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Lower Waterworks
The Lower waterworks, dating from the early 16th century, is the second largest and second oldest waterworks in Augsburg. It consists of the Lower water tower, the Pump house and a water crossing where the inner city moat now crosses the Stadtbach canal.
Building history and description
- Plant with former water tower with pump house and canal bridge
- Augsburg, city center, cathedral district; Tower: Springergäßchen 4, pump house: Unterer Graben 1
- built around 1450-1500 over a former watchtower
- improved and increased 1538
- increased by three storeys until 1626
- Renovation and balustrade 1674
- internal development and construction of the pump house and buttresses 1737
- four-sided, six-storey water tower
- Hipped roof (after 1762), east saddle roof construction (for formerly three water wheels)
- west of the city stream simple hall construction (19th century)
- cast-iron canal bridge ("Zirbelnuss canal bridge" by Carl August Reichenbach)
- brick corridor from the pump house to the water tower
Lower Waterworks
Zirbelnuss canal bridge
Water tower of the Lower waterworks
Use and purpose
- first water supply to the bishop's residence, then to the entire cathedral district
- second largest waterworks of the city after the waterworks at the Red Gate
- in the 17th century, the Archimedean screws were replaced by water-wheel operated winder pumping station, then expanded by Caspar Walter
- in the 19th century, Georg von Reichenbach doubled the amount of water pumped through his cast-iron "water machine" (new sources replaced the Brunnenbach)
- 1865 more modern pump system of the MAN (until 1879)
- Lower Waterworks as extension of the drinking water supply system of the city Augsburg, supply of the cathedral district
- humanitarian or social component, testify to the separation of drinking and industrial water and the raising of the spring water by the motive water
- Association of the three historic waterworks in Augsburg's Old Town
- Drinking waterworks at the Hochablass (high drain) as a modern successor
Authenticity and unique features
- Water Tower (renovated 1997-1999) in urban property, privately rented
- Pump house renovated in 1988, building substance and "Zirbelnuss canal bridge" (renovated in 1984) in good condition
- technical equipment dismantled (cracks and construction drawings in the city archives of Augsburg, descriptions and drawings of the well master Caspar Walter in the inventory of the art collections and museums in Augsburg)
- testifies to the technical development of the water elevation (Archimedean screws - piston pumps - turbines)
- illustrates technical development of the water elevation best, technical pioneering role by turbine
- Augsburg's second largest and second oldest waterworks (after Waterworks at the Red Gate), thereby also the second oldest factory in Germany and Central Europe
