Property Record
2288 N LAKE DR
Architecture and History Inventory
| Historic Name: | North Point Water Tower |
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| Other Name: | NORTH POINT WATER TOWER |
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| Reference Number: | 27231 |
| Location (Address): | 2288 N LAKE DR |
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| County: | Milwaukee |
| City: | Milwaukee |
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| Year Built: | 1873 |
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| Historic Use: | public utility/power plant/sewage/water |
| Architectural Style: | Early Gothic Revival |
| Structural System: | |
| Wall Material: | Stone - Unspecified |
| Architect: | CHAS. A. GOMBERT |
| Other Buildings On Site: | |
| Demolished?: | No |
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| National/State Register Listing Name: | North Point Water Tower |
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| National Register Listing Date: | 2/23/1973 |
| State Register Listing Date: | 1/1/1989 |
| National Register Multiple Property Name: |
| Additional Information: | LOCALLY DESIGNATED 11/9/1982. HABS WI-249. This High Victorian Gothic water tower perched atop a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan is one of the nation’s finest surviving nineteenth-century water towers. It commemorates an era when civil-engineering projects doubled as monuments to lavish design. The seventeen-story tall tower is built of rock-faced local limestone and dressed limestone trim. A Gothic buttress culminating in a stone pinnacle embellishes each corner of the square base. And each of the four steeply pitched gables in the base boasts a bold corbel-table frieze. Above, a tapering cylindrical shaft supports an elaborate observation platform, bedecked with copper pinnacles, gables, and windows. The North Point tower remains the most visually striking component of the city's original waterworks system, developed during the 1870s. Steam-powered pumps drew water from Lake Michigan, but their uneven pulsation stressed the water mains. City engineers enclosed a huge metal standpipe inside this decorative tower to relieve the pressure. An iron staircase (closed to the public) spirals around the pipe, leading to the observation deck 135 feet above the ground. Although the water tower went offline in 1963, made obsolete with the completion of the Howard Street water purification plant, this picturesque and beloved landmarks remains a monument to progressive nineteenth-century civil engineering. |
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| Bibliographic References: | MILWAUKEE HISTORIC BUILDINGS TOUR: NORTH POINT, CITY OF MILWAUKEE DEPARTMENT OF CITY DEVELOPMENT, 1994. Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. |
| Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, State Historic Preservation Office, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin |