WATER-WORKS THE ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING OF THE CITY WATER SUPPLY

KEVIN BONE, Editor

GINA POLLARA, Associate Editor

PAUL DEPPE, Archive Project Associate

Essays By

ALBERT F. APPLETON

KEVIN BONE

PETER H. GLEICK

GERARD KOEPPEL

With Excerpts from City Water Tunnel #3 by

MARTY POTTENGER

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union

THE MONACELLI PRESS THE RISE TO CROTON

GERARD KOEPPEL

wenty-first-century New York is arguably th e world's capi­ su re-handed Morris, "a nd ... straight-sided and right-a ngled hou ses ta l city. But it was not always so. New York 's primacy was are the most cheap to build and th e most conveni ent to live in."' Tnot inevitable (nor is it inviolab le). W hen Dutch New Thus was Manhatta n gridded for its glorious future. Amsterd am became Eng li sh New York in 1664, the lead ing colo­ As urban settlement pushed north from Housto n Street to nial city was Boston. Over the next hundred yea rs, New York was Washington Square to 21st Street and beyond, the politica l and outranked in popu lation by two others : Phi ladelphia and Charles social landscape adapted as well . Starting in the late 1790s, con­ Town to the so uth. By the turn into the first fu ll ce ntury of the new trol of city and state government shifted from th e Federali sts (later American nation, Phi lade lphia was the country's largest city, but reborn as W higs and now Republica ns) to the Democratic­ its supremacy was draining away down the hundred river miles Republica ns (today's Democrats): from Hamiltonian elites to that separated it from ocean shipping lanes. In 1810 New York Jefferso nian merchants, from the manor-born to the Tammany counted ninety-si x thousand citi ze ns, slightly more than served. In 1804 th e state legis lature, over conservative objections, Phi lade lphia. Ten years later, the Eri e Ca nal was under construc­ significa ntly expa nded city suffrage to all taxpaye rs . In 1830 the tion, joining the to th e previousl y impenetrab le first major city charter revision in a hundred yea rs created mod­ continental interior. Two hundred yea rs after its founding, the ern govern ance: the Common (now City) Council was split into island settlement by the sea finally emerged as the trade center of two houses, each with legislative authority, and the mayor­ the Western world . appointed on ly since 1821 by th e council instead of Albany-was In many ways, New York was prepared to take up its mantle as severed from the coun cil and given veto power, subject to major­ the nation's premier city. In 181 1 it began stretching paved fi ngers ity override. Annual popu lar elections for mayor began in 1834. up from its jumbled southern tip. Repli cation of Dutch­ Mayoral control of proto-bu reaucracy followed, and a city under made disorder-narrow winding streets haphaza rdl y laid-would executive management emerged. And none too soon. not do. A state commission led by Gouverneur Morris, a home­ From 1810 to 1840 New York's population more than tripled, grown gentryman and a draftsman of the U .5. Constitution, decided add ing an average of 7,200 new people a year, many of them that Manhatta n shou ld be a natureless grid of twelve avenues and poor Iri sh immigrants. New York turned from an overgrown colo­ 155 streets: two thousand similar rectilinear blocks from suburban nial-age town into a dense industrial city of 330,000. And yet, on North (now Houston) Street to the seeming li mit of future migration, the cusp of world dominance, New York was sti ll drin king water designated as l 55th Street. Manhattan's hills-the Delaware Indian as it had in the days of burghers and bouweri es: from wells that name "Manahata" is thought to mean " isl and of many hills"-were had always been distastefully hard and brackish but now were to be shoved into its vall eys. Its many fresh streams, extensive extraordinarily deficient and dangerously polluted. marshes, scattered ponds, and bubbling springs were to be suffo­ cated with pavement and basement floors. Rational order was to FACING PAGE transform thi s continental shard into prized rea l estate. " [A] city is FIG. i. Old . Cross section. c. 1836. to be composed principally of the habitations of men," w rote the This is believed to be the oldest drawing in the DEP Archive.

26 I ~; • .'' r; l ';111 ..

r~ ' ., " . 2 /·J· 33 l~· ~~ q :~;: . 3.

-· ..... · - - ~

'1J t{Zh:,, 1.'t7.c~~,,;,;(

0 ' '

. I .E

---··:1--;~=-:11 :-----: o-~;-· I .. 'I 21 =~==J1 [ ~·• ' ~-.----· ., I 11 1 ' 11 ' I 11 I ...... ,~·~" --·1 r·----~ r··--·: r·------·- : I ,., ,I

FIG. 2. Plan of New York, 1695, showing nine public wells below Wall Street. Small dark squares indicate well locations.

New York's eternal struggle with filth wells of the town."4 English clergyman urious a city which lavishes countless was noted as early as 1697 when Boston Andrew Burnaby passed the final verdict thousands on curious wines, cannot afford physician Benjamin Bullivant took offense on colonial New York: "[It] is subject to itself wholesome water." ' to the " nasty & unregarded" streets. 2 one great inconvenience, which is the Irving was writing in early August 1832 Annapolis physician Alexander Hamilton want of fresh water."5 U.S. Supreme Court from the safety of a spa at Saratoga Springs . (an intellectual bon vivant, not the later Justice and native New Yorker Brockholst Having ravaged the world for six years, statesman) was the first to record New Livingston remarked in 1810 on the bod­ Asiatic cholera had made its inevitable wa York's water trouble. "They have very bad ily wastes seeping into wells public and to New York, deemed (by former mayor and water in the city," he observed in his pri­ private: "Inhabitants literally in their water great diarist Philip Hone) to be a filthier vate travel journal during the summer of [are] drinking a proportion of their own host than any of the cholera-violated cities 1744, after finding excellent and abun­ evacuations, as we! I as that of their horses, of Europe and Canada. No one knew that 3 dant well water in Philadelphia. Swedish cows, dogs, cats and other putrid liquids cholera was a baci 11 us transmitted in waste­ botanist Peter Kalm made New York's so plentifully dispensed in the different pol 1uted water. In 1832 no New Yorker water a matter of pub I ic record a few years yards, streets, and alleys." 6 Livingston made the medical connection between later. "There is no good water to be met might have added the noxious leechings we! I water and the waste that infiltrated th e with in the town itself," he wrote in the from slaughterhouses, tanneries, hatteries, wells from the streets and yard privies. widely published account of his North and other industrial waste deposited, Over 3,500 New Yorkers died, nearly one American travels. "This want of good along with organic waste, in yards and in sixty, the highest cholera death rate water I ies heavy upon the horses of the street gutters. Another generation later, among the largest cities of the Western strangers that come to this place; for they lamented the lack of world. One hundred thousand New Yorkers do not like to drink the water from the progress: "It is a pity that so rich and lux- fled, a desertion rivaled only by the

28 THE RISE TO CROTON patriotic flight from the English occupation who owned much of the land along the island: marshy ground led southeast to a during the Revolution. This was no way to west side of Broadway. A detailed city small stream opening onto the run the leading city of the . plan drawn in 1695 noted thirty land­ at what is now Catharine Street, and Wells had figured almost exclusively in marks, not the least of which were the extensive marshes led northwest along the water fortunes and misfortunes of New public wells in Broadway, Broad Street, what later became a canal (and then the York for its first two centuries. The Dutch Wal I Street, Bridge Street, and the fort [Fig. street of that name), draining to the town (confined within a fortified wall that 2]. A hundred and forty years later, hun­ Hudson River. As the expanding city became Wall Street) drank only from pri­ dreds of public wells equipped with brass encroached on this area in the early vate wells, especially those used commer­ pumps had been shifted from the center of 1800s, the Fresh Water came to be called cia lly by a half-dozen brewers. New the streets to curbs and were maintained the Collect [Figs. 3, 4], a corruption of the Amsterdam's wells were shallow and few. by the city. Dutch word for pond-kolk-and dis­ The best were lined with wood and had a During the generations of water depri­ paragingly emblematic of the pond's large bucket suspended from a long vation, there were periods of hope. All increasing collection of rubbish and the sweep. The lack of a well in the fur-trading revolved around the greatest geographic occasional murder victim. In the 181 Os settlement's fort at the foot of Broadway feature of lower Manhattan: the Fresh the pond was landfilled into real estate, contributed to Governor Peter Stuyvesant's Water Pond. Spreading seventy suburban with Centre Street roughly defining its lon­ quick surrender to an English fleet in 1664. acres across what is now the courthouse gitudinal axis. The pond was never There was no way to water his besieged neighborhood of Foley Square, the pond directly tapped for drinking water, but its troops, Stuyvesant later explained to New in its natural splendor was ringed by prodigious springs were the source for Amsterdam's proprietor, the Dutch West wooded hills and fed by clean subter­ three water supplies of varying inspiration India Company, which found the explana­ ranean springs. Its outlets spanned the and efficacy. tion "very strange."" ew York's first water shortage was reso lved two years later, when the new English governor sunk a well in the fort " beyond the imagination of the Dutch" w ho had believed the location unsuited for a well.9 It was the city's first public well. The second, sunk in 1671 in the rear yard of the Stadt Huys, a tavern turned into City Hal I on the East River at Pearl Street and Coenties Slip, was the first stone-lined well. A deep wood-lined well dug in front of the fort in 1689 was fitted five years later with a pump, another first. By then the town boasted nine other stone-lined public wells. They were situ­ ated mid-street and systematically ordered, paid for, and maintained. Locations were designated by the Common Council, costs were split between the city and the given neighbor­ hood, and residents were assessed on the basis of their proximity to a local well. Prominent residents were named (and compensated) as caretakers of their neigh­ borhood wells, so that most of these first public wells became identified not by their locations but by the names of their caretakers. The well in Broadway just FIG. 3. Vicinity of Collect south of what is now Exchange Place, for Pond showing streets and significant land­ example, was known as "Mr. (Francis) marks before and after Rombout's Well," for the former mayor filling of pond in 78 7Os.

