Timisoara Water Tower

The Water Tower in Iosefin is an industrial monument from Timișoara, Gheorghe Barițiu Street, no. 3. It was one of the sources of water supply in Timișoara at the beginning of the 20th century. It is classified as a National Heritage Site (Romanian:monument istoric) with LMI code TM-II-m-A-06152.

History

The Water Tower in Iosefin was built between 1913 and 1914, as a twin of the one in Fabric neighborhood. The 52-meter-tall towers were built at the two ends of the distribution system with the aim of compensating for the maximum consumption level during the day. The towers were executed according to the project made by engineers János Lenarduzzi (1865–1916) and Richárd Sabathiel (28 January 1875, Budapest – 14 June 1942, Budapest).

Just like the Water Tower in Fabric, its superior level is equipped with a drinking water tank of 500 m³, but it also has an industrial water tank (from the Bega River) of 250 m³situated at an inferior level.

Perspectives

Unlike the Water Tower in Fabric, the one in Iosefin belonged until 2012 to Aquatim (the company which supervises the drainage and water supply system in Timișoara), which in 2011 intended to find a purpose for it and organized, with this aim, a round-table where the Timișoara City Hall, the Directorate for Culture, Cults and Cultural Heritage of the Timiș County, the Timiș County Council, the Timiș County Construction Inspectorate and the Faculty of Hydrotechnical Engineering of the Politehnica University of Timișoara were invited. On this occasion, an exhibition was organized, displaying drawing boards of the 5th year students from the Faculty of Architecture of the Politehnica University of Timișoara. Some of the suggestions were the arrangement of the tower as a science museum, playing ground for children, reading corner or tea house. These ideas did not meet the requirements of Aquatim, therefore, since 23 November 2012, the tower has been signed under the property of the City Hall, which suggested that the tower should be transformed into either a restaurant, a café ("Franceso Illy"), a confectionery store or a museum.

Before becoming a property of the City Hall, there has been a lot of talk in 2012 about the idea of selling the tower, but some were against it. The space was considered too small for a restaurant or a café. And if it were sold, the investor may only be interested in the 2700 m² of land and the tower would no longer be preserved. Nevertheless, the idea of selling the tower was not abandoned, as it is preferred to the leasing or the letting, which would not make much money for the City Hall.

Its location, near the Bega River, was perfect for its initial purpose, but, unlike the water towers in Arad [hu; ro], Drobeta-Turnu Severin or Szeged, the area where it is situated is far away from the city center, and there are no other landmarks around. The tower could be the final destination of a tourist circuit through the Iosefin neighborhood, but at the moment there is no such circuit, which makes it of no interest to the private investors. The tower is now being used only as a GSM antenna holder. However, the desire to renovate it and include it on the list of different activities is there.

In 2008, the Timișoara City Hall announced its plans of setting up a small cultural café and a coffee museum inside the tower, dedicated to Francesco Illy, a man from Timișoara who invented the espresso machine.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Water Tower in Iosefin" and modified on June 22, 2020 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.