The Mystery:
Why is there a leaning tower in Niles?
The northwest suburb of Niles has its own replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the famously askew belltower in Italy. Geoffrey Baer and Jessica Mlinaric investigate.
Ah, the historic Leaning Tower of – Niles, Illinois? That’s right, northwest suburban Niles has its own replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the famously askew belltower in Italy. So why does Niles, Illinois, population 30,000, have its own version? Completed in 1934, a Chicago factory owner named Robert Ilg built the replica to hide a water tower (which supplied a pair of swimming pools in a nearby park for his employees), so he could protect some of the area’s natural beauty. The tower is roughly about half the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, according to the village, coming in at 94 feet. According to author Jessica Mlinaric, Ilg was a big fan of Galileo Galilei. “Galileo, of course, is the famous astronomer who’s a Pisa native,” Mlinaric said. “He wanted to pay tribute to the power of science to better mankind.” Ilg’s family later donated the tower to the YMCA in the 1960s, and the Village of Niles took over in the 1990s and renovated the structure. Though it is not open to the public, the inside of the tower is home to seven bells – three of which date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – that once rang out in Italy.
