HISTORY & MYSTERIES
These aerial and ground photographs were taken by Jack Boucher in 1978 and are now part of the Historic American Engineering Record collection of the Library of Congress. The collection includes a large number of photographs and plans documenting the original Croton Dam, the New Croton Dam and the entire aqueduct system.
This is an often photographed view of the New Croton Dam, but this particular image from 1912 captured an automobile driving along the road which once ran across what is now the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail. For an equally romantic image of "driving" out to the Dam, see this earlier post.
As we noted in a previous post, the poet and social activist Lydia Maria Child recorded the unbridled joy New Yorkers felt when the Croton Aqueduct opened in 1842. The arrival of the "clean, sweet, abundant water" also inspired her to write a poem, "The New-York Boy's Song," which was published in 1854 in her … Continue reading O, blessed be the Croton!
These two nineteenth century puzzles, showing the Old Croton Dam and High Bridge, were part of a set called Sliced Objects, published by E. G. Selchow & Co., circa 1867 to 1880. The puzzles came in a box (shown below) along with puzzles of other New York landmarks—the Bethesda Fountain, St. Paul's Church, the statue … Continue reading Croton Aqueduct Puzzles
Of all the people who recorded the unbridled joy New Yorkers felt when the Croton Aqueduct opened in October 1842, few captured it as eloquently as Maria Lydia Child, whose poem Thanksgiving Day, was set to music and is known today as Over the River and Through the Woods. In her book Letters from New-York she … Continue reading Clean, Sweet, Abundant Water!
This map and graph were published in the May 23, 1908 issue of Scientific American. They show the locations of the different reservoirs within the Croton watershed after the New Croton Dam was completed and their relative elevations. Click the image to enlarge it.
This account of the devastating New York City fire of 1835 that led to the construction of the Croton Dam and Aqueduct is from a wonderful blog, Ephemeral New York, which chronicles “a constantly reinvented city through photos, newspaper archives, and other scraps and artifacts that have been edged into New York’s collective remainder bin” remembering the “forgotten people, places, and relics of the way New Yorkers used to live.”
It started on the frigid night of December 16. Flames broke out inside a warehouse on Pearl Street, the center of New York’s dry-goods district.
“The city’s undermanned volunteer fire brigades rushed to the scene, but what little water could be pumped from the nearby hydrants turned to ice in the frigid night air, and the crews—exhausted from fighting a blaze the night before—were soon completely overwhelmed,” wrote Ric Burns and James Sanders in New York: An Illustrated History.
[Above: the fire as seen from Williamsburg, by Nicolino Calyo]
With help from strong winds, flames leaped from shops to warehouses to the majestic Merchants Exchange (below, in a 1909 illustration).
Within hours, 20 blocks and 600 buildings bounded by South, Broad, and Wall Streets and Coenties Slip, were ablaze.
New York had experienced devastating fires before, particularly in 1776. This fire was something else though—so intense, it could reportedly…
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This 1906 plan of the downstream elevation, prepared by the New York City Aqueduct Commission, comes from the Historic American Engineering Record collection of the Library of Congress. The collection includes a large number of photographs and plans documenting the New Croton Dam and the Aqueduct. The record for this specific item is here. Click … Continue reading New Croton Dam, 1906
This detailed engraving shows the New Croton Dam when it was under construction in 1896. The image was commissioned for the cover of the October 17th issue of Scientific American magazine to accompany an article entitled "New York Water Supply—Present Condition of Work on the Great Croton River Dam." Christopher Tompkins, author of The Croton Dams … Continue reading New Croton Dam Construction, 1896
A detail from an exquisite map of Central Park, published in 1865. The map appeared in A picturesque Guide through the whole Park showing all the improvements up to June 1865, published by L. Prang, Boston. The reservoir was drained in 1931 and filled with excavation material from Rockefeller Center and the Eighth Avenue subway. Today it … Continue reading Croton Reservoir in Central Park, 1865
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