29 topher Colles's successes, however, were few. " Had I been brought up to the trade of hatter," he lamented late in a long and ultimately impoveris hed life, "peop le would begin to come into the world w ith­ out heads." 10 In 1774 Calles proposed New York's first piped water supply, a public enterprise he wou ld both build and superintend. O n the outskirts of town he wou ld create a water­ works featuri ng a deep well, a steam engine, and a large rese rvoir. A network of hollowed log pipes wou ld be laid through the main streets. Although in creasi ngly distracted by rising revo lutionary fervor, the Common Council agreed to the idea and began issuing promissory notes to finance th e esti mated £18,000 ($45,000)

FIG. 4. Collect Pond. c. 7787. cost [Figs. 5, 6]. Th at was six times the city's annua l revenues and far more than its accu mulated debt. Th e " New-York In the early 1740s, the Tea Water Pump at the stake and ga ll ows, and dozens of Water Works" notes were the first paper started a si x-decade run, ending when the blacks and whites were banished. A new currency issued by an Ameri ca n city. city grew up around it and its sources law prohibited blacks from getting water Over the next two yea rs, Ca lles con­ grew polluted . Th e pump was located just from anywhere but the nearest neighbor­ structed his works on high grou nd pur­ east of the Fres h Water Pond on a country hood well. chased by the city just west of the Fresh road that is now Park Row; the exact spot Th e "conspiracy" turned the Harden­ Water Pond, at what is now Broadway is beneath the grounds of the Chatham brooks' suburban well into an entrepre­ between Franklin and White Streets. Th e Towers apartment complex. Th e pump neurial opportunity. Before long, the Tea well was thi rty feet wide and twenty-eight was owned by the Hardenbrooks, a family Water Pump was a concess ion, its water feet deep; Samuel Bard, the city's leading of prom inent ta nn ers, and leased to a suc­ delivered in casks on horse-drawn carts by sc ientist, tested its water and deemed it cess ion of operators; the well tapped a city-regul ated Tea Water men to customers superi or even to the Tea Water. Next to the spring that was for many years deemed the who could afford the charge. By the early well, Ca lles built a reservoir that was 165 fi nest for New Yorkers' tea. 1 770s thousands of households were get­ feet sq uare, w ith a capacity of two million The pump got its start after the so-ca ll ed ting a few pai Is of water a day for forty-five ga ll ons. Twelve-foot-high vertica l inter ior Great Negro Conspiracy of 1741. The con­ shillings a year. As fine as the water was, its walls of brick (or stone) were supported by spiracy was supposedly hatched by slaves annual cost equaled a month's earnings for exteri or sloping earthen embankments. and suspect whites at a private well near a working people, who continued to use the Th e centerpiece of the works was the Hudson River dock above Wall Street to inferior but free street wells. By the early steam engin e that pumped water from the wh ich lead ing citizens' slaves were sent to 1800s, the quality of the Tea Water had well into the reservoir. At the time there fetch water. New Yo rk was ripe for intrigue, fallen dramaticall y and it passed out of use was no workin g steam engine in America. due to a combination of economic reces­ as a regular supply. It was last seen in 1827, Twenty years earlier, a large and powerful sion, stra ined colonial finances-England trickling from a pipe into a liquor store at Newcomen-type engine had been im­ was warring w ith Spain-a severe w inter, what had become 126 Chatham Street. ported in parts from England, where steam and I ingeri ng unsubsta ntiated rumors Th e inequ ities and inefficiencies in the engin es had long been in use to pump out about a black plot to poison public wells. water supp ly of late colonial New York mines; the imported engine was put into Th e 17 41 conspiracy, "exposed" by the were addressed by Christopher Calles, the service at the famous Schuyler copper spectacu lar testimony of a sixteen-year-old first individual clear ly identified with New mine in New Jersey but was destroyed by white servant girl, called for the slaughter York's water fortunes. Co ll es hailed from a fire ea rly in 1773. Later that yea r, the of all whites, the burning of the town, and prominent Anglo-Irish family. Particularl y newly immigrated Calles designed and rule by a junta of assorted tavernkeepers, notable is his nephew Ab rah am Calles, built the first American steam engine for a slaves, and prostitutes. Hysterical justice the great surgeon and medical educator of Philadelphia distillery. It was cheap ly claimed thi rty-five li ves (all but four black) ea rl y-nineteenth-century Dublin. Chris- made and barely worked, but it inspired

30 TH E RISE TO CROTO N design improvements for his New York survivors recognized that filth must be greater virulence and to prove more engi ne. Its major components were cast at involved. "The present sickness will sub­ destructive to human life, in proportion to the New York Air Furnace, a prominent side and soon be forgotten," warned editor the magnitude of our cities. 11 12 fou ndry at the site now occupied by the and public health advocate Noah Webster's newspapers advocated heavily Woolworth Building. Webster, "and men will proceed in the for New York's cleansing. "Get water into The completed engine was an immedi­ same round of folly and vice ... piling the city," demanded one correspondent. ate and fascinating attraction. Few New together buildings, accumulating filth, and "Take the matter into consideration, and Yorke rs had seen a steam engine in opera­ destroying fresh air, and preparing new resolve every man for himself, to leave no ti on. Workers raised a flag on a high pole and more abundant materials for pesti­ stone unturned to have this grand object of at the waterworks before tests. Large lence, which will continue to assume watering carried thro," urged another. crowds flocked up from the town to expe­ rience this belching, hissing, clanking har­ binger of the industrial future. These tests bega n in March 1776. Six months later, British forces occupied the city. Most New Yorke rs, including the patriotic Calles, fled. The New-York Water Works, a "dan­ gerous" example of American ingenuity, was destroyed by British troops. The log pipe distribution network was never laid. Colles's waterworks (like all of his engi­ neering and scientific projects over the next four decades) amounted to very Iittle , but they inspired many other would-be water purveyors in the years after the revo­ lution. The Common Counci I, cautious after the failed first effort and harried by the cla ims of many Calles contractors, refused to sanction any of the numerous plans sim­ ilar to his. None advanced beyond written proposals. This changed in 1798. Yellow fever had been a recurring warm-weather plague in New York since 1702, when the mysterious ailment was called a "malignant distemper" and offi­ cially blamed on "our manifold sins immorality & profaneness. 11 11 By the mid- 1700s the disease had taken its modern name from the jaundice its victims suf­ fered, but the suspected causative agent had advanced only to miasmas of bad air rising from swamps and foul standing water. Not until the early 1900s was yel­ low fever conclusively understood as an acute viral disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes. Eighteenth-century New York, with its surrounding swamps and filthy unsewered streets, was a notorious mos­ quito breeding ground. In the summer of 1798, two thousand of the city's sixty thousand residents died from mosquito bites they believed to be FIG. s. Promissory note for the waterworks of FIG. 6. Promissory note for the waterworks nothing more than a nuisance. The wisest 1774-76. Obverse. of 1774-76. Reverse.

31 "Then New-York will be as famous as old 1799. The legislature and the council were tions. An obscure clause Burr slipped into Rome was, and the other cities may learn controlled (though not for much longer) the charter late in legislative debate from us how to do clean things.111 3 by Federalists; the city's Assembly delega­ allowed the company to use surplus fu nds Fever-ravaged New Yorkers were al ready tion, however, was headed by Democratic from its water operations for an y lega l pur­ talking about a cleansing plan offered in -Republican Burr, who had other ideas. pose. This was practically revolutionan July by a Westchester doctor named By the time Burr had completed an and soon revealed the true purpose o; Joseph Browne. Little did they know what extraordinary sequence of manipulations Browne's water plan and Burr's exp loita­ a dirty business it would become. over the ensuing weeks, the legislature tion of it. Five months after it was created A surgeon and author of an earlier trea­ chartered a private company as historic as and many months before it supplied an tise on yellow fever, Browne proposed that the plan that prompted it. The highlight of water, the Manhattan Company opened a a private company provide water to New Burr's efforts was enlisting political archri­ bank. It immediately thrived as a so urce o: York from the pristine Bronx River, which val Alexander Hamilton to convince fel­ economic and political power ior flowed through southernmost Westchester low Federalists that the annually elected Democratic-Republicans, quickly outpac­ (now part of the Bronx) opposite upper and perpetually underfunded city govern­ ing the influence of the city's two other Manhattan. The river would be dammed ment was inadequate to the task of build­ banks- the Bank of New York and the some fourteen miles from the city and ing and managing a water supply. Why local branch of the Bank of th e United diverted into an open channel to the Hamilton agreed to get his city's govern­ States- both Federalist-dominated institu­ . There, a river-powered ment to change its mind in favor of a pri­ tions created by Alexander Ham i Iton. pumpworks would raise the Bronx water vate company is an enduring mystery, but Burr's banking coup is known toda as to a height sufficient for its passage over Burr was a master at convincing oppo­ JPMorganChase. To hoodwinked Fed­ an embankment across the Harlem River. nents where their best interests lay, and eralists who had unwittingly supported From upper Manhattan, the water would they were invariably his own. In April Burr's endeavor as a water company, the flow in wooden pipes down to a receiving 1799, "an act for supplying the city of bank was "a greater pestilence th an the reservoir five miles north of town, and New-York with pure and wholesome Yellow Fever." 14 But the water bus ines: from there to a distributing reservoir in the water" became law. The Manhattan was even worse. city proper. Browne put the cost at Company was created, ostensibly to sup­ In order to do banking, the Manhattan $200,000, half of that for a twenty-mile ply New York with water based on Company, under the terms of its ch arter network of distribution pipe. As proposed Browne's plan, with Burr at the head of the had to supply water. It endeavored to do by Browne, the public-spirited company board of directors. this in as capital-conserving a manner as would guarantee a minimum of 300,000 The company was capitalized at $2 mil­ possible. Instead of throwing money and gal Ions of water a day; after household lion, an unprecedented cash base in those limited engineering knowledge at th e di - allowances of 30 daily gallons, at an aver­ days of few and strictly limited corpora- tant Bronx River, the company opted for a age charge of $10 a year, excess supply would be available to the city for street cleaning and firefighting. For investors, Browne calculated a 13 percent return in ten years. Browne's was the first proposal to water New York from off its island. In that, it was historic. Otherwise, as subsequent devel­ opments showed, it was nothing more than a front for the larger designs of Browne's confederate, brother-in-law Aaron Burr. Finally propelled to action by yellow fever, the Common Counci I endorsed Browne's Bronx plan but insisted that the city itself, rather than a profit-minded company, do it. The council communi­ cated this desire to its delegation of sena­ tors and- assemblymen in Albany, where the city's water needs would be decided by the state legislature, meeting in early FIG. 7. The Manhattan Company's Chambers Street Reservoir. 7825.

