Wasserturm Schwerin-Neumühle

The Wasserturm Schwerin-Neumühle rises 22.5 metres on an 86.1-metre-high vineyard in the Neumühle district, the highest point in Schwerin. Its 11.5-metre cylinder is a double shell of clinker bricks in the old imperial format. Below it, a polygonal base of natural stone takes the weight. You can pick out the brick Gothic detailing: pointed arch windows, blind niches, glazed bricks and a crown of battlements.

The Berlin architect Henry Gill designed it, and Carl Benduhn built the structure in the late nineteenth century. Schwerin put it to work in 1890 as part of its central water supply. Filtered water from the Neumühler See filled a 70,000-litre pure water shaft before pumps pushed it into the tower or earth tanks. Inside sits an iron Intze-2 tank with a capacity of 350 cubic metres. A round arch frieze marks where the water tank begins.

Early in the twentieth century Schwerin switched to groundwater, and the earth tanks went out of service. The tower, though, stayed on the job: WAG Schwerin mbH owns it, the oldest technical structure in Schwerin's public water supply. It is also a protected monument, renewed several times in the 1990s and early 2000s. The work lined the tank interior with cement mortar, added corrosion protection and repaired the roof and masonry. Under the battlements, the iron tank still balances pressure in the city's water network.