Since those early treks I have run and walked many miles on the OCA, particularly in Highbridge Park and in various parts of the Bronx, Yonkers, Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington and Tarrytown.

Finally, with the long awaited reopening of the High Bridge just this April (2015) I decided to collect all the information I've come across, together with links to my most recent OCA Running blogs. This effort resulted in one large post on the OCA in general — this web page — plus a web page on a proposed route over the Manhattan miles.

I will divide my future efforts into two types: 1) posts on general OCA features, history, remnants, etc. will be added to this web page, like a blog, and 2) posts of runs along specific parts of the OCA will be added to my running blog. Check the links in the last section for those.

As always, comments, questions or requests to join my mailing list are more than welcome. Use the link at the bottom of this web page to send a note, or just click .

As always,
Papa Bear

On this Page —

The Old Croton Aqueduct in Manhattan: Mostly Gone and but Not Forgotten

hen the Croton Aqueduct was built for New York City in the 1830s, Manhattan was New York City. Getting the aqueduct into Manhattan from the mainland (i.e. the Bronx) was a huge problem which was solved by The High Bridge across the Harlem River which will get special treatment below.

Lots of folks think they know more-or-less where the aqueduct went in Manhattan: 1) up Fifth Avenue, 2) through Central Park and 3) up Amsterdam Avenue to the High Bridge. But to determine exactly where the Croton Aqueduct went, a contemporary map is needed. In 1865 one Egbert Viele, a prominent engineer, published a map of Manhattan showing all the streams and ponds and other hydrological features of the island. The map was so detailed and accurate that to this day it is consulted by architects and building engineers to find what river or stream was flowing where they might want to put up a new structure.

The Viele map showed all the streets laid out by John Randel from 1811 to 1820 and lucky for us, it shows the precise route of the aqueduct. Here's a copy of the Viele Map I found on the net: . The date, 1865, is serendipitously perfect. The Croton Aqueduct and the two Manhattan reservoirs were all in place. Central Park with its "New Reservoir" had just been completed (but probably because its design kept changing, the new reservoir only made it onto Viele's map as a dotted line).

I also got a great deal of information from the Bromley Atlases and Land Maps which you can track down from a number of sources on the internet. I was lucky to find an 1891 Bromley Atlas shows every building lot on every block, which is a fortuitous date since all the major changes and upgrades to the aqueduct had taken place by that point in time.

Here are the Viele Map (about 9 MB) and the Bromley Atlas. If you click on the Bromley Atlas you will get to a page with the option to either read the atlas online or view the PDF file (which you can download). The PDF file has better resolution and you can zoom in or out, but it's humongously large (over 100 MB).

The best resource I have found detailing the building of the aqueduct and later changes throughout the 19th century is (on Google Books). Wegmann was an engineer for the New Croton Aqueduct, and the volume has everything you always wanted to know on the subject.

The Croton Aqueduct in 1842

he Croton Aqueduct in Manhattan as originally built consisted of five distinct sections. Here are the sections with annotated portions of the Viele Map to clarify the descriptions:

1. The Distributing Reservoir and the Fifth Avenue Syphon:
   The distributing reservoir (aka the "Murray Hill Reservoir") occupied the eastern half of the two block rectangle between 40th and 42nd Streets west of Fifth Avenue. Water was taken from this reservoir via water mains to serve the lower Manhattan area.

   It was a massive structure in a faux Egyptian style, designed by none other than James Renwick. The top of the walls with views of both the North (Hudson) River and the East River were open to the public

   It had a limited lifetime, being demolished by the age of 60 in 1902. For a charming tribute to this structure, here is a NY Times article published Feb. 27, 1898: . It's a bit hard to read and the columns jump around a bit, but it's worth a little of your time. When it was written the reservoir was slated for demolition to make way for the New York Public Library. The author, one Amos K. Fiske, writes " ... The reservoir has been taken into the bosom of the city and cherished with vines and enlivened with a park on one side, only to be cast aside now that the limitless thirst of the population takes in the whole Croton Valley water supply and draws it through bigger pipes from larger sources. It gives way to a reservoir of literature and learning to slake an equally limitless mental thirst."

   The Fifth Avenue Syphon:
   This consisted of Two 36" pipes laid beneath Fifth Avenue from the distributing reservoir at 42nd & Fifth to the receiving reservoir at 80th & Sixth.

2. Central Park: the Receiving Reservoir:
   The receiving reservoir was a rectangular structure with two sections occupying the land between Sixth and Seventh Avenues from 79th to 86th Street in what is now Central Park. The input was at 85th & Seventh and the output was at 80th and Sixth.

   The picture shown is a view from the west with a small gatehouse on the front left where the aqueduct entered the reservoir and a rock outcrop inside the front right corner on top of which Belvidere Castle would later built when Central Park was established in the late 1850s. There appear to be people on the wall so presumably it was open to the public at least at this point in time.

   
   
3. The Clendening Valley and the Conduit Beneath Tenth Avenue:
   A masonry conduit went all the way from the reservoir at 85th & Seventh to a gatehouse at 119th Street in the middle of Tenth Avenue. The section from about 93rd to 103rd Street was known as the Clendening Valley (Note: the spelling of "Clendening" varies on old maps), across which the aqueduct was on an elevated embankment. The conduit followed a path 100 feet west of Ninth Avenue in this section. For most of this section it blocked the cross streets and arches were built at 98th, 99th and 100th Streets to allow traffic to pass underneath. (Think Metro North tracks on Park Avenue north of 97th Street.)

