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:
“Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.”
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
“The structure was designed by an old sea captain who believed that the world would end in a flood. He built a home in the traditional shape of the Ark, inverted, with the roof forming the hull of the proposed vessel. The builder expected that the deluge would cause the house to topple and then reverse itself, floating away on its roof until it should land on some new Ararat.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)