Water Tower RWD No. 6

New York's most quietly iconic structures — this fine art photograph of a rooftop water tower captures one of the city's most distinctive and enduring features, the wooden barrel towers that have supplied water to Manhattan's buildings for over a century. New York City's water towers are a peculiarity of the city's infrastructure: because the municipal water pressure is insufficient to supply buildings above six stories, the towers — typically made of cedar or redwood staves bound with steel hoops, built by a handful of specialist companies that have operated for generations — are filled by pumps and then gravity-fed to the floors below. There are estimated to be around 17,000 of them across the city, perched on rooftops from the Lower East Side to Midtown, weathering through the seasons, turning silver and grey as the wood ages. This photograph finds the beauty in one of these overlooked objects — the warm tones of the wood, the elegant simplicity of the form, the way it sits against the sky. A piece of the real New York for your wall. Printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper with optional acrylic glass or Alu-Dibond mounting for a gallery-quality finish.