32 THE RISE TO CROTO N waterworks just south of th e Fres h Water Pond, by then universall y and derisive ly known as the Collect. In his Bronx pro­ posa l of 1 798, Josep h Browne had called the Co llect a " large stagnating fi lthy pond" and doubted that the city wou Id "ever eriousl y think of forcing the inhabitants to dri nk [its] disgusting water." 15 In 1799, Joseph Browne, appointed at his brother­ in-law 's behest as th e Manhattan Company's superintendent, endeavored to do just that. Browne oversaw construction of the waterworks betwee n Chambers and FIG. s. Iron water tank Reade Streets. It was built on the Colles of the Manhattan model of a quarter-century ea rlier (the Company, Centre and aging Co ll es actuall y gave it his blessing) Reade Streets, during dismantling. July 14, but of dramatically less imag ination. A 1914. arge well was dug, but its water was not -ubmitted to scientific testing. On the brink of the steam age, the company opted ·or a horse-operated pump to raise the \ater, initially into a round iron tank 41 :eet across and 15 feet deep, set on a 23- :oot-high sto ne foundation. Plans for a grand reservo ir were gradually scaled back. Superintendent Browne's initial pro­ po al for a great stone octagon holding a 'Tlillion ga l Ions was rep laced by the plan o· architect John McComb Jr. (the future builder of today's City Hall) for a 250,000 oal/on rese rvoir. Ultimately, the company board approved a res ervoir, likely designed by City Hall codesigner Joseph FIG. 9. Radial arched langin, holding a mere 100,000 gallons. masonry supports after removal of iron e\ York was then a rapidly expanding water tank. July 29, city of nearl y that many people. Th e 7974. lanhatta n Company could not ade­ quately supp ly th em from its ta nk and its 'Tleager reservoir. En closed in a fo ur-story building, it was w ithout in cident until th e mid-1900s Th e reservoir was not unattractive. It maintained for generations by the when a merge r w ith the Chase National \as bui It of brick and stone on a lot with Manhattan Company for fear of losi ng its Ba nk and a national banking charter a fifty-foot front on Chambers Street. charter. During the widening of Centre lega lly relieved Aaron Burr's corporate Ri ing twenty feet, the gracefully sloping Street in 1898, the building's eastern wall descendant of any water obligations. faca de featured a portico of Dori c was torn dow n, drawing crowds to view After using horsepower to raise its water columns surmounted by a statue of th e century-old iron tank, into w hi ch a leve l, th e company eventually moved into Oceanus, rec umbent and pouring water bank employee reported ly pumped a bit the steam age. Th e company managed to from an urn [Fi g. 7] . The reservoir was of water every day, in service to the char­ lay some twenty-five miles worth of distri­ someth ing of a landmark until it was torn ter. The tank was tightly ree ntombed inside bution pipe, initially made of hollowed down shortly after the Croton Aqueduct a new, curving wall until 1914, when tank ye llow pine logs of small bore and notori­ ca me on Ii ne in 1842. (Th e Surrogate's and building were torn down and the land ously leaky. In 1810 the company wanted Court building now sta nds on the site.) Th e was leased to a developer [Figs. 8, 9]. The the city to chop down all its Lombardy more utilitarian tank had a longer life. company's banking bu siness proceeded poplar trees because their thirsty roots

33 were clogging company pipe; the city New York would be ravaged by cholera, Bowery (now Fourth Avenue) [Fi g. 1 OJ. responded w ith a tree protection ordi­ the disease that finally prompted a new Inside an octagonal stone structure, a cast­ nance. In the 1820s the company sol ution to its water troubles. iron tank, over 40 feet in diameter and 20 rep laced some of its wooden pipes with In the mea nti me, the city expanded in feet hi gh, was placed on a 27-foot-high cast iron mains. length and w idth, through the island's sto ne base [Fig. 11 ]. Bes ide the 250, 000 For decades after its founding, the broad girth between Grand and 14th ga llon tank, a twelve-horsepower stea m M anh attan Company's influential directors Streets. Settled areas in creased, as did the engine was installed to raise water from a and lawyers, mayor and future governor wood and other combustible structures remarkab le well. Dug and blasted over a DeWitt Clinton among them, thwarted crowded in to them. Increasingly th ey three-year period, th e wel I eventually numerous plans by the city or private caught on fire and progressive ly there was reached a depth of 112 feet, mostly interests to develop a proper water supply. less water to save them. Major fires devas­ through so li d rock. Th e main chamber was Wary of threats to its banking activities, tated res idential and commercial neigh­ 1 6 feet across, but two broad latera l ga l­ th e Manhattan Company effectively argued borhoods in 1804, 1811 , and 1816; the leri es near the bottom of th e well each th at it alone was entitled to supply New city suffered an average of twenty fires a extended 75 feet, giving a tota l capacity of York with piped drinking water. In the year during that period. Spectacul ar 175,000 ga llons. Th e subterranean bl ast­ meantime, these very pipes froze in the blazes consumed the historic Park Th eatre ing killed at least three workers, the first winter, clogged in the summer, rarely (now the site of J&R Music World) in 1820 exa mples of that special breed now yielded ample water, and that water never and the Bowery Theatre (in today's kn own as sand hogs to die in the servi ce of deemed healthy or flavorful. In 1824 Chi natown oppos ite the Confuciu s Plaza New York 's public water supp ly. botanist David Hosack was among fifteen Apartments) in 1828. By 1833 roughl y 12 miles of cast iron leading city physicians condemning com­ It was fire that in sp ired the city's first mains, with inner diameters from 6 to 20 pany water as " highly injurious" to New public waterworks: not a bold aqueduct inches, had been laid. Major north-south Yorkers' hea lth .16 Severa l yea rs later, a lyri­ from a distant river but a modest works on lines ra n along Hudson Street (and lower cal correspondent to the New York Evening suburban 13th Street. Begun in 1830, the 8th Ave nue), Broadway, the Bowery, East j ournal derided the "poisonous nature of system, w ith well, steam-engi ne, tank, and Broadway, Pea rl Street, and William Street. the pernicious Manhattan water ... th e distributing pipes, is largely forgotten Shorter crossing lines were laid under unpalatableness of this abominable fluid." 17 today because the water was undrinkable W averly Street, Spring Street, Stanton If New Yorkers suffered for years with and used on ly for firefighting. The 13th Street, Delancey Street, Grand Street, M anh attan Company water, the company Street Reservoir was, however, a great step Ca nal Street, and Chambers Street. In all, disposed of its founder promptly. Hav ing forward, at least geographically. After the some 150 street hydrants made firefighting dipped into its bank for $120,000 in unse­ Tea Water Pump and the Col les and water ava ilab le in portions of all twelve cured loans-nearly as much as the com­ Manhattan Company works, the 13th wa rd s out to the city limits at 21st Street. pany had invested in its water Street Reservoir system was New York's Th e partially completed works were operations-Burr was removed from the first effort to provide water from some­ officially opened in April 183 1. A poten­ board in 1802 (when he was Jefferson's w here other than the subterranean sou rces tially sign ificant fire several weeks later vice president). Brother- in-law Josep h of the Co llect Pond. That the pond itself was put out with 13th Street water, the Browne was shown the door shortly there­ had been filled in nea rly twenty years ear­ "most practical evidence of the certain after. Th e company's practice of ripping up lier indicates how slowly New York started success of this enterprize." 19 Rising 100 streets to lay pipe and the bitter negotia­ crawling out from under the Manhattan feet above w hat was already high ground, tions with the city to pay for th eir repair Company's unfortunate water monopoly. the handsome building prese nted "a ve ry helped topple Browne from concurrent Th e 13th Street Reservoir system was picturesq ue object to boats pass ing servi ce as company superintendent and the inspiration of Common Council fire through both the East and North [now the city's street commissioner. This was committee chai rm an Samuel Stevens, Hudson] Rivers." 20 Thi s first landmark of certainly one of the era's great conflicts of "Alderman Sam," as he was know n, for his the city's public water supply was short­ civic interest. long council service. Questioned during lived. Th e works were shut down w ith the Ye llow fever preyed on New Yorkers for council debate about the prospects for advent of the Croton water supply system many summers after the Manhattan water under newly laid 13th Street, in 1842, and the distinctive octagonal Company was founded to combat it. Four Stevens sa id : "Give us the tank and pipes, building and tank were torn down in the hundred people died in 1822, the last epi­ and we [will] engage to fill them, if we ea rl y 1850s. The location reta in s its her­ demic. By then, the Collect and its swampy have to carry the water in quart bottles." 18 itage : for nearly a century, 108 East 13th outlets had been fi I led in for development, Th e works were built in 1829 on empty Street has been a firehouse. serendipitously eliminating a prominent lots purchased by the city on the south Th e 13th Street Reservoir system pre­ mosquito breed ing ground. Ten years later, side of 13th Street just east of upper vented much death and destruction by

34 TH E RI SE TO CROTO N FIG. 10. Map showing the location of the 13th Street Reservoir between Bowery and Third Avenue in Manhattan.

