Art Deco R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant

At the recent 'Doors Open Toronto' I visited the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant. Partly to complete my tours of the water cycle (having been through the Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant almost 30 years ago) and partly because it is a series of cool looking buildings!

It's an extremely basic process (bring in water from the Lake, let it settle, filter it, add some chlorine and flourine and pump it out again) but in some beautiful buildings. Here are some of my pictures (or take a look at a 'blog.to' link here). For a good 'guided tour' I liked the 'Torontoist' site - lots of interesting information. (Click any photo to enlarge)

Looking up to the filtration building.

One of the big front windows in the filtration building.

Rotunda in the filtration building.

(This was an interesting column. At the top on two sides the 'clock-like' dials show how full the water storage tanks used to backwash the filters are. One side is a clock. And one side shows something else about the water levels. Also an indicator light - red in the picture above - as to the readiness to clean the filters).

Control panel in the pump room.

Nice brass guardrails and chain.

The pump room

Part of the service building

And as an added bonus, you may have seen the plant in a movie or television show, since it often seems to have doubled as a jail, asylum, or some nasty corporation's HQ. See the RC Harris Wikipedia link from the first sentence for a list.