High-Rise

“I felt like I had won the golden ticket to get into the Willy Wonka chocolate factory,� says psychiatrist Robert Bright Jr., explaining his reaction when he purchased a 1,100-square-foot water tower in Pasadena three years ago. The 1891 wood-shingle structure once contained a 50,000-gallon steel water tank that served nearby Grace mansion. (The Victorian mansion, built for William Stanton, a cousin of Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, was designed by Frederick L. Roehrig, architect of the historic Green Hotel and its Castle Green annex.) Today, the 45-foot-tall tower has four stories connected by a narrow, winding staircase.

Bright’s partner, Ruben Garcia, manager of a sober-living house in Hollywood, had to get used to the stairs and round rooms but soon succumbed to the tower’s lofty charms. Their third-floor balcony offers ringside seats come Fourth of July, when they watch the Rose Bowl fireworks. “They’re practically in our backyard,� says Garcia. “It’s spectacular.�

The uninsulated tower gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but Garcia and Bright wouldn’t live anywhere else. “It’s really quiet and serene,� Garcia says.

One of the biggest challenges of life in a tower occurs when they get a delivery. “There’s no going through the front door and up the stairs,� Bright says. When the 200-pound-plus Kenmore Elite arrived in July, they had to extend a large beam out the fourth-floor window and lift up the refrigerator with a hand winch.

Other unconventional arrangements include a unique fire escape, installed by a former owner, consisting of a 3/8-inch steel cable that links the tower to a nearby Moreton Bay fig.

“In case of a fire,� explains Garcia, “we can swing down Tarzan style--thank God we’ve never had to use it.