Postscripts

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY

On October 14, 1842, 167 years ago, New York City marked the completion of the Croton Aqueduct and the stream of cold, clear water it brought from the valley of the Croton River. The water's arrival touched off celebrations whose like had never been seen before. At a time when the purity of Croton's own water supply is in jeopardy from runoff contamination, it is appropriate that we remind ourselves of the benefits Croton's pure, sweet water brought to the way of life in Gotham.

Throughout the summer of 1842, Manhattan's citizens were brimming with anticipation as they eagerly awaited the long-heralded coming of Croton water. Over the years many proposals had been explored in the city's search for "a sufficient quantity of pure and wholesome water," including tapping the Bronx River, the Passaic River in New Jersey, or the Housatonic in Connecticut.

To replace an earthen dam that had been breached and destroyed in a storm, a dam had been erected in Westchester County to impound the Croton River. Some 270 feet across and 50 feet high, the Croton Dam, the first large masonry dam in this country, created a lake five miles long. To carry this water to the city, a now still-usable masonry aqueduct eight and a half feet high and seven and a half feet in width, snaked its way through a dozen towns and villages and across hundreds of acres of private land, tunneling through hills and spanning broad valleys with earthen embankments or classical arches.

Bridges carried it across deep ravines, streams or highways. Some, like the aqueduct bridge at Sing Sing with its span of 88 feet and height of 76 feet, were structures of striking architectural boldness. The entire system was one of the nineteenth century's engineering marvels. Proposed in 1833 and estimated at $5 million, its final cost was almost twice that amount.

Farther to the south, a 24-million-gallon reservoir was erected at the highest point of this part of Manhattan, now the site of the New York Public Library. Like a gigantic above-ground swimming pool, the magnificent Egyptian-style masonry structure stretched across two city blocks from 40th to 42nd Street. Its sloping walls rose 38 feet above street level. It would soon become a major attraction for residents and visitors. A railed flagstone promenade atop its massive walls made it possible for strollers to gaze into the serene depths of sparkling clear Croton water or to survey the vast panorama of the city lying to the south.

On June 8th, Chief Engineer John B. Jervis, several of his assistants and the five water commissioners began a final inspection by trudging for three days through thirty-three miles of the Croton Aqueduct from the Croton Dam to the Harlem River. Jervis, a brilliant self-taught engineer, had cut his teeth on canals: first on the Erie Canal--where he rose in eight years from axeman to surveyor to Resident Engineer--and then the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Next he built New York's first railroad, the Mohawk and Hudson, between Albany and Schenectady. The driving force in the construction of the Croton Dam and Croton, Jervis's only remaining monument today is the 41-mile-long aqueduct itself.

The Voyage of the Croton Maid
On June 20, a modest flow of water was started down the aqueduct. Only 18 inches deep, the stream was enough to launch a 16-foot flat-bottomed wooden skiff designed for this use and named the Croton Maid. Carrying four workers, the tiny vessel competed its journey and reached the Harlem River 22 hours later.

As artillery battery fired a 38-gun salute , the first Croton water began to flow into the receiving reservoir in the wild area that would become Central Park. New York Governor William H. Seward (who would later become Lincoln's Secretary of State), Mayor Robert H. Morris and other officials were on hand for the historic event.

After portaging the Croton Maid around the three-foot-diameter cast iron pipes that carried the aqueduct temporaryily under the Harlem River and across Manhattan Valley, on June 21st the four men in the little craft finally sailed out into the giant York Hill receiving reservoir located betewen 79th and 86th streets and Sixth and Seventh avenues to the cheers of some 20,000 enthusiastic spectators, cannon salutes and toasts of the "sweet, soft, clear water." A Water Commission report later added that this voyage "afforded indubitable evidence that a navigable river was flowing into the city for the use of its inhabitants."

George Templeton Strong, a young graduate of Columbia University who was to have a brilliant career as literary critic, music lover and lawyer, noted in his diary, "Croton Water is slowly flowing towards the city, which at last will stand a chance of being cleaned--if water can clean it."

