Sue Water Purification Plant Former Receiving Well House

Where the Water First Arrives

The Sue Water Purification Plant Former Receiving Well House (末浄水場旧着水井上屋, Sue Jōsuijō Kyū Chakusuisei Uwaya) is a single-storey reinforced concrete building completed in 1932 at the Sue Water Purification Plant in Suemachi, Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, and was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 29 November 2016. It stands immediately inside the main gate on the right, facing west, with a building area of 87 square metres and a basement below.

A receiving well is the first stop for raw water. The supply main delivers it here, its flow and quality are adjusted, and it is sent on to the three sedimentation basins to the east. This building was put up to house that well.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs places it among the very first works carried out at the plant. The ponds and pipes came first; the buildings that sheltered them followed. A completion date two years after water began flowing in 1930 fits that sequence.

The Last of the Twelve

When eleven structures here were registered together in 2001, this one was not among them. It joined fifteen years later as number 17-0260. In between, in March 2015, its exterior was restored to its original appearance; the national database records the date of the work by fiscal year, as 2014.

The criterion applied is that the building serves as a model of design. Most of the basins and filters were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. The Sue Water Purification Plant Former Receiving Well House, like the collecting well at the far end of the site, was registered for the quality of its architecture.

The Kanazawa City Public Enterprise Bureau calls it an example of the modernist manner then emerging in Japan. There is no borrowed temple roof here and no traditional ornament, only geometry. A new kind of civic utility was being given a face of its own.

Parapet, Canopy and Round Windows

The first thing to catch the eye is the parapet, the low wall around the roof edge. At the corners it swings outward on a gentle curve, softening what would otherwise be a plain box.

Below it, a canopy runs across the entrance at a lower level. The two horizontal lines, one above the other, organise the whole front and quietly mark the doorway.

The windows are mostly rectangular, with round windows set in among them as accents, and there is decorative work around the base of the walls. The bureau notes how the round openings sharpen the geometric character of the whole; the Agency speaks of an ornamental quality intended for a modern waterworks.

Look at how the round windows, the canopy and the parapet are set at related heights. That alignment is why so small a building reads as composed. What you see today is the result of the 2015 restoration, the details of which are not set out in published sources.

Seeing It

Because it stands just inside the main gate, the Sue Water Purification Plant Former Receiving Well House sits beside the front garden, which is open without booking, and its exterior can be seen from there. Neither the interior nor the basement is advertised as open to visitors.

The front faces west and falls into shadow in the morning. For the curve of the parapet and the depth of the round windows, the early afternoon, while the garden is still open, is the better time.

The bureau publishes nothing on photography. This is a working plant, so keep to the areas open to the public. Directions and garden hours are on the Sue Water Purification Plant page.