The Path of the Old Croton Aqueduct in New York City
Note on the northern sections of the aqueduct:
Much of the Old Croton Aqueduct's right-of-way between New
York City and the Croton Dam is a linear New York State Park. For information
and a map, contact Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct.
Charlotte Fahn, Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct 914-478-3961
or Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct, Inc.
Overseers House
15 Walnut St.
Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522
Or contact
Old Croton Trailway State Park, 914-693-5259
Historic Hudson Valley 914-631-8200
Westchester County Department of Parks 914-242-7275
or look online at
www.adk-nyc.org/Trails/LowerHudson/Intro.htm
for an introduction to the trail and a low-detail online
map.
There is an actual marked trail within Van Cortlandt park called the "Aqueduct
Trail," suitable for walkers, joggers, mountain bikes, and horses. For
maps of the park itself with the Aqueduct Trail marked, contact the Parks
Department.
Van Cortlandt and the Bronx down
to the Highbridge crossing
Note that the conduit and its supporting embankment has been destroyed
at West Burnside avenue, accross from the Bronx Community College, to allow
the road (West Burnside Ave) to cross at grade. (In the map below, Bronx
Community college is just to the right of the "E-R" in "river" in the labeling
of the Harlem river.)
Map from the Parks Department, Parklands file X-001(Click
for a larger version)
It should be noted that the New Croton
aqueduct follows a similar path, but is much deeper and thus has very little
effect on the surface or surface building, except in the cases of pumping
stations. (Which are, in some cases, still in use, as the New Croton Aqueduct
still carries water.) The path of the New Aqueduct is slightly to the east
of the Old Aqueduct in the Bronx, and the Jerome Park reservoir in fact
was built for the New Aqueduct and is still in use by the DEP. The New Aqueduct
crosses underneath the East River slightly to the north of Highbridge (coming
into Manhattan at 179th, whereas the Old Aqueducts enters Manhattan from
the Highbridge at 174th.) The remains of the original pumping station for
the New Aqueduct where it crosses into Manhattan can be seen just to the
west side of the Harlem River Speedway at 179th street; it was destroyed
as the road was constructed/improved. The newer 179th pumping station, still
in use on the northeast corner of 179th street and Amsterdam, is built on
the site of an orginal construction shaft for the New Aqueduct.
Jerome Park Reservoir and environs, as of 1896-- Map from Wegmann,
The Water Supply of the City of New York
, 1896. (note-- north is to the right on this map.) The path of the old
aqueduct is marked in blue. For a larger version (unmarked), click on the
map.
The aqueduct crosses into Manhattan within the Highbridge, which was built
to look as much like an old Roman aqueduct as possible. The center span of
Highbridge was replaced with a steel arch in 1923 by the Navy Engineers to
facilitate river traffic, but the aqueduct remains intact and contiguous
within both the old and new sections of the bridge. (Although of the original
pipes, only the large wrought iron pipe [90.5 inches interior diameter,
made of 0.5 inch thick riveted plates] still remains; this was added in
1860 to increase capacity for the aqueduct. In order to accomodate it, the
sides of the bridge had to be built up six feet, and a brick arch was built
to connect them and support the pedestrian walk above. The original two 36-inch
pipes, put in when the bridge was first built, no longer exist in the center
section.)
Highbridge park itself encampasses the bridge as well as a small space
on the Bronx side (a "sitting park") and a very large area on the Manhattan
side. There are small, squarish gatehouses at both ends of the bridge. These
were used to shunt the water from the masonry conduit into the bridge pipes
and then back into the tunnel on the Manhattan side. Both of these gatehouses
have had all entrances bricked up, and stand derelict. The bridge itself
has been closed to pedestrian traffic due to crime and vandalism and lack
of park funds for upkeep.
In Manhattan, the Old Aqueduct makes a sharp left turn after the end of
Highbridge. The Highbridge Tower, just west of the end of the bridge, was
completed in 1872 as a water tower to give "high service," or high-pressure
water to supply such things as flush toilets on higher parts of the island.
Water was pumped from the Old Aqueduct up to the Highbridge reservoir and
up the tower itself, which contained a 47,000-gallon tank.
