Poldertoren, Water tower and tourist attraction in Emmeloord, Netherlands.
The Poldertoren is an octagonal water tower in Emmeloord, the main town of Noordoostpolder in the Netherlands. At its top sits a gold-plated copper weathervane shaped like a cog ship, referencing the seafaring past of the region.
The tower was built between 1958 and 1959 to a design by Amsterdam architect H. van Gent, who won a competition in 1950 for the Waterleiding Mij Overijssel. The construction was part of the broader effort to develop the Noordoostpolder after the land was drained in the previous decade.
The carillon inside the tower was paid for through donations from local residents and can be heard across Emmeloord throughout the day. The bells mark the passing hours in a way that people in the area have grown accustomed to over generations.
Inside the tower, a staircase leads up to an observation platform that looks out over the flat polder land surrounding Emmeloord. The view from the top gives a clear sense of how the landscape was shaped and how the drainage system organizes the land below.
Though it functions as a working water reservoir, the tower also houses a carillon and an observation platform, making it one of the few structures of its kind in the Netherlands that was designed from the start to serve all three purposes at once. This was not added later but planned into the original design.
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