Water tower on Na Grobli Street in Wroclaw - one of the oldest objects of technical infrastructure of the city. 40 meters high. It was built as a key element of the Jamesa Moorea water supply for 200,000 residents, revised and dressed in a historicizing garb by the city's building counselor (city architect) Johann Christian Zimmermann. Built between 1866 and 1871 at a cost of 3 million marks, it was put into operation on August 1, 1871, with a riveted steel tower tank in the center and an engine room. A second tank, of reinforced concrete, was added in 1902, and their combined capacity at the time was 4150 m³. In the engine room, from 1879, first pumping and steam generators of the Woolf system, made at Ruffer G. H., Maschinen-Bauanstalt in Breslau, according to the design of engineer Thometzek, worked, and then their role was taken over in 1924 by a steam turbine of the Zoelly system. The oldest of the cranes, still dating from 1871, is still preserved in the tower, and these devices operated until the tanks were taken out of service in the 1960s. Today, these facilities, still not dismantled, along with numerous 19th-century architectural details (such as the tallest, richly decorated cast-iron spiral staircase in Poland) document the history of world technology. In the 1990s, the idea of installing an Open Museum of Technology here was conceived, but the initiative failed. From April 2000 to 2005, still owned by the Municipal Water and Sewerage Company (MPWiK), it was used by the theatrical Art Group "Ad Spectatores" Under Calderón, which staged its performances there.
Michal - 07.08.2008
