Encyclopedia of NYS entries (drafts):
Colles, Christopher.
(b. Dublin, Ireland, 9 May 1739; d New York City, 4 October 1816).
Engineer, promoter of internal improvements.
After emigrating to Philadelphia in 1771, Colles settled three years later in New York City where he attempted to build its first public waterworks (1774-1776), for which he designed one of the first American-made steam engines; the incomplete works were wrecked by the British during their wartime occupation of the city. From 1784 to 1786, Colles promoted his plan to link Albany with Oswego (Oswego Co.) on Lake Ontario via improvements of the Mohawk River and other water courses; the ill-funded venture did not progress beyond initial surveys but was the first formal proposal for a water route between the Hudson River and Great Lakes. Colles's 'Survey of the Roads of the United Statesī (1789), the first comprehensive atlas of American highways from Virginia to Albany, detailed routes to Albany on both sides of the Hudson. From these and lesser visionary projects, Colles gained modest fame but little fortune, and he died impoverished.
Gerard T. Koeppel
Koeppel, Gerard T. Water for Gotham: A History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Ristow, Walter
W., ed. A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America 1789 By Christopher
Colles (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1961).
Seelye, John Beautiful Machine: Rivers and the Republican Plan 1755-1825 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
York, Neil Longley
Mechanical Metamorphosis: Technological Change in Revolutionary America (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).
Croton Reservoir and
Aqueduct.
First public water supply for New York City.
Conceived in 1832 after
a devastating cholera epidemic, authorized by the state legislature in 1834,
approved by New York City voters in 1835, and opened in 1842, the original Croton
Aqueduct ended the city's long reliance on inadequate and dangerously polluted
neighborhood wells. Supervised by state-appointed water commissioners, David
Bates Douglass conducted the original surveys of the Croton River and its tributaries
in Westchester and Putnam counties and laid out the route of the aqueduct (1833-1836)
and John Bloomfield Jervis detailed the engineering plans and oversaw construction
(1836-1842). From Jervis's pioneering, fifty-foot high dam on the lower Croton
River that created a 500-million gallon reservoir, the aqueduct stretched 40.5
miles through Westchester and upper Manhattan, ending at a massive distributing
reservoir a mile north of the city limits. The unpressurized brick and masonry
conduit was roughly seven and a half feet wide and eight and a half feet high;
except for several miles of tunneling, high embankments, and spectacular raised
arches such as those of the High Bridge over the Harlem River, most of the aqueduct
was laid at or near ground level.
While daily water use rose beyond the aqueduct's capacity
of 90 million gallons in the mid-1880s, work began on the New Croton Aqueduct,
a 31-mile pressurized tunnel three times the size of the old aqueduct. Completed
in 1893, the New Croton was the world's longest and largest tunnel. The 240-foot
high New Croton Dam, the largest masonry dam in the world when opened in 1905,
increased the capacity of the Croton Reservoir to nineteen billion gallons,
and submerged the original Jervis dam.
As the vast Catskill and Delaware Aqueduct systems came into
service during the twentieth century, the 'Old Crotonī was cut back and closed
in 1955; it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992. The New Croton
continues to supply 10% of the city's water.
Gerard T. Koeppel
Blake, Nelson M. Water for the Cities:A History of the Urban Water Supply Problem in the United States(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1956).
Koeppel, Gerard T. Water for Gotham: A History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Marx, Robin and Goldstein, Eric A. A Guide to New York City's Reservoirs and Their Watersheds (Natural Resources Defense Council, 1993).
The Old Croton Aqueduct: Rural Resources Meet Urban Needs (Yonkers, N.Y.: The Hudson River Museum, 1992).
Scharf, J. Thomas History of Westchester County, New York (Philadelphia, Pa.: L. E. Preston & Co., 1886).
Schodek, Daniel L. Landmarks in American Civil Engineering (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).
Weidner, Charles
H. Water for a City: A History of New York City's Problem from the Beginning
to the Delaware River System (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1974).
Croton River.
Largest river in northern Westchester County; drinking water source for New
York City.
Originating in the low mountains
of southern Dutchess County, the Croton is fed by
numerous smaller rivers and streams in the rocky highlands of Putnam and Westchester
counties before draining into the Hudson River at Croton-on-Hudson (Westchester
Co.); the Croton watershed covers approximately 375 square miles. The origin
and meaning of the name is unclear; Croton is likely a corruption of a native
word referring to the region of which the river formed the southern boundary.