Filling the Reservoirs
Few were present at sunrise on the Fourth of July when valves were opened and water flowed through three-foor iron pipes down Fifth Avenue and began to flow into the Murray Hill distributing reservoir at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenu, as 45 cannon boomed. (The New York Public Library now occupies this site.) . Croton's water had arrived not a moment too soon. The huge cast-iron tank erected in 1829 at 13th Street and the Bowery, with a capacity of more than 305,000 gallons, the city's only reservoir and the source of the water on which it depended for fire protection, was bone dry. At Mayor Morris's request, Croton water was immediately piped to the downtown location.

George Templeton Strong told his diary: "There's nothing new in town, except the Croton Water, which is all full of tadpoles and animalculae, and which moreover flows through an aqueduct which I hear was used as a necessary by all the Hibernian vagabonds who worked upon it. I shall drink no Croton Water for some time to come. Jehiel Post has drunk some of it and is in dreadful apprehensions of breeding bullfrogs."

The festivities of June and July marking the arrival of Croton water were mere preludes to the huge celebration planned for Friday, October 14th. "Nothing is talked of or thought of in New York but Croton water; fountains, aqueducts, hydrants and hose attract our attention," another tireless diarist, ex-Mayor Philip Hone, wrote, "and impede our progress through the streets. Water! Water! is the universal note which is sounded in every part of the city, and infuses joy and exultation into the masses, even though they are out of spirits."

Charles King, president of Columbia College, hailed the Croton Dam and Aqueduct as "the crowning glory and surpassing achievement of the latter part of the half century," and indeed it was. The city had participated in the statewide celebration of the federal union and the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, but it had outdone itself this time. The Croton Dam and Aqueduct were exclusively a municipal venture.

Invitations went out to President John Tyler, in Washington, and to the two living ex-Presidents, John Quincy Adams, then serving as a Congressman from Massachusetts, and Martin Van Buren, then living up the Hudson in Kinderhook, N.Y. All declined because of previous commitments. Writing from the Upper Manor House, 80-year-pld Pierre Van Cortlandt, former member of Congress and President of the Westchester County Bank in Peekskill, gratefully accepted the invitation "to celebrate the introduction of Croton Water."

A Celebration Unlike Any Other
The day began with the firing of one hundred cannon in a national salute at sunrise. Church bells were rung for an hour. At ten, the five-mile-long parade began. The Commercial Advertiser called it "the largest procession ever known in the city." Spectators jammed windows, balconies and sidewalks to watch and applaud. The seven-mile-long parade route took marchers north from the Battery up Broadway to Union Square and then turned south down the Bowery and East Broadway to City Hall Park. Spectacular fountains shooting geysers of Croton water 50 feet into the air had been erected at Union Square and at City Hall Park.

First came a military escort, followed by a dozen open carriages carrying top-hatted dignitaries and elected officials, followed by additional regiments of soldiers. Next came 97 companies of volunteer firemen in full regalia of fire helmets, red shirts and dark trousers. Some pulled highly polished hand pumpers; the smoke-bellowing, steam-driven pump engines were drawn by teams of powerful horses. Four thousand firefighters were in the line of march: three thousand from the city and the balance from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, upstate New York, Connecticut and Long Island.

Butchers on horseback made up another contingent, all in white aprons with their forearms covered with traditional checkered sleeve protectors. These were followed by 30 temperance societies, artisans and mechanics organizations, trade unions, civic societies, college faculties, ladies' auxiliaries, and bands of every description. No segment of society was overlooked.

The Cold Spring Temperance Benevolent Society marched under a banner showing "a gentleman tendering the pledge of total abstinence to a poor ragged inebriate." Its motto was, "Turn; drink of the pure fountain of life, come with us and be free." The presence of so many temperance organizations reflected the hope of reform-minded New Yorkers that public drunkenness would decline with the availability of water that did not have to be made palatable by the addition of alcohol.

