The Hidden Flow of History:

The Old Croton Aqueduct in New York City and the Parks Department

Steve Duncan

Prof. Owen Gutfreund

Urban Studies

December 2001

In 1842, the original Croton Aqueduct was completed under Chief Engineer John B. Jervis, providing the thirsty, dirty city of New York with one of the preeminent municipal water supplies in the world. It was a magnificent work of engineering, less visible in its structure than other marvels of the century such as the expanding national railroad network or the Erie canal, but it was no less significant than any of these.

The city, which had been suffering from many problems associated with water shortages–usch as Asiatic Cholera and severe fires-- needed the water desperately. Before the Aqueduct's completion, the city had drawn its very scant water from increasingly stagnant wells; in fact, it is estimated that in 1830, the city's population of 202,000 was producing approximately 100 tons of excrement every day, which was being deposited into this same soil from which they drew their drinking water.

The water first flowed into the distributing reservoir in the summer of 1842 and was welcomed with a thirty-eight gun salute. On October 14th, designated as the day for the Croton Celebration, a huge parade marched up Broadway. At City Hall, a choir of two hundred sang a seven-verse song that began:

Forty-one miles long, the Old Croton Aqueduct was made of masonry and hand-laid brickwork, with an arched brick top and a slightly curved floor, 8'6" high and 7'5" wide. From the Croton Dam to the Distributing Reservoir at 42nd Street, the cost for the original building of the structure was approximately $9 million. The aqueduct was intended to provide an average of 27,562,000 U.S. gallons daily. "This is three times as much as the present population together with the seafaring public want," Schramke, one of the water-supply engineers, declared confidently in his 1946 book, Description of the New-York Croton Aqueduct.

But by 1850, the population-- now over 500,000-- was using 40 million gallons daily. The estimated maximum output of the Old Croton Aqueduct, when it was built, was between 60 million and 75 million gallons per day. But by 1870, with the population of the city at nearly 1 million persons and flush toilets beginning to see widespread usage, 77 million daily gallons were demanded; and by 1875, 95 million gallons were being demanded of the aqueduct, which had been strengthened all along its route to accommodate the extra water, and which was soon to be combined with small, subsidiary systems in the Bronx. By 1890, after the New Croton Aqueduct had been opened, the population of the city was 1.5 million persons, and the daily water consumption was 145 million gallons.

No one in 1837, when the first Croton Aqueduct was planned, had foreseen the tremendous growth of the city during the second half of the 19th century. As the water system was expanded, the city continued to grow beyond expectations. This meant that improvements to the water system were overtaxed almost as soon as they were built. In the period of 1885-1870, for example, water had to be furnished to about 30,000 new buildings each year, a nearly impossible task. But there was another factor at work besides just expansion. As Wegmann explained:

In fact, New Yorkers became so accustomed to plentiful water that up until WWI, the daily per capita consumption of water by New Yorkers was two to three times as much as in comparable European cities. This consumption, combined with growth and the need to supply the entire five boroughs with water after 1898, meant that the city's water supply system was in a state of near-crisis until 1917, when the Catskill system was brought online.

Even the Catskill system was not enough for the City. In 1965 the Delaware aqueduct was completed; and even today, work continues on the City Water Tunnel #3, which will eventually help supply the entire city and relieve pressure on the other, older tunnels. At this point only 10% of the city's water comes from the Croton watershed, through the New Croton Aqueduct. The Old Aqueduct was taken completely offline by 1955, although a small section of it has been reopened upstate to supply Ossining. Sadly, all this magnificent engineering that solved the problem of water in the past, and even the infrastructure work that is being engineered by the City today, is often overlooked because that infrastructure is hidden deep beneath the city.

However, the problem of water for New York City has changed in the second half of the 20th century, from an engineering problem to one of conservation, environmental protection, and long-range sustainable development. New York has grown so large, and is already using such a large amount of water from several watershed areas, that it is no longer enough to simply build another pipe to another watershed-- not that such a process was ever actually simple. Thus it is more important than ever for the City to be aware of water, not as something free that just comes from the tap, but as a vital resource that must be protected, collected, and transported to the city. In fact, perhaps the most significant change that occurred with the water supply over the past ten years-- more significant even than the work on City Water Tunnel #3 at the same time-- was the conservation practices, during Al Appleton's tenure as commissioner of the DEP, which reduced the City's daily water usage from 1.4 billion gallons to 1.2 billion.

It has been said that those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it. This is not exactly true, particularly in cases where, as I suggest above, the nature of the problem changes over time. What is true is that problems that cities have faced before, they will probably face again; and a consciousness of how the problem was dealt with in the past can aid in solving it in the future. In the case of the water supply system, history is useful in showing us that water has not always been free and easy in New York; we can understand that a great deal of work, in fact, had to go into making it accessible; and with this consciousness, we can see water for what it is: as a valuable and finite resource. It only this consciousness, which requires us to remember our history as a city, that will lead to the widespread conservation or at least responsible-usage practices that will keep water for New York relatively free and easy.

Remembering history, however, poses its own set of problems. It is both natural and inevitable that growing cities will sacrifice their past for their present, "paving over history," as it were, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of municipal infrastructure, which becomes obsolete like any machine. It is equally true that often, in this self-devouring process of urban infrastructure development, a few artifacts are left behind, which can become synechdochal signifiers of what was once there, as a relic signifies a saint.
At the same time, though, there are often efforts made to save entire structures or even areas, not for their current utility as such, but for what they once were, and more specifically what they once meant to the city. This fairly universal impulse-- to save something not for its function but for the auratic meaning it has accrued through use, beauty, or historical specificity-- is exemplified by the historical preservation movements that have coalesced in New York since the destruction of the old Madison Square Garden. Often times, though, actual preservation of history does not occur through such organized efforts, but by the less systematic actions of multiple individuals or groups who might never even be conscious of each other's efforts.

This paper examines some of the remnants of the Old Croton Aqueduct within the boundaries of New York City, from the Bronx to 113th Street, which was the southernmost point of the masonry conduit since 1875. An understanding of the meaning of these artifacts requires an understanding of the original structure in its entirety, how it was built, and its relation to the city. An understanding of the preservation or development of these structures in time also requires an examination of the politics and processes that have shaped them. I have chosen to focus primarily on the Parks Department, which has become the repository for much of the land above the Old Aqueduct. However, it must be recognized that this department has only been one of several important shaping forces since the Old Aqueduct became obsolete; policies of the Department of Water Supply, Gas, and Electricity (D.W.S.G.&E.), the current DEP, the NYCDOT, and various other forces have all had profound influences on shaping the passage of the Old Aqueduct through time.

I have also chosen organize this paper geographically, because my focus is what exists today, and history is only background to that; but nonetheless, the story of the Aqueduct is one that is better mapped out over a chronological framework than a geographic framework. No piece of the aqueduct come to us today directly from 1842; all of it saw usage, development, changes, deterioration, and renovation from 1842 until 1955, and all of it has seen deterioration since then.

For other elements of this story, and photos of some of the relevant structures, please see www.undercity.org/croton/