From the mid-1700s, a number of grist and other mills were established along
rock-lined, steep, and narrow lower portions of the river; this activity was
ended gradually by two dams, completed in 1842 and 1906, for New York City's
Croton Aqueduct system. The second dam, two miles from the river's mouth, transformed
nine miles of the lower river into a lake-like reservoir. Dams and reservoirs
on eleven upper branches and tributaries of the river were constructed between
1866 and 1911. Set naturally in a rugged and remote landscape, the river and
its tributaries now flow through largely suburbanized terrain; this is a factor
in continuing debate about the quality of Croton water, which provides roughly
ten percent of New York City's water supply.
Gerard T. Koeppel
Blake, Nelson M. Water for the Cities: A History of the Urban Water Supply Problem in the United States (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1956).
Bolton, Reginald Pelham "Ketche-Wank," Westchester County Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin, 12 (January 1936): 17
Koeppel, Gerard T. Water for Gotham: A History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Marx, Robin and Goldstein, Eric A. A Guide to New York City's Reservoirs and Their Watersheds (Natural Resources Defense Council, 1993).
Scharf, J. Thomas
History of Westchester County, New York (Philadelphia, Pa.: L. E. Preston &
Co., 1886).
Douglass, David Bates.
(b Pompton, N.J., 21 March 1790; d Geneva, Ontario Co., 21 October 1849).
Civil and military engineer, educator.
After graduating with honors from Yale College in 1813, Douglass served heroically as the commander of a U.S. Army engineer company during the British siege of Fort Erie in 1814. From 1815 to 1831, Douglass became a leading professor at West Point [United States Military Academy]; he later taught science, mathematics, and engineering subjects at the University of the City of New York [now New York University] and Geneva [now Hobart] College. Douglass' most notable engineering work was the Croton Aqueduct, for which he conducted the original surveys and served as the project's first Chief Engineer (1833-1836), though he was dismissed before construction began. His most influential work was the trendsetting design of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn (Kings Co.) (1838-1841), which led to Douglass commissions for other cemeteries, including the Albany Rural Cemetery in 1845, and inspired the later design competition for Manhattan's Central Park.
Gerard T. Koeppel
Douglass, David Bates. Papers. William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Koeppel, Gerard T. Water for Gotham: A History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000)
Lankton, Larry
Dean. 'Manhattan Life Line: Engineering the Old Croton Aqueduct, 1833-1842ī
(Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1977).
Forman, Joshua (b
Pleasant Valley, Dutchess Co, 6 Sep 1777; d Rutherfordton, NC, 4 Aug 1848).
Early promoter of Erie Canal; founder of Syracuse.
Forman graduated from Union College (Schenectady) in 1798; after legal studies and admission to the state bar, he established a legal practice in 1800 at Onondaga Hollow (now Onondaga, Onondaga Co), then a near wilderness. Forman rose to local prominence as a lawyer, county judge, landowner, mill and mineral developer, and civic benefactor. After the 1807 publication of newspaper articles originated the idea of a canal linking the Hudson River and Lake Erie, Forman, as a new member of the Assembly, introduced in 1808 the first legislation for such a canal, after discussions with fellow assemblyman and future Erie Canal engineer Benjamin Wright. The resulting survey, by future Erie Canal engineer James Geddes, confirmed the possibility of a canal to Lake Erie but funding questions and the War of 1812 postponed significant planning for nearly a decade. In 1819, Forman moved to and laid out land he owned at the future site of Syracuse, of which he is considered the founder. In 1829, Forman provided the concept for the security of bank deposits enacted later that year as New York State's landmark Safety Fund Act. A resident then of New Brunswick, NJ, Forman moved shortly thereafter to Rutherfordton, NC where he administered the sale of vast land holdings until his death.
Gerard T. Koeppel
Bruce, Dwight H. Onondaga's Centennial: Gleanings of a Century (Boston: Boston History Co., 1896), I:836-866
DAB
Geddes, George. The Erie Canal: Origin and History of the Measures That Led to Its Construction, Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society II (1880): 263-304
Hawley, Merwin
S. 'The Erie Canal: Its Origin Considered In Reference to Gouverneur Morris,
Joshua Forman, James Geddes and Jesse Hawley,ī Publications of the Buffalo Historical
Society II (1880): 335-349
Shaw, Ronald E. Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal 1792-1854 (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1990), 29-37
Whitford, Noble
E. History of the Canal System of the State of New York (Albany, 1906), I:57
Tunnel #3.