When the New Croton Aqueduct was brought online in 1890, it supplied the
city with much higher-pressure water than the Old Croton Aqueduct had, as
the watershed reservoir for the New Croton was at a slightly higher altitude
than the old. Thus the Highbridge Reservoir and Tower slowly became obsolete,
even while the Old Croton Aqueduct was still in use as a supplement to the
New Aqueduct. In fact, both the Tower and the Old Aqueduct itself were becoming
redundant enough that they were shut down during a sabatoge scare in WWI,
several years before the Catskill system came online. (The New Croton Aqueduct
is built into a much deeper tunnel, and crosses underneath the Harlem River,
so it is much less vulnerable to sabatoge.)
The Highbridge reservoir was replaced in 1934 with the large swimming pool
that now exists.
The tower had originally been designed to look like a medieval belltower.
In1958, a carillon (which apparently is some sort of bell-thing) was installed
in the tower (donated by the Altman Foundation, in memory of the Altman of
department-store fame), but both this and the roof of the tower was destroyed
by a fire (in which a homeless man died) in 1984. The Parks department replaced
the roof of the tower in 1988, complete with copper minaret and weathervane,
but without the carillon.
In the map below, the path of the old aqueduct is outlined
in green; the Manhattan end of Highbridge is shown with red; the Highbridge
Tower is circled in blue; and the black line is is the Harlem River Speedway.
For a larger (and unmarred) version, click on the map.
(map from the Parks Department Record Map, High Bridge Park,
M-37.)
From Highbridge Park to 150th
Below 150th Street, the Old Croton runs straight down Amsterdam Avenue.
Between Highbridge Park and 150th, however, it follows a more circuitous
path.
Note that the section of aqueduct between 154th and 151st is different
from the original line, as shown above in Schramke's diagram. As shown
below, the line of the aqueduct runs underneath St. Nicholas until 153rd
Street, and then curves west along the the north-west corner of 153rd and
St. Nicholas, taking the cross-block diagonal from 405 W. 153rd to
475 W. 152, then traveling underneath 152nd street briefly before making
a sharp turn south underneath Amsterdam Ave. This represents a change from
the original line of the aqueduct, which did not turn so sharply. (Sharp
turns, of course, impede the easy flow of the water.) This newer section
of the Aqueduct is constructed in concrete, with a circular cross-section
instead of the rounded-horseshoe shape of the old masonry conduit. I think
that the renovation was done in 1910, when some other repair and renovation
was done to Manhattan portions of the line; however, my research has
not yet yielded a definate answer.
The following maps are taken from the Sanborn Land Atlas.
(Please note that I have reproduced them here only for my own edification
in writing a paper, not for publication or profit. Thus it might be illegal
for you to look at them. So please don't look at them.)
171st street 167th street
163rd street to 167th street
157th street to 163 street
152nd street to 157th street
154th street to 152nd street
Further South
Map from Schramke's Description of the Old Croton
Aqueduct, 1846
(Click on map for a big version)
This map shows the original line of the aqueduct when it was built. At
this time, although the street grid was planned out, there was little development
other than farming in upper manhattan. Central park did not exist. As Wegmann
put it in his 1896 book The Water Supply Of The City Of New York
, "At that time...no person anticipated the wonderful growth of the city."
The waviness of the aqueduct's path between Highbridge and 150th street
indicates the waviness of the terrain; in much of this area, the aqueduct
was essentially built into the side of the rocky hill that slants down very
sharply toward the east river.
Although the line shown is continuous, this does not all represent masonry
conduits: from 135th to 119th, the crossing of the Manhattan Valley was
effected with an "inverted siphon" system using two 36-inch cast-iron mains,
to which were added two 48-inch cast iron pipes in 1853 and 1861. South
of the Receiving Reservoir at 86th street, similar underground mains carried
the water to the Distributing Reservoir at 42nd and 5th Avenue. Much of the
conduit south of 135th was destroyed or altered as the system was improved.
Gatehouses 142nd Street to 119th Street
Originally there was a small gatehouse at 142nd Street, a gatehouse at
135th Street (the north side of Manhattan Valley, where the water was shunted
from a masonry conduit to pipes for the inverted siphon), an underground
vault and sewer connection at the bottom of Manhattan valley at about 125th
Street (this was built to allow for cleaning of the Manhattan valley pipes--
they would shut off the water at the north and south of the valley, then
open up the sewer gates, and the water rushing out would take all the silt
and debris with it), and then another gatehouse at 119th Street (the southern
end of Manhattan valley, where the pipes were re-routed into a masonry tunnel
to pass underneath "Asylum Hill"-- so called because of Bloomingdale Insane
Asylym, which was at the present location of Columbia University.
However, as the city expanded, Amsterdam Avenue became a more well-traveled
road, and the gatehouses in the middle interefered with traffic. As well,
the New Croton Aqueduct, which was begun in 1885, demanded new facilities.