FIG. 11 . The octagonal stone structure housing the 13th Street Reservoir.

fire, but it was unsuited to protecting New had something to do with filth and water. before, was filed away and forgotten, until Yorkers from ep idemic disease, as the Whereas a generation earlier Aaron Burr engineer Clinton gave Croton a second cholera epidemic of 1832 quickly proved. had manipulated city and state for per­ look. Water from local wells, the Manhattan sonal and politica l benefit after a devastat­ The ri ses in the low rolling Company, and up-island spri ngs (pur­ ing ep idemic, Van Schaick put his efforts hills of Putn am County and flows in a veyed, as was the Tea Water, by cart at to pub I ic manipulations for en during southwesterly direction, mergi ng with the considerable expense) were insufficient or social benefit. Hudson River about 40 miles north of li ke ly harmful to cholera patients, and no As a Democratic alderman and then a . Three main rivul ets and 13 th Street hydrants were tapped for sta te senator from 1832 to 1835, Van many minor streams drain a 375-square­ hea lth purposes. Schaick shaped policy and drafted legisla­ mile area bl essed with dependable rainfall The terror of cholera exposed the defi­ tion, guiding its passage and implementa­ (48 to 50 inches per year) and ab undant cient visions of Stevens, Burr, and Col Jes tion. In 1832 he arranged for a report by ground water that bubbles up in numerous before them. Th e island did not have the DeWitt Clinton Jr., the late governor's son small springs, brooks, and marshes. Many water to quench New Yorkers' thirst or and a rising engineer, which ca lled for the of the local lakes are fed from under­ clea nse them of disease. Th e first person to city to tap the dista nt Croton River. ground streams. recognize and act on th is fact was Th e Croton River was not unknown to Clinton's report proposed that the water Myndert Van Sch aick, a New Yorker of old New York water planners. In the early be taken directly from th e Croton River Dutch stock. His name appears on no 1820s, the Common Council had hired through a divers ion weir to be built near memorials except the New York Marble engineer Canvass White to Pine's Bridge, in the lower stretch of th e Cemetery vault w here his remains share exp lore th e possibilities of tapping the Croton va lley about fi ve miles upriver spac e w ith assorted rel atives of th e Bronx, Byram, or Saw Mill ri vers; White in from the confluence w ith the Hudson Clinton and Hone clans. For the man turn had hired Westchester surveyor River. From the diversion it would head w ho brought water to George W. Cartwright to examine the dis­ south to New York, flowing in an open ew York City and made both famous for tant Croton River to see if it might be led cana l, much like a simple agricultural irri­ excellent water, his obscurity seems down to any of these rivers . Ca rtw right gation ditch: undeserved. ga uged the Croton at 20 million ga llons a The elevation at Pine's Bridge, by Mr. While thousands of prominent citizens day-a third of its true capacity-and Cartwright's meas urement, is 183 feet above died (including M agdelen Bristed, the eld­ White discounted it as a tributary source; tide. I would propose at this point to sink the est daughter of John Jacob Astor) or fled, he also dismissed the Croton as an inde­ bottom of the works below the bed of th e Alderman Van Schaick stayed and w it­ pendent source due to what he perceived stream, to avo id the ri sk of a dam, and more nessed death scenes that horrified him. He to be insurmountable engineering issues. fully command the whole vo lume of th e (among others) realized that the suffering White's report of 1824, like so many water if necessary. Sluices and gates should

35

------.-r· :i

be provided and other contriva nces to prevent West Po int graduate and professor had fierce from spring water suppliers, bored­ any impurities from the stream passing into ea rli er been hired to des ign the first build­ well drilling advocates, the Manhatta n the works . .. Th e elevation of the Croton at in g for the new college on Washington Company (via politically safe anonymou Pines Bridge being 183 feet, and the bottom of Square (now New York University) of pamphlets), and tax-wary ri ch and poor the work being sunk 6 feet below the bed of w hi ch Van Schaick was a founder. alike. Westchester landowners (many oi the river, it leaves 177 feet; and if the line from While Clinton had proposed a straight them city dwellers as well ) protested the that point should descend uniformly 1 1/2 half diversion from the river, Douglass intro­ extraterritorial invasion of their peaceable feet in the mile ... I have strong confidence duced the idea of building a dam and an county by a city grown too large to water in the practicability of delivering it [the water associated storage reservoir. The Romans itse lf. Despite robust anti-Croton election­ 21 to New York] at 138 feet above tide. had utilized water storage facilities for eeri ng, memories of th e 1832 cholera had The cana l would head west, then south their great aq ueducts. That concept would been revived by a 1834 recu rrence, and along the so uthern banks of the Croton come to prevail in New York. Th e Croton the vote ca me down 17,330 to 5,963 in River, continuing along the steep and River was reliable, but there woul d cer­ favor ·of the plan to claim the Croton' irregular terrain of the east bank of the tai nl y be sustain ed dry ti mes when the water. Only three of the city's fifteen wa rd Hudson. The route would take the water river yield could prove inadequate. A dam had majoriti es aga inst the bill: one com­ over the va ll ey of Sleepy Hollow and other could reta in a reserve so urce and get the prising the formerly separate village oi ravin es that drain into the Hudson, tu rn city through the in evitable droughts Greenwich w hich still had good wells and inland to the east, cross ing the Saw M ill impacting the Croton bas in. The pos ition clear spr in gs, and two in the su nken River above Yo nkers, and then crossing the of the dam on the river would affect the neighborhoods of what is now th e Lower Harlem River near Macomb's Dam, in the capacity for collection and storage. If th e East Side, which had the worst wells and vicinity of w hat is now Yankee Stadium. dam was located too fa r upriver, the the least money but the greatest fear oi (An alternate proposal crossed the Saw amount of water ava il ab le in the water­ change. Mill River near its mouth at Yonkers and shed wou ld be reduced, as many of the Lin gering opposition went up in smoke continued directly south to the Harlem watershed streams would enter th e river eight months later. On the bitter ni ght oi River, crossing at the northern extremity of downstream of the dam. But if the dam December 16, a fire was touched off in a Manhattan Island around Marble Hill at was located too far downstream the eleva­ Merchant (now Beaver) Street warehouse. what is now the Broadway Bridge.) tion at the rese rvoir would be too low and Fann ed by a ga le, it consumed seven hun­ Clinton's vision for the new aq ued uct coul d limit the effective ab ility to de li ver dred bui ldings from south and east of all was the first to propose a bridge over the and distribute th e water by gravity. A bal­ Street and Broadway [F ig. 12]. The ther­ Harlem River, estimated at 138 feet high ance that wou ld provide an advantage in mometer read below zero, but the inten­ and 1,000 feet long. Despite objections estab li sh ing proper flow wou ld have to be sity of the flames I iquefied copper roofs_ made by his critics at the time of its sought. The 13th Street Reservoir system, depleted rel ease, Clinton's plan was specific, well Van Sc haick's 1834 legis lation, "An Act by fires ear lier in the week, trickl ed and organized, and based on sou nd engineer­ to Provide for Suppl ying the City of New froze in its hydrants. Wells and scattered ing. The overa ll thoroughness and credi­ York w ith Pure and W holesome Water," cisterns remained frozen so lid. Manhattan bility of his report helped turned the tide gave the commissioners complete author­ Company water goes unmentioned in an of official opinion toward the Croton as ity over al I aspects of aqueduct construc­ account. Property losses from the Grea· the preferable source. Clinton closed his tion and funding (through bond issues), Fire of 1835 were more than $20 mill ion, report by calli ng for minute and careful pending approval of their final plan by the roughly 10 percent of the city's propem surveys to help estab lish and refin e the Common Council and a public referen­ va lu e. While the commercial center of the aqueduct line and determine the actual dum. "Was it not pru dent," Van Schaick nation continued to smolder three day construction requirements. explained, when the successfully com­ later, Stephen Allen was named to oversee In 1833 Van Schaick's "pioneer law to pleted project reached its eventual $13 the rebu ilding effort. Allen was alread) the Croton" w ise ly sh ifted planning million cost- nearly double the outlay fo r managing the Croton project that would authority from the overm atched city gov­ the Erie Canal twenty yea rs earl ier-"that help protect the city from future disasters. ernment to five state-appointed com mis­ the people shou ld be pledged for the pay­ But he was growing impatient with the sioners. 22 Van Schaick named the panel, ment of the debt by their own act and slow pace of his ch ief engineer's study. all prominent Manhattanites and good deed and by their favorite rule of the Th e quantity of water to be delivered as Democrats, led by former Mayor Stephen majority? 11 23 based upon two main assumptions: that the Allen, a sailmaker turned civic booster. At In April 1835, New Yorkers (th at is, system wou ld ultimately serve 450,000 Va n Sc.haick's behest, the commissioners those ad ult males who were entitled to people (at the time of planning, the popu la­ nam ed military and civi l engineer David vote) went to the polls to give the Croton tion was 225,000), and that each user Bates Douglass to conduct surveys. Th e project their blessing. Opposition was would requi re 20 ga llons per day.

