Taking a closer look at the sculptures on the Washburn Water Tower, Minneapolis, Minnesota


A good friend of mine recently started going through some of his photos of his old neighborhood in Minneapolis, called Tangletown, and today he sent me this photo of the Washburn Water Tower in 1978.

This water tower, which is on Prospect Avenue between Harriet and Highview, and is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, as the Washburn Park Water Tower, is something that I really have no memory of, although it was just a few blocks away from where I went to high school, and closer still to my friend's house, where I visited quite often to flop his dog's ears. So today I thought that it would be good to take a closer look.




Since my friend is an Engineer, and I'm a Graphic Designer, we do see things differently. We was able to tell me about its history, how it replaced the original water tower, the fact that it sits on the highest point in the city of Minneapolis, that sort of thing, but what I really enjoyed is how he said that as a kid he would stand right underneath the sword and wait for him to drop it on his head.


I was able to get some basic information from Wikipedia (which you shouldn't always trust, but for this stuff is pretty reliable), and apparently it was built in 1932, and the sculptures were done by John K. Daniels. I found a picture of him on the Library of Congress website from 1903 when his claim to fame was doing sculptures in butter. And now I'm thinking of the Minneapolis that he saw from the first time his picture was in the paper (that's the Minneapolis Journal, by the way) until he did these admittedly heroic sculptures on a water tower. Those are guardians of health, by the way.


I really don't know if they're supposed to be historically accurate, or to just be representational, but to me they kinda look like Knights from the time of King Arthur. I think I see chainmail armor? You know, the time of gadzooks, gramercy, and feasting with the king, quaffing mead, eating gigantic turkey legs, and wiping your hands off on the dogs. None shall pass!


As I look at the Guardians of Health on the Washburn Water Tower, I'm reminded of the first time I saw the sculptures on Hoover Dam, which were done in the same era. And this type of artwork was used to decorate all kinds of things, especially engineering achievements. It as if they wanted to say, "Ta-da!", and that this was more than just some concrete that would give people water that wouldn't give them typhoid. Of course now we just take it all for granted, and wonder why these people thought that something should have monumental sculpture. Nowadays it might seem pretentious, but I'm glad they did it, and I understand.

Thank you for visiting the Washburn Water Tower with me!



Photos courtesy of Ted Bezat, used with permission.

Library of Congress links:


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