Beloit Water Tower

By Randall Scherkenbach

Piece description from the artist

The Beloit Water Tower is a historic octagonal limestone water tower completed in 1889 in Beloit, Wisconsin. The walls are octagonal, 36 feet in diameter at the base with walls eight feet thick. As the walls rise, they taper in four stages with the top stage 30 feet in diameter. Lancet-arched windows let light into the tower. Originally, a tank 20 feet deep sat atop the tower, built of 3-inch cypress and holding 100,000 gallons of water. A pumping station was built just southwest of the tower, powered by steam-operated Smith and Vale pumps. The resulting system could shoot a two-inch stream of water 130 feet high. In 1914, the cypress tank collapsed. The water-works replaced it with a metal tank of the same size, built by the Eclipse Wind Mill Company, right in Beloit. On top of the tank was a cupola, and a flag pole on top of that.
By 1929, the water system served 25,000 customers, but the tower was outdated. A modern (for the time) steel tower was built nearby, with a 200,000 gallon tank. The metal tank was removed from the old tower, the stairs inside were removed, and demolition of the stone walls began, but the walls were well-built, and demolition was deemed too expensive. After demolition was given up, a Beloit Daily News article stated that the tower was "once regarded as the finest piece of masonry in the west". In 1983, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.