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130-foot spiral column that was to provide water pressure for the emerging neighborhood of Mantua with a standpipe wrapped in an ornate, circular staircase topped off with a 17-foot wide public viewing platform and, above that, a 16-foot statue of George Washington. Everything would be custom engineered, locally-manufactured, and, except for the base, in cast iron.
In the Fall of 1854, the 8-foot Gothic doorway at ground level was thrown open for the public to venture up the 172 narrow steps
Philadelphia’s standpipe had its models in ancient Rome’s venerable columns for Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, monuments with spiral stone steps on the inside and spiral stone friezes on the outside.
The London-published Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal profiled the standpipe. But so did Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, a popular national magazine of the day, whose editors presented an illustrated feature in the Spring of 1853.
Philadelphia’s standpipe had its models in ancient Rome’s venerable columns for Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, monuments with spiral stone steps on the inside and spiral stone friezes on the outside.
The London-published Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal profiled the standpipe. But so did Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, a popular national magazine of the day, whose editors presented an illustrated feature in the Spring of 1853.
The standpipe became obsolete after a reservoir that took more funds and time, came online in another 15 years.
The standpipe sat abandoned until the early 1880s, until, in yet another display of derring-do, engineers moved it in a single piece, to the Spring Garden Water Works.
But permanence proved fleeting and fickle; Philadelphia’s spiral column, its monument to industry, innovation, and history, was last seen somewhere at the end of the 19th century.
Its ultimate demise came without fanfare. Meanwhile, in Rome, the standpipe’s ancient progenitors remain standing—two millennia and counting.