36 THE RI SE TO CROTO N FIG. 12. Burning of the Merchants' Exchange. December 16- 17, 1835.

Unlike th e aqueducts of the ancient but ultimately settled on a plan where Th e construction characteristics proposed world that often passed through arid or water was to be coll ected at numerous by Douglass were very close to those ulti­ semi-arid · lands, the Croton Aqueduct places in the branches and tributaries of mately used. w ou ld have to traverse a complex and the Croton watershed and taken via iron Douglass developed a horses hoe­ craggy landform marked by springs, pipes to a small one acre confluent reser­ shaped cross section that had an inverted creeks, and deep-cut draws that flooded voir at Mechanicsville. Th e elevation of arch at the base, outward battered w ith every rainfall. To some degree the this basin would be 270 feet above the masonry walls on the side, and a brick aqueduct could fo llow the contours of the Hudson River at low tide, a sign ificantly arch cover (or wood roof) over the channel land, but in many places ravines would higher point of origin than had previously [Fig. 13]. Th e larger aqueduct section have to be crossed with built-up embank­ been proposed. This plan confronted vari­ would be four feet wide at the base arch, ments or open bridges. Th ese crossings ous topological obstac les in moving the and the smaller section would be two feet would add substantially to the shee r vol­ water directly south through the high w ide at the base arch . Clinton's original ume of construction for the conduit. Each rocky ground that separated the Croton plans for the aqueduct proposed an open­ creek would be routed into a culvert of River drainage from the cut trench type conduit, but concerns stone, some one hundred feet long and basin. The route would have requi red about contamination, freezing and evapo­ deep below the hydraulic line of the deep cutting and hard-rock tunneling ration, and maintenance prompted the enclosed structure. through th e rocky ridges, but once decision to enclose the enti re aqueduct Douglass studied and suggested two through the high ground, the aqueduct with a masonry arch. The most typical and alternate routes. He developed specific cou ld follow a shorter route down th e characteristic cross section was a brick- structural ideas fo r each of these routes gentle terrain of the Saw Mill River va lley. 1in ed stone trench w ith slightly battered

37 walls separated on the bottom by an inverted, nearly flat arch, and covered above by a sem icircular brick arch, made of two thicknesses of brick, measuring 7 feet 8 inches in diameter. This maso nry conduit would then be buried in an earthen berm, or would be set into a trenched cut and then covered. In add ition to th is typical construction, there were several masonry conduits developed to accommodate va rious geological condi­ tions. These alternates included a stone arch cover and an irregular ovoid cross section that was used in rock tunneling [Fi gs . 14, 15]. By the fall of 1836, Douglass had com­ pleted four years of surveys and des ign but still hesitated on breaking ground. After in creas ingly uncivi I quarreling, A llen repl aced Douglas s with John Jervis, an upstate farm boy turned va ledictori an of the so-called Eri e School of En gineering. AG. 13. Va rious sections of the first Croton Aqueduct as proposed by Major David Bates Douglass. c. 78 35.

Sc:i k- -i· l1wh \u tl 11 • - ~ 'o___o i .. FIG. 14. Old Croton Aqueduct. Cross sections showing different methods of construction on steep hillsides, inscribed: "This drawing probably made about 7836."

38 T HE RISE TO C ROTO N Erane ~~::~~~!tiip;g~~C:;k;:J~ L·------1-

Cons1ruc:1inn

FIG. 15. Old Croton Aqueduct. Cross sections showing the variety of construction methods in different landscape conditions.

39 Whig politicians cried foul: Douglass was In the end, Douglass largely designed the river from where Douglass had staked it, a Whig and Jervis a Democrat working on Croton Aqueduct and Jervis built it, with but then paid the price. Heavy snow and a project run by his political brethren. But some substantial design modifications and rain in early January 1841 caused a flood Douglass was proving himself a concep­ innovations along the way. that breached the mostly completed dam, tual engineer ("a ripe scholar ... and in As conceived by Douglass and executed killing one worker there and two men at a theory, well acquainted with the science by Jervis, New York's great aqueduct downstream wire mill destroyed by the of engineering" in Allen's public estima­ started with a 50-foot-high dam 6 miles rolling wall of water, ice, mud, boulders, tion),'4 while Jervis was a proven project from the Croton River's junction with the and uprooted trees. Navigation on the engineer with a lengthening resume of Hudson, making a long natural reservoir lower Croton was permanently ruined; railroad and canal work that began with of the rugged Croton River . Jervis lawsuits continued for many years. But his rise from Erie Canal axeman to chief. shifted the dam location slightly down- Jervis ingeniously redesigned the dam, with a stilling basin and a novel S-shaped face that minimized the destructive force of overflowing water and became a stan­ dard for American dams [Figs. 16, 1 7]. Jervis's dam survives, submerged for over a century now in the deeper reservoir cre­ - L~ ' ; IT~: ated by the towering New Croton Dam. ~~j} The original plan for the dam was to have 25 percent of the length constructed as masonry, and the remaining 75 percent as earth embankment. As redesigned after the flood, the dam had an additional 180 feet of masonry. The river bottom was cleared of mud and bou Ide rs to reach a stable layer of riverbed. Timber cribs filled with boulders created the aprons upon which the dam rose. The cribs were a combination of elm, pine, and oak, with joints dovetailed and secured with wooden spikes of white oak (treenails), and capped with pine planks. This series of substructures was the armature of the dam. On these, rows of hydraulic stonework were keyed together to resist the great forces of restrained water. The face stone was granite. The profile of the dam allowed water to flow evenly over almost the entire upper surface and not through a restricted weir. On the down­ stream side of the dam, the stilling basin, or "dead water" pool, was created by a low secondary dam. The pool created a counterforce to the weight of the water backed up by the main dam and mini­ mized the destructive force of the water spilling over the dam. From the reservoir created by Jervis' dam, diverted river water began a 33-mile run by gravity to the Harlem River. Through the undulating hills and valleys of FIG. 16. Old Croton Dam. Cross section. FIG. 17. Water cresting over the Old Croton Dam. The gatehouse for the New Croton Aqueduct is the lower , Douglass had on the hill at right. c. 1900. painstakingly determined the aqueduct's

40 THE RISE TO CROTON most efficient route to maintain the required descent of 13 inches per mile. In places, the aqueduct's underground course ran up to 30 feet deep in varied I ' rocks and soils; in others, it passed in dozens of culverts and larger structures over rivers, streams, and ho! lows [Fig. 19]. Throughout, the basic dimensions were retained: the horseshoe-shaped conduit was just under 71/i feet wide and 81/i feet high. The bottom was a flat inverted arch and the straight sidewalls broadened slightly towq.rd the rounded arch top. (In tunnels passing through rock, the conduit roof was formed by the natural rock; in tunnels deep through earth, the sidewalls were round.) Jervis acknowledged Douglass' sensible route location and made only small refine­ ments to his conduit dimensions and spec­ ifications, but Jervis designed most of the major aqueduct structures along the Westchester route, including the spectac­ ular arched crossing of Sing Sing Kill, which is still standing in what is now FIG. 18. Old Croton AquecL Ossining, and the long embankment over Inlet gatehouse. the Mill (now Pocantico) River near Sleepy Ho I low [Figs. 20, 21]. At the Harlem River, FIG.19. Old Croton Aq1;00_ Cross sections of cul e::J;_ which separates the mainland from upper Manhattan, Jervis nearly met his match. Douglass, with a taste for the magnifi­ cent, had suggested, but not designed, a grade-level crossing of the Harlem River on towering Roman arches, meeting Manhattan at what became 1 7 4th Street. At more than 1,400 feet long and 140 feet high, the scale of the bridge would have been unprecedented in America. Jervis, whose tastes ran toward the frugal, designed a pipe siphon on a relatively inexpensive low embankment, with one low arched passage for boats. This plan pleased the cost-conscious commissioners but quickly ran afoul of other interests. Douglass defenders alleged that Jervis was afraid to build a great bridge. Real estate interests on both shores of the Harlem saw rising values in a high bridge. Shipping interests were outraged at the permanent obstruction to navigation posed by a low arch. And New Yorkers generally wondered why their fine aque­ JO duct should come slinking onto the bold --- --