   At the time, it was considered unlikely that streets in this area would be opened up for at least another century.
   

4. The Manhattan Valley Syphon:
   
Two 36" pipes were laid as an inverted syphon beneath Tenth Avenue across the Manhattan Valley from the 119th Street Gatehouse ending at another gate house on Tenth Avenue between 134th and 135th Street. At the low point at Manhattan Street (now 125th Street) the grade was over 100' below the hydraulic line of the aqueduct.


5. The Conduit Beneath Tenth Avenue and up along the cliff side to the High Bridge:
   A masonry conduit ran from the 134th-135th Street Gatehouse to High Bridge beneath Tenth Avenue and turning down (between 151st and 153rd Streets) to the Kingsbridge Road (now St. Nicholas Avenue) and entering what is now Highbridge Park at 155th Street.
   

It's worth noting that south of 155th Street the entire aqueduct in Manhattan was underground except for its crossing of the Clendening Valley. If you walked (or more likely rode on horseback) along the the length of the aqueduct in the late 1840s you would see just 2 reservoirs, 2 gatehouses and about 11 blocks of the above ground section from 93rd to 103rd. Folks were known to have walked along the top of the distributing reservoir walls and probably at the receiving reservoir (in what would later become Central Park) as well. I would guess no one thought of doing an "aqueduct walk" (or even less so, an "aqueduct run") in that day and age.

And for those who like maps, here's the whole 1842 Croton Aqueduct in one big map (as Yoda would say "Big it is"), give the map a click and you'll see:

The aqueduct changed very little in the first 20 years. Most of the changes were out of sight, such as laying more pipes and water mains, and repairing leaking pipes under the streets. But the rapid rise of the city population and the inexorable northward march of development caused an ever increasing demand on the water supply. These trends were in part due to the fact that the city, at long last, had a plentiful and reliable supply of water. You might say the success of the Croton Aqueduct was leading to its undoing.

The Croton Aqueduct is upgraded and adapted due to increased demand, and the force of development

y 1860 it was clear changes to the aqueduct had to be made. These changes were of two types 1) to increase the supply of water by increasing the aqueduct's capacity, and 2) by moving the above ground parts of the aqueduct underground to make way for development. These changes were made incrementally in the 1860s, 70s and 80s until finally the powers-that-be agreed that a new aqueduct with much higher capacity was needed. And so it was that the "New Croton Aqueduct", with three times the capacity, was designed, built and finished in 1890. This also gave the original aqueduct its first name, and the the "Old Croton Aqueduct" became part of the city's lexicon.

The changes included a myriad of small upgrades. especially those involving increasing the number and size of pipes. But there were three very visible items: 1) The building of the "New Reservoir" (aka the Central Park Reservoir) in 1858-64 including 3 new gatehouses, 2) the building of the High Bridge Water Tower and reservoir in 1866-72 above the Manhattan end of the High Bridge and 3) replacing all the above-ground portions of the conduit below 155th Street with underground pipes (1865-75).

If you want all the details including maps, dates, size of pipes, &c. then Here are all the significant dates and the type of change made to the aqueduct:

• 1850-1863 – The Fifth Avenue pipes were repaired several times and were eventually replaced by four larger pipes.
• 1854 & 1862 – A third and fourth pipe, 48" and 60", were added to the Manhattan Valley Syphon.
• 1858-1862 – The "New Reservoir" was built in Central Park which, besides the reservoir, included the following:
  1. A "Junction Gatehouse" was built at 92nd Street near Ninth Avenue to direct the flow to the old or to the new reservoir in Central Park.
  2. The North Gatehouse (inflow) and South Gatehouse (outflow) were built on the new reservoir. The superstructures of these two Central Park Gatehouses were finished in 1864.
  3. A new masonry conduit was built underground from the 92nd Street Junction Gatehouse to the new North Gatehouse in Central Park.
  (2nd map below.)
• 1861 – A third, much larger pipe (90.5 inches) was added to the High Bridge, increasing its capacity more than three-fold.
• 1865-1867 – The masonry conduit between 85th and 90th Streets was replaced by Two 72" underground pipes, which, due to repeated problems, were eventually replaced by three 48" pipes. (3rd map.)
• 1866-1872 – The "High Service" tower and reservoir were completed at the High Bridge providing service to the neighborhoods in the northern part of Manhattan.
• 1870-1875 – The above-ground masonry conduit between 93rd and 107th and that under Tenth Avenue to 113th was replaced by six 48" underground pipes. This included two new gatehouses: at 93rd & Ninth (just north of the Junction Gatehouse) and at 113th & Tenth. (4th map.)
• 1875-1889 — The walls of the entire masonry conduit were reinforced to allow the maximum flow to increase from the original 72 million to over 100 million gallons per day.
• 1890 – The New Croton Aqueduct (aka the "NCA") was completed. It shared a new gatehouse at 135th & Convent Ave. with the OCA (replacing the 1842 gatehouse in the middle of Tenth Avenue), and used a new gatehouse next to the Central Park North Gatehouse.
• 1894 – The 1842 gatehouse at 119th Street in the middle of Tenth Avenue was replaced by a new gatehouse on the SE corner. (last map.)
• 1898-1902 – The 1842 distributing reservoir at 42nd & Fifth was demolished and the New York Public Library was built on the site.
• 1930s – The 1842 receiving reservoir in Central Park was filled in to become the Great Lawn.

