Monday, January 18, 2021 – WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN ON OUR ISLAND, MANY CONCEPTS
265th Edition
January 18, 2021
from Untapped Cities
Bridge and Water Tales
Stephen Blank
In 2015 a remarkable New York City treasure reopened after being closed for almost half a century. It was modeled on an ancient Roman structure and helped provide a deeply needed resource, without which the City would never be able to grow.
Of course, this is the High Bridge – originally called the Aqueduct Bridge – built in 1848 to carry clean water from the Croton Aqueduct across the Harlem River to New York City, a city which was constantly struggling against the flames of fire and disease. The bridge was remodeled in 1928, much transforming its appearance, and then closed in the 1970s. It was reopened for pedestrian traffic in 2015.
Surrounded by rivers and by one of the world’s largest and most beautiful harbors, NYC became woefully short of drinkable water. New Yorkers had always drawn their water from nearby ponds, streams, and wells – brackish because of the salty rivers and harbor. They were scarcely fastidious in daily habits and their waste ran into the same water they drank. An article in the Smithsonian Magazine tells us “…the colonists ran amok in noxious habits…Runoff from tanneries, where animal skins were turned into leather, flowed into the waters that supplied the shallow wells. Settlers hurled carcasses and loaded chamber pots into the street. The goats and pigs roamed free, leaving piles of droppings in their tracks. In early New York, the streets stank.” The growing city was unable to pump water up from the rivers to battle fires. New York City became one of the unhealthiest cities in the new nation.
Still, in the late 18th century, there was one untainted pond just north of the city, named Collect Pond, and wealthy colonists bought carted water from that pond.
Ah yes, the Collect. In the swampy areas north of the wall was a fresh water pond. The pond covered about 5 acres and was about 50 foot deep. This was the Collect. And it was for a moment the best hope for fresh water for the city. But of course there’s a story – involving Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Collect. (The Collect was later filled in roughly and became the notorious Five Points, the crime center of the city. Today this is the City’
The site of the Collect Pond opposite the courthouses on Worth Street
In 1798, lawyer Joseph Browne (Burr’s brother in law) proposed to the Common Council that the City find a water source beyond Manhattan. Only a private company could fund the complex project, he argued, but the Council disagreed. Burr leapt in. His real aim was to create a bank to rival Hamilton’s Bank of New York (ultimately Citibank), but he convinced the State to give him authority to create a company to provide water to New York (Hamilton was his lawyer!). Burr was able to add a clause to the legislation that would allow the company to use “surplus capital” for any business purposes beyond the waterworks, a completely new freedom for state authorized businesses – and the Manhattan Company was born. The only viable source of water was the Collect which was then filthy beyond reason. By then, the Collect had become a town dump. In 1785, the New York Journal observed people “washing … things too nauseous to mention; all their sudds and filth are emptied into this pond, besides dead dogs, cats, etc. thrown in daily, and no doubt, many buckets [of excrement] from that quarter of the town.”
1835 Fire Wikipedia
Finally, devastated by cholera in 1832 and the Great Fire (which destroyed 700 buildings) in 1835, the inadequacy of New York’s water system of wells-and-cisterns became impossible to deny. The Manhattan Company’s system was poorly constructed and ill maintained. It froze in the winter and tree roots fractured the log pipes. At best, it provided pitifully low water pressure. And, despite having permission to get clean water that ran down the Bronx River, Burr chose to source water from the polluted sources the city tried to get away from – the Collect. The Company continued laying wooden pipes in the 1820s, even though other U.S. cities began using iron clad pipes. It remained the only drinking water supplier until 1842, leaving people with unreliable and bad water for over forty years.
So long story short. The Manhattan Company never provided enough safe water, but it grew over many years into the Chase Bank. (I know. You really can’t make this stuff up.)
There were few good sources of water close to Manhattan and what did exist was controlled by the Manhattan Company. A young civil engineer named De Witt Clinton, Jr. surveyed the Croton River and found it unlike any waterway around New York City. The river was fresh, clean and vast. Surrounded by rough terrain, development could never encroach its waters. So, after consideration, it became clear that only the Croton River in northern Westchester County had water sufficient in quantity and quality to serve the City. But how to get Croton River water to New York City?
When in doubt, do as the Romans did. Build an aqueduct.
An aqueduct would bring the water to Manhattan by navigating hills, rivers and valleys over a distance never before reached by an American waterworks. A masonry conduit would cut right through the hills for some 41 miles, keeping the entire aqueduct on an incline so the water could flow by the power of gravity. The Croton Aqueduct was the first of its kind ever constructed in the United States. The delivery system was begun in 1837, and was completed in 1848. This was one of the young country’s greatest engineering projects.
John Jervis was chief engineer on the project. He had earlier begun his career working on the Erie Canal (the country’s other greatest engineering project) and had risen to a senior position there. Now he designed and built a dam on the Croton River in Westchester County, and then sent the water south solely on gravity. Jervis was America’s leading consulting engineer of the first half of the 19th century, designing and supervising the construction of five of America’s earliest railroads; was chief engineer of three major canal projects; designed the first locomotive to run in America – in addition to the Croton Aqueduct.
(It’s interesting that these two enormously important and successful projects were undertaken by private companies.)
The Croton Aqueduct had to cross the Harlem River at some point, and the method was a major design decision. A tunnel under the river was considered, but tunneling technology was in its infancy and rejected. This left a bridge, with the Water Commission, engineers and the public split between a low bridge and a high bridge. A low bridge would have been simpler, faster, and cheaper to construct but would obstruct passage along the Harlem River, so a high bridge was ultimately chosen. The design then fell to the Jervis engineering team. James Renwick, who we know well here on Roosevelt Island, was a member of the team. George Law, Samuel Roberts and Arnold Mason were project contractors. Mason also had prior engineering experience working on the Erie Canal.
They chose a grand arched bridge echoing the aqueducts of ancient Rome, and multiple reservoirs connected by iron pipes underground was envisaged. So, the High Bridge.
In 1864, a walkway was built across the High Bridge. In 1928, to improve navigation in the Harlem River, the five masonry arches that spanned the river were demolished and replaced with a single steel arch of about 450 feet. Of the masonry arches of the original 1848 bridge, only one survives on the Manhattan side, while some ten survive on the Bronx side. In 2009, preliminary planning began for restoring the High Bridge which had been closed in the 1970s. The High Bridge Coalition raised funds and public awareness to restore High Bridge to pedestrian and bicycle traffic, joining the Highbridge Parks in both Manhattan and the Bronx and providing a link in New York’s greenway system. On January 11, 2013, the mayor’s office announced the bridge would reopen for pedestrian traffic by 2014, but this was postponed to spring 2015. In May 2015, the Parks Department announced a July opening and a July 25 festival. The ribbon was cut for the restored bridge at about 11:30 a.m. on June 9, 2015, with the bridge open to the general public at noon.
Stephen Blank
RIHS
January 17, 2021
Brownstoner (c)
MONDAY PHOTO
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WEEKEND PHOTO
The old New York Cancer Hospital building at 106th St. and Central Park West in Manhattan.
Sources:
Wikipedia
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-new-york-city-found-clean-water-180973571/
Ted Steinberg, Gotham Unbound; The Ecological History of Greater New York
Gerard Koppel, Water for Gotham
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/nyregion/hamilton-burr-and-the-great-waterworks-ruse.html?auth=login-email&login=email
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/nyregion/a-stunning-link-to-new-yorks-past-makes-a-long-awaited-return.html
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
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