You look up and there is a water tower on the roof. A wooden barrel on stilts above the skyline. The water tower looks like it belongs in a Western. The water tower looks like it got lost on its way to Kansas and ended up on a tenement in Manhattan. Every building over six stories in New York has a water tower because the city water pressure only reaches six floors. After that you are on your own. The water tower is the building taking care of itself. The water tower is the building saying the city will only carry you so far.

You have seen a water tower from the street and it looks small. It is not small. The water tower holds ten thousand gallons. That is the weight of five cars sitting on top of a building. The water tower is the heaviest thing on the block and nobody thinks about it. Nobody worries about the ten thousand gallons above their head. The water tower has been up there since before you were born and it will be up there after you leave. The water tower is the most trusted object in New York because nobody ever checks on it.

You know what a water tower is made of. Cedar. Not steel. Not plastic. Cedar wood held together with steel hoops like a wine barrel. The water tower is nineteenth century technology sitting on top of a twenty-first century building. They build them the same way they built them in eighteen ninety. A crew of men with hammers and wood and no blueprints. They build a water tower in a day and it lasts thirty years. That is how New York works. The thing that keeps the city running was built by hand and nobody wrote a press release about it.

You have seen a water tower at sunset. The light hits the wood and the barrel turns gold. I have stood on rooftops and watched the water towers at dusk and they look like sentries. A row of wooden soldiers standing guard over the skyline. Every rooftop in New York has a soldier and the soldier is full of water. The water tower at sunset is the most beautiful thing in the city that nobody photographs. Everybody photographs the bridge. Everybody photographs the skyline. Nobody photographs the thing that keeps the skyline alive.

You notice some of the water towers are painted. An artist climbed up there and painted the barrel. That is the most pointless and most beautiful thing you can do in New York. Paint something nobody will see. Paint something that exists only for the pigeons and the helicopter pilots and the one person on the roof who looks up instead of down. The water tower does not need to be painted. The water tower does not need to be beautiful. But somebody made it beautiful anyway and that is the most New York thing there is. Making something nobody asked for and putting it where nobody can reach it.