Since it's hard to keep track of all those comings and goings of features, I've put the changes on the base map in the the slideshow below. I've started with the 1842 "As-built" version and annotated all the changes. Click each image to bring up the next one. And you almost certainly need to click on the "click here for larger image". To see the end point, study the last map, "The OCA as of 1894". I didn't think we needed maps showing the demolition of the 1842 distributing reservoir or the filling in of the 1842 receiving reservoir. You can figure that out yourself.

Note: all of these maps are rather big (from 4+ to 6+ Mbytes) so it will take a moment to load each one as you click though the sequence.

If not Read on ...

Intact Features and Remnants or Footprints of Features of the Old Croton Aqueduct

he long and the short of it is that no intact features of the original 1842 Croton Aqueduct remain in Manhattan below 155st Street. The two 1842 gatehouses and the above-ground Clendening Valley aqueduct were gone by 1894. The original 42nd Street distributing reservoirs was gone by 1902 and the original receiving reservoir in what became Central Park was filled in in the 1930s. However we can nevertheless find remnants or footprints of some of the original features.

The only intact features to be found today below 155th Street are not original but were the result of changes and upgrades to the aqueduct, namely the Central Park Reservoir and its gatehouses (1858-64) and the three Upper West Side gatehouses (1875, 1890 and 1894).

First a word on my nomenclature:

• An intact feature means it is above ground and and visible and looks roughly like it did when it was built. So the Central Park Reservoir is an intact feature.
• A remnant is a surviving part of a feature which is otherwise gone. So the exposed portions of the old receiving reservoir walls to be found in Central Park are remnants.
• A footprint is a term I'm introducing for something that indicates a feature that is or was once present at that location — but the "footprint" is not actually part of the feature. So lot-lines or manhole covers — provided the manhole is for access to the OCA — are footprints.
• I also distinguish between original features and those made later as a change or enhancement to the original aqueduct (such as replacing a section of masonry conduit with pipes), and that distinction should be pretty clear.
• Most other websites call all these things remnants of the OCA, even if it's a manhole cover 2 miles from the OCA. One might say they are remnants of the Croton Water System, which would include all the water mains put down in the 19th Century.

1. Intact original aqueduct features:
   • Below 155th Street: none.
   • Above 155th Street: the entire original aqueduct in Highbridge Park: along the cliffs through what is now Highbridge Park is intact all the way to the High Bridge, including the retaining walls both above and below the aqueduct and rock cuts through outcrops. The first one-half mile is a dirt path and the last-half mile to the bridge is paved and used as a pedestrian and bike path. This is the real deal folks!
   • The High Bridge:
     
     Although the Croton Aqueduct started to deliver water to the city in 1842, it took 6 more years to complete the High Bridge over the Harlem River. This structure is considered the epitome of engineering and architecture of the entire aqueduct project in its day, if not the nineteenth century.

     But at the time, there was a good deal of controversy of what the structure should look like, and in fact whether the bridge should be built at all, rather than pipes laid across the bed of the river. Here's John Jervis, the chief engineer of the Croton Aqueduct on the subject (from ) which also answers the question "How did the water get across the river before the bridge was finished?":
     
     A temporary pipe 3 feet in diameter is laid down, (partly on the embankment of the coffer dams) which now conveys the water across this valley. Gate chambers are arranged at each end of the bridge, with gates to regulate the water, and the one on the north end has a waste weir to discharge the surplus water that at any time the pipes might not be able to carry.
     
     ... It may very properly be inquired, if the water can be carried temporarily across this valley by iron pipes, why construct this expensive bridge? The reply is that a plan was prepared to construct a low bridge with one arch for water way; but a supposed value which was attached to the future navigation of the river, was so pressed upon the legislature, as to induce them to pass a law, requiring that the under side of the arches should be 100 feet above ordinary high tide in the river. The law, therefore, and not the otherwise necessity of the case, has controlled the plan for crossing this valley.

     I think future generations, myself included, are eternally grateful that the bridge was built as it was rather that saving the money and going with the less expensive plan.

2. Intact features of the changed or upgraded aqueduct (i.e. non-original):
   • The "New Reservoir" aka the Central Park Reservoir (1858-1862) and its Gatehouses (1864):
     
     Everyone knows the Central Park Reservoir (aka the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir) like an old friend. We run around it and watch the ducks on it and even check out the ice on it in winter.

     But when I started looking everything up I was surprised by what I didn't know. First off it was called the "New Reservoir" but it was not built for the New Croton Aqueduct (1890), no, it was built almost 30 years earlier to increase the capacity of the Old Croton Aqueduct. I learned that the water came in at the North Gatehouse and out the South Gatehouse, and that other gatehouse just east of the North Gatehouse was where the NCA came in (in 1890).

     And I learned that these gatehouses (completed by 1862) are all below ground. The superstructure (i.e. the building that we would call the gatehouse) are just to keeep out the rain (and the people) — they were finished in 1864 (hence the dates we've all seen on the buildings).

     And what I never even thought about was how the water got to the reservoir from the OCA, which was way over near Ninth Avenue. Well, they built another gatehouse (long gone) at 92nd Street west of Ninth Avenue called the Junction Gatehouse and a section of masonry conduit which came east underneath 92nd Street, into the park, snaked around under the north side of the reservoir and entered the North Gatehouse. The Transfer Gatehouse had gates to send the water to the old or the new Reservoir, hence the name. It appears on street maps published as late as 1975, although I've never see a picture of it except the old 19th century in Wegmann and an — can you spot the gatehouse? Here's a .
     

