Running Water
Imagine your life without clean running water.
The building that I chose to research is the North Point Water Tower, located at the east end of East North Avenue. From the looks of it, the North Point Water Tower looks like a castle tower. The base of the tower is made out of limestone and at the top where there is an observation platform capped with an octagonal spire of gables that is covered with galvanized iron.
Built in 1874, The North Point Water Tower is significant for its role in early community efforts to improve public sanitation. Water from Lake Michigan was forced from a pumping house up the slope to the Kilbourn Park Resevoir, where it flowed by gravity pressure through a network of water mains to the users. The North Point Water Tower was constructed as an essential component of the system which relieved the pulsations caused by the pumping engines and reducing pressure on the water mains and minimizing the danger of breakage. (Historic Designation Study Report)
It also is an example of nineteenth century technology and despite of its above average architectural quality, it is a purely functional. It was added to the list of the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1969, named a Milwaukee landmark in 1968, and selected as a national landmark of the American Water Works Association in 1969. (Historic Designation Study Report)
Section 106 talks about the public being involved in what is determined historical to the nation. It is important for people of the public to be involved in the decision making for what stays or what goes as far as historical preservation because we are the people molding the nation for future generations. We need to make decisions based on what we find important to keep around for us and the future of our nation.
Section 4(f) talks about the construction of roads through national parks and near historical properties. Because of our growing world, things are going to need to change. The addition of industrialized items like roads through national parks or proximity in which they come to historical properties, is highly controversial. The additions of roads can cause species of animals to be split up causing a change in the gene pools within a population. However, the addition of roads can help people travel from one beautiful place to the next and observe everything in between. There is a lot of decision making that needs to go into changes like these and for good reasons.
Murtagh, William. Keeping Time, The History and Theory of Preservation in America. 3. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2005. 37-61. Print.
Historic designation study report north point water tower. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://city.milwaukee.gov/hpc/LocalDesignations
(2006). North point water tower. (2006). [Print Photo]. Retrieved from http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?strucID=742770&imageID=G92F091_027ZF
Historic structures. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.historic-structures.com/wi/milwaukee/np_water_tower1.php
The North Point Water Tower, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Taken on May 16, 2009, by me. Attribute to Kevin Han
It is a tricky thing to establish a reasoning for road work. I think that 4F definitely sets up good guide lines for what is acceptable to plow tight through. Though you make a good point, roads are needed to get from place to place, and with given the opportunity to drive to the volcanic geysers in Yellowstone or hike the trails to find them, there is a definite practicality to driving as well as a more voyeuristic tourism aspect. Most people on vacation want to relax and they want to see, so hiking seems to be the most difficult solution. A nice in between would to have the road work while preserving the beauty, but the idea of this industrial mass cutting through nature will ultimately never aesthetically please.
ReplyDeleteI think that you selection of the North Point Water Tower was very interesting as it is a structure that embodied cutting edge technology at the time that it was designed, but now no longer serves that purpose. It is interesting because it is in essence a big tower with no function except to look like a castle. I wonder if the structure had looked more "engineered" and less "architectural" if Milwaukee would have had the desire to designate it as historically significant?
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