Brooks Catsup World’s Largest Water Tower
800 S Morrison Ave, Collinsville, IL 62234
Get there with Google Maps by clicking HERE
Date Visited: 07/18/2017
What’s that in the distance? It’s a HUGE catsup (ketchup?) bottle!
In Collinsville, IL you will find the 170 foot tall Brooks Catsup Bottle water tower. Several sources stated that it is the tallest water tower in the world. In my travels and discoveries of various “odd & unusual” sites there are many that claim to be the largest, smallest, tallest, etc. The misuse of superlatives seems to be fairly commonplace.
Brooks was never as popular as Heinz or Hunts brands of catsup (I’ll be using this spelling out of respect to Brooks for this post). However, Brooks Catsup was the ONLY brand on my family’s table growing up. It does seem to have been mostly a midwestern brand.
The Brooks Catsup Bottle water tower, is trademarked “The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle.” This is likely more true than claims it is the world’s “tallest” and it certainly not the top dog as far as capacity is concerned. Located just south of Collinsville, IL it is a prime example of mid-20th-century “novelty architecture.” It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in August 2002.
The water tower was built in 1949 to supply water to the Brooks Catsup plant, owned by the G.S. Suppiger Company. Apparently the president of the company, Gerhart S. Suppiger, came up with the idea of a water tower designed to look like the company’s catsup bottle.
In 1993, the then owners of the plant, Curtice-Burns, Inc., put the property up for sale. The water tower was offered to the city of Collinsville, but the city declined to purchase it due to the high projected cost of repairs and restoration. Over the following two years, volunteers raised $80,000 to “repair, strip, and paint” the aging structure. Other sources cite the Catsup Bottle Preservation Society for restoring the water tower. The project was completed in June 1995. Now it is a beautiful, historic attraction off Route 66 and is known worldwide.
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Thanks again!
Joe