hi ghlands of upper Manhattan in a style Macomb's Dam Bridge dates from 1895). Not all on Jervis' staff agreed. Twenty­ suited for lesser cities. The leg islature soo n ordered Jervis to one-year-old as sistant engineer Fayette Passions became enflamed, espec iall y choose between a high bridge or a tunnel. Tower privately condemned a costly hi gh those of Lewis Gouverneur Morris, grand­ Jervis knew that the effort to build the bridge mandated "just for architectural nep hew of the late city grid planner. In world's first underwater tunnel, Marc bea uty in a place w here there is little September 1838, the young heir to the Brunel's Thames Tunn el in London, was necesity [s ic] for it." 27 Tower soon learned Morrisania estate on the Harlem River led only just coming to completion after fif­ the role of business and politics in engi­ a stra nge nava l assault on Macomb's Dam teen yea rs. Th e project had caused dozens neering and went on to document the Bridge, which had been thrown across the of deaths and in capacitatin g injuries, and Croton Aqueduct in a book of exquisite Harlem two decades earlier w ithout a ran 400 percent over budget. Jervis offered engravings, including his panoram ic view state-mandated draw for ri ver traffic. Th e a Harl em River tunnel plan but favored his of the bridge that originall y offended his dam portion of the wooden bridge, a mile plan for a multi-arched bridge w ith an youthful idealism. downriver from the proposed Croton cross­ Albany-mandated hundred-foot minimum Croton was built on the organizational ing, succumbed quickly to boatloads of clearance over the ri ver: a hi gh bridge but model estab lished for the Erie project axe-wielding mariners. The Harlem River one that came in slightly below grade twenty yea rs ea rli er: a state-appointed was once again open for navigation, espe­ level using a cheaper pipe siphon instead commission hired the engineers who con­ ciall y by Morris and other Harlem River of expensive add iti onal maso nry. ducted the surveys, prepared the work for estate owners, and the ca use of Harlem The legisl ature happily opted for the competitive bidding in sma ll sections, an d navigation was dramatically improved: high bridge, a reso lution not necessaril y overs aw the contractors ' progress. Th e without Macomb's Dam Bridge, the argu­ unwanted by the ori gin al low-bridge advo­ constru ction had one hundred sections, ment for a river-blocking aq ueduct cate: "It was natural," Jervis w rote in his each averaging less than a half-mile in embankment lost support (state courts memoirs, "that an engin eer should incline length. As with the pioneeri ng Erie work, eve ntually vindicated Morris for abating "a to a work that would give prominence to the construction contracts for many se c­ public nuisance;"25 the third and current professional character as a work of art." 26 tions were won by local farmers or landowners knowledgeable about th eir particular area, but a substa nti al number of sections were undertaken by assoc ia­ tions of workers w ho had gai ned experi­ ence on can al projects elsewhere. The lead contractor of the High Bridge, for example, was an asp iring capitalist named George Law. In the fifteen years after leaving the strugg ling upstate farm estab lished by his Iri sh immigrant fath er,

;; .. .g..ftj-•.·: ...... ' ...... ) ~ . • ·: •_. , ''· • ' jj"· "" ·if·-· ·f··· >·'· · ·...... 1 ••• ,.,/ \ ' ""(V- .'9.··. . ._-. ··+"' ,, ,_, .. ··-- ·rn Law had risen from laborer on various American canal projects to contract w inner on seve ral small Pennsylvania canals. Having obtained some wealth and a well­ born w ife, he moved to New York City to bid on Croton contracts. After w inning the contract for the embankme~t over the M ill River (where he befriended a loquaciou s local whom he fai led to recognize as Washington Irvi ng), Law joined three other veteran Croton contractors to win the High Bridge job with a $755,000 bid. " [A] sel f­ IIii made man [who] worships his creator" and imbued with "a tal ent for making money out of other peopl e," 28 Law was soon a Fi fth Avenue millionaire, a financier, and owner of steamship, fe rry, and railroad lines rang­ rl in g from New York to California and FIG. 20. Old Croton Aqueduct. Sing Sing Kill Bridge. Ele vations and cross sections. Panama. He was also an early challenger

42 THE RISE TO CROTON FIG. 21. Old Croton Aqueduct. Ossining Arch (Sing Sing Kill Bridge). July 9, 7973.

for the White House in 1856 as a Know­ 1837 (spawned by a burst bubble in spec­ age wage for unskilled labor in the ci Nothing Party candidate. Coa rse and reac­ ul ative cana l stocks ) was sp iraling into a and relative ly in line w ith th e $75 mon h tionary, Law was not popular among New six-year national depression. Croton, sa lary for first ass istant engineers. In bad York's estab lished elite, but th e Croton proj­ financed with $12 million in state bonds seasons, though, such as 1839 \ hen t.ne ect had lau nched him into the city's broad­ issues, w hich so ld initiall y at impressive commissioners had to pay contradors · n ening upper-middle class. premiums but soon at deep discounts, was discounted city bonds instead of ccs" Most of the workers w ho labored for nevertheless a timely public works project da ily wages for laborers dropped ·o Law and other Croton contractors were that employed thousands of the otherwise seventy-five cents. fresh Irish immigrants. Th ey had fled eco­ jobless . In good seasons, unskilled Croton Rega rdless of th e season, worke rs \\ere nomic collapse in Irel and on ly to find the laborers happily earned a dollar a day. always at risk of injury or death. Because sa me crisis in America, where the Pani c of This was considerably more than the aver- workers w ere hired by contractors, and ,l,. C.<:: "<">Q N ~ · .. "'"- 0 ' ,.. ,,C.~ > O N .,.,...... , o' C<:.>!Tk "- Or" "'"-<:.tt Cl::...,<' f\... <::. o..- P< "'- "-• ==!cF===="'°==~=.....,,,"'=="'='-*~=====I~------·---.

.\I \' I !. ··-:-T,. I

Il. ~\ -----~ · - ·....:,1

. '- ,,. ... c;.,. ,Q < ;..T C. l<..O WN . .!::.CC:."<"l Ofl. Ttt "-0 f>rt..A~Tt::R ~~ <:;'"· " e ' ",. .,...... ,. .. " ,... .. '

FIG. 22. High Bridge. Cross sections and partial elevation showing FIG. 23. High Bridge. View from mainland, looking up Harlem River. cofferdams and centering for arch construction. c. 1845.

44 THE RISE TO CROTON ·· , :.··;.·· ··:.· ··

. · ··.·.·.·:: . .-.·· · ·::::_:: ..: .:· · ·. · ·.·.·. :·:. -_: :.;· -· .· . ··.:.:·· ···:.-::_·:_· :. .·.:::=..::·.

FIG. 24. Sections of elevated aqueduct through the Clendening Valley showing arched passage­ ways for roads and sidewalks.

1-'-'-'--'+'-''-'+'----+----+--~------_t--- - ,.,of

governmental oversight was generations in full-scale riot. After beating or driving off The piers to support the fifteen arches of the future, there is no record of Croton higher-paid masons, carpenters, and other the High Bridge slowly rose from the bed casualties other th an the occasional report­ skilled workers, as well as otherwise con­ of the Harlem River and the low ing in local papers of particularly grue­ tent laborers, a thousand Westchester Westchester plain. A pipe siphon on a low so me incidents. The imprecise science of workers-equal to the entire winter crew embankment would carry Croton water rock blasting, espec ially for the aq ueduct's and a quarter of the usual summer force­ across the Harl em until the bridge's com­ sixteen tunnels, ea rned the most ink and commandeered work boats at the Harlem pletion in 1848 [Fi gs. 22, 23]. the least sympathy. On a section near River and invaded upper Manhattan, scat­ From the Harlem Ri ver, the aqueduct Dobbs Ferry in January 1838, the "unfor­ tering work crews there. "Th e Croton ran underground (in brick conduit, cast tunate" Patrick Carr was "neg I igent of the W ar" 30 ended bloodlessly several days later iron pipe, and two tunnels) for four miles precaution of keeping a sufficient quantity when the city militia, mustered for the first toward, and then down, the future line of of water in the hole, and when a part of time in long memory, rode north to find the Amsterdam Avenue and, after a gentle S­ the covering of the charge was removed, a rioters had already dispersed. But sponta­ turn, to just west of today's Columbus hissing noise was heard, and in the twin­ neous strikes and violence persisted along Avenue, surfacing dramatically at what is kling of an eye" Carr was blown to bits. 29 the entire line through the month, until it now 102nd Street to cross the Clendening Unsafe on the job, Croton workers were became clear that there were many unem­ Valley. never "fully at peace with each other or ployed laborers eager for work at depres­ Perceived today as merel y a shallow dip 11 11 their employers. Southern ( corkonians ) sion wages. in the Upper West Side, the va lley was the and northern ("fardowns") Irish factions National economic malaise did not sig­ Clendening family fa rm . By late 1840, a skirmished regu larly (and sometimes nifica ntly affect progress on the Croton SO-foot-high, 1,900-foot-long arched fata lly) along the line, fueled by illicit because its bonds, though deflated, did stone wall supporting a section of brick w hiskey consumption. On April 1, 1840, continue to sell. By 1840 much of the conduit, lined with iron to prevent seep­ w hen it became apparent that the prevail­ work in Westchester was completed, or age damage to the stonework, rose from in g lower winter wage would be continued nearly so, and construction in Manhattan the bucolic va lley [Fig. 24]. The nine for the summer season, workers united in was moving forward. arches-three which are 27-feet wide, and

45 fl anked by 14-foot-w ide arches-repre­ sent a bit of city governmental history. When the Whigs gained control of state J government in 1840 (fo r two yea rs), they impaneled a slate of cost-cutting water comm issioners (led by old alderman Sam uel Stevens) who won a vote by the poli tica ll y divided Common · Council to scrap the planned Clendening arches in favo r of a cheaper solid wa ll. Democrat 8< Slree Con ~ec nS pipe Isaac Varian responded w ith th e first veto NORTHERN DIVIS10N A I ~of-4 8 SO~T~ERN DlV~· v-----·------·- 1826 4 ..•... by a New York mayor. Varian exp lained that not only was th e counci l order y ~- <>" beyond the council's authority and a vio­ · ~~ ef lation of ex isting contracts, but the unbro­ ~'>.,~ ken wall it mandated would be a barrier to , Effluent-gate ,t:f rn1u.,~t' J.---....-.-"------+---.-_.~_. -___-__ - ._-__ -___'-_ .... _ :", _,~)r----=u, . ------<.:"-J development. And so a Solomonic com­ promise was made: a solid wa ll wou ld ris e 7Ttt Avenue. at the northern and southern end s, com­

Is~5t. \ ISt.sa I \;;I prising half the valley cross ing's length, and the partially constructed nine-arched midsection would be completed. W ithin

FI G. 2s. York Hill Receiving Reservoir. Plan with twenty years, the Clendening farm was intended street layout (before implementation gone, and the streets and sidewa lks of of Central Park plan). c. 1839. 98th, 99th, and 1 OOth Streets passed beneath those arches. In the 1870s, devel ­ opment demanded more: th e aq ueduct FIG. 26. York Hill Receiving Reservoir. Section of section was shifted underground into a effluent pipes and vaults for the north basin. c. 7839 .

