Plateau Strategy
The story
Walk around the tower once before deciding what it looks like. William W. Boyington designed it in a castellated Gothic Revival style, so a piece of water infrastructure appears to be a small medieval fortress. It was completed in 1869 to house a 138-foot standpipe that regulated pressure in the city's water system. The pipe became obsolete and was removed in 1911.
The tower and the nearby pumping station were among the few public buildings in this area to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Survival made the tower more than useful. It became a marker of continuity in a city that rebuilt at extraordinary speed.
Its beauty is strongest in contrast. The limestone is rough, pale and low beside the glass and dark metal around it. Across Michigan Avenue, the X-braced tower of 875 North Michigan rises from an entirely different century. Hold both buildings in one view. The distance between them is small, but the engineering history between them is enormous. Cross toward the taller building for 360 CHICAGO.