MAKING HISTORY

PAXTON — Aug. 27, 2025, is a historic day for Royce Baier, his nonprofit Paxton Foundation and, really, the entire Paxton community.

Stan Foster, who lives just outside the Ford County seat, can certainly be included in that list, too.

The milestone moment that all have been awaiting for nearly two years — and Baier for more than four decades — arrives at 9 a.m. on this notable Wednesday, when a replica of the original water tank that once sat atop the downtown’s 138-year-old brick water tower is hoisted by a crane 80 feet in the air and set in its rightful place, culminating the Paxton Foundation’s $100,000 project known as “The Crown on the Town.”

“This is the icing on the cake for us,” said Baier, a local historic preservationist who formed the Paxton Foundation in 1984 with the immediate goal of saving the deteriorating and abandoned water tower from demolition but always had a longterm goal of replacing its long-removed cypress tank, too. “When we started this project, the end goal was to put the tank back on it.”

Forty-one years later, that goal is about to become reality, with much of the credit going to rural Paxton’s Foster, a 71-year-old semi-retired builder of custom-made curved staircases who took on the challenge — with passion — of building a nearly exact replica of the original tank starting in early 2024.

Dating back to 1887, the original cylindrical tank was already long gone before the Paxton Foundation purchased the old water tower and pumphouse behind City Hall in the mid-1980s. Measuring 20 feet tall and 28 feet wide and with “PAXTON” scribed on at least one of its sides, the tank rested atop the 80-foot-tall tower for 60-plus years, holding up to 60,000 gallons of water, before its dismantling in the early 1950s.

After purchasing and restoring the tower and pumphouse and creating a Ford County Historical Society museum there, the Paxton Foundation tried over the years to fill the void atop the tower. However, every time that Baier thought he found the way, the door closed.

In one such instance in the late 1990s, Baier said, he found the “exact same tank” in Paris, Ill., where the tank had once sat on the roof of a shuttered four-story shoe factory. The tank was later relocated to the ground and put up for sale by the property’s owner, but he was asking far too much for it, Baier said.

“I took one of the Packard limousines and took eight or nine people down there, and we met with this guy and tried to buy it,” Baier said. “But he wanted some ridiculous price, and we didn’t have the money then.”

Baier also tried to find builders of wooden tanks in Illinois that could build a replica, but after he “checked into it,” he said, “I just didn’t put my finger on a particular builder, so I just kind of dropped it.”

Eventually, Baier’s dream seemed more like a pipedream.

“It was just always in the back of our head, not thinking that it would ever happen,” Baier said.

In summer 2023, however, the project started to finally gain some traction when Foster proposed building a replica of Paxton’s old water tank himself. The idea came to Foster when a model of the water tower and its tank, handcrafted by Charlie Withers, caught his eye after he presented a program to the historical society in the water tower and pumphouse, where the model is displayed.

When Foster initially pitched the idea to the Paxton Foundation’s vice president, Judy Jepsen-Popel, who then passed it along to Baier, Foster was unaware that such a project had long been the goal.

“I thought, ‘This (water tower) needs a water tank,’” Foster recalled, “and, unbeknownst to me, that was Royce’s plan all along.”

Of course, Baier was beyond interested.

“Judy Popel calls me back and she says, ‘I told Royce, and he said, ‘It’s about time,’’” Foster said. “I’ll never forget that.”

For Baier, it was “a dream come true.”

“It’s almost like I came along and reinvented the thought (in Baier’s mind),” Foster said.

“I knew he could do it,” Baier said of Foster. “There are probably some guys who would have volunteered to do this that I would have said, ‘No, thanks; you don’t know what you’re getting into.’ And (Foster) really didn’t know what he was getting into, (either), but he’s a sharp enough guy and he’s seasoned enough that I knew it wouldn’t matter. I knew he could do it.”

In late December 2023, the Paxton Foundation announced the “Crown on the Town” project and began raising funds to help cover its estimated $100,000 cost.

Early in 2024, Foster got right to work, too, starting with the construction of the tank’s eight 16-foot-tall curved cypress wall panels inside his stair shop along Illinois 9 by Ten-Mile Grove west of Paxton. After months of work, Foster hauled the tank’s custom-crafted wall sections in summer 2024 to the parking lot next to the old water tower downtown, where he then began assembling the tank on a wooden base he previously built on site. Later, the tank’s circular galvanized metal roof — built by Phil Foster of rural Paxton — was installed on the tank, whose wall sections were painted white with “PAXTON” painted in black on two of the tank’s sides.

“I do not know how many hours (it took),” Foster said. “I just know it was a lot.”

Foster said he has enjoyed every minute of the challenging, nearly two-year job.

“This is a work of passion,” Foster noted. “It’s such a unique project, and I like to take on projects that nobody wants to do. … I’ve taken on stairways where they say, ‘You can’t do it,’ and that just drives me nuts. … I just like challenges.”

One last challenge remains, of course, and it promises to be the most rewarding of all.

“I’m going to be relieved when (the replica tank is) sitting on (the tower) there,” Baier said.

“I’m tearing up just thinking about it,” Foster added.

A large crane is expected to arrive downtown around 7 a.m., requiring the temporary closure of the road in the 100 block of South Market Street. The crane, the biggest one available through Custom Crane of Fisher, will be stationed on Market Street in front of Majestic Park, Baier said.

“They’re going to be here with five semis loaded with mats that they’ll spread out to distribute the weight so they don’t tear up the street or anything,” Baier noted.

“I heard there’s 340 tons that they’re bringing in counterbalance weights,” Foster added.

By 9 or 9:15 a.m., the crane operators should be ready to attach the crane to the tank and start the lift, Baier said. Before beginning the ascension, ropes will be used to swivel the tank by 90 degrees to position it so that its “walk-out” door is facing east, just as it will be once set atop the tower.

During the lift, Foster will be positioned in the tower’s hatch to ensure that the tank is aligned with the wood-frame “slots” built around the top of the tower to hold it in place, Baier said.

“It’s going to fit,” a confident Foster said. “It’ll fit.”

The tank weighs an estimated 22,000 pounds, according to Foster, but both the crane and old water tower should have no problems handling it, Baier and Foster said. Foster noted that the original water tank held about 60,000 gallons of water — weighing about 480,000 pounds— while the replica tank will not hold any water.

Engineers from the Clark Dietz engineering firm in Champaign — who were consulted for the project — are confident, too.

“The engineers are real confident that the brick is more than adequate to withstand the weight of the tank itself,” Baier said. “They’re not concerned about the weight at all on the tower.”

Engineers were concerned, though, about the potential for the tank — and its catwalk around it — to be lifted up from the tower by an updraft of high winds. To address such concerns, the tank will be anchored to the tower in a number of ways. Baier said it will be secured via tension ties to the tower’s four lateral wooden beams that stretch from its floor to its top, plus to 24 brackets embedded in the tower’s interior brick walls.

“So the tank will be held down to the wood and into the brick,” Baier said.

According to Baier, the tank should be able to withstand “everything but a direct hit from a tornado.”

The tank’s 4-foot-wide, 360-degree catwalk — featuring an aluminum railing connected to eight PVC-wrapped corner posts, each topped with a white LED light — will not be accessible by the public, although both Baier and Foster still like to dream of a day when it eventually might be.

“What we need to do — and I’ve said this from the beginning — is we need to have a glass elevator going up the center of the tower so that people can go up there … and can go out on the catwalk and walk around,” Baier said.

“I know it sounds impossible,” Foster added, “but that would be cool if that was publicly accessible, because it is so cool.”