Louisville Water Tower

The Louisville Water Tower, located east of downtown Louisville, Kentucky near the riverfront, is the oldest ornamental water tower in the world, having been built before the more famous Chicago Water Tower. Both the actual water tower and its pumping station are a designated National Historic Landmark for their architecture. As with the Fairmount Water Works of Philadelphia , the industrial nature of its pumping station was disguised in the form of a Roman temple complex.

Unknown to residents at the time, the lack of a safe water supply presented a significant health risk to the city. After the arrival of the second cholera pandemic in the United States , Louisville in the 1830s and 40s gained the nickname "graveyard of the west", due to the polluted local water giving Louisville residents cholera and typhoid at epidemic levels. This was because residents used the water of tainted private wells, but the linkage was not discovered until 1854 by the English physician John Snow, and not accepted as fact until decades later. Due to the water project's completion in 1866, Louisville was free of cholera during the epidemic of 1873.

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