S E CT I O_N T H R. 0 1 A , 6 •

F :-:-:-----':Jqfv _Jr? !/.I)"_._ __j ! -

i-J,

46 TH E RISE TO CROTON r_Q_ __ _ ~ -- ! I .L

_! _L

FIG. 27. Old Croton Aqueduct. Sluice gates at termination ---~:--~-- - ~ of aqueduct at York -HH'-'..!-5- Hill Receiving :5 13£1 6256-Y Reservoir. c. 7839. $C .... i..E .3TOA,.OOT

...... ~ ...... · .. ~

..; >

FIG. 28. York Hill Receiving Reservoir. Sections through waste weir. c. 7839 .

47 RE.C.EIVINC.. R.l i:>E.RVOIR. .8E:CTION ..,\ .f ii .i

S E.C.TION M C.. t:

0

$ E C T tON ..t ;;,J •

· r - · L J· - 11 1JJ.l·. J):. If[_i ~ -· .l.\.

FIG. 29. York Hill Receiving Reservoir. Details of gatehouse and pipe vaults. c. 1839.

pipe siphon and the entire valley cross­ bounded by 79th and 86th Streets and twenty-five feet [Fig. 25]. With a capacity ing-the arched central portion and the Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Twenty years of 150 million gallons, the receiving reser­ solid wall blocking 96th, 97th, and 101 st after it was completed, the reservoir was voir outpaced the storage of th e Streets-was torn down. Some might say the centerpiece of Central Park- 843 Manhattan Company and the 13th Street that the valley has never countenanced its urban acres of re-created nature rescued Reservoir system three hundred times over development: after its degeneration into a from their fate of becoming part of the 153 [Figs. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30] . dense region of shabby tenements, 1950s blocks of grid (and inspired by Brooklyn's York Hill received its first water on th e urban renewal delivered the current Green-Wood Cemetery, the pioneering afternoon of June 27, 1842, to the cheers "banal .. . slab and balcony" high-rise exercise in urban pastoralism created in of twenty thousand citizens and the salute apartments of Park West Village.31 1838 by displaced Croton chief David of thirty-eight guns. Fayette Tower, who From the looming tristesse of Clenden­ Douglass). during the past five years had been ing Valley, the brick conduit disappeared The York Hill receiving reservoir was assigned increasing responsibility for for its final underground mi le to the York comprised of two linked basins with major structures from the dam to th e Hill receiving reservoir in rocky, open unadorned sloping stone walls that rose in Clendening crossing, was present from ground that the 1811 grid plan intended to varying heights above the uneven terrain early morning, when he took the hand of eventually fill with fourteen blocks to maintain a maximum water depth of a distinguished visitor emerging from hi s

48 THE RISE TO CROTON ex qu1s1te ca rriage. "His head was bent 2 'I? . fo rward beneath the weight of years and Of" 2. f"C.C.T TO AN be ing introduced to one of the contractors fo r building the reservoir, he turned up one eye towards him and remarked 'I ! < th ink you ought to make money here.' . ,;; M ·-__ :;:..J _1__.L i_I How characteristic of the man whose thoughts have turned to dollars."32 Po ss ibly the thoughts of America's richest ma n, seventy-three-year-old John Jacob Astor, were also turned to the costs of cholera an d th e approaching tenth .,,., ..-·· ~""'· .. 0 .....,.,.,, .,.·- ..- ,,,. ... an nivers ary of his daughter Magdelen's agon izing death. From the receiving reservoir, twin three­ foot-diameter iron mains led water south for two miles under the future line of Fifth Aven ue to a 20 million gallon distribution res ervoir at the provincial intersection of dirt roads, presently Fifth Avenue and -+2n d Street. The receiving reservo ir was primarily a functional creation; the distri­ bution reservoir, on four acres of Murray Hill a mile north of the city limits, was a sh owpiece [Fig. 31]. Its mass ive sloping maso nry walls were 45 feet high, towering over new lots, country cottages, and trees that thus far had su rvived clearing. Th e ;:. ·1 . ....,. ~ I - ~J exterior was adorned with neo-Egyptian deta iling. An iron railing ringed the flat top ·[: 'l.,i'I ~ · ..,I~ yl~· --·r ; =J _: 1 ~ of the walls, creating a broad public prom­ . J. t . ~ - J_ enade a third of a mile square [Figs . 32, ~'~1111111 11 ~1 ··/ . I ·l;,· 33]. To all who viewed it from a distance or viewed into the distance from its hi gh promenade, the great reservoir augured the city to come, surging northward to meet, surround, and, by century's end, overwhelm it. When the reservoir was fi lied to its 3 6-foot depth, the level of the water was 115 feet above mea n tide, and 51 feet below the water level at the Croton Dam 41 miles away. With ca nnon booming at sunrise on Independence Day 1842, the water gates into the twin basins of the Murray Hill rese rvoir swung open. "At an hour when the morning guns had roused but few from their dreamy slumbers, and ere yet the rays of the sun had gilded the city's domes," Fayette Tower, perched on the reservoir para pet, "saw the first rush of the FIG. 30. York Hill Receiving Reservoir. Cross FIG. 31. Murray Hill Distributing Reservoir. water as [it] entered the bottom and wan­ section of gatehouse and perimeter embankment. 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue (future site dered about, as if each particle had c. 1839. of the New York Public Library).

49 consciousness." 33 Late r, the rese rvoir's years of economic depression, which had everyone end ured a choral society rendi­ bounty was served in cups to twenty-five something to do w ith the fact that few tion of the seven-stanza "Croton Ode," thousand sweating citizens. By mid­ households had engaged a new breed­ w hich opened with: October, hundreds of miles of distribution the Croton plumber-to hook up expen­ Water leaps as if delighted, pipe had been laid, from the Battery to sive serv ice pipes. Only two weeks ea rlier While her conquered foes retire! 21st Street, river to river, and specta cul ar the city officially an nounced that it would Pale contagion flied affrighted fountains played in City Hall Park and make free and unlimited water available at W ith the baffled demon Fire! 35 Union Square. "Nothing is talked of or street hydrants and charge up to $12 a thought of in New York but Croton water; year for private service. More lyrically, editor and best-selling fountains, aqueducts, hydrants, and hose To promote the use of its new abun­ writer Lydia Maria Child (chiefly remem­ attract our attention and impede ou r dance, the city threw the "Croton Water bered today for her Thanksgiving verse "Over progress through the streets," wrote Philip Celebration" on October 14, 1842. Tens of the river and through the wood . . . ") Hone in his fa mous diary; "Water! Water! thousands of marchers, in groups repre­ reported to her newspaper readers in is the universal note w hich is sounded senting every layer of society, paraded Boston: "Oh, who that has not been shut up through every part of the city, and infuses before the population crowded along the in the great prison-cell of a city, and made joy and exultation into the masses, even winding citywide route festooned with to drink of its brackish springs, can estimate though they are somewhat out of spirits."34 flags and floral displays. Church bel Is the blessings of the Croton Aqueduct? New Yorkers were out of spirits from six pealed, bands played, artillery fired, and Clean, sweet, abundant water!"36

FIG . 32. Murray Hill Distributing Reservoir. Elevation FIG. 33. Murray Hill Distributing Reservoir. Plan and and cross section details at entry to pipe vaults. sections showing vaulted perimeter masonry walls.

50 THE RISE TO CROTON -- - •

FIG. 34. Old Croton Aqueduct. Section of aqueduct exposed during building excavation at West 7OS th Street, Manhattan. May4, 1928.

