sole downtown survivor of the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, along with the Pumping Station (aka Water Works), its associated building across the street. Today the tower houses the City Gallery , showcasing Chicago-themed works by local photographers.
Built in 1869, the tower and pumping station were constructed with local yellow limestone in a Gothic style popular at the time. It's this stone and lack of flammable interiors that saved them when the fire roared through town.
The Water Tower was the great hope of Chicago when it first opened, one part of a great technological breakthrough that was going to provide fresh, clean water for the city from intake cribs set far out in Lake Michigan. Before then, the city’s drinking water had come from shore-side collection basins that sucked in sewage-laden water and industrial runoff from the Chicago River. Garnished with the occasional school of small fish, it all ended up in the sinks and bathtubs of unhappy Chicago residents.
Though the fish problem was solved by the new system, the plan was ultimately a failure. Sewage from the river, propelled by spring rains, made its way out to the new intake bins. The whole smelly situation didn’t abate until the Chicago River was reversed in the 1890s (when engineers used canals and locks to send sewage away from Lake Michigan). By 1906 the Water Tower was obsolete and only public outcry saved it from demolition three times. Whether Oscar Wilde would have joined the preservationists is debatable: when he visited Chicago in 1881 he called the Water Tower ‘a castellated monstrosity with salt and pepper boxes stuck all over it’. Restoration in 1962 ensured the tower’s survival.
