Chicago Water Tower Audio Guide

Chicago Water Tower: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Chicago Water Tower

   Welcome to the Chicago Water Tower, one of the most surprising sights on Michigan Avenue. You are on the Magnificent Mile, surrounded by glass, steel and shopping crowds. Right in the middle sits a pale yellow limestone tower with turrets and battlements, looking as if a storybook castle had wandered into the city. It stands in a small park near the corner of Michigan Avenue and Pearson Street. It was never a castle, of course. It was a piece of civic plumbing, finished in 1869 to hide a tall standpipe, a vertical pipe 138 feet high, that helped keep the city's water supply steady. Over the next few minutes we will look at why Chicago needed it, who designed it, how it earned its place in the city's story, and what you can still do here today. Take a moment to look up at the pointed turrets and the rough, golden stone. Then keep that image in mind, because every detail of it is tied to a very practical problem: how to bring clean water to a booming city.

2. 02

   A City That Needed Clean Water

   By the 1860s, Chicago's water supply could not keep up with its rapidly growing population. The nearby lake water was too polluted to use, because runoff from the Chicago River fouled the shoreline. The city needed a bolder answer than simply drawing water closer to home. The solution came from the engineer Chesbrough, who designed a water supply tunnel running nearly 2 miles offshore to an intake crib out in Lake Michigan. When the tunnel was completed in 1867, lake water was pumped back to shore through a pumping station, which stood across Michigan Avenue, then called Pine Street, from where the tower rises today. There was a catch. The original pumps produced pressure surges and pulsation in the water. So in 1869 a standpipe system was added. The tall pipe evened out the pressure and could also be regulated to control surges in the area, and its force was useful for firefighting too. The tower you see is the handsome outer shell built around that machinery. Historians read it today as a sign of how seriously Chicago took infrastructure and water supply in the late nineteenth century.

3. 03

   Boyington's Castle in Yellow Limestone

   The architect was William Boyington, who designed both the tower and the pumping works building on the opposite side of Michigan Avenue. Both were built of yellow Joliet limestone, a very popular building material in Chicago at the time. The style is Boyington's signature castellated Gothic Revival, with battlements and little turrets that make a utilitarian structure look like something from a fairy tale. Not everyone was charmed. When Oscar Wilde came to Chicago to give a lecture in 1882, he famously called it a castellated monstrosity with pepper-boxes stuck all over it. It is a wonderful insult, and one that the city has long since turned into affection. Look closely at those little turrets and you can see exactly what he meant by pepper-boxes. The tower still carries the look of its era. Boyington dressed a standpipe, a plain technical necessity, in ornate stone, and the result was architecturally the most imposing of the new waterworks buildings when it was completed.

4. 04

   Survivor of the Great Fire

   The Chicago Water Tower is best known as one of the few buildings that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. In the years of rebuilding that followed, it came to symbolize Chicago's I Will spirit, a quiet limestone reminder that the city could pick itself up again. A common myth holds that it was the only building left standing after the fire. That is not the case, and the tower does not need the exaggeration. Surviving at all, while so much of the city around it was lost, is plenty of reason for its fame. The tower is now a contributing landmark in the Old Chicago Water Tower District and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is no longer part of the city's waterworks. A renovation changed mostly the interior, with only minor changes to the outside, so what you see on the street is very close to what Chicagoans saw in 1869.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Today the tower stands in a small park that was named in 2014 for former Chicago mayor Jane Byrne. Inside is the City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower, which shows the work of local photographers, artists and filmmakers. Across the street, the old pumping station houses a tourist information center, where a program tells the story of the tower and the impact of the Great Fire. The tower has also lent its name to its neighbor, Water Tower Place, a 74 story skyscraper and shopping mall. Stand between the two and you can compare a small nineteenth century castle with a modern giant, both tied to the same name. Before you wander on, take one more slow look at the stonework and the turrets. Then ask yourself what else on this busy avenue might be hiding a practical purpose behind a decorative face.