Chicago's 178 rooftop water tanks, though protected by a 180-day demolition delay, may be nearing the end of their lifespans. (Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau)

Ronald Carlson, heir to four generations of Swedish-American coopers, may be the only man left in Chicago able to save the city's newest landmarks: gravity-fed rooftop water tanks. "They're simple, they're pleasing to look at and, with proper maintenance, they still do the job they were built to do, which is to fight fire," Carlson says.

In a city that suffered one of the United States' most devastating urban fires, controlling fire has been a serious concern. The Great Fire of 1871, which destroyed more than 17,000 structures, shaped Chicago politics and housing policies for decades. But the fire's widespread destruction also allowed Chicago to rebuild itself, tougher and brasher than before, a factory-town phoenix where forests of rooftop tanks soon added their brawny silhouettes to the city's neighborhoods.

This is the heritage Chicago's city council was trying to save when it unanimously passed an ordinance last July to keep the water tanks from being haphazardly torn down. The ordinance imposes a 90-day demolition delay on all gravity-fed wooden water tanks, which the city can extend at its discretion. Any tank visible from the street is protected by the ordinance, as long as it presents no danger to passersby.

The tanks' future once seemed secure. Chicago law required each industrial, commercial, or public building to have its own firefighting system. But by the 1950s, when most remaining tanks were built, electric firefighting systems became common. And the 1990s wave of loft conversions led to the demolition of thousands more tanks. "Maybe loft buyers would have felt uneasy living beneath a huge tank," Carlson says. In any event, only 178 tanks remain, according to the city.

John Russick, curator of architecture at the Chicago History Museum, believes the ordinance is needed. "So much of our expanded view of history and what's important about the way people lived is tied into ordinary objects like these tanks," he says.

But Russick has some concerns about the ordinance's effectiveness. "Its language about extending the review period by mutual agreement can be seen as time for the owner to come up with a new way of looking at the tank, or it can be a way to force the city's hand to allow the demolition," he says. "In the past, the hallmark of the property-rights movement was to let property get run down to the point that it was beyond repair."

That's where Carlson's firm, Johnson & Carlson, comes in. Today he is the sole repository of local knowledge about how to service and repair gravity-fed water tanks. His tiny office contains specifications on every surviving tank in the city, in just two file drawers. Above the cabinet hangs a mid-1990s map showing the city's total at 373 tanks. Just 10 years later, more than half are gone. By his count, only 91 are still in service.

The rest have been stabilized to allow them to safely remain in their original locations. "The tanks don't withstand outright neglect well," says Carlson. "The wooden staves shrink when they're not in contact with water and then the iron hoops that hold the tanks together fall down." For owners who want disused tanks to remain standing, Carlson can nail the hoops into place, enabling the tank's basic structure to remain intact, though it will no longer be watertight.

Water tank atop the Wirt Dexler building, which burned down this year (Bob Thall, Commission on Chicago Landmarks)

The tanks are typically made of redwood, which lasts 40 to 50 years, or cypress, which lasts 100. They range in capacity from 15,000 gallons to 60,000 gallons. The oldest one Carlson can recall is a cypress tank on the city's Near West Side that dates from 1924.

Today, Carlson looks back in the company files and sees that his grandfather sent out proposals indicating that, for only a few hundred dollars more, a customer could get a tank that would last 100 years instead of 50. "In nearly every case, companies chose to save the money and go with redwood," he says.

That long-ago choice could mean that protecting the tanks now is even more important: Since most of today's surviving redwood tanks date from the 1950s, many might be near the end of their lifespan. "The ordinance could be critical to saving them," says Russick. "They're not a thing of beauty—mostly nostalgia pieces in the eyes of the public."

Given the family business, it's no surprise that some of Carlson's earliest memories involve water tanks. But the same is true of Russick, who grew up 75 miles outside of Chicago. "There was a giant tank advertising Campbell's Soup near downtown that we could see from the expressway. As soon as we saw it, we knew it was almost time to get out of the car," he says. "I'm sure many commuters clocked their drive by that tower, too. Now, as a historian, that's what I look for: how everyday objects touched people's lives."

Early in the last century, only Chicago rivaled New York in numbers of rooftop tanks. Today, the Big Apple stands alone, with thousands of rooftop tanks remaining and multiple companies competing to service them. New York has no plans to protect its rooftop tanks, according to Elisabeth DeBourbon, spokeswoman for the Landmarks Preservation Commission in New York. "We only designate entire buildings as landmarks. We don't designate features of buildings," she says.

Therein lies another possible pitfall with Chicago's ordinance, which selectively safeguards the tanks while ignoring the buildings beneath them. Many of these buildings are nondescript or in poor condition.

In fact, many would view the tanks themselves as nondescript, so ordinary that they're taken for granted. "The tanks live in people's visual memory, even when they're no longer there. Most people probably think they're still a dime a dozen, and they're not," Russick says. "Someday, we'll all be looking at each other and asking ourselves what's missing. That the tanks are part of the landscape makes them worth saving, but it's also their Achilles' heel."

Darcy Lewis is a freelance writer in Chicago.

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