Tiddler on the Roof (Tank)
An Ode to the Water Tower.
The rhythm of New York's skyline is written in the meter of old building, new building, and water towers. If we're really getting into it, scaffolding is probably involved1 and especially in Manhattan, the odds are decent the new building is a glass monolith.2 But regardless of that, the undersung hero of the cityscape is the water tower.
So let us take a moment, you and I, to wonder how these seemingly humble structures came to not only push their way through their grand surroundings but plant their legs against the rush of time. Did that sound mellow-dramatic? It wasn’t actually meant to: I’m just pretty excited to talk about water towers.
The purpose behind the roof tank water tower is simple: it's reasonably easy to use the momentum of flowing water to get it up five flights,3 but extremely difficult to get water to the sixth floor or higher.4 Now, New York has never been one to let logistics impede growth, even when that meant the buildings outpaced the height of the fire department’s ladders,5 or the state motto would be “usually upward” but it's a lot easier to use gravity than to fight it, and that means a storage system perched above anywhere you think water needs to go.6
The tanks themselves are equal in elegant simplicity to the idea “water flows down, not up”: wood planks – usually cedar, sometimes California Redwood—held in water-tight place by iron or steel hoops. The hoops are tightened around the planks, which expand to seal as the tank is filled. If the mechanics of that sound familiar, it might not surprise you to learn that one of the earliest water tank companies began its life as a cooper: the Dalton Barrel Company, established in the Lower East Side in 1866 by a guy named William Dalton.
This was an explosive time in New York City history.7 New York’s population blew up by a factor of 50 over the nineteenth century. That is, not to put too fine a point on it, a staggering amount of growth, especially when you remember there was a big war smack in the middle of that. Major waves of immigrants started rolling into the city—mostly the Lower East Side—from Germany and Ireland in the 1840s. 12 million people would arrive at the port of New York over 30 years and four million of them stayed in the city. 1.27 million people arrived just in 1907. In fact, on April 17th of 1907 alone, Ellis Island processed 11,747 people.8 On a very related note, this was also the period that saw the rise of tenement9 buildings to house the entire city’s worth of people arriving in the already notably large city. As apartments went from crowded to overcrowded, the regulations around water supplies remained “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” and so epidemics soon followed.
The epidemics are where we’ll meet Dr. Stephen Smith, a doctor at Bellevue Hospital. Smith saw the end result of poor sanitation and that the laws of the day took a pretty hands-off approach even when he could track outbreaks to individual negligent landlords and a single building’s tainted water supply. He was able to effect some changes by drawing public attention to the issue10 and in 1863, he gathered other wealthy do-gooder types and formed the Citizens Association of New York. In 1864, they undertook a major sanitation survey of the city that came out the following year. In 1866, the same year William Dalton was founding his barrel company, the study helped engender the founding of the Metropolitan Health Board and clean water became a requirement rather than just a necessity.
The other hot problem of the day was fire.11 To be clear, fires are still bad but in the nineteenth century they were more like non-malicious mass shootings: hundreds of people could be killed in minutes and regulation would probably help. The fire at the Brooklyn Theatre on Washington and Johnson12 in 1876, for example, killed 278 people. 103 were never able to be identified and are buried without their names at Green-Wood.
Sprinklers could help reduce the destruction and the death toll, but they needed pressurized water. A large tank with an extra five thousand gallon capacity for fire suppression could provide the necessary reserve. By the 1890s, fire insurance would be discounted if buildings had roof tanks. Water towers became a way to combine two things everyone can get behind: saving money and not dying a painful and untimely death. And so New York’s growth spurt became hatted in untreated wood:13 all buildings over 6 floors have roof tank, for both domestic use as well as fire reserve. The city brings it to your building’s basement and its pumped up to the roof tank for storage until you or your friend in an 8th floor apartment want to wash your hands or brush your teeth.14
Growing along with the city were the companies that made the tanks, which brings us back to the 1890s. In 1894, William Dalton hired a Polish immigrant named Harris Rosenwach. When Dalton died two years later, his widow sold the company to Rosenwach, who recruited other family members and Rosenwach Tank Company was born.
Rosenwach Tank is still operating out of Brooklyn and up to its fifth generation of Rosenwachs. They’re unique as they make all their parts in house and keep their woodshop open year-round. They also hold the distinction of having social media and merch with its slogan on it, “We Tank NY.” They’re often cited as the oldest tank makers, but there’s a set of siblings who might disagree with that one.
Isseks Brothers Tank Company was founded in 1890. Careful readers or just people good at keeping numbers in their head may note that 1890 is after the Dalton Barrel Company was created but before it was bought by the Rosenwachs, so Isseks Brothers is older but people who say Rosenwach is the oldest aren’t Wrong Wrong they’re just maybe not right. Isseks Brothers is still family run out of Manhattan, but the family name is Hochhauser now – David Hochauser and his siblings Beth and Scott. The Isseks Brothers slogan is “A Tower of Strength” which sounds pretty badass to my ear, not gonna lie.
