Science Central's Colors

The colors at Science Central were chosen to accent the technology used when this building was generating electric power to the city of Fort Wayne.  The colors reflect the redundancy in the various systems used to generate power.

At its peak, this plant had four generators and four boilers.  The boilers were on the west side of the building.  When turning the plant into Science Central, three generators and boilers were removed.

The current building was started in 1929 and finished in 1945.  Electricity has been generated from this site since 1909, and stopped on March 31, 1975.  Science Central reopened the building 20 years later, on November 5, 1995.

Turbine Level (Grand Exhibit Hall)

Yellow:  All the turbines are painted yellow

Orange: Anything orange is part of the governance system.  The governance system was the control system.

Royal Blue: These are the generators.  If you look closely you will notice several smaller ones which could start everything by steam in case the building itself lost power.

Yellow/Green:  These are the electric motors

Red:  These are the pipes that carried hot steam from the west side to the east side of the building to turn the turbine blades.  An example of the turbine blades is sitting in the entry level vestibule.

Purple:  These pipes carried the cooler used steam back to the west side.  This water was purified so that mineral deposits wouldn't damage the workings.  Once used, the steam was cooled in the condenser, which was a series of cold-water pipes running next to the steam flow.  The cooling water carried heat to the cooling pond on the east side of the building.

Lower Level

Aqua Green:  These pipes carried the warm cooling water to the pond.

White:  This is the condenser for cooling the used steam.

Lavender: Exhaust system pipes.

Sky Blue: This is part of the oil system, which kept the whole plant functioning.