God this one is even more bonkers than I realized. It’s wonderful. Chicago industrialist Robert Ilg built his employees a 22-acre countryside ‘pleasure park’ in the suburbs and–since a regular old water tower would be inelegant–had it disguised as a half-sized replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It is impossible to imagine today, sitting in a suburban car-sewer hellscape, but the Leaning Tower of Niles once stood in a literal forest.
