Wasserwerk Tolkewitz, Waterworks in Tolkewitz, Dresden, Germany

Wasserwerk Tolkewitz is a drinking water plant on the left bank of the Elbe in Dresden-Tolkewitz, built from 1894 and feeding the city network from 16 August 1898. The listed ensemble comprises the collection well with well house, the machine house with its steam engines, the boiler house, a coal shed and a staff dwelling on Wehlener Straße. A new functional building of 1997–2000 houses the treatment stages, its concrete filter bodies forming the outer shell.

Construction began in autumn 1894 on filled ground, largely with Italian labourers. From mid-March 1898 pumps from the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik Chemnitz were installed, and on 16 August 1898 the works first fed water into Dresden's network. By 1899 five more shaft wells, a second siphon main and a third pump raised output to 40,000 cubic metres a day.

The waterworks displays brick industrial architecture typical of Dresden's technical development around 1900. The buildings shape the Tolkewitz neighborhood today with their solid, functional form.

The plant sits on the left bank of the Elbe in the Tolkewitz drinking-water protection zone, on the Wehlener Straße side. Since 2012, two meadow nature monuments border it: the Magerwiese and the Bläulingswiese, each covering part of nearly 10 hectares of Elbe meadows. The listed old buildings — collecting well, machine and boiler house, officials' dwelling, old well house and enclosure — are best seen from outside.

The old Elbe arm beside the site silted up during construction and was later filled in; gardens were laid out on the reclaimed land. Since 2012, almost 10 hectares of the adjacent Elbe meadows have been protected as the Magerwiese and Bläulingswiese nature monuments.