Tapping Into the Ad Potential of Water Tanks

NEW YORK —  In a meeting of old and new, some of the wooden water tanks that adorn the city’s rooftops by the thousands are being decorated with billboard-like advertisements.

Perched atop virtually all buildings seven stories or higher, the cisterns use technology from the 1890s to hold water for tap and sprinkler systems.

Two family-owned companies install and maintain just about all the 9,000 tanks in New York as well as a few hundred in Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago. And after four generations of putting up tanks, the advertisements seemed the next logical step.

“It’s a perfect blend of old New York and the cutting-edge vitality of the city,” said Scott Hochhauser, who runs the 107-year-old Isseks Bros. Inc. with brother David and mother Joyce. “Maybe this will catch people’s attention and they will finally notice the tanks.”

Many tanks are invisible from the street, covered by brick housings atop most modern buildings. Yet a look up from almost any New York street will yield numerous sightings of the conical cisterns.

And it is that visibility that makes the tanks a prime spot for advertising. A firm called Tanks for the Memories--created by Isseks--is in charge of the venture.

The tanks began sporting ads in April. The first billboard on a tank in Queens advertised the Broadway musical “Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk.”

Scott Hochhauser said the only other time he can remember a tank being used for advertising was during the mayoral campaign of candidate Abe Beame in the early 1970s.

Hal Drucker, Hochhauser’s partner in the advertising venture, has said that only about 1,000 of the tanks could be suitable for advertising because of zoning restrictions.

“We’re not going to plaster the city,” Scott Hochhauser said. “It’s an exciting new medium, using structures that have been around so long to advertise modern aspects of New York.”

Although it is all but impossible to glance at the city skyline without seeing some of the tanks, many people do not notice them.

“They are a forgotten kind of thing up there,” said Pete Ganci, chief of operations for the New York City Fire Department, “but the tanks are absolutely critical.

“They’ve been up there for more than 100 years and they’ll probably be up there for another 100 years.”

The tanks are unaffected by loss of electrical power during a fire and provide the only ready water supply for some buildings. Because they are elevated, gravity pulls the water down and gives fire crews time to set up on the street.

For the Isseks and Rosenwach clans, the tanks have been a way of life since the 1890s. Rosenwach Tank is guided by the father-and-son team of Wallace, 75, and Andrew, 44. Started in 1896 by Wallace’s grandfather, Harris, Rosenwach Tank has grown into a firm with annual revenue between $5 million and $10 million. Isseks reports similar sales.

Andrew Rosenwach, who monitors the day-to-day operation of his family company, spends his days scurrying around the city checking on various jobs. He works 12-hour days, usually starting about 5:30 a.m.

But sometimes, he does take a moment to ruminate.

“I like to think of the miracle of what’s out there,” he mused. “Those tanks, they are New York.”

“It’s impossible to do a sketch or a painting of New York without one of our tanks in it,” Wallace Rosenwach said. “I probably have walked into every building in New York at one time or another, so I feel very much a part of the city, and I enjoy that.”

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Electrical pumps bring water up from the city’s underground pipes to the cylindrical tanks with cone-shaped tops. The cones come to a point with a company symbol--a three-dimensional “R” for Rosenwach and an “I” for Isseks.

The tanks work like a glass of water with a straw protruding from one side and another leaving through the bottom. Water flowing via the side straw would be used for bathrooms and kitchens throughout a building--and, Hochhauser said, it is cleaner than pipe water because rust and sediment settle to the bottom. Water below the side straw level is for supplying a building’s standpipe system. Thus, there is always emergency water below the side straw level, and the tank is automatically refilled when an electric sensor notes that the supply is low.

With only rare exceptions, the tanks are made of wood because it is an excellent temperature moderator. Water stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

“Three inches of wood has the same insulation capacity as 30 inches of concrete,” explained Wallace, a trained engineer.

Wooden tanks only have to be cleaned once a year and do not have to be painted every five years like steel.

Tank size ranges from 3,500 gallons to 50,000 gallons (Isseks just built one of that size on the roof of the new Trump International Hotel and Tower). An average 10,000-gallon tank would cost about $25,000 to erect, said Scott Hochhauser, 36.

Isseks is headquartered in Manhattan, with a factory in Philadelphia. The Rosenwach Tank offices are in Queens, and the factory is in Brooklyn.

The wooden sides, called staves, are surrounded by galvanized iron hoops that combine with the pressure of water swelling the wood to form a nearly perfect watertight seal.

Although water tanks also dot the skylines of Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, they are present in far lesser numbers than in New York. In Boston, for example, an Isseks tank sits atop the Federal Reserve Bank. In Philadelphia, a tank can be seen on the Bell Atlantic Tower.

“There just isn’t the density of tall buildings anywhere else,” said Wallace Rosenwach. “Other cities can use pumping and pressure systems to get water up high, but that won’t work in New York.”