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Sara Hamm, Art Historian
The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
A water tower consists of an elevated water tank and a shaft. It serves a double purpose: the
storage of a certain quantity of water and the creation of a sufficient pressure for the transport
of water over far distances. The smooth distribution results from the principle of the
communicating tubes: the height of the tower must correspond to the highest point in the
pipeline system, which can be supplied with water.
The size of the water tank depends on the quantity of water needed at the maximum daily
peak, the needed breakdown reserve in case of pump loss and the needed reserve for fireextinguishing.
A complex public water supply system developed in Germany in the middle of the 19th
century and led to an important improvement of the hygenic standards. A central element of
this modern water supply was the water tower. With it water storage and the elevation of
water were united for the first time. The largest number of water towers was built around
1900 in a period of thirty to forty years, when the villages and cities were equipped with a
public water system. Due to increasingly higher buildings being built in the twenties and
thirties of the 20th century, the water towers started to lose their importance during that time.
Since then, they represent a relatively short time period within the industrial and town
development. Despite this short period, there are many variations in the shapes of different
water towers.
Apart from the technical challenge, the problem of an aesthetically satisfying integration
came up with reservoirs, which were established in urban surroundings. The construction of
the containers and the supply system for water were tasks allocated to an engineer. With the
desire to integrate the outer appearance of the water tower into the architectural structure of
the town resulted additionally the task to find a formative solution. The outer casing of the
water tank and its shaft was done in many cases by an architect. Since the water towers were
a relatively young task of building and since water towers stand out for their height, they
formed an architectural challenge.
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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The most important functional element of a water tower is the elevated reservoir. This
principal part of each water tower that had been technically optimized during the 19th
century, gave reason to the building of a tower.
Different types of water containers1
If one leaves formative conditions aside, the task of building consisted mainly of constructing
a container as well as a shaft, which carries the water tank and lifts it to the necessary height.
Although towers were also built in this simple form, the public water towers in urban
surroundings followed complex formative laws. Bernd and Hilla Becher take a clear position
on this fact when they write about formal principles of industrial buildings in the 19th century
that “the attempts to hide the functional construction” reached from “little style-adds up to
total masking”2. The actual building - so the authors - was hidden and masked.
This is true for most of those towers erected in a historicist style. It is interesting, however,
how the towers change during Art Nouveau.
1
Rödel, Volker: Reclams Führer zu den Denkmalen der Industrie und Technik in Deutschland, Bd. 1 Alte
Länder, Stuttgart 1992
2
Bernhard und Hilla Becher: Die Architektur der Förder- und Wassertürme. Studien zur Kunst des 19.
Jahrhunderts Bd. 13, München/Passau 1971, p. 11.
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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First, I will focus on a tower which was never built.3
Its plans, however, illustrate very nicely the direction
the construction of water towers were to take from it
on.
Under the slogan “six columns” Joseph Maria
Olbrich sketched the water tower at the orphanage in
Hamburg Uhlenhorst in the context of a competition
in 1906. Here I show Olbrichs perspective drawing of
the water tower. It is done with a drawing-pen, brush
and coloured pencil on grey-brown drawing
cardboard. The measures are 65.8 x 33.5 cm.
The water tower is presented isolated in the center of
the drawing and without direct relation to other
buildings. Outlines of an urban surrounding are
indicated on the horizon, but they remain
schematically and insignificant for the selected point
of view. Hardly higher than the plinth area of the
water tower, these shade outlines form rather a
transition of the soil level to the sky than enter into an architectural dialogue with the tower.
A brightly coloured plinth separates the tower from the natural soil and forms a base for the
green, straight tower shaft.
The total gesture of the tower is the vertical, which is emphasized by the round columns.
They are shaped in a simple way, but massive in diameter. The tower shaft takes almost the
double height of the tower head and is of a dark green without ornamental decoration. Above
a transient area with red balconies the tower head rises in bright, yellowish green colours.
Through its brighter colour it forms a strong contrast to its dark shaft. Since the tower head is
larger in diameter than the tower shaft and in addition is decorated with the municipal coat of
arms of Hamburg, it becomes the most important and most remarkable section of the
building.