   I've found some very enlightening and entertaining contemporary accounts of the reservoir and the gatehouses. Here's one from .

   It's a fairly long travelogue of the entire aqueduct all the way from Croton to the city and has lots of good illustrations. But if you're short of time, skip to last two pages for some information on the South Gatehouse with some pictures of the insides that I had never seen before. But some of the narrative, especially when he described his tour inside the the gatehouse, seems a bit unlikely, though amusing.

   The other one is a story from the good old New York Times published on June 30, 1862, just days before the reservoir was officially brought on line: Written 10 years earlier than the Appleton's Journal, it concentrates on the reservoir's two gatehouses and it's style is more formal — but it has a good punch line at the end. It's worth a read.
   

   • High Bridge Water Tower (1872):
     
     The High Bridge Water Tower is in great shape (in spite of the 1984 fire that burned the upper part of the tower: see ). The reservoir was converted to the swimming pool you now see there by Robert Moses in the 1930s, but I would say the swimming pool is not really a remnant. Maybe a "footprint" like the Turtle Pond in Central Park.
     
     Once in a while the Parks Department opens the tower for visitors and I made that visit a few years ago. Strange sites await you inside — a stairway winds around and around and you can see the old pipes. The huge tank was cut apart and removed when they repaired the fire damage. By all means keep your eyes and ears open and take advantage of the next visit.
     
     
   • The 113th Street Gatehouse (1875):
     
     This is the oldest of the three surviving Upper West Side gatehouses and the only one which was not replaced or otherwise moved. It served as the north end of the syphon which replaced the masonry conduit from 93rd Street across the Clendening Valley and up Tenth Avenue. By the late 1860s the above-ground Clendening Valley aqueduct which blocked cross streets for over a half mile just had to go. Those who assumed that development above 86th streets would not necessitate the opening of the streets in the West 90s and 100s for "a century or more" totally underestimated the force of development. The building is in good shape and now houses an old age center.
     
     
   • The 119th Street Gatehouse (1894):
     
     This replaced the original 1842 119th Street Gatehouse which stood in the center of Tenth Avenue and which had become a traffic hazard, and it is currently a mess! It's unkempt, the door is falling in — in short, it's scandalous. To quote from a blog post of the Croton Waterworks "But what is it now you ask? The 119th Street Vermin Hotel owned by New York City." The irony is that it is an officially landmarked vermin hotel! This paper issued by the Landmark Preservation Commission on March 28, 2000 designated this structure as a landmark: . Interestingly, much of the history of the building and of the Old Croton Aqueduct in Manhattan in that report are sourced from Wegmann, which I quoted above as my best resource.
     
     
   • 134th Street and Convent Avenue Gatehouse (1890):
     
     Originally built as part of the New Croton Aqueduct, it also replaced the old 134th-135th Street Gatehouse of the OCA which stood in the center of Tenth Avenue a half block away. In addition to the NCA functions, gates were installed to allow water to be shunted from one aqueduct to the other. The superstructure is now used as a performance space including a new theater. However, the gatehouse functions which are underground still function as part of the NCA, which has recently been reactivated. The OCA, of course, has been out of the picture since 1955 when it was deactivated. See this NY Times article published Oct. 17, 2006 for a nice summary: .
     
3. Remnants or footprints of original aqueduct features:
   • 42nd Street Distributing Reservoir: It is widely reported that a remnant of the original reservoir can be seen in the lower level of the South Court of the New York Public Library. I believe these reports are mistaken and I explain my conclusion in the section below.
     
     
   • Receiving Reservoir in Central Park:
     
     There are a number of exposed sections of the reservoir walls to be found in Central Park, most of them well known to cognoscenti (I outline them on an 1875 Central Park map, see next paragraph). The one shown here (left) is the NW corner of the old reservoir which is up against the westernmost brick building along the 86th Street transverse. You can get there from the Great Lawn if you go the the last brick building (there's a driveway there), go around the fence and through the bushes. There used to be a path and a sign here.
     
     Note: I would say we should consider the Turtle Pond where it meets the rock outcrop on which Belvidere Castle sits, to be a remnant of the old reservoir – not the pond itself, and certainly not the castle, but the SW corner of the pond where it abuts the rock outcrop. It has been said that Olmsted and Vaux had the castle structure built as a viewing point for the old reservoir and named the place Vista Rock. This was done, at least in part, to mitigate the presence of the old reservoir in the newly designed park since from the ground level, the reservoir was for the most part, just an ugly wall. When they built the original reservoir they didn't bother blasting away this rocky prominence; they just used it in place of a wall in that corner. Here's an early (1875) map of that part of the park: . It shows the castle as well as the irregular shape of the reservoir in that corner. I've marked those parts which survive today as remnants (plus a few "footprints" not part of the old reservoir).
     
     I spoke with the Central Park Conservancy and was told the the Turtle Pond is not a remnant of the old reservoir per se, but was part of the construction of the Great Lawn, as a scenic element in the new landscape and it may have been easier to construct the water body within the existing footprint.
     
