84-year-old iconic water tower in West Hempstead coming down piece by piece

West Hempstead’s iconic water tower — a longtime symbol of the community — is coming down piece by piece.

The tower, erected 84 years ago, has served as a beacon for residents, including one who as a child used the structure to guide her home.

“It’s been a landmark for so long … it’s been there their whole lives,” said West Hempstead Water District Superintendent Jason Belle.

So far, crews have drained the tower, removed the bowl and are currently removing the “floor” of the tank and its legs, Belle said. The removal should be complete within a month.

“It’s just the end of its usable life and it's time for it to come down,” Belle said, adding a new one was erected in 2019. “Metal gets old after a while and to paint and rehabilitate costs as much or more to build a new tank from scratch.” 

Painting the tower costs $3.5 million to $4 million, officials previously said. The tower was in use until the beginning of this year and held 750,000 gallons of water. The new one has a 1 million gallon capacity, which Belle said gives the district a larger surplus, proving useful in the summer months when Long Islanders use more water. 

Emily Aghabi, a lifelong West Hempstead resident, said the structure was more than a water tower. It was a symbol of the community. 

Aghabi, 43, began selling sweatshirts with an image of the tower to memorialize it.

As a child, she lived close enough to see the red blinking light through her window as she drifted off to sleep at night. Even now, she can see the structure from her home, and she’s been documenting its removal on Facebook for West Hempstead natives who have left the hamlet. 

“Every night I was going to sleep, that red light was there,” she said. “It almost feels like a piece of my childhood is being taken away.”

By Brinley Hineman

brinley.hineman@newsday.com

Brinley Hineman covers the Town of Hempstead and the City of Long Beach for Newsday. She previously was a reporter in Nashville, Tennessee, and is a West Virginia native.