3
Joseph Maria Olbrich, Wasserturm in Winterhude, Berlin, Kunstbibliothek der Stiftung Preußischer
Kulturbesitz.
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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The openings remain very unobtrusive at this tower. The entrance is carried out in a
representative way by the outer staircase, the sopraporta and the framing columns, but
remains quite inconspicuous due to its small size in comparison to the entire tower. The
entrance is primarily accentuated by that remarkably broad way, which leads up to the outer
staircase. The window openings remain even more unobtrusive than the entrance as they are
not only small, but also very simple in their reveals, sills and intels. Since the “built skin” is
interrupted only by these unobtrusive openings, the tower appears coherent and enclosing,
permitting no dialogue from the inside and outside. The entire building works thereby as a
unified whole, so that in a countermove the total form is stressed.
The following water tower was built in Plön
in 1913 after the planning of Carl Franke.4 It
is 42 meters high and measures six meters in
diameter. Its water tank is designed according
to the Inze I principle. Since a larger water
tank had been erected on the Parnasshill in
Plön, the tower was relieved in 1974 of its
former use. 1977 the building was classified
as a historical monument. In 1983/1984
private owners converted the tower and its
water tank into an accommodation unit.
The tower was erected on a location of 37
meters above sea level. It therefore towers
above the relatively small town and is visible
from far away. The main effect of the water
tower of Plön is caused by its gracile and slim form. No direct plinth area marks the
transition of the natural soil to the built architecture, it kind of ‘grows’ out of the soil. Instead
of a base around the tower foot an earth barrier was piled up around the shaft. This gives the
impression as if the tower had pushed itself up directly through the soil and had grown to the
light like a plant. The earth barrier corresponds to the earth elevation which leaves a growing
sprout. Here, the soil itself becomes the base for the tower.
In the first quarter the tower shaft is larger in diameter than the remaining three quarters.
Thus, the lower tower gives a counterweight to the dominant roof helmet. Primarily the
4
Photo © Stadtarchiv Plön.
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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vertical direction is underlined in the construction of the tower shaft, and because of the
withdrawing wall between the buttresses and a cornice which jutes far over the shaft, the
shaft seems even thinner than it is. The tower head in which the container is hidden, forms
the dominating section of the tower. The head is separated clearly from the shaft by the
cornice, which is dominant and large in diameter. The materials underline this separation.
The hood in black slate is separated from the red brick of the shaft by the moulding made of
concrete. The moulding becomes a pedestal for the ‘exhibited’ hood on it, resting on the high
tower shaft. The separation is very consistently emphasized by the withdrawing wall between
cornice and hood. The hood seems to separate from its pedestal and to float above it.
The last water tower I want to present here is
the water tower in Bardenberg (a small town
about ten kilometres north of Aachen) which
was built in the years 1909 to 1911.5 The
tower reaches a height of 47 meters and
measures about seven metres in diameter at
the ground. The water tank is an iron
Barkhausen-container. The tower is classified
as a historical monument since November
1982 and was in use until 1985. Today it is in
private property and was converted into space
for living.
The water tower rises highly over the small
village of Bardenberg. During the construction
period of the tower the place was oddly assorted with some agricultural enterprises and the
houses of the mining industry workers. The village is set on an elevation in the otherwise flat
Aachener countryside, and on the second highest point of the place the water tower was
erected.
The highest location was not an option since there a pipeline supply would not have been
possible. The massive concrete foundations are hidden by an earth barrier, so that the tower,
similar to the tower of Plön, rises without an architectural base directly from the earth. The
conical building made of bricks is strongly vertically structured by the six buttresses tapering
in two steps. Between each of them five simple rectangle windows are arranged axially one
5
Photo © Heimatverein Bardenberg.
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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above the other. A clear cornice, which projects the buttresses, concludes to the roof. Over
the moulding rises the roof-hood in copper, formally in slate (as the tower of Plön). In the
arrangement of the roof the design principles of the tower shaft are resumed. Above the
buttresses the enlargement is continued by pitch-nose-like projections, and in the axle of the
windows there are six small windows in the upper range of the hood. The copper hood is
carried by a complex wooden roof truss as an open roof structure and hides the large
Barkhausen-container.