     You might be interested in an amusing story from 1996. It seems they built the receiving reservoir too well. When Robert Moses (bad stuff is always his fault) had the old reservoir filled in in the 1930s, he forgot that it was a reservoir, whose job it was to hold water. Read this NY Times Article from March 10th 1996: and you'll get a chuckle. But I would say the Central Park Conservancy was not amused. Incidentally, the article gives a good review of the history of the old aqueduct and it's two reservoirs.
     
     
   • Building Lot-lines at West 105th Street:
     
     The building lot-lines show the path of the aqueduct just north of the Clendening Valley where it was built diagonally across 105th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenue. I knew the there was a possibility that places where the aqueduct crossed a block diagonally would show up if old buildings built along these diagonal lot-lines remained, or if newer buildings that replaced the original buildings were built on the same lots. I used Google Earth to search all candidate blocks on the west side of Manhattan and bingo! the lot-lines of the buildings on both the north of the south side of West 105th Street stood out like sore thumbs. Check out the Google screen shot on the left. I've been there and it's for real. It's amazing what you'll find if you look for it.

     I had not found any references to this aqueduct footprints on any of the usual OCA websites (or sites the feature "lost" NYC features). But when I tried to find the best spelling for "Clendening", I found this web page, a post from the "Tours by Gary" blog: . It's not an OCA site per se, but this particular post has lots of aqueduct stuff and mentions the remnants of the OCA at 105th Street. Thanks Gary.
     

   • Building Lot-lines at West 151st, 152nd and 153rd Streets:
     
     The path of the aqueduct from Tenth Avenue to the Kingsbridge Road (now St. Nicholas Avenue) is visible and open. It didn't take Google Earth to find this one — I've noticed it many time when I walked along St. Nicholas just south of Highbridge Park. Some of the OCA websites mention it too, such as the . I did put up a Google Earth screen shot here since it's easier to see it from above than from ground level. On the one block between 152nd and 153rd, a community garden occupies the space now. I call this the "last block of the OCA" and I walked it about a month ago.
     
4. Remnants or footprints of the changed or upgraded aqueduct features:
   • A Note on Croton Manhole Covers
     Normally I would not consider a Croton manhole cover per se as a remnant or footprint of the aqueduct, since they are found in various places around the city, near and far from the actual path of the aqueduct. But in a couple of the following items we have several manhole covers that do match with an underground part of the OCA so those manhole covers are good.

     Croton manhole covers are not rare (just do a ). Most of them were put above water mains in various parts of the city laid after the aqueduct was built and many of them say "croton water" on the outside with an ornate "DPW" in the center. The one on the right is such a one I found on Fifth Avenue right next to Central Park — but nowhere near the path of the OCA. But the other ones I found in the park are clearly associated with the OCA, standing right over an underground feature, as you will see in the next couple of items.
     

   • Croton Manhole Cover (1862) in Central Park near the South Gatehouse and Tunnel Portals on the 86th St. Transverse:
     
     I'm not sure these items should just be considered a part of the South Gatehouse, or separate remnants of another feature. In any case, they are physically separate from the gatehouse.

     As I was searching the web for manhole covers that might be associated with the OCA, I found a very interesting one: – it's the one on the right in the second row. Not only did it look different from others (it was open, like a sewer shaft cover) but more importantly 1) it was dated 1862, 2) it was in vegetation, not on a street and 3) it was in Central Park. To me that screamed out "New Reservoir!" So I went to the park and looked for it around both the North and South Gatehouses (both of which dumped excess water into the sewer system) but came up empty. By the way, I discovered there are many manhole covers in the park, in the grass, woods, brambles, etc. Lots of them just everywhere!

     So I contacted the and got an email back from Matt M. who gave me information on the manhole cover's location. So on Friday Aug. 7th I found it — it was off the park road in the vegetation and through the openings in the manhole cover you could see a long shaft going straight down, here's a picture: . It was located near the 86th Street Transverse which you could see a bit over 35 feet beyond. Here's the view: . It turns out there is a tunnel that starts in the transverse (with a locked gate) just about there. The tunnel heads into the park underground in the general direction of the South Gatehouse. And that brings us to the next item —
     

   • Two Tunnel Portals on the 86th Street Transverse:
     
     I've noticed this tunnel (picture, left) several times in the past and have taken pictures of it but never knew what it was for or when it was built. Matt M. of NYC H2O thought it was an access tunnel to the below-ground parts of the gatehouse (the pipes and valves and stuff). So after taking the above manhole cover picture, I walked around to the transverse (which goes in at 85th Street) and along the north sidewalk to the tunnel portal. And whom should I see when I got there but an NYC DEP crew opening the tunnel gate and going in. How's that for perfect timing!

     It seems the NYC DEP still takes care of the reservoir and gatehouses in the park. I chatted with them and besides saying "sorry you're not allowed in, it's a hard-hat area" after I asked, they said "yes the shaft under that manhole cover does come down to the tunnel" and "yes the tunnel goes up to the gatehouse". That answers a lot of questions about the tunnel, including (from the date on the manhole cover) that it was built in 1862 when the reservoir was completed and that therefore the tunnel was an original part of the gatehouse infrastructure.

     But wait, there's more —
     After the crew left and I took a few more pictures of the tunnel (), I got on the 86th Street crosstown bus heading west. As we passed under the park East Drive, what to my wondering eyes should appear but another tunnel portal, much like the first, but all bricked up. My, this was getting interesting.