51 NOTES

FOREWORD Works of Washington Irving, 10 vo ls. 16. Certificates, Relative to Manhattan Water 1. Kenneth T. Jackson, quoted in Glenn (New York: G. P. Putnam & Co ., 1910), in N.Y. (New York [?], 1824[?]), 1. Col lins, " In City's History, a Glass Half 24: 713. 17. New York Evening journal, undated clip­ Full: Unea rthed City Archives Reveal 8. Edmu nd B. O'Callaghan, ed., Documents ping in Stephen Allen Scrap Book, New­ Artistry of Water Supply," New York Times Relative to the Colonial History of the York Histo ri ca l Soc iety. Th e paper was Uanuary 8, 2001 ). State of New-York, 15 vols. (A lbany: published from 1829 to 1832. Weed, Parso ns, an d Co., 1856- 87), 2:500. 18. New York City Board of Aldermen, "Semi­ THE RISE TO CROTON 9. I. N. Ph elps Stokes, Th e Iconography of Annual Report of the Water Commis­ 1. Wi lliam Bridges, Map of the City of New­ Manhattan Island, 6 vols. (New York: Arno sioners," Document No. 9 (August 8, York and Island of Manhattan; with Press, 1967 [1915]), 4:262. 1842), 86- 87. Expla natory Remarks and References 10. John W. Fra ncis, "Reminiscences of 19. MCC, 1784- 1831 , 19:718. (New York: T &J Swords, 1811 ), 24. Christopher Ca lles," Th e Knickerbocker 20. Th e Family Magazine, or, Monthly Abstract 2. Wayne Andrews, "A Glance at New York Callery: A Testimonial to the Editor of the of General Knowledge 6 (1839), 11 7. in 1697: Th e Travel Diary of Dr. Benjamin Knickerbocker Magazine from Its 21. Edward Wegmann, Th e Water Supply of Bu lliva nt," New-York Historical Society Contributors (New York: S. Hu eston, the City of New York 7658 - 7895 (New Quarterly 40, no. 1 Uan uary 1956), 65. 1855), 197- 208. York: Joh n Wi ley & So ns, 1896), 24. 3. Alexa nder Hamilton, ltinerarium (New 11 . M inutes of the Common Council of the 22. New- York Evening Post, March 18, 1845. York: Arno Press and New York Times, City of New York, 1675-1776, 8 vo ls. 23 . NYEP, M arch 18, 1845 . 1971 [1 907]), 107. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1905), 12:203 . 24. Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, 4. Peter Kalm, Travels into North America, 12. Th e Spectator 22 (September 29, 1798). November 12, 1840. trans . John Reinhold Forster, 2 vols ., 2nd 13. Commercial Advertiser 1 (September 5, 25 . Renwick v Morris, Court for the ed. (London: Printed for T. Low ndes, 1773 1798). Correction of Errors of New York, 7 Hill [1753]), 196- 197. 14. N icholas Low to Rufus King, May 24, 575 (1844). 5. Andrew Burnaby, Travels Through the 1799, in Beatrice G. Reubens, "B urr, 26. John B. Jervis, Th e Rem iniscences of john M iddle Settlements in North America in Hamilton and the Manhatta n Company, 8. Jervis, Engineer of the Old Croton, ed. the Years 7759 and 7760 (New Yo rk: Part II: Lau nching the Bank," Political Neal FitzS imons (Sy racuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Augustus M. Kel ley, 1970 [1775]), 112. Science Quarterly 73, no. 1 (March 1958), Un ivers ity Press, 1971), 143. 6. Henry Brockholst Li vingston to Henry 109. 27. Fayette B. Tower to (brother) Julius Tower, Remse n, April 11 , 1810, in Gregory S. 15. Proceedings of the Corporation of New­ June 12, 1839, Tower letters, private col­ Hunter, The Manhattan Company: York, on Supplying the City with Pure and lection of Helen Tower W il so n. Managing a Multi-unit Corporation in Wholesome Water, with a Memoir of 28. Jun ius Henri Browne, The Great N ew Yo rk, 779 9- 7842 (New York: Joseph Browne, M.D., on th e Sa me M etropolis: A Mirror of New York Garland Publishing, 1989), 104-105. Subject (New York: John Furman, 1 799), (Hartford : America n Publ ishing Company, 7. Irving to Charles King, August 9, 1832, in 9-29. 1869), 642 , 644.

251 29. Hudson River Chronicle, January 16, 1838. 18. New York City Aqueduct Commission, 25. HCARS 6:8-12. 30. New York Morning Herald, April 13, 1840. Report I (1883-87), 7. 26. HCARS 7:74- 76. 31. Norval White and El liot Wi llensky, eds., 19. Isaac Newton, New York Water Supply: 27. HCARS 7:79- 83. A/A Guide to New York City, 4th ed. (New Report on Storage Reservoirs in the Croton 28. HCARS 3:27. York: Three Rivers Press, 2000), 367. (New York: Martin B. Brown Co., 1883), 29. HCARS 3:2 3-24. 32. Fayette Tower to "brother," June 28, 1842, 8-11 . 30. HCARS 3: 43-45. Tower letters. 20. Weidner: 74. 31. HCARS 4:1-5. 33. Fayette Tower to Helen M. Phelps, Jul y 5, 21. Weidner: 81. 32. HCARS 10:131 -42. 1842, John Wolcott Phelps Papers, New 22. Edward Wegm ann, The Design and 33. HCARS 9:13- 15. York Public Library. Construction of Dams (New York: John 34. HCARS 9:19-23. 34. The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828-1851, ed. Wiley & Sons, 1911 ), 159- 60. 35. HCARS 9:28-31. Allan Nevins, 2 vols., (New York: Dodd, 23 . Wegmann, Dams: 170. 36. HCARS 9:36. Mead and Company, 1927), 2:624. 24. Weidner: 119. 37. HCARS 4:23-27. 35. The ode was com111i ssioned by the city 38. Weidner: 274-75. from minor Knickerbocker Group poet THE CATSKILL SYSTEM 39. New York City Board of \ \'a e ::_ George Pope Morris. 1 . New York City Board of Water Supply, Catsk ill Water System: A Ce-e-~ 36. Lydia Maria Francis Child, Letters from Office of the Chief Engineer, History of the Description, September 1915. New-York (New York: Charl es S. Francis, Catsk ill Aqueduct and Related Stru ctures 40. New York City Board of Water u 1843), 200. 1905-1917, 12 vols., 1 :3 . This document Water Supply of the City of i'e " is an unpublished history of th e first phase Vo lume Descriptive of its So urces ::­ THE EXTENSION OF of the Catskill system. Attribution of spe­ Reservoirs and Transportation THE CROTON SYSTEM cific w ri tings is not given in th e text. Dates September 1950: 1 0-11. 1 . Edward Wegmann, The Water Supply of in the manuscript suggest that the docu­ 41. BWS, Water Supply: 12-13. the City of New York 1658-1895 (New ments were produced in 1917 and 1918. 42. BWS, Catskill, December 20, 1913. York: John Wiley & Sons, 1896), 48. 2. Ch arles Weidner, Water for a City (New 2. Wegmann: 65. Brunswick, N.j.: Rutgers University Press, THE DELAWARE SYSTEM 3. Elizabeth Barlow Rodgers, Rebuilding 1974), 141. 1 . New York City Board of \ \'a er S Central Park (Cambridge, Mass.: M IT 3. New York Tim es, April 20, 1899. Fifteenth Annual Report, January 1, Press, 1987), 106. 4. Weidner: 147-48. 2. BWS, Twenty-first Annual Repo 4. Robert J. Kornfeld Jr., 'j erome Park 5. Weidner: 150-51. 1, 1927: 103 . Conservancy Preservation Report," 1998: 1 06. 6. HCA RS 1 :7-8. 3. BWS, Twenty-first Annual Repor. _ 5. Annual Report of the Croton Aqueduct 7. HCARS 1:9-10. 1, 1927: 6. Department Made to the Common 8. HCARS 1 :11. 4. Delaware Ri ver Case 1952-195.;, -~ Council of the City of New York for the 9. HCA RS 1:13-14. Court of the United States, II: 1--4. Year 1858: 8. 10. Weidner: 180-81. 5. State of New Jersey v State oi e 6. Annual Report 1858: 10. 11 . HCARS 2: 5-6. and City of New York, Supreme C _ - 7. Annual Report of the Croton Aqueduct 12. New York City Board of Water Supply, First the United States, (dec ision a~ ...: - ::r Department Made to the Common Annual R epo ~ December31, 1906: 2 1. 6. BWS, Twentieth Annual Report, Ja -2- Council of the City of New York for th e 13. HCARS 2:18. 1926: 7-8. Year 1860: 7-11. 14. HCA RS 2:60-62 . 7. BWS, Twen ty-se cond Annual Re~ - 8. Annual Report 1860: 1-14. 15. HCARS 2:58. January 1, 1928: 64. 9. Kenneth A. Jackson, The Encyclopedia of 16. HCA RS 2:23-25. 8. BWS, Holing Through City Tun nel o. _ New York City (New Haven: Yale 17. HCARS 2:24-25. March 30, 1932 : 2. Universi ty Press, 1995), 11 49. 18. HCARS 2:28-30. 9. BWS, Annual Report, Decembe· 1 0. Charles Weidner, Water for a City (New 19. HCARS 2:82. 1935: 43 . Brunswick, N.j.: Ru tge rs University Press, 20. HCARS 5:27-29. 10. BWS, Origin and Achievemen i:X _ 1974), 62. 21. HCARS 5:31-32. Board of Water Suppl y, City of /\:e\\ o· 11. Kornfeld: 7. 22 . HCA RS 5: 35. September, 1950: 43. 12. Jackson: 1206. 23. Weidner: 215. 11 . Roger W. Armstrong, "Construction r:i - 13. Weidner: 49. 24. William H. Burr, Rudolf Hering, and John Delawa re Aqueduct," Journal oi 14. Annual Report 1858: 111. R. Freeman, Report of the Commission on England Water Works Association L\ . ~ _ .:: 15 . Wegmann: 90. Additional Water Supply for the City of (1941): 161. 16. Kornfeld: 10, quoting Union League, New York Made to Robert Grier Monroe, 12. Walter E. Spear, "Civil En gineerin "Union League Club Report," Uanuary commissioner of Water Supply, Gas and Tunn els for Delivery of Water upo 1882), 9. El ectricity, November 30, 1903 (New March, 1933. 17. Wegmann: 110. York: Martin B. Brown Co., 1904), 3. 13. Armstrong: 140.

252 NOTES