Mino Water Purification Plant Former Power Room and Water Transmission Pump Room

What Is the Mino Water Purification Plant Former Power Room and Water Transmission Pump Room?

The Mino Water Purification Plant Former Power Room and Water Transmission Pump Room (三野浄水場旧動力室・送水ポンプ室, Mino Jōsuijō Kyū Dōryokushitsu Sōsui Ponpushitsu) at 1-2-1 Mino, Kita-ku, Okayama City, is a single-story brick building completed in 1904, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on February 9, 2005.

It was the heart of Okayama's first waterworks, which opened in 1905, housing the pumps that pushed filtered water out to the reservoirs and the machinery that drove them. Today the interior serves as the Okayama City Water Museum (岡山市水道記念館). The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as brick, one story, tile-roofed, with a building area of 529 square meters and an attached chimney.

Why It Was Registered

The Mino pump house was registered as a model of design. The Agency describes a brick building just north of the slow sand filters, with a hipped (Yosemune-zukuri) roof of pantiles and its entrance on the long side. Granite forms the lower walls, and tall windows with semicircular arches run around all four sides. Over the front sits a broken pediment, a triangular gable whose apex is left open, and the timber porte-cochère is worked with dense decoration, including hanging ornaments of the type called yōraku.

The Okayama City Waterworks Bureau adds that the roof is carried on trusses and ringed by a parapet, the porte-cochère is roofed in natural slate, the windows are sash windows, and granite appears throughout, from the foundations to the window keystones. For a building meant to hold pumps and engines, it uses the vocabulary of Western architecture generously.

Beside the west gable stands the lower part of a brick chimney, which is included in the registration. According to the Waterworks Bureau, the chimney is octagonal and once rose about 30 meters; its upper section has since been removed.

What to Look For

Begin at the front, where the timber porte-cochère projects from the brick wall, its yōraku ornaments hanging below a broken pediment. The contrast between heavy brick and delicate woodwork is the building's best moment. Above the entrance is the inscription 坎徳無窮 (kantoku mukyū), which the Okayama Prefectural Tourism Federation translates as "the virtue of water endures forever."

Along the walls, look for the red brick and white granite that the Waterworks Bureau calls a hallmark of Okayama's early water facilities. The granite base, the window keystones, and the foundation stones mark the brick with white lines and points. No other building on the Mino site shows the pairing so clearly.

Walk around to the west side for the octagonal chimney. The Tourism Federation gives its present height as about 12 meters and notes that it still serves as the exhaust stack for the plant's emergency diesel engine, an opening-day fixture still at work in a new role.

Inside, the museum reopened on July 23, 2022, after seismic strengthening and a full refit of the exhibits. The building first became a water museum in July 1985, marking the 80th anniversary of the waterworks.

Visiting

This is the one registered structure at Mino you can enter. As the Okayama City Water Museum it is open to individual visitors free of charge on opening days. View the facade from the front of the museum and the chimney from the west side of the building. The Waterworks Bureau gives no guidance on photography, so follow staff instructions inside. Exhibits are in Japanese.

Opening hours, closing days, directions, and parking are covered on the Mino Water Purification Plant page.