     So I jumped off the bus at the next stop (8th Avenue), walked back through the transverse, checked out the all-bricked-up tunnel portal (conclusion – the center brick in the bottom row is missing), went up above the tunnel — there's a bridle path up there — and looked for another manhole cover. Hey, if there's another portal then there's another tunnel behind the bricks and there's another shaft from above, so there's another manhole cover. But my luck had run out and I found nothing. But it was a rather overgrown area with fences etc. so more searching lies in my future. But at the very least, it was a very good day!

     So what is the manhole and what are these tunnels for? I don't know what lies beyond the locked gate and the first 20 feet or so visible through the gate — one possibility is that the tunnel was built directly over the outlet pipes from the gatehouse which travelled underground to Fifth Avenue and 80th Street where they met with the outlet pipes from the old reservoir. And what might be the purpose of the bricked up tunnel #2? From the old documents, there were no pipes there. At times like this I think I've made too many categories and too many distinctions, so I'll leave it up to you to decide. But do take a walk along the north sidewalk of the transverse sometime and check them out.
     

   • Croton Manhole Cover (1861) in Central Park near the North Gate House
     
     This was brought to my attention (in April 2021) by the website

     It was featured in the category "Oldest Manhole Cover in NYC", a title that seems to change hands by the week. Prior to this finding the title was shared by the 1862 Croton Manhole Cover featured above in this report.

     It was found down the hill and abount a hundred feet from the North Gatehouse, just a few feet from the east end of the bathrooms for the tennis courts (a few parked cars are usually in this spot). It is so big that it's a surprized it had never been noticed before by the people (like me) who look for these things. It seemes likely that it may be related to the overflow conduit from the gatehouse which terminates in The Pool, and it is close to the line of that conduit. See the next item below.
     
     

   • Water Input to The Pool (1862) near 100th St. & Eighth Avenue:
     
     Like the previous item, this one is another "what should we call that?" item, but it's real so read on. In his 1896 treatise, Wegmann talks about the overflow of excess water from the New Reservoir: "The [North Gatehouse] waste-pipes are connected by brick culverts with the waste drain of the gate-house which is 4 feet in diameter and discharges into one of the ponds in Central Park near One Hundredth Street and Eighth Avenue."

     With the discovery of the 1861 Croton Manhole Cover (see previous item) I've added a map (to the left) showing how that manhole fits into the overall picture.

     With more detailed information, the reported on June 30, 1862: "In each gate-house there is a well-hole connecting with a sewer, so that when the water reaches a specified height, the surplus will be carried off by a never-failing self-acting process. The north sewer is 2,000 feet in length, and empties into a Central Park brook. The south sewer is 1,916 feet long, and connects with the main sewer in Seventy-ninth-street. It is 46 feet below the top bank of the Reservoir, 42 feet below the water surface, and 6 feet below the bottom of the Reservoir, so that the last drop, almost, may be drained off."

     So I went over to The Pool and checked out the source of its water. I've been by it a number of times and it's easy to find: the water just pours out of rocks (see picture above right) on the south side of The Pool, not far from the park West Drive. It clearly is not a natural flow — the last time I heard of water just coming out of a rock was some 4000 years ago in the Sinai desert, but this flow is no miracle. There is a fairly obvious path for a pipe from the North Gatehouse to this point — under the 97th Street Transverse, then by the Field House and diagonally across the North Meadow. So I asked the Central Park Conservancy about The Pool's source of water and was told that yes, The Pool still gets the bulk of its water from a pipe from the reservoir. So there you have it, go see for yourself.

     Update May 12, 2017

     On May 12, there was a lecture at Hunter College sponsored by NYC H2O given by Stacy Levi, an artist, on her projects to make little known aspects of our water system more real to the public through her public art works. Before the lecture I had occasion to chat with Ken Chaya, well known as an expert on everything to do with Central Park and creator of , possibly the best map of the park in existence.

     I mentioned that I had learned from the Central Park Conservancy that the "The Pool" was fed with water from the Reservoir to this day. I mentioned to Ken that I had visited the outlet several times but didn't know if the original brick conduit was still functional, or if it had been replaced by pipes in the 150 odd years since it was first built as an overflow feature of the 1862 North Gate House. I said somtime when I didn't mind getting my feet wet I would scramble up and look into the portal to see what's in there. He said he had done just that and the brick conduit is indeed still there and that the brick work is in great shape.

     So I guess Ken has scooped me (and everyone else) on this, but you can be sure I'll climb in there sometime soon and get some pictures.

     
     
   • Croton Manhole Covers (1866 and 1867) in Central Park at 85th Street near Eighth Avenue:
     
     I found these on the path that aligns with 85th Street inside the park as the path heads up a hill. (A road heads slightly to the right as you walk into the park at the Mariner's Gate.) Later when I researched the history of the changes to the OCA, I found that 1866 and 1867 were when they replaced the original masonry conduit from 85th Street to 90th Street with underground pipes. Here's the original plan for that work: .

     The plan linked above shows where the 1866-67 pipes ended and the old conduit resumed its path to the reservoir. Wegmann comments on the plan thus: "The masonry conduit was torn down, within the limits mentioned above, and replaced by two lines of cast-iron mains, 6 feet in diameter, which were located as shown on Plate 10. The connections of the masonry conduit with the pipes were made by suitable masonry chambers." Since a pipe-conduit junction chamber was located at this spot and the two dates agree, I consider these covers to be true footprints of an aqueduct feature, and a very interesting feature, if I do say so!

