Built St. Louis > > The Watertowers || College Hill > > Grand Avenue Watertower

Nearly on the opposite end of the city, but still on the same road, stands the Grand Avenue or White Water Tower.

A free-standing, 154-foot Corinthian column, it is by far the most surreal of the three, rising out of an oval plaza in the center of the street. George Barnett, a St. Louis architect of considerable reknown, designed it in 1871, when the area was on the outskirts of the city. It originally served a waterworks complex on the Mississipi, at Bissel's Point.

The oldest of the three, it was also the first to go out of service, in 1912, when the erratic steam-driven pumping system began to be replaced by more stable electric pumps. Area residents have successfully resisted several attempts to have it demolished over the years.

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