Again the vertical is accentuated by the emerging buttresses, interrupted only by a few
horizontal elements. The mouldings remain discreet hints which vary the vertical stress
formed by the buttresses in an interesting way.
The fundamental design principle, which arranges the tower clearly into shaft and tower
head, is found in all three water towers. The difference in design can be found mainly in the
dealing with the pillars. Olbrich structures the shaft with massive round columns. They
support the column-like structure of the tower shaft, which receives a pedestal with the base
and with the gradual widening by the red balconies the suggestion of a capital. The hollow
round columns have above all a formative function.
At the tower of Bardenberg the buttresses are broad and angular. They clarify the supporting
function of the tower shaft in a very sober way. The buttresses of the tower of Plön are
reduced to narrow supporting pillars striving into the vertical. They end in broad consoles
embracing the gallery and illustrate in their general gesture an elegant elevation of the water
tank. The shafts of these towers illustrate the change in design beginning with a decoration
playing with meanings and ending in the clear and sober solving of a technical problem. But
the container casings evade this clear order. The towers in Bardenberg and Plön, developed
later, stand the puristic forms which arose in architecture at the beginning of the 20th century,
nearer than Olbrich’s tower, whose container’s casing is still decorated with ornamental
forms. But the sober tower shaft is crowned neither in Bardenberg nor in Plön by a simple
water tank. In both water towers the containers disappear artfully packed in coverings, which
concur hardly with their form. Therefore it remains masked for the comparative viewer that
the water tank of Plön is designed according to the Inze I principle, while in Bardenberg it is
a Barkhausen-container.
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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Hamburg
Bardenberg6
Plön7
Like other architectural tasks which developed with the industrialization, the water tower did
not have typological or formal standards formed by former buildings. But what complicated
in Historicism the formative solution of the towers, became in reform architecture an
advantage of the water tower. The architects of Historicism tried to solve the problem of the
lacking of typological models, by drawing parallels to known building genres with historical
background, which had absolutely no relation to the function of a water tower. The reform
architects searched instead for their own aesthetic expression. Adelbert Matthaei writes 1914:
“If we [...] only let ourselves be pervaded by the modern tasks of building [...]of the
numerous new tasks in the industrial, business and traffic section, about which former
architects had no idea, then we must succeed with the strength of our own fantasy and our
architectural gift to create new things and bring new forms into life [...].”
The pronounced efforts in Historicism to hide each new achievement behind a well-known
form canon came to a limit. The dissonance of innovative achievements and their artistic
wrapping increased and required by the continuous development of new manufactured
products and building genres a more harmonious solution. Art nouveau tested a way between
purely functional civil engineerings and the masquerade of Historicism. Henry van de Velde
says 1909: “Kunst und Industrie einigen, heißt nichts Geringeres, als Ideal und Wirklichkeit
verschmelzen.“ Which translates closely as: “To unit art and industry, is nothing smaller,
than to merge ideal and reality.”
6
7
Photo © Sara Hamm, 2004
Photo © Birgit Binder 2000
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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The formative solutions of the water towers
introduced here also show an attempt to mediate
between a simple functional construction and the
aestheticizing of it. In all water towers the
vertical is stressed by projecting pillars and the
tower shaft is separated clearly from the range of
the container. The tower section “hiding” the
elevated reservoir does not lose itself in an
arranged front, but is clearly emphasized and
marks the most important part of the building.
Here lies a large difference to the water towers of
Historicism, where it was almost impossible to
locate the container behind the front.
Mannheim8
With the presented water towers the container range is even particularly stressed by the
protruding or coloured cornice and the change of materials. In the tower of Bardenberg and
Plön the moulding becomes, as I have shown before, almost a pedestal for the covered water
tank.