     Surely by now it's occurred to you to ask, "So what's under those manhole covers?" Good question — wanna go there some night when no one's around, open them up and take a look?

     Update May 3, 2016

     After I published the first version of this web site I had some correspondence with the , an organization dedicated to exploring, preserving and education of the public on this historic structure. I had some questions and offered to provide some material I had found over the years. I mentioned these two man hole covers and what they evidently represented and I got an email back from Robert Kornfeld, one of the organizations officers. He wrote:

     "John Bartelstone and I had been discussing the OCA manhole covers in Central Park and whether there was a remnant of the masonry aqueduct there. Our theory was that the masonry aqueduct should be there because the park was laid out prior to the replacement of masonry with iron pipes in the early 1860’s at 85th and CPW (I believe that this is illustrated in the 1861 Annual Report of the Croton Aqueduct Dept.) We discussed this with DEP and they got excited and drove us into the park where we met a team that pulled up one of the man hole covers and dropped a video camera in. It confirmed that there is indeed a remnant of masonry aqueduct in Central Park that goes east to a giant plug near the old reservoir."

     I was very glad to hear this since that was exactly what I would have guessed from the documentation in Wegmann. As for the "giant plug", I would guess that was placed there in the 1930s, when the old reservoir was decommissioned. I don't know if Robert got any copies of what was seen that day but I will pursue that question with him.

     
     

   • Department of Public Works Manhole Covers near the 113th Street Gatehouse
     
     When the old masonry conduit between 93rd and 113th Street was removed and replaced by pipes (1870-75), the 113th Street Gatehouse was built as the northern terminus of the pipes and connected them to the remaining conduit which went up to 119th Street. In laying the pipes under Tenth Avenue, the DPW also put in brick sewers on both sides of the avenue. To quote Wegmann, p. 99: ... [After the 113th Street Gatehouse] was built and the old masonry aqueduct had been removed the pipes were moved to the centre of the avenue and connected with the permanent gate-house. While the pipes were being laid brick sewers were constructed on both sides of the avenue in order to avoid subsequent blasting.

     In other words, since the department was responsible for installing sewers as well as maintaining the water supply, they "killed two birds with one stone" so-to-speak and put the sewers in while the road was dug up. Here's a picture from Wegman showing both pipes and sewers being laid in the street: .

     The covers are interesting. The 1874 one (with a broken "4") is right in front of St. John's Cathedral and the text "d.p.w sewer" is read from the center of the cover. The other two, across the street between 111th and 112th Street have text facing the other way. Look at the pictures (click to enlarge) and you'll see what I mean. These dated DPW covers seem to be pretty rare but someone did find the 1874 cover (1st one above): .

     So are these remnants or footprints of the OCA? A very good question. They do indicate that sewers were built on both sides of the avenue in 1874 and 1875 and the documentation indicates that in these years sewers were put in along with the OCA pipes. So I'll let you decide whether they "count". But just remember what Einstein once said "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."
     

The Distributing Reservoir (1842) at 40th-42nd Street & Fifth Avenue —
   A Remnant in the New York Public Library? A Questionable Claim.

he 1842 Distributing Reservoir was a square structure (about 450' x 450') which rose almost 50 feet from the street level and supplied water to most of the downtown area. It was supplied via iron pipes buried under Fifth Avenue from the much larger Central Park Reservoir. Walking around the walls was a great tourist attraction. It was demolished in 1896-1902 to make way for the New York Public Library.

Here is the description of the reservoir from Wegmann pp. 58-60: and here is the plan from the same volume: (note: south is up on the diagram) both of which describe the complicated structure, the walls of which were actually hollow.

Several websites claim that part of the reservoir's foundation can be seen from the South Court of the Library which is open to the public — this area was recently renovated and is now a very attractive multi-media space. I have never seen a source of this claim and I believe it is mistaken. What you see is simply a section of the Library's foundation and not the reservoir's. It is possible that some of the stones from the reservoir were reused in the library's foundation but my intuition is that engineers would prefer cleanly cut stones rather that those retrieved from a demolition.

On the left is a composite of the reservoir outline superimposed over a Google Earth view of the Library. The outline was constructed using dimensions given in the original OCA plan and from vintage photographs which show how the reservoir fit into the street grid. I suggest you click on it to see the full image. The entire library lies within the reservoir and none of the main walls (which were hollow with a passageway inside) are near the south court. The division wall separating the east from the west reservoir sections does cross the south court of the library but not near the NE corner which is where the foundation is exposed.

Further to the issue, These two diagrams from Wegmann: and Show that the shape of the walls were not vertical and are not compatible with what is on view in the South Court of the Library.

In addition I found a very good web page on the subject: written by Charlotte Fahn on the Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct website with this quote:

... The exposed stone wall visible at the lowest level of the New York Public Library South Court—the auditorium level—is not a remnant of the reservoir as is sometimes thought, according to a 2003 conversation with Ernest Batchelor, an architect at Davis, Brody & Assocs., the firm that carried out the South Court project. ...

So as far as I'm concerned it's nada in the New York Public Library for the distributing reservoir.

June 9th: The Restoration and Reopening of The High Bridge

n Tuesday, June 9th, I left home about 7:45 to go up to Highbridge Park for the opening of the High Bridge. (A word on typography: the name of the park is "Highbridge Park"; the name of the bridge is "The High Bridge".) I was told there would be an opening ceremony at 9:00 and then we could cross the bridge for the first time in 45+ years. When I got there about 8:40, it was already open and there was no ceremony. Oh well, whatever. It was a cloudy, drizzly day which was unfortunate since I wanted to get some good pictures. Too bad, we do the best we can.

