An architectural history lesson
New York is a city of towers, and not just the skyscraper variety. Sitting atop many of the city’s buildings are towers of a different type — the modest but ingenious water tank. Capped with conical roofs, these instantly recognizable cylindrical features of the skyline have contributed to the city’s signature look for nearly a century and a half. It is estimated that more than 5,600 water tanks currently populate the cityscape. How did these structures come into being, and why have they far surpassed their utilitarian value to become a symbol of the city? The answer tells us as much about the city’s character as it does about physics and economics. In a quintessentially New York mix, long-entrenched commerce, artistic imagination and stubborn practicality — an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude — have all contributed to this enduring urban phenomenon.
New York’s built environment has long been shaped by public health and safety concerns. It was, for example, not only the desire to humanely house the poor that led to the passage of the city’s first Tenement House Law (1867), which set minimum standards for residential buildings. One powerful perception repeatedly catalyzed reform — namely, the idea that slum dwellings lacking sanitary facilities, as well as adequate natural light and ventilation, served as incubators of infectious diseases. Similarly, the development of New York’s vast municipal water system, the envy of cities around the world, was rooted in public health issues. The lack of sanitary systems rendered privately operated wells, including those drawing water from a spring-fed pond in lower Manhattan known as the Collect Pond, extremely hazardous.
In 1842, to address this issue, as well as the need to provide significant protection from fire, the damming of Westchester’s Croton River led to the creation of the Croton Aqueduct system. Like subsequently established municipal water systems in Boston and San Francisco, it relied on gravity. Though the Croton Reservoirs stood at an elevation of only about 60 feet, by the time water reached the city, the pressure created by the water’s weight was sufficient to push it up to the level of a building’s sixth story.
By the 1880s, however, the passenger elevator and steel-frame construction had allowed buildings to rise above 10 stories. At the same time, the demand for water skyrocketed as the result of both the city’s burgeoning population and the widespread adoption of indoor plumbing. Natural water pressure no longer sufficed. The rooftop water tank, along with the development of powerful electric pumps, offered a solution to the distribution problem posed by tall buildings. Water could be pumped up to a building’s roof and stored in a tank. When a building occupant turned on a faucet, gravity was on their side. Water depletion prompted a coordinating pump to trigger refilling, functioning much like a toilet.
As New York rapidly became a skyscraping city, its barrel-making industry was eager to fulfill the unprecedented demand for wooden tanks. (The city solidified this demand by legally mandating that all buildings over six stories be equipped with rooftop water tanks.) Barrel-maker William Dalton expanded his business, founded in 1866, to produce the new product, and in 1894, he sold his business to an employee, Harris Rosenwach, who established an eponymous water tank business. Four years earlier, in 1890, Isseks Brothers had become the first company expressly founded to manufacture water tanks, and by 1920, the two manufacturers had been joined by a third: American Pipe & Tank. The companies became the city’s principal producers of water tanks.
Today’s wooden water tanks are not merely vestiges of the Industrial Age. They continue to be built and installed. In the New York City area, the same three multi-generational, family-owned businesses dominate the industry, manufacturing 90% of the city’s water tanks. Wooden water tanks typically last 25 to 30 years, so while many new buildings incorporate sophisticated basement pumps that turn on and off based on demand and can distribute water directly to locations throughout a building, eliminating the need for rooftop tanks, replacement of existing tanks keeps manufacturers in business. And some new buildings opt for installing the older technology.
Amazingly, traditional cooperage materials and building methods are still used. Wood is favored over steel or concrete because it is less expensive and requires less maintenance. Additionally, it provides significant insulation, preventing the water within a tank from freezing in the winter or getting too warm in the summer. Redwood and cedar are the woods of choice due to their light weight and resistance to insect infestation and decay.
The average wooden tank, 10 to 12 feet high and capable of holding up to 10,000 gallons of water, is constructed of precut lumber and assembled on site, usually within 24 hours. Individual components too large to fit in a freight elevator are hoisted up the outside of a building. Three-inch-thick strips of wood (known as staves), narrower at the ends than in the middle, are grooved on the bottom to fit into floorboards. Staves are installed in a circular fashion around a base to form a cylinder. Cables are then placed around the wood. A conical cover, or “hat,” which adds a distinctive and almost humorous dimension to the design, serves to keep out debris. Once complete, the barrellike tank can be lifted onto steel stilts. When the tank is filled, water initially leaks out, but as the wood dampens and expands, the tank becomes watertight. Miraculously, neither nails nor synthetic sealants are used.
Some buildings hide their water tanks behind brick or concrete enclosures, but so iconic have the wooden structures become that a 1994 set of voluntary design guidelines for residential buildings in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park City encouraged exposed rooftop water tanks “if they are of the traditional wood barrel type.” Five years later, in his design for the high-end apartment building at 400 Chambers Street, the architect Robert A.M. Stern followed the development’s guidelines. Sitting atop a massive rooftop platform, a classical New York water tank became a highly visible element of the building’s design.
How did such practical structures enter the realm of urban mythology? In the early decades of the 20th century, artists, including Ash Can School member John Sloan and Edward Hopper, acknowledged water tanks as a ubiquitous feature of the city. Later, in the 1970s, the German conceptual artists Bern and Hilla Becher created meticulously assembled grids of black and white photographs that celebrated the New York water tanks they described as “anonymous sculpture.”
In 1976, as New Yorkers responded to the impact of the fiscal crisis with a reinvigorated sense of pride (bordering on chauvinism), Saul Steinberg’s memorable New Yorker cover illustration, “View of the World from Ninth Avenue,” featured multiple water tanks as an indispensable part of the city’s visual vocabulary. Twenty-two years later, the Public Art Fund commissioned the British artist Rachel Whitereid to create a sculpture; she sought to depict an object she considered to encapsulate New York. While visiting Brooklyn and looking across the East River at the Manhattan skyline, she was struck by the ubiquity of water tanks. The resulting work, “Water Tower,” a life-size translucent resin cast, was initially displayed on a rooftop in SoHo and subsequently became part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.
Today New York’s rooftop wooden water tanks stand proudly, miniature versions of the water towers that loom over smaller low-lying towns and communities nationwide. Byproducts of age-old craft and 19th-century technology, they continue not only to efficiently serve our daily needs, but to fascinate us. Perhaps this is because they seem to stand outside of time, antiquated, yet up to date. Or perhaps it is because unlike so many technologies in the Digital Age, which defy common understanding, we can readily comprehend how water is collected, stored and distributed. In the wooden water tank, we see not only practical accommodation but also the perfect fusion of form and function.