The new 135th street gatehouse was built from 1884-1890, at 135th street
and Convent Avenue, as the connector between the Old and New Aqueducts. For
the Old aqueduct, this gatehouse replaced both the 142nd and 135th street
gatehouses, and these were both torn down to leave the center of Amsterdam
Ave clear. (Convent Avenue is a short block east of Amsterdam, and new pipes
had to be installed to make the turn; a plethora of manhole covers is still
visible at 135th and amsterdam and indicates the extent of the underground
piping.)
The New aqueduct approached along Convent Avenue and entered on the north-east
corner of the Gatehouse; the Old aqueduct, approaching from Amsterdam Ave,
entered on the north-west corner. A substructure that extended 40 feet underground
connected the two and channeled the water into eight 48-inch mains. South
of the gatehouse on Convent Avenue, one can see a line of 8 manhole covers,
stretching in a line across the road and up onto the sidewalk and adumbrating
the pipelines beneath. As the New Croton Aqueduct is still in use, the area
underground near the Gatehouse still contains a great deal of active water
supply machinery, although much improved from the machinery that once was
contained within the Gatehouse itself. The Old Croton is no longer connected
to the 135th Gatehouse.
After the construction of the 135th street gatehouse much of the city's
water was shunted through a new set of pipes, but the line of the Old Croton
was still in use. The old 119th street gatehouse in the middle of Amsterdam,
however, was considered a traffic hazard, and was replaced from 1894-1895
with a new Gatehouse on the east side of the road-- the south-east corner
of 119th and Amsterdam Ave. This still stands. It was not officially taken
offline until 1990, although the aqueduct underneath had long since been
unused. The floor and subsurface piping of the building has been backfilled
with dirt and cement, and it was declared a New York Landmark in 1999.
113th Gatehouse
The gatehouse on the northwest corner of Amsterdam Ave and 113th still
stands, although it in the 1990s it was sold by the city to the Amsterdam
Nursing Home and Adult Daycare center, and was renovated by the Geddis Partnership
Archtitects. The exterior superstructure was retained, and two of the four
original riveted-iron door panels were saved (they are now on the 'inside'
doorway, where the old gatehouse gives access to a hallway leading to the
main building). However, the interior was plastered, and the substructure
was removed in order to allow for an expanded basement section. The section
of masonry conduit in the immediate environs of this gatehouse had already
been backfilled when renovation took place.
92nd Street to 113th Street
The section of masonry conduit from 92nd street to 113th street, which
had been slightly above ground on an embankment when the aquduct was originally
built., was torn down and replaced with six parallel 48" cast-iron mains
, running underneath the roadbed of Amsterdam Ave, between 1870 and 1875.
This of course was a huge amount of construction, and while Amsterdam was
a turned into a giant ditch for the installation of these mains, they installed
4-foot brick sewers along each side as well. The pipes were completed in 1875.
In order to facilitate the change of pipes at 113th (and Amsterdam) and at
92nd (and 9th Ave), two gatehouses were built, completed in 1876. The gatehouse
at 92nd was built at the northwest corner of 92nd street and 9th Avenue;
however, this was torn down as the area became more developed.
85th Street to 92nd Street
The section from 85th street to 92nd street, which was raised to cross
Glendenning Valley, was torn down and replaced with 6-foot underground mains
in 1865-1866 (although there was so much trouble with these huge pipes that
they were replaced with smaller ones later on in the century.) This replacement
also changed the line slighty, so as to avoid cutting diagonally through so
many blocks-- the new pipes made a more abrupt right-angle turn to go straight
east under 90th, and then headed straight down 8th Ave, and then east again
at 85th street to go into the Receiving Reservoir.
Information taken from:
New York Aqueduct Commision. Report to
the Aqueduct commissioners by the president... New York,
1887-1905
Wegmann. The Water Supply of the City
of New York. New York, 1896.
Schramke. Description of the New -York Croton Aqueduct, in English,
French, and German. New York and Berlin, 1846.
New York Landmarks Preservation Commission. Report on
Croton Aqueduct West 119th Street Gatehouse, 432-434 West 119th Street (aka
1191-1195 Amsterdam Avenue), Manhattan.
New York, NY: The Landmarks Preservation Commission, 2000.
New York Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Croton Aqueduct Gate House (135th Street Gate House): 135th Street and
Convent Avenue, Borough of Manhattan. New York, NY: The
Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1981
