Mississippi Water Tower Landmarked
From The New York Times
Seeking a Tribute to the Ordinary in a Water Tower
By Sheila Dewan
In recent years, Hernando, once a Southern classic with a courthouse square, stately white houses, spinster shut-ins and a pair of aging sisters who ran the well-known Shadow Hill Tea Room on their porch, has undergone significant development pressure. The housing boom, and the town’s proximity to Memphis, pumped the population from fewer than 3,000 in 1990 to about 15,000 today.
In response, Hernando went on a preservation kick, forming a commission that created four historic districts and overseeing the restoration of 80 percent of the buildings on the square. “We have thousands of new people coming to the community,” said Chip Johnson, the mayor. “We have no way to educate people about where they are.”
The water tower, which sits on a postage stamp of land near the square, was built by the Pittsburgh Des Moines Steel Company with money from a bond the town issued in 1925. During World War II, a guard was posted at the tower out of fear that Germans would poison the water. Shelly Johnstone, the deputy director of planning, calls the tower an emblem of the foresight civic leaders showed in providing a clean water supply.
Some Hernando natives were startled to learn that the water tower that has presided over their lives — a structure almost identical to the water tower in Coldwater, Miss., 10 miles down the road — was worthy of such attention. “It’s like ‘Antiques Roadshow,’ ” said Bill Ballard, a local lawyer. “Somebody tells you this is a real treasure, and you say, ‘We’ve been feeding the puppies out of that bowl.’ ”
There is already one water tower on the list of Mississippi landmarks, and there are at least 74 water towers or standpipes on the National Register of Historic Places, said James Gabbert, a historian for the register. Arkansas recently added 10 towers to the historic register, all of them relics of the Depression-era Work Projects Administration.
Many of the towers on the National Register possess some sort of architectural flourish or gimmick. But, Mr. Gabbert said, there is nothing preventing a workaday water tower from winning historic recognition. “There is a growing awareness of the importance of what we call the vernacular, the ordinary, things that represent ordinary people and workers,” he said.