The container is locatable and remains hidden at the same time, because not the simple
container is presented on a pedestal, but its complex enclosing. In the tower of Plön and
Olbrich’s blueprint for Hamburg the covering makes the water tank look like a casket, at the
tower of Bardenberg it looks almost as if the water tank is wrapped in a piece of folds
throwing cloth. Not the technical and operational sequence is shown, but rather its stylized
form as carrier of meaning. Gert Kähler calls this “the choice between ‘bicycle' and ‘light
switch'”9. In the first the sequence of functions remains visible and comprehensible, in the
latter it is disguised without pretending to be something else.
The function of the water tower is abstracted. The abstraction shows a precious tower head,
which is lifted up by a strong shaft. This corresponds with the task of the water tower, where
8
9
Mannheim, Wasserturm, Gustav Halmhuber, 1886 bis 1889; photo © Sara Hamm, 2004
Kähler, Gert: „...kai rei ta panta.“ In: Bauwelt, 80, September 1989, nr. 36, p. 1687
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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the water is pumped up to the height of the water tank and retained in it making it the most
valuable part of the tower.
Olbrich saw the water tower as a storage container for a precious substance. In the tower for
Uhlenhorst a load-bearing and uplifting shaft is separated from a preciously coated water
tank, and thus, the operational principle of the water tower shaped its form. With the columns
Olbrich gives only a hint regarding the theme of the elevation of water. In contrast, with the
pillars of the tower of Plön and their continuation in the cornice the architect expresses
almost an upward motion.
Looking at the towers I have presented here it becomes clear that the architects were
searching for forms which make it possible to derive the use from the shape. But it is not
only a form harmonizing with the function, but beyond that the function is aestheticized.
Thus the water towers receive complex formed roofs, which float in complicated roof
framings over the water tanks and are of importance for the effect of the tower.
They become noble containers, sculptural and monumental objects, aroused by an aesthetic
superelevation of the function. The sculptural impression is supported by the unobtrusive
window openings, since the outside building structure seems in a way more closed and the
total form comes out clearly. The architectural expression assimilates with the inner structure
and functional organization and becomes a “custom-made dress” for the functional water
tower.
Visible over a long distance these noble receptacles can decorate a village or a town like a
vase or a precious container placed at a dominant position is able to decorate an interior. The
towers are not or nearly not decorated. They become the decoration of the respective village
or town. They become a visible aesthetic indication of the modernity of the place. The
functional system of the water tower required a height above all buildings of the environment
around. This implied that a water tower always exceeded the architectural structure of a town
even if it was not established on the highest point. At the beginning of the twentieth century
towers of a village were mostly the towers of churches and town halls, whereby the latters
achieved rarely a comparable height. Each larger village could show at least a church tower,
whose specific form marked the urban silhouette. With the water tower a further building,
which was visible from far away, was added.
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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Bardenberg, photo © Sara Hamm 2004
But since not in each village a water tower was established, it was not only the form, but the
building itself, which could lend a specific character to the silhouette of a village. This
circumstance made it easily possible that the water tower became the landmark of a locality.
A landmark that could become a kind of deputy for the municipality and made it a
recognizable place. Particularly in smaller municipalities the water tower became often a
local mark. Similar to the handling of an old “village-tree” regional writer and musicians
wrote songs and poems on “their tower”. In the refrain of the “national anthem of
Bardenberg” occurs up to today besides their castle the water tower. In the poems and songs
on water towers mostly their stability and steadfastness are underlined as well as their
outstanding height, which finds expression in a characterisation of the water tower as
guardian over the place.
Beyond that the towers stood for progress and a better quality of life. They were the visible
marks of the underground pipeline system, which brought precious water into each house. At
the beginning of the twentieth century more cities and municipalities than ever invested in a
modern public water supply. In that context the water tower could become a proud symbol of
victory of a smaller municipality over a larger, if the latter did not have yet a modern water
supply net. By way of their function, underlined even more by their designed shape, the
water towers stood for a new life-style. They became clear indications of a general renewal
of life. With an appropriate design concept the watertowers became models for an
“aestheticized life”.
Sara Hamm, The Watertower as Décor – Exceeding Generic Concepts in Art Nouveau
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