Leaning Tower of Niles

On the northwest edge of Chicago, in the suburb of Niles, there is a half-scale concrete replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It is ninety-four feet tall, leans seven feet and four inches off vertical, and was built in nineteen thirty-four as a water tower for a swimming pool.

The man responsible was Robert Ilg, owner of the Ilg Hot Air Electric Ventilating Company of Chicago. In the early nineteen thirties, Ilg built an employee recreation park called Ilgair Park, complete with swimming pools and an artificial lake. The pools required a large water tank and pumping equipment. Ilg decided that rather than building a utilitarian water tower, he would disguise the infrastructure inside a landmark replica. His architect, Albert Farr, designed the structure at about half the height of the original in Pisa: ninety-four feet versus roughly one hundred eighty-three feet.

Construction began in nineteen thirty-one and was completed in nineteen thirty-four. Ilg also framed the tower as a monument to Galileo, who according to popular legend dropped objects from the top of the Pisa original to demonstrate that falling bodies of different masses accelerate at the same rate. Galileo was born in Pisa, and Ilg, himself of Italian heritage, saw the tribute as fitting.

The recreation park is long gone, but the tower survived. It passed through several owners over the decades and eventually became a landmark in its own right. In twenty nineteen, the National Register of Historic Places listed the Leaning Tower of Niles, recognizing it as a significant example of early-twentieth-century recreational architecture and concrete construction.

The tower sits next to a YMCA and is visible from the street. It is, by any measure, the most unexpected thing you will encounter on the northwestern approach to Chicago, and it has been startling motorists on this stretch of road for more than ninety years.