The drainpipe carried the water from the roof to the ground. A vertical tube bolted to the side of the building that caught what the gutter collected and delivered it to the street. The drainpipe was the building circulatory system running in reverse. The heart pumps blood up. The drainpipe pumps water down. Gravity was the pump. Gravity never breaks. Gravity never needs a service call. The drainpipe was the only plumbing in the building that worked on a principle that could not fail.

The drainpipe was cast iron or copper or lead depending on the century. The lead pipes were Roman. The Romans ran lead drainpipes down the facades of buildings two thousand years ago and the lead lasted because lead does not rust. The word plumbing comes from plumbum which is Latin for lead. Every plumber carries the Romans in the name of the trade. The copper drainpipe turned green. The green was the patina and the patina was the copper protecting itself from the air the way a scab protects the cut. The green was the wound healing.

The drainpipe had brackets. Iron straps bolted through the mortar joints of the brick wall every four feet. The brackets held the pipe away from the wall by an inch. The inch mattered. The pipe needed room to expand when the water froze inside it and the ice pushed the pipe wider and the bracket held the wider pipe and the bracket did not let the ice push the pipe into the wall. The bracket was the restraint. The bracket understood that the pipe would try to move and the bracket job was to let it move a little but not a lot. Every good restraint works the same way.

The bottom of the drainpipe had an elbow. A ninety-degree bend that turned the vertical water horizontal and aimed it away from the foundation. Away from the foundation. That was the entire point. The water had to leave the building. If the water pooled at the foundation the foundation got wet and the wet foundation cracked and the cracked foundation leaked and the leaked water filled the basement and the basement was the building memory and a flooded memory is no memory at all. The elbow aimed the water at the street. The street could take it. The street was built to take what the building could not hold.

They snap plastic drainpipes together now. The plastic does not rust and does not turn green and does not age and does not tell you anything about the building. The cast iron drainpipe told you the building age the way a tree ring tells you the tree age. The rust pattern. The bracket style. The joint method. Soldered or riveted or slip-fit. Each joint was a date stamp. The plastic joint is a click. The click is the same in 2026 as it will be in 2076. The click has no memory. The click is a sound that tells you nothing happened.

See also: Downspout, Gutter Pipe