Hang Dau Water Tower

The six-way junction on the north side of Hanoi's Old Quarter is always on the move. Motorbikes stream from Phan Đình Phùng into Hàng Đậu. Street vendors pass along Hàng Giấy. And in the middle of all this movement, a block of gray stone stands quietly at the junction. It is round, with rough rubble walls and a cone-shaped roof, and the shadow of a sấu tree falls across it.

The block of stone is the Hàng Đậu Water Tower.

According to the Hanoi Museum, the French built the tower in 1894. It was the first structure in colonial Hanoi to store and distribute clean water on such a scale. At the end of the 19th century, the city went through several outbreaks of disease linked to its water. So the French invested in the Yên Phụ water supply system, and the tower was a major storage point on its distribution line.

The Hanoi Moi newspaper, citing local records, says the water was pumped from the Yên Phụ waterworks up into the tower. From there it spread out along a network of pipes. At first the system mainly served the French authorities and army. Only the surplus reached the people of the Old Quarter. That was when Hanoi first had tap water running in pipes.

The architecture rewards a close look. The body of the tower is a round cylinder built of rubble stone, about 19 meters across. It has three levels, with a cone-shaped roof on top. The tank holds about 1,250 cubic meters. The stone walls are very thick, with small, tall openings like loopholes that let in light and air.

One special detail is recorded by the Hanoi Moi newspaper. The stone used to build the tower came from the old Hanoi citadel wall, which had been torn down. So the tower today still carries stones that were once part of the old citadel. Two layers of history are joined in the same wall. Because of its large, thick, closed shape, the people of old Hanoi used to call the place "bốt Hàng Đậu", the Hàng Đậu post. The name came from its shape, not from any military purpose.

The Vietnam News Agency describes the tower as standing where six streets meet. Two of them are Hàng Đậu and Hàng Cót. Two more are Hàng Giấy and Hàng Than. The last two are Quán Thánh and Phan Đình Phùng. The spot lies on the boundary between two areas, Ba Đình and Hoàn Kiếm.

From the tower, the old quarter of Đồng Xuân and Hàng Mã lies to the south. Long Biên Bridge lies to the east. To the west runs Phan Đình Phùng, with its row of ancient trees. Every direction sends its own stream toward the tower, and the gray stone has stood calmly at the center of them for more than a century.

Around 1960, the tower stopped supplying water, when modern technology replaced the old system. For many decades after that, its doors stayed shut.

In November 2023, at that year's Hanoi Creative Design Festival, the tower opened to the public for the first time. It held an art pavilion called "Water Installation and the Heritage of the Hàng Đậu Water Tower." Architecture Magazine says the work was made by the architect Cao Thế Anh and the artist Nguyễn Đức Phương. It used sound, light and materials recycled from urban waste, recalling the relationship between people and water.

Circle the junction, stand beside the round block of stone among the traffic, and look up at the cone-shaped roof against the sky. It is easy to see why nobody has ever moved the tower.

More than 130 years have passed since the first stones were laid on the foundation. The city has grown many times over. But the round tower at the Hàng Đậu junction is still there, carrying the stone of the old citadel, the water of the new city, and the memory of everyone who has passed this way.