In the mid 1920s, the city of Beverly Hills decided it needed a water treatment plant. But instead of building a utilitarian monolith, what did Beverly Hills do? They built something that resembled a monumental Spanish Romanesque style church with a soaring Moorish bell tower that housed the water purification spraying system. The facility opened in 1927 (this photo is from 1931) and was affectionately called the “Public Water Cathedral.” It came under threat of demolition in the 1980s but was instead adapted in 1991 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a library and film archive. Today it is known as the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study. So the lesson is: If you’re going to build a water treatment plant, make it classy people.

In 1927:

A close up of the main entrance (1928):

And how it looks in 2019: