The World's Tallest Water Sphere

David Arminio, Vice President of the Union Township Historical Society, and Dan Becker, editor of WorldsTallestWaterSphere.com, appear in a documentary “The Story of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere” by Bob Buel. The three minute documentary features recollections by the subjects about the World’s Tallest Water Sphere (WTWS) located in Union Township, New Jersey.

The water tower has stood in Union since 1964 and overlooks the Kawameeh swamp on the Elizabeth River. The tower with its large “Union” lettering is visible from major highways such as the Garden State Parkway, US Route 22, US Interstate 78, and Union’s main street Morris Avenue. The tower is often photographed from aircraft at the nearby Newark Liberty International Airport.

Recently the township has revealed information that the water tower owner American Water plans to decommission and disassemble the tower once the mobile phone antennas are located elsewhere. This announcement has caused many news organizations and fans to create and share stories about the tower.

This documentary was created by filmmaker Bob Buel as an entry to the Twitch channel MinnMaxShow for their annual DocLightning documentary film contest. The MinnMaxShow episode is available here.

Bob Buel is a lifelong Union resident for 30+ years, always appreciative of the Water Sphere in the skyline. He has hosted, runs & edits an interview podcast called “99 Questions” for 5 years where he’s interviewed over a hundred comedians, writers, actors, journalists, pro wrestlers and everything in between.

The documentary “The Story of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere” by Bob Buel is available on YouTube.

Tempora Mutantur – “The times change, and we change with them”

The World’s Tallest Water Sphere is scheduled for decommissioning. New Jersey American Water (NJAW) which owns the tower says decommissioning will occur once the mobile antennas are moved to a new tower. Once decommissioned, NJAW will be scheduled for demolition.

This article states that Union Business Administrator Don Travisano recognizes “It is more than just a curiosity; it is, in effect, a historical landmark and one of the many prominent treasures that Union is known for.” and township officials have reached out to NJAW to explore the possibility of designating the water sphere as a historic landmark.

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/union/sections/government/articles/union-s-iconic-water-sphere-set-for-demolition-as-new-cell-tower-proposal-moves-forward

Our fan and photographer Steven Hans Lindner shares his recent photo (©2023) of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. Wow, just look at the autumn color! Unfortunately the beautiful foliage draws attention to the aging paint job. This is a very unique angle of the sphere. Can you see your house on the photo?

A Lego competition held in Union, New Jersey on October 21st, 2023 wins notoriety for its builder and the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. The LEGO Challenge contest hosted by the Union Police Activities League (P.A.L.) had over one dozen entries. Corey D. Samuels, a LEGO teacher featured on LEGO Masters, Union Mayor Manuel Figueiredo, and Union Committeeman James Bowser performed the judging.

Amanda Abbate (UHS class of 1988) reports that her son won first prize for their execution of the “World’s Spookiest Watersphere.” The Abate family is pictured here with their proud son.

Here is artwork from an unknown artist and World’s Tallest Water Sphere fan. This appears to be water color, perhaps water color pens, and ink markers. It is a wonderful collage of beautiful colors and penmanship. If you know the exact artist or time frame, let us know, and we will update the article.

(From January 2023-01-28), On this day someone left the gate open to the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. What a great looking sky, flora, and geese overhead.

Following are some images of what sort or artistic painting may be made to water spheres. This water sphere is from the company Moog, Inc. headquartered in Elma, New York. The photos are provided by WTWS content reporter Mark Fleetwood.

As you can see it is a very creative paint job with the pillar painted as a rocket motor and the sphere atop painted as the planet earth. The scheme has so many interpretations. So well done.

The new painting was revealed in October of 2022. The paint artist is muralist Tim Martin who spent months on the mural. More details on the construction are provided in this Moog video link https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1234917900622607 provided by WTWS content reporter Scott Shafer.

Thanks all for the news, and enjoy this artistic water sphere!

Some time ago in the 1990s, mobile phone antennas were added to the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. This site does not know the exact date (readers, please let us know), but this Star Ledger article from that time gives more details on the update.

This week was a significant time for flight simulator enthusiasts. On August 18th, 2020, Microsoft released its first new edition of Flight Simulator since 2006.

What is significant about this release is that this version of Flight Simulator has the entire world simulated in nice detail without buying significant scenery packages or add-ons. What once was a dreary world is now populated with trees, rivers, highways and lots of glorious buildings. Yes you can fly over and spot your house.

Now there are scenery issues. Sometimes the computer generated buildings are the wrong color or architecture. And there are bugs and glitches in the scenery which are fun to spot. However in general, this is the most extensive and detailed scenery over a broad area in any flight simulator.

Of course, I had to fly my simulated plane over the simulated World’s Tallest Water Sphere. Check out these screen captures. See if you can spot well known streets in Union. See if you can see the Kawameeh Swamp, the ball fields, and Kawameeh Junior High.

Of course, check out the computer model of the WTWS. Yes it is a slightly blocky, funky shape. But it is in the right spot. The nearby water storage tank looks good. All in all, a great simulated rendering of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

As part of a nationwide flyover program, part of “Operation America Strong”, the Navy Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds flew over the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

This southbound leg of flyover route on April 28th, 2020, was a bit east of Union, New Jersey, but either over Newark Bay or Newark Airport. Later on the jets flew northeast towards Long Island, but rounded back south towards the Verrazanno Narrows Bridge, Staten Island, and then back north over New Jersey. This was a spectacular moment to see these planes from New Jersey, New York City, and western Long Island.

