Ypsilanti Water Tower: The World's Most Famous Water Tower
Near Ann Arbor, Michigan
The Ypsilanti Water Tower was built in eighteen ninety at a cost of just over twenty-one thousand dollars, constructed of Joliet limestone and standing one hundred forty-seven feet tall with a steel tank holding two hundred fifty thousand gallons. Its designers were focused entirely on function. What they produced, however, was something else entirely.
In two thousand three, Cabinet Magazine ran a worldwide contest to identify the world's most phallic building. The Ypsilanti Water Tower won. Locals have called it the Brick Dick ever since, embracing the designation with the good humor that comes from living next to a nineteenth-century infrastructure landmark that also doubles as an internet celebrity.
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty-one.
