Structure
The exterior was designed in the popular Queen Anne style of the period. Queen Anne design was less formal than other popular styles at the time. Instead it experimented with different shapes particularly towers. Queen Anne buildings also often had more decoration than this structure.
The stone tower is located at the highest point of elevation of the city on Summit Street. The tower is made of Joliet limestone. The tower is 147 feet tall, has an 85 foot base. The substructure walls taper from a thickness of forty inches at the bottom to 24 inches at the top. The reservoir holds a 250,000-gallon steel tank. When it was constructed it had a dual purpose. Not only did it store water but the falling water also generated electricity for the city street lamps at night.
A marble bust of Demetrius Ypsilanti stands between a Greek and a U.S. flag at the base of the water tower. The city of Ypsilanti is named after this hero of Greek independence.
Read more about this topic: Ypsilanti Water Tower
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)