Thousands have lived without love,
not one without water.
W. H. Auden, First Things First, 1956
Seventy eight feet of reinforced concrete. Corner of Alma and Hawthorne. Built in 1910.
A water tower. 155,000 gallons. It helped establish Palo Alto’s city-owned utility system, back when the city actually built things for the public good, imagine that. It did its job for seventy-seven years. Then in 1987, the water utility walked away.
1995: someone has an idea. Turn it into a six-story home. Why not? It’s there. It’s solid. It’s got history. Make something useful out of it.
Disruption Town says no.
So it stands there. Empty. A monument to nothing in particular. Can’t tear it down, can’t use it, can’t reimagine it.
Just a 78-foot concrete cylinder on a street corner, reminding everyone that Palo Alto has never met a creative solution it couldn’t reject.
Palo Alto Tower Well, 201 Alma St, Palo Alto, CA 94301.