Decoration
Water towers can be surrounded by ornate coverings including fancy brickwork, a large ivy-covered trellis or they can be simply painted. Some city water towers have the name of the city painted in large letters on the roof, as a navigational aid to aviators and motorists. Sometimes the decoration can be humorous. An example of this are water towers built side by side, labeled HOT and COLD. Cities in the United States possessing side-by-side water towers labeled HOT and COLD include Granger, Iowa, Canton, Kansas, and St. James, Missouri (Eveleth, Minnesota at one time had two such towers, but no longer does). When a third water tower was built next to the Okemah, Oklahoma set of Hot and Cold towers, the town briefly considered naming it "Running", but eventually decided to use "Home of Woody Guthrie". The House in the Clouds in Thorpeness, located in the English county of Suffolk, was built to resemble a house in order to disguise the eyesore, whilst the lower floors were used for accommodation. When the town was connected to the mains water supply, the water tower was dismantled and converted to additional living space.
Sapp Bros. truck stops use a water tower with a handle and spout – looking like a coffee pot – as the company logo. Many of their facilities have decorated actual water towers (presumably non-functional) on-site.
The first and original "Mushroom" – Svampen in Swedish – was built in Örebro in Sweden in the early 1950s and later copies were built around the world including Saudi-Arabia and Kuwait.
Many small towns in the United States use their water towers to advertise local tourism, their local high school sports teams, or other locally notable facts. Since the water tower is sometimes the highest point in the town, antennae, public address systems, cameras and tornado warning sirens are sometimes placed on them as well.
Many water towers serve manufacturing and other commercial facilities. These are often decorated with the name of the company that the water tower serves.
Read more about this topic: Water Towers
Famous quotes containing the word decoration:
“If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of his own comfort,—who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The question mark is alright when it is all alone when it
is used as a brand on cattle or when it could be used
in decoration but connected with writing it is
completely entirely completely uninteresting.... A
question is a question, anybody can know that a
question is a question and so why add to it the
question mark when it is already there when the
question is already there in the writing.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)