watertoren Utrecht Lauwerhof

Utrecht Lauwerhof water tower stands on Lauwerhof street in the old city of Utrecht, Netherlands, a 39-meter-tall water tower completed in 1895. Architect Lucas Christiaan Dumont gave it a neo-Renaissance design, and the project was handled by contractor Dessing from Gouda, costing 46,800 guilders. It was built in the backyard of the water company director P.E. Rijk's residence, the first water tower in Utrecht's history.

The reason for building this tower starts with the drinking water of the nineteenth century: at that time, Utrecht residents relied on wells, pumps and canals for water, but the canals also carried sewage, and cholera spread repeatedly. After several epidemics, understanding of contaminated water spread disease gradually deepened, and Utrecht established the first Health Commission in the Netherlands in 1855. It was not until 1883 that the city had formal piped water, run by the Utrechtsche Waterleiding Maatschappij. The water comes from Soestduinen fifteen kilometers away, relying on a fifty-meter elevation difference and steam pumping stations to deliver water into the city. As usage grew, stable pressure became hard to maintain, so the water company decided to build a water tower in the city center. The water reservoir hung thirty meters high holds 1,500 cubic meters, the largest of its kind in the Netherlands, built by the German company F.A. Neumann.

This tower pumped water until 1983, and the reservoir continued as a backup until 2010. For more than twenty-five years, the Waterleidingmuseum told visitors the past and future of Dutch drinking water. After the museum closed at the end of 2010 due to sponsor Vitens withdrawing funding, its collection was merged with the Nederlands Watermuseum in Arnhem. In 2016, Vitens sold the tower. Real estate company Caron converted it into three studio apartments, preserving many original features, with the ground floor reserved for meetings and training. The building is listed as a Dutch national monument, the rijksmonument; the water reservoir that once supplied water to the whole city still hangs at thirty meters up.