Both the iconic Char House and Water Tower are 100 years old!
During the early 1920s, the Imperial Sugar Company faced emerging competition from othersugar refineries in Texas. The owners, I.H. Kempner and W.T. Eldridge authorized ambitious plans to increase refined sugar production by fifty percent. To meet this goal, the existing building housing the bone char (charcoal) filters was replaced with a new eight-story, steel and brick structure, front and center on Highway 90-A in Sugar Land, Texas.
The Char House enclosed thirty vertical cylindrical cast iron tanks, each larger than a railroad tank car. The tanks were filled with bone char. When workers added the amber-colored sugar syrup at the top, it filtered through the bone char which absorbed impurities, making the amber-colored syrup clear. The clear syrup was then pumped to another building to be processed into refined white sugar.
Construction costs for the Char House totaled $1,000,000. It remained the tallest building in Fort Bend County until the 1970s.
The fact that the Char House was eight stories high created a problem. The existing water tower serving the Imperial refinery and Sugar Land was tall enough for water to reach the top of the Char House in case of fire. A new Water Tower was constructed 50 feet taller, to provide the water pressure required for fire protection, making it the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River at the time.
In 2014, the iconic Water Tower was restored, and repainted, and continues to be a signature feature in Sugar Land. Funded by Johnson Development Corporation, the structure was stabilized where needed and was painted and embellished with the Imperial Sugar Land logo.
Today the Char House and the Water Tower remain two of Sugar Land’s most iconic historic structures.