1, 1941. The building, unlike most modern engineering structures, was also created to make an architectural statement. Fashioned in the Art Deco style, the cathedral-like structure remains one of Toronto's most admired buildings. It is, however, little known to outsiders. The interiors are just as opulent with marble entryways and vast halls filled with pools of water and filtration equipment. The plant has thus earned the nickname The Palace of Purification. In 1992, the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant was named a national historic civil engineering site by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. It was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1998. The plant appeared on a stamp issued by Canada Post in 2011, in a series showcasing five notable Art Deco buildings in Canada. Use Despite its age, the plant is still fully functional, providing approximately 30% of Toronto's water supply. The intakes are located over from shore in of water, running through two pipes under the bed of the lake. Water is also chlorinated in the plant and then pumped to various reservoirs throughout the City of Toronto and York Region. Access The facility grounds have been made available to the public. Despite some concerns of vulnerability to an attack on the water supply since the September 11 attacks, the grounds have remained open to the public, but security has been increased. In the summer of 2007, construction began on the installation of an underground Residual Management Facility allowing processed waste to be removed before discharging into the lake. This construction has since been completed. In popular culture The R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant has been used in dozens of films and television series as a prison, clinic, or headquarters. The building of the plant is vividly recounted in Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion. The headquarters of "The Man" in the 2002 comedy Undercover Brother. A prison in the 1998 comedy Half Baked. An asylum in the 1995 horror film In the Mouth of Madness. "The Centre," a nefarious think tank in the television series The Pretender. Base of operations for Genomex, an antagonistic corporation in the television series Mutant X. The Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane (next door to Elsinore Brewery) in the 1983 film Strange Brew. The Henry Ford Centre for the Criminally Insane, as seen in Robocop: The Series. The Langstaff Maximum Security Prison, as seen