Raytheon Water Tower Gone: The passing of an era!

All of you boaters out there probably noticed as I did recently that the 150' Raytheon Water Tower is no longer there! The landmark tower was removed for cost reasons.
The maintenance, preservation, etc far exceeded its utility for fire fighting, that was no longer needed due to updated systems.

PORTSMOUTH — The Portsmouth skyline lost a landmark recently when Raytheon cut down its water tower.
Heavy equipment made short work of the 150-foot white tower with the Raytheon logo on top.

Working with a crane, crews removed the top and then worked their way down, all in one day — Saturday, Sept. 18. The sections were cut apart with acetylene torches and the metal was trucked away.

Raytheon spokesman Nick Garrison said the tower was erected in 1960 to provide fire protection for the new Raytheon Submarine Warfare Center (it’s now called Raytheon Seapower Capability Center). The tower’s tank held 100,000 gallons of water.

Recently, however, improvements to water supply lines into Raytheon made the tower unnecessary and it was decided to drain the tower and take it down to save money needed for maintenance.