Sunol Water Temple

The Sunol Water Temple is located at 505 Paloma Way in Sunol, California. Designed by Willis Polk, the 59 foot high classical pavilion is made up of twelve concrete Corinthian columns and a concrete ring girder that supports the conical wood and tile roof. Inside the temple, water originally from the Pleasanton well fields and Arroyo de la Laguna flowed into a white tiled cistern before plunging into a deeper water channel carrying water from the filter galleries to the Niles Aqueduct in Niles Canyon and across San Francisco Bay near the Dumbarton Bridge. The roof covering the cistern has paintings depicting Native American maidens carrying water vessels. The temple is open to the public Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Since the mid-19th century a private company, the Spring Valley Water Company (SVWC), owned much of the Alameda Creek Watershed and had held a monopoly on water service to San Francisco. In 1906, William Bowers Bourn II, a major stockholder in the SVWC, and owner of the giant Empire gold mine, hired Willis Polk to design a "water temple" atop the spot where three subterranean water sources converge (a pipe from the Arroyo de la Laguna, Alameda Creek, through the Sunol infiltration galleries, and a 30-inch pipeline from the artesian well field of Pleasanton) Some sources claim Bourn wanted to sell the water company to the City of San Francisco and saw the temple as a way to appeal to San Francisco voters, who would have to approve the purchase (municipal efforts to buy out the SVWC had been a source of constant controversy from as early as 1873, when the first attempt to purchase it was turned down by the voters because the price was too high). Other sources claim that as one born into wealth and classically educated, Bourn was partially motivated by a sense of civic responsibility.

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