Water Tower Observation Deck

This guide to the Water Tower Observation Deck in Seattle asks why Capitol Hill needed a reservoir in the sky, then answers with the blunt physics of 1906, when the Water Department raised a tank above the hill to push gravity-fed pressure to houses and fire hydrants below. It follows superintendent L. B. Youngs, who spent nearly three decades on the young water system, and landscape architect John Charles Olmsted, who pushed to let the standpipe double as a public viewpoint. Climb the tight spiral stairs past the tapering brick walls and the arched, grated windows framing the water below.