{"nrhp_refnum":"94000082","name":"Elizabeth City Water Plant","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"N. end of Wilson St., 100 block","address_restricted":false,"city":"Elizabeth City","county":"Pasquotank County","state":"NC","lat":36.31818373450005,"lon":-76.22568566079826,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1994-03-04","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Community Planning and Development","Engineering"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"The Elizabeth City Water Plant is a municipal water treatment complex on the city's northwest boundary in Elizabeth City, Pasquotank County, North Carolina, centred on a Spanish Colonial Revival style main building completed in 1926. The site includes several concrete reservoirs, tanks and a raw water pump house.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the plant reflects the civic investment in modernizing the city's water supply in the 1920s, and that it is the only one of William C. Olsen's water plants still in service. It also argues the Spanish Colonial Revival design is rare in North Carolina and the Albemarle region and is the largest municipal building of its style in the region.","narrative":"Built in 1926 on the northwest edge of Elizabeth City, the water plant was designed by William C. Olsen, a Raleigh consulting engineering firm that specialized in municipal water works. Its main building is a sixteen-bay Spanish Colonial Revival block with a tile-roofed central pavilion, brick and stucco walls, and round-arched first-floor windows. Beside it stand a 150-foot-diameter concrete finished water reservoir and a large raw water reservoir, both built in the mid-1920s and mid-1930s. The plant was part of the city's effort to replace an aging, unreliable supply after it took over the private Elizabeth City Light, Power, and Water Company in 1925. It is regarded as the finest example of the style in eastern North Carolina and the only surviving water plant by Olsen, whose firm designed facilities for many North Carolina cities before 1943. Later additions in 1977-1978 by J. M. Pease extended the complex.","period_of_significance":"1926-1943","architect_builder":"William C. Olsen (architect/engineer); Guion and Company of Gastonia (builder)","architectural_style":"Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Still used for finished water storage and treatment; the Pre-Chlorination Tank is no longer used.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:42.049637-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/11/7183/47718311/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/94000082.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/94000082/0d053f847a-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/94000082/0d053f847a-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Nyttend","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_City_Water_Plant.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Nyttend</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_City_Water_Plant.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47718311","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_City_Water_Plant","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19878068"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/pasquotank-county/elizabeth-city-water-plant-94000082/"}