Historic Water Tower

806 N Michigan Ave

Architect: W. W. Boyington

When Chicago began, the river was a big selling point. Not only did they have easy access to drinking water but they could also dump stuff into it and watch it flow right into a giant lake.

Using the river as a dumpster sounded like a good idea at the time, but the population kept growing. In 1842 there were 4,500 residents. By 1860, more than 100,000 people lived in Chicago. All of them needed to drink water, and all of them put things, dirty things, back into the water.

City officials quickly realized the need for water works, and in 1842 a private firm built a pumping station to pull fresh water from Lake Michigan. This firm installed a 150-foot pipe, but that wasn’t nearly long enough. Not only did trains soon begin bringing people by the carload, they also brought livestock. There were flour mills, grain elevators, factories, and packing houses along the river. It was a free-for-all of expansion, and all of the residential and industrial waste stagnated in the streets until it went right into the drinking supply.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

In 1851, the city built its own water works, installing a 600-foot pipe. They thought their new system would sustain them for another 15 years, but even a second pumping station in 1857 couldn’t stem the tide of typhoid fever, diarrhea, cholera, and other water-borne diseases.

Ellis Chesbrough, to the rescue.

His plan was to build brick sewers above ground level, cover them, and raise the existing buildings to the new street level. Gravity would then work its magic. His system worked to get most of the sewage out of the street, but it still dumped all that filth into the river, which went into the lake, which was pumped into the city so people could drink it.

Ellis proposed a two-mile tunnel sixty-four feet below the surface of the lake. This was in the 1860s, but this was also Chicago, a city of doers, and it took a little less than three years to complete the tunnel and crib.

The city tapped prolific architect William W. Boyington to design the Chicago Avenue Water Tower and Pumping Station. Mr. Boyington decked out his tower with buttresses, battlements, turrets, parapets, and spires. Cloaked in pale yellow Joliet limestone, when the structures were completed they fairly screamed GOTHIC! 

On March 25, 1867, the city celebrated the formal inauguration of the Great Lake Tunnel with a parade and a cornerstone ceremony. In 1869, the water works opened by the shores of Lake Michigan.

Two years later, the Chicago Avenue Water Tower survived the Great Chicago Fire, and it became a beacon of hope during reconstruction.

The water works could only be used for another ten years before another tunnel was needed. Engineers finally realized that reversing the flow of the river was the only solution. That happened in 1899, and by 1906, although the pumping station could still be used, the Chicago Avenue Water Tower was obsolete.

Over the years there would be calls to tear the tower down, but each time the public was able to preserve it. 

In 1969, the Chicago Water Tower became the first water works to be designated as an American Water Landmark. In 1971 it became a Chicago Landmark, and in 1975 both the tower and pumping station were inscribed to the National Register of Historic Places.

Today the historic water tower still stands tall and represents a city that simply will not give up.

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