The 147-foot-tall Manassas Water Tower is the oldest water tower in the region and is designed in the typical style for its 1914-construction date. It includes a steel trestle supporting a 75,000-gallon-capacity tank with a hemispherical base (one of six water towers in Virginia with this hemispherical bottom), and a conical roof.
The tower signaled the community's transition from a small rural town to a modern city with planned infrastructure. Elevated steel water tanks – first developed in the 1890s – emerged as common landmarks in communities throughout the U.S. It provided citizens with clean drinking water and supported community-wide fire protection in a pressurized system.
This is the first water tower to be individually listed in the Virginia Landmarks Register (June 2016) and marks the oldest surviving public water tower in Northern Virginia at the time of its listing. In August 2016 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
