It’s been discussed and commented upon for years. Because of the need for a longer flight path into Albany International Airport, the iconic Latham Water Tower, along with its red-and-white checkerboard patten, was scheduled for demolition. No amount of preservation could save the water tower; besides, it was no longer a functioning water tower anyway.
So with that in mind, I decided to take my film cameras out for a photo run, to see what shots I could get of the tower in its final days.
March 6, 2011
I was experimenting with my Polaroid Polachrome HC instant slide film, and decided to visit the water tower. It was still standing. The weather was miserable, it was cold and rainy. I had some Polachrome HC in the Nikkormat, so I took some pictures while I had a chance.
Brought them home and developed them. Some of the pictures came out with a nasty magenta shift; others had that black developer compound still on them. Such is the curse with Polachrome. Maybe this will work for lomographers, but as far as I’m concerned, this film just looks nightmarish.
March 14, 2011
I brought my Rollei and my Ansco over to the Water Tower. By now, the demolition crew had scraped some of the checkerboard pattern off the side of the tower; they needed to sand down and remove the lead paint from the tower’s façade, lest the paint chips float into the community. I had Fujichrome Velvia in the Rollei; there was black-and-white efke 127 in the Ansco.
March 17, 2011
I went back over to the Water Tower in the afternoon. The top cone of the big tower was now gone. The plan was for all parts of the Water Tower to be demolished in such a way that they fell inward into the tower, rather than outward onto someone’s house. If you look very closely at the upper part of the tower, you can see a gap in the frame between the letters “H” and “A”.
March 19, 2011
The blowtorches were in full effect. You can see that sections of the tower are now gone, and the word LATHAM is now down to maybe LA. And wow, look at the light leak on the black-and-white shot. Can you tell that that was maybe the ninth shot of the roll?
March 20, 2011
The checkerboard part of the big tower is down. These shots were taken with the Rollei; I now have a roll of Ektachrome in the camera. As you can see, the smaller reserve tower is now visible from all ground angles.
And just like that, the Latham Water Tower is now only a memory.
Chuck The Writer 
Thanks for posting. Sad to see such an iconic image erased from the landscape.
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Great pictures. I remember when that tower was built. When I was a kid there was just the one small tower.
On a side note…do you remember the giant “Wink” bottle on Route 9 in Latham? People say I’m crazy but I know I didn’t imagine it.
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OMG, Wink! I don’t remember a bottle, though I am younger so that might explain it, but I was just trying to remember the name of this soda a few weeks ago! My stepfather LOVED it.
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Velvia will always look awesome.
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B – I really like the way the Fujichrome Velvia turned out with these pictures.
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Great images! At least we now have this to remind us that it was there.
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I don’t remember a giant wink bottle, but I DO remember what we’d always refer to as the “winking lady” in Troy which you could see from 787.
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