American Pipe & Tank the third tank-maker building the skyline. They’re fourth generation run (though the family name is “Silver,” not “Pipe & Tank”) out of offices in Queens. They deal in a lot of steel and plumbing but their subsidiary New York City Water Tanks builds the wooden barrels we all know15 and love.
Together, those three family businesses build and maintain the approximately 15,000 tanks in active use across the rooftops of the city. Because as weathered as they may appear, those tanks are absolutely still how New Yorkers above a certain floor get their water. When a tank reaches the end of its days, a crew16 can it take it down and put its replacement up in a single day, with two to three hours needed to fill it. They’re mandated to be cleaned once a year, which is a two-person job that costs a few hundred dollars and they throw in bacteria testing as part of the package.17
So in a city that’s constantly building and rebuilding how do roof tanks stand as towering examples of longevity? Mostly because they still work and they’re still the most sustainable option. For one thing, there’s money: an average wood water tank18 holds 10,000 gallons of water and costs approximately$35,000. A steel tank of the same size runs about $125,000 and requires different maintenance and lining. For a thing that usually lives on a roof, weather is also a factor. The wood planks of a roof tank insulate as well as two feet of concrete, while the steel risks freezing in winter and boiling in summer. Steel tanks can also be bigger than the halls and stairs of its building, so they may have to be put in place as the building is erected around it like Odysseus building his house around the bed he shared with Penelope.
I have not found in my extensive poking and pointing an official collective noun for water tanks. I would like to take this moment to propose “pressure”. Partly because I think it works—it’s connected to pressure! — and partly because that’s what I’ve been calling them for a while and I think I’d get fewer confused looks if other people got on board.
It should be said that parts of the technology have evolved: some tanks use probes to gauge water levels rather than valves. Power tools mean installation is extremely efficient. The bacteria testing is also a pretty big deal.
This evolution has carried through the towers themselves as well. Sculptor Tom Fruin creates luminous water towers that shine like stained glass. Shepard Fairey was commissioned to paint a mural on a tank on the Bowery. The Water Tank Project brought New York artists and students together to create art on towers to draw attention to environment justice. The wood from decommissioned tanks is upcycled to flooring and furniture companies or to artists sourcing materials.
It’s easy to be enraptured by the consistency of water towers, but also their somewhat paradoxical nature and appearance. We’re a city that has always defined ourselves by our ability to reach into the sky, but we can only reach up with these tanks lifting us. Amidst steel and glass and iron, they stand small among giants but they stand. Once you notice them, you see them in every air shaft, on every corner, stashed behind mesh and columns, always there and shifting with each step and each glance upwards, iconic and invisible. There’s an old line that the fastest way to draw a crowd in New York is to stand on a corner and look up. As I now stop on the sidewalk fairly regularly,19 I will vouch for the truth of it but sometimes it has to be done: attention must be paid.
O Henry's line that New York will be a great place if [we] ever finish seems to reverberate through the centuries like a foreboding of Cassandra sharpening into a curse.
Somewhere along the line, it seems to have been decided that the best way to show how wealthy you are is to tear down the walls and curtains and let the world into your living room. No kink shaming if that's your thing.
City water is gravity fed via aqueduct from upstate so there’s a lot of momentum to build.
About 60 feet up, if you like that sort of metric.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire ended how it did for a lot of reasons but one was a ten-story building and six-story ladder.
Like Batman, except it's the tank we both deserve and need. If we're being honest, that line maybe doesn't make the kind of sense it should.
Sometimes literally, but we’ll get to that.
Do feel free to remind some of our local politicians of these numbers; some fights we just keep coming back to, I guess, and it must be hard to remember history with multiple indictments on one’s mind.
Tens, tens, tenements across the board.
Like a forerunner of Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives.
Heyoooo.
The building would be home the Brooklyn Eagle and then be torn down to create Cadman Plaza.
The wood has to be untreated as otherwise the coating would seep into the water, which is why so many towers you see are weathered enough to look like they’re leftover from the 1800s despite towers being replaced every 30 years or so.
Since water doesn’t flow upward in other counties either, the surprising thing isn’t that New York has rooftop water towers, it’s that other places don’t. Not my shower, not my problem, but still – seems like other people are missing out.
Maybe we all? Definitely me. I know and love them. Seriously, I started an Instagram account that’s just water towers: it’s ohcaptainmycaptank and it’s my favorite part of the internet.
About six people.
The water tower in my building was cleaned this September! I would describe the handyman’s response to my enthusiasm as “befuddled.”
Though they come in all shapes and sizes: short little beans, tall boys, half stacks, big guy. These are not technical terms, but they could be if all agree.
I move to the side or tuck myself behind a bike stand: I am not a monster.
Hatted 🙂🎩