The UTW Water Tower: Jacksonville's Eastside Landmark
Share
Highlights
- The Union Terminal Warehouse opened in 1913 and its owner called it the largest and finest warehouse in Florida
- The red rooftop tank holds 50,000 gallons and has UTW painted across it
- The building sat mostly empty for decades and became a graffiti and urban explorer destination
- The city gave it landmark designation in April 2021
- It reopened in March 2025 as 228 apartments after a renovation north of $72 million, and the tower stayed
A 50,000 gallon water tank on a warehouse roof is not usually the thing a neighborhood organizes itself around. On the Eastside it is. You can see those three letters from the highway, and for about forty years they were the most recognizable part of a building nobody was allowed inside.
The tower outlasted the reason it existed. That happens a lot here.
What is the UTW water tower?
The UTW water tower is a red 50,000 gallon rooftop tank on the Union Terminal Warehouse at 700 E. Union Street in Jacksonville, marked with the letters UTW. The warehouse opened in 1913 and reopened in March 2025 as 228 apartments after a renovation costing more than $72 million. The tower was kept as part of the redevelopment.
1913, and a very confident owner
The warehouse went up in 1913, built by C.B. Gay, who described it as the largest and finest warehouse in Florida. Contemporaries did not seem to argue much.
It was built for a city that moved things by rail. Sitting where it does near the tracks, the building did exactly what it was designed to do for a long time, which was hold an enormous amount of other people's stuff.
Then the freight economy changed, and a building designed around rail sidings became a building with a rail siding problem.
The long empty stretch
For decades the warehouse mostly sat. Parts of it saw light use. Most of it did not.
What filled the gap was graffiti. The UTW became one of the most painted buildings in the city and a fixture for photographers, urban explorers, and anybody who wanted an industrial backdrop. That is its own kind of use, and it kept the building in people's minds during the years nothing official was happening to it.
The tower on top never stopped being a landmark, even when the thing under it was condemned in practice if not always on paper.
The comeback
The city designated it a local landmark in April 2021, which mattered, because landmark status is often the difference between a building like this getting restored and getting flattened.
It reopened in March 2025 with 228 apartments inside, after a renovation that ran past $72 million.
The developers kept the tower. They did not have to. Nobody needs 50,000 gallons of rooftop water for an apartment building, and the cheapest version of this project takes the tank down on day one. Keeping it was a decision, and it's the reason the skyline on that side of town still reads the way it always has.
Why locals care about a water tank
Jacksonville does not have many objects that everyone recognizes. The ones we do have tend to be accidental: a fiberglass dinosaur, a clock on a sidewalk, three letters on a tank.
The UTW tower works because it is a fixed point. If you grew up on the Eastside or drove that stretch regularly, it marks where you are without you thinking about it. Buildings around it changed. The tower did not.
That is most of what a landmark is. Not beauty, and not age. Just something that stays put long enough for everyone to agree on it.
Go look at it
700 E. Union Street. It is now a residential building, so this is a look-from-the-outside situation rather than a wander-around-inside one.
The tower photographs best in late afternoon when the red actually reads as red instead of rust.
We put it on a sticker, and it's one of the twenty designs in our Jacksonville sticker pack at $15 for the set. The other nineteen are in our guide to the landmarks locals actually point at, and if you want more on the neighborhood side of the city, our Springfield write-up covers a comeback story with a lot in common with this one.