This photo was taken from a video from WABC7 TV New York. The vantage point is a tall building on the Hudson River, either on the New York west side or Bayonne east side.

It shows the six Blue Angel jets trailing smoke in the upper center. Six whiter Air Force Thunderbird jets follow lower and to the right. Bayonne and Newark Bay are shown in the lower foreground. The center of Newark is marked by the Eleven 80 building in downtown Newark, NJ at the extreme right center. Newark Airport is slightly right of this photo from this angle.

In the background, the New Jersey Watchung Mountains from Washington Valley on the left to the Hobart Gap on the right stretch across the middle of the photo.

The World’s Tallest Water Sphere is visible as a white sphere in the center of the photo, midway between Newark and the Watchungs.

Sorry for the screen capture picture quality. It shows up more clearly in higher resolution video from the original source.

Perhaps it is a normal occurrence in the life of a water tower. We take it for granted that water towers function and are useful to their owners and the community. Have you noticed that Union’s World’s Tallest Water Sphere (WTWS) has lost a few mobile phone antennas over the years?

The photo above clearly shows this loss. The photo on the left from 2013-12-25 (Dan Becker) shows the WTWS with five rows of mobile phone antennas. The photo on the right from 2018-06-12 (Chad Aaronson) shows the WTWS with four rows. Clearly the middle row is now missing. There are also repainted areas where the antenna mounts were removed.

Did any folks see this maintenance on the World’s Tallest Water Sphere? Can we more precisely figure the date of the maintenance rather than just the 2013 to 2018 end points of these photos? Perhaps you saw some cranes and some scaffolding in this time period. WTWS want to know!

With a flattering title of “Meet the Texas man who loves this N.J. water tower so much, he built a virtual museum in its honor“, Star Ledger reporter Amy Kuperinsky writes a nice article about Union’s World’s Tallest Water Sphere and various people associated with it.

You get to hear about other towers, water tower artists such as Peter Freudenberg , WTWS builder Armand Fiorletti, American Water project manager ” Christopher DePaola”, and WTWS Museum Curator Dan Becker.

The entire article is positive and supportive of everone’s love of Union’s water tower.

The World’s Tallest Water Sphere Museum is now open. I’ve added a section to the WTWS site that has a virtual museum with lots of artwork, photos, and fun stuff.

http://www.worldstallestwatersphere.com/museum/

The WTWS Museum has been operating as a physical museum in Austin, Texas since 2003. This virtual version of the WTWS Museum was created in 2020. The virtual museum has the advantage of 24 hour a day access and higher crowd volumes.

Please let me know of any navigation, image problems, misspellings with your mobile or browser.

Since Route 22 is the closest highway to the World’s Tallest Water Sphere, and since it is notoriously crowded and difficult to drive, I thought a T-shirt honoring those Route 22 drivers would be in order

Here is a rendering of a possible Route 22 driver T-shirt. Let me know what you think. Feel free to use the graphics that I stole from a T-shirt making site.

As we have mentioned and admired in previous posts, NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia has a beautiful water tower.

We wish them luck in tonight’s launch of Northrop Grumman’s 13th contracted cargo resupply mission with NASA to the International Space Station which will deliver more than 7,500 pounds of science and research, crew supplies, and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory and its crew. https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2020/02/09/nasa-tv-broadcasts-launch-of-u-s-cygnus-cargo-craft/

In previous WTWS articles we have reported damage to the water tower because of launch failures. We are glad to see the tower looking good and ready to go.

Here is a beautiful photo of the pre-launch with a late day full moon via the NASA website:

Southeast of Austin, Texas, along State Route 71, lies the small town of Garfield. Like many Texas towns, they have their own water tower.

Proudly, emblazoned with the text “Garfield WSC” (water supply company), this water tower is amazing and strange. The actual water container is a steel sphere. There is a pipe at the bottom, which supplies the pressurized contents of the water sphere above. There are three steel pipe legs, with rigid and cable bracing. One of the legs has interesting features: a pipe to supply water to the container and a ladder to provide maintenance access. Girdling the lower part of the water sphere is a walkway with railing.

Garfield residents should be proud of their water tower. It is a true sphere set upon a tripod stand. With no hidden access, no lights or antennas, one can see the naked, utilitarian, functional beauty of this water sphere.

One week ’til Christmas!

Reader Alexandra Morrison Winkler (a.k.a. Alex W) submits this photo of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere taken on 2019-08-22. It has been called “the most New Jersey photo ever!”

Let’s tally up the wonderful New Jersey things in this photo:

1. Steely almost-silhouette of World’s Tallest Water Sphere.
2. Almost imperceptible lettering “Union”.
3. Tower is over-burdened with mobile phone antennas in order to support large volume of callers.
4. Beacon on tower lets you know Newark Liberty Airport is nearby.
5. Traffic jams on both Route 22 and Parkway entrance.
6. Driver taking photo through windshield of car.
7. Iconic green signage of New Jersey.
8. Gigantic EZPass toll device.
9. Rain, clouds, blue and gray sky.
10. Rainbows and Unicorns orbiting the tower.

Thanks for our reader submission of the day Alex.