I decided to intersperse my photos in the slideshow with a number of historic pictures all the way back to 1843. The pictures tell the story. What more is there to say? I went there, walked across and back and took a bunch of pictures. But the story actually goes back some 165+ years and you can be sure I'll be running over it in less than a week.

There were just a few folks out on the bridge, maybe 20, and it was very casual. People took photos of others or themselves and we looked into every nook and cranny of the bridge. And the views — up and down the river the views were marvelous. I had seen the bridge many times over the years (back to 1970), but always with a big metal gate across the entrance — and for the last 2 or 3 years with a construction fence and the bridge itself with scaffolding and coverings. But Tuesday was the day.

You might ask since the bridge restoration was so beautifully done, what's with the "Grand Staircase" shown in my pictures. The Parks Department docents said that the stairs are on Department of Transportation land taken when the adjacent highways were built and they were hopeful that the stairs would be transferred to Parks which would fix them up. Hmm ...

To run the slideshow, click on the picture above. You must manually advance through the pictures (click on the ">" icon, or use the arrow keys). Take your time and read the captions. However, since Google took over the original album software company (Picasa) the captions tend to disap pear. So to fix this, click on the little "i" within the circle in the upper right of the photo. This will give the caption and other information in a panel on the right. Leave this on and keep clicking through the photos and you'll see it all.

Enjoy!

The OCA and the Jerome Park Reservoir

hen I ran with Melissa in June along the OCA in the Bronx, we ran along Goulden Avenue when we got to the Jerome Park Reservoir. Then I ran with Ed a week later and we went along the other side of the reservoir. I really never thought about where the OCA went, other than more or less in the north end and out the south end of the reservoir and ultimately to Kingsbridge Road, across from the Kingsbridge Armory. But some of the parkland along Reservoir Avenue (last Saturday's route) looked a lot like the OCA sections further south between Kingsbridge Avenue and the Harlem River. So I did a little research and found out a number of interesting tidbits (see , starting at about page 15 and ) from the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, aka NYC DEP, website. It's a report published with the meeting minutes of a meeting where the DEP met with members of the local community to discuss various issues. Note that the historical narrative included in these posts were taken from the which was written by Robert Kornfeld, AIA. The designation was approved in 2000. For a general paper on the effort to preserve the Jerome Park Reservoir, see .

First off, earlier in the 19th century in the 1870s when this part of the Bronx became part of NY City, none other than Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the designers of Central Park, laid out a plan for the streets and parkland in this area. Much of that plan was accepted and the lovely streets and parks Ed and I discovered in our run west of the reservoir reflects Olmsted's design. See this map: , which shows this part of the Bronx in 1879 — after Olmsted had created the plan. His street plan, which extended west to Riverdale, is shown in very light lines, the existing streets are shown in normal print. Where the reservoir would eventually be built, there was a park, "Jerome Park", with a race track within it. Hence the name of the future reservoir. The map shows the aqueduct going right through the park, from Gun Hill Road at the north edge of the map, to Kingsbridge Road and on towards the south. Most of the parcels show no current streets, just the owner's names. This was farm land.

Then in the decades following, when the New Croton Aqueduct (aka the NCA) was being built and the reservoir was designed, it was intentionally fit into this plan.

And lastly, the original plan for the reservoir was to have a portion east of the present day Goulden Avenue as large as, or larger than the portion actually built. See the 1907 design plan to the left. Due to politics and budgets the "East Basin" was never built and the land already taken was eventually given over to other city departments. So all the schools from Dewitt Clinton High School, Bronx High school of Science and Lehman College are sitting in the old East Basin. The unbuilt part was originally designed to go all the way south to Kingsbrige Road to the site of the Armory (built in 1912 after the East Basin plan was scrapped). So what was once a wall dividing the West Basin (built as designed) and the unbuilt East Basin is now simply the east wall of the reservoir.

The OCA originally ran near where this wall was to be built, so they relocated the OCA slightly and put it inside the east basin wall, mostly to protect it. Look carefully at the 1907 plan above left and you can see the dotted line for the original OCA path and the East Basin wall built very close to it. Here's a Google Earth screenshot which I have annotated to show the relocated path of the OCA from the Gate House to Van Cortlandt Park: (the original path is shown in blue, the relocated path in red). After the NCA's completion, the OCA would continue to serve as one of the major sources of water for the city and a backup for the NCA for close to 60 more years. So neither aqueduct just flowed in one end and out the other end, as I naively thought. They both entered and exited the reservoir through a gate house designed for that purpose (the gate house is still there, see photo on the right).

And for obsessives like myself who want to "get it right" when doing an OCA run, just running along the Goulden Avenue sidewalk is fine. Don't attempt to run along the reservoir wall. It's between two fences and you might get arrested as a terrorist, or at least as a wacko! Besides, in places the Goulden Avenue sidewalk is closer to the original path of the OCA anyway!

Blog Links, Sources, Maps, and OCA Websites

Links to OCA Related Blog Posts from Beyond Central Park
August 2015
June 13, 2015
June 20, 2015
June 24, 2015
June 2017
June 2017
June 2017
Source Documents
see sections 7 - 11.
Maps
News Articles
OCA and Related Websites