Beppu City Asami Water Purification Plant Water Meter House

What Is the Beppu City Asami Water Purification Plant Water Meter House?

The Beppu City Asami Water Purification Plant Water Meter House (別府市朝見浄水場量水室, Ryōsui-shitsu) is a small reinforced concrete building of 1927 in Asami 2-chome, Beppu City, Oita Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on September 3, 1997. It stands on low ground a short way north of the hilltop Asami plant, covers 17 square meters and carries registration number 44-0016.

The name means a house for measuring water, that is, for the equipment that meters the flow. According to Beppu's centennial waterworks history, it was built together with a metering basin during the First Expansion Project.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs praises the Asami water meter house for a distinctive classical exterior that has made it widely familiar. At 17 square meters it is still a tiny building, yet it manages the full classical vocabulary: a raised base, a colonnade, capitals and arched window frames. That completeness at so small a scale is the heart of its value. It was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency dates it to 1927. The First Expansion Project began in 1926 and was completed in November 1927, so the city's records fit.

What to Look For: Columns on a Podium

The Asami Water Meter House rests on a foundation treated like a podium. Lifting a building even one step off the ground gives it something of the bearing of a small temple.

Columns line the walls. The Agency describes them as arranged to read as one bay across the front and two bays along each side, so the front shows two columns and each side three. Capitals crown the columns, and arched window frames fill the spaces between them.

Giving the sides more bays than the front makes the building look deeper from an angle than it really is, a neat way to lend a very small structure some presence.

How to Visit

The Beppu City Asami Water Purification Plant Water Meter House stands apart from the plant, on low ground to the north. City sources say nothing about who manages the surrounding land or how much of the building can be seen from the road. Do not enter private or restricted ground, and check with the Asami plant (tel. 0977-22-0527) before going. The interior is not open. If you can see it from outside, look at a side wall to pick out the two-bay rhythm of columns and arched frames.