Water distribution tunnel in New York City (under construction).
Designed to distribute Delaware and Catskill Aqueduct water from an existing reservoir in Yonkers (Westchester Co.) to all of the city's boroughs except Staten Island (Richmond Co.), City Water Tunnel #3 will allow inspection and repair of the city's two original distribution tunnels for the first time since they were put in service in 1917 and 1936. Construction of the tunnel, first contemplated in the 1950s, did not begin until 1970, and was suspended during contractual and fiscal problems in the mid-1970s; in 2001, completion was expected in 2020 at a total cost of six billion dollars, making it the largest capital construction project in the city's history. The first thirteen-mile segment of the tunnel's anticipated sixty-three-mile total length was opened in 1998, serving portions of the Bronx, Manhattan (New York Co.), and Queens. The concrete-lined segment has a maximum diameter of twenty-four feet and runs as much as eight hundred feet below ground. In the first three decades of construction, twenty-four people died in tunnel-related accidents; by contrast, sixty workers were killed in one three-year period during construction of the city's second water tunnel in the 1930s.
Gerard T. Koeppel
City of New York, Department of Environmental Protection. New York City's Water Supply System [online]: < http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dep/html/watersup.html > [26 February 2001]
Chiles, James R. 'The Fearless 40 of New York's Water Tunnel No.3,ī Smithsonian, July 1994.
Galusha, Diane Liquid Assets: A History of New York City's Water System (Fleischmanns, N.Y.: Purple Mountain Press, 1999).
Greenberg, Michael
and Sehgal, J. Paul 'City Tunnel No. 3,ī The Municipal Engineers Journal 80
(1992): 43-57.
Water supply and use
New York City watershed
The source of water for
New York City is three watersheds covering just under 2,000 square miles in eight
counties (Schoharie,
Delaware, Sullivan, Greene, Ulster, Dutchess, Putnam, and Westchester). Water
is collected in 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes and delivered by three
gravity-fed aqueducts to storage reservoirs in Westchester and Bronx counties
for distribution by city tunnels. The system, begun in 1837, has a storage capacity
of 600 billion gallons, with an average daily consumption in the city of 1.2
billion gallons; another 120 million gallons a day is supplied to four counties
(Westchester, Putnam, Orange, and Ulster) outside of the city.
Original supplies
The public water supply of New York City for its first two centuries was
street wells; after the first public well was dug in 1666, hundreds of pump-equipped
wells eventually were sunk. Initially, the geological conditions beneath the
town founded at the low-lying southern tip of salt-ringed Manhattan caused its
well water to be merely distasteful. As the population spread north up the island,
the wells became increasingly polluted by proto-industrial, animal, and human
waste. A 1774 plan by Christopher Colles for a public piped water supply from
a deep well on high ground just beyond the city's settled area was abandoned
before completion during the Revolution. Aaron Burr's Manhattan Company, liberally
chartered as a water business by the legislature in 1799, quickly evolved into
a monopoly that provided little water and frustrated other private and public
efforts while thriving as a bank that became Chase Manhattan. A palatable but
limited and expensive supply was had from carted spring and private pump water.
After an Asiatic cholera epidemic in 1832 killed over 3,500
(one in fifty) residents of the notoriously filthy and ill-watered city, alderman
and state senator Myndert Van Schaick (son of Col. Goose Van Schaick) led the
effort to claim the pure waters of the Croton River in what was then remote
northern Westchester County. State-appointed commissioners oversaw the planning
and construction of the Croton Aqueduct which, when opened in 1842, quickly
changed the city's water reputation. Delivering 90 million gallons a day, the
aqueduct became the model for urban American water supplies, and Croton became
a byword for excellent water. As larger systems came online in the 20th century,
the aqueduct was cut back gradually and closed in 1955.
The Modern System
While Manhattan's population surged beyond 1.5 million in the early 1890s,
the city completed the New Croton Aqueduct, which quadrupled the daily supply
from the Croton watershed.
The current Croton system was completed with the construction of a landmark
dam on the lower Croton River (opened in 1905) and eleven other reservoirs on
dammed upper branches and tributaries (1866 to 1911).
The creation of Greater New York in 1898, expanding the city
to its current five boroughs and nearly doubling its population, prompted the
building of an aqueduct from the Catskill Mountains, one hundred miles northwest
of the city and west of the Hudson River. Begun in 1907, opened in 1917, and
completed in 1927, the Catskill system features two reservoirs (the 123-billion
gallon Ashokan in Ulster County, and the smaller Schoharie at the intersection
of Schoharie, Delaware, and Greene counties) and a 92-mile aqueduct transmitting
up to 800 million gallons a day and passing in a tunnel eleven hundred feet
below the Hudson River between Storm King and Breakneck mountains.
