Taipei Water Source Site (Museum of Drinking Water)

The Taipei Water Source Site is a historic water purification facility located at the foot of Guanyin Mountain in the Gongguan area of Zhongzheng District, Taipei, Taiwan. Completed in 1908 during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), it represents a landmark achievement in modernizing Taiwan's public health infrastructure and remains one of the most impressive Baroque-style buildings from the colonial era.

The facility's origins trace to 1896, when Goto Shinpei, then head of the Japanese Home Ministry's Sanitary Bureau, recommended that the Governor-General's Office hire William K. Burton, a British sanitary engineering consultant working for Japan's Home Ministry. Burton conducted comprehensive surveys of Taiwan's water and sanitation conditions and proposed the construction of a modern water supply system for Taipei. He was accompanied by his student, the Japanese engineer Hamano Yajiro (濱野彌四郎), who carried forward the project after Burton's untimely death in 1899.

Construction began in 1907 following Burton's original plans. A water intake was built on the banks of the Xindian River, with a slow sand filtration facility on the mountainside and a pumping station to send treated water to a reservoir at the summit for gravity distribution. The pump house — the building that survives today as the museum — was completed in 1908 and features a grand Neoclassical-Baroque design with arched windows, ornamental columns, and bronze domes at either end. The architect of the pump house building was Nomura Ichiro, who also designed what is now the National Taiwan Museum.

By 1909, the entire system was fully operational, supplying 20,000 tons of clean water daily to a population of approximately 120,000 people. This marked Taiwan's entry into the era of modern public water supply, dramatically reducing waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and dysentery that had plagued the island. The water system continued to serve Taipei throughout the colonial period, the war years, and well into the postwar era.

In 1977, as downstream pollution of the Xindian River worsened, the water intake was relocated upstream to Qingtan Weir, and the original pumping station was gradually retired. The pump house was declared a third-class historic site in 1993 and was briefly opened to the public for the first time that September. After restoration begun in 1998, it opened in 2000 as the Museum of Drinking Water. Today it is part of the Taipei Water Park complex and exhibits the original pumping equipment, historical documents, and educational displays about the history of water supply in Taipei.