As work continued on the Catskill system and the city's population
grew toward its 1950s peak of eight million people, planning began for an aqueduct
from Delaware River source waters in Delaware County. A U.S. Supreme Court decision
settled litigation with downriver states in 1931 but the Depression delayed
the start of construction until 1937. Completed in 1965, the Delaware system
features two reservoirs in Delaware County (the Cannonsville, 120 miles from
the city, and the 140-billion gallon Pepacton, the largest of the city's reservoirs),
one in Sullivan County (the Neversink) and one on the border of Sullivan and
Ulster counties (the Rondout), and the 84-mile Delaware Aqueduct, the world's
longest continuous tunnel.
At the opening of the 21st century, the Delaware Aqueduct
supplied 50%, the Catskill Aqueduct 40%, and the New Croton Aqueduct 10% of
the city's water. The only major ongoing work was a massive new tunnel for distribution
of existing supplies within the city, but the $6 billion projected cost of Water
Tunnel #3 made it the largest capital construction project in the city's history.
The City-Watershed Region
Relationship
In 1837, landowners unsuccessfully petitioned the legislature to halt
the impending 'invasionī of Westchester by the Croton Aqueduct; the relationship
between the city and its watershed populations has been uneasy ever since. Construction
of the Croton, Catskill, and Delaware systems flooded at least thirty-three
communities, displacing ten thousand residents and requiring
the reinterment of nearly twelve thousand graves from over eighty cemeteries.
Since the city stopped building new supply facilities in the 1960s, it has sought
to preserve the quality of the supply with watershed land purchases and environmental
regulation, engendering new resentment. Increasing commercial and residential
development in the watershed counties, in part the result of city water projects
there, has compounded the threat to water purity, making it likely that tension
over the city's vast extraterritorial water supply will not disappear.
Gerard T. Koeppel
Blake, Nelson M. Water for the Cities: A History of the Urban Water Supply Problem in the United States (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1956).
Galusha, Diane Liquid Assets: A History of New York City's Water System (Fleischmanns, N.Y.: Purple Mountain Press, 1999).
Koeppel, Gerard T. Water for Gotham: A History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Marx, Robin and Goldstein, Eric A. A Guide to New York City's Reservoirs and Their Watersheds (Natural Resources Defense Council, 1993).
Weidner, Charles
H. Water for a City: A History of New York City's Problem from the Beginning
to the Delaware River System (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1974).
Wood, Jethro (b ?Dartmouth,
Mass, 16 Mar 1774; d Ledyard, Cayuga Co, 18 Sep 1834).
Inventor of the cast-iron plow with interchangeable parts
Wood was born either in Massachusetts or White Creek (Washington Co), to which his Quaker family moved prior to 1783; he established a successful farm near Scipio (Cayuga Co) in 1800. A tinkerer with model plows from early childhood, Wood received his first plow patent in 1814. After continuous experimentation, he was granted a patent for a cast-iron plow featuring curved moldboard and interchangeable parts on September 1, 1819. The shape and construction of Wood's plow gave it advantages of balance, strength, durability, light weight, and low cost over existing iron plows. Initially hesitant farmers soon created a demand for Wood plows; manufacturers took advantage of weak national patent laws to avoid royalty payments. Litigation during the fourteen years of the original patent and one fourteen-year extension impoverished first Wood and then his eldest son, who won a favorable decision in Albany circuit court in 1845 but died shortly thereafter; subsequently, Wood's daughters failed in several efforts to gain renewed rights or substantial relief from Congress. The inventor was hailed by supporters such as onetime family counsel William H. Seward as the country's greatest unrewarded benefactor; his invention was among the most significant agricultural innovations of the nineteenth-century.
Gerard T. Koeppel
Ardrey, Robert L. American Agricultural Implements (Chicago: author, 1894), 9-11
DAB
Gilbert, Frank Jethro Wood, Inventor of the Modern Plow (Chicago: Rhodes & McClure,1882)
Scientific American, v3,no22 (19 Feb 1848): 171, 173; v23,no4 (23 Jul 1870): 55
Storke, Elliot G. History of Cayuga County, New York (Syracuse: D. Mason & Co., 1879), 458