About four-thirty the last marchers reached the park at City Hall, where the Mayor introduced the orator of the day, Samuel Stevens, President of the Board of Water Commissioners. "Only the Romans could compete with such a magnificent public work," Commissioner Stevens told the assembled throng. "But the works of Rome were built by slaves," he reminded them, while the Croton Aqueduct "was voted for and constructed by free men." Abolitionists in the audience cheered.

"The Croton Ode"
With the City Hall Park fountain as a backdrop, a choir of two hundred members of the New York Sacred Choral Society sang "The Croton Ode," with lyrics composed by George Pope Morris specifically for the occasion. Morris was a poet, journalist and writer of popular song lyrics. His most famous work was the 1837 sentimental ballad, "Woodman, Spare that Tree." The music for "The Croton Ode" was adapted by Sidney Pearson from Rossini's opera Armida and contained fourteen four-line stanzas; one stanza anticipated the conquest of the twin threats of epidemics and fires:

Water leaps as if delighted,
While her conquered foes retire!
Pale Contagion flies affrighted
With the baffled demon, Fire!

Another stanza pointed the way to temperance:

From her haunts of deep seclusion,
Let Intemp'rance greet her too,
And the heat of his delusion
Sprinkle with this mountain dew.

The ceremonies closed with a cold buffet for invited guests in City Hall , with more speechmaking by the mayor and governor. Wines and spirits were conspicuously absent; the only beverages available for the frequent toasts were Croton water and lemonade.

Despite the hoopla and the celebrations that accompanied the arrival of Croton water in New York City in 1842, by 1844 the Croton water system had acquired only 6,000 paying customers and revenues of $100,000, while total cost had risen to $13 million. Croton water was everywhere--in fountains spouting geysers of water and in fire hydrants, but many property owners had not spent the money to intall the expensive pipe connections to the system. Most city residents still preferred to get their water from free street hydrants and the few wells that remained flowing with subsurface water in ancient springs below Manhattan.

With the completion of the High Bridge in 1848 and the resultant increase in water pressure, usage of Croton water began to rise. Begun in the 1850s, construction of an underground sewer system soon made interior bathrooms and water closets a fixture in city dwellings, and launched a new trade--that of the Croton water plumber. In 1857, an enterprising manufacturer named Joseph C. Gayetty produced and marketed the first packaged toilet papers in the United States. For ten cents, a customer got a package of ten sheets of manila hemp paper pre-moistened with an aloe solution. Gayetty's name was imprinted on each sheet.

Arrival of Croton water in Manhattan reputedly added another feature to life in the booming city. The omnipresent German cockroach (Blatella germanica) acquired a new name. City dwellers called it the "Croton bug," convinced that this pest could be introduced into dwellings through the pipes bringing Croton water.

Little did the 1842 celebrants know that by the turn of the century the city would have to build a new and larger Croton Aqueduct to relieve the threat of water shortages, and a new and higher Croton Dam backed by additional upstate reservoirs to increase water capacity. In its unending quest for water, the city would range even farther afield to the Catskills and beyond. For the moment, however, New York was content--and awash in water. It had found in the Croton watershed the "pure and wholesome water" that would make it the envy of other cities.

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth and final article in a four-part series about the building of the Old Croton Aqueduct. The complete series of published articles can be found at the following links:

http://notorc.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-disease-and-fire-led-to-building-of.html

http://notorc.blogspot.com/2009/04/no-irish-need-apply-culture-clashes.html

http://notorc.blogspot.com/2009/06/the-old-croton-aqueduct-an-engineering.html

http://notorc.blogspot.com/2009/06/days-of-hope-and-glory-when-croton.html

Labels: Celebrations, Christmas History, Croton Aqueduct, Croton Dam

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY

Seen from the air, the Old Croton Aqueduct gives the impression that a giant mole had tunneled its way south from the Croton River to New York City, throwing up the slight bulge that is the telltale sign of the animal's passage through a lawn. Now a public right of way, the aqueduct was purchased by New York State from New York City's Bureau of Water Supply in 1968. Listed on both the New York State and the National Registers of Historic Places in 1974, most of it is open for walking and cycling.

This elongated but little-used state park extends all the way to the heart of New York City. In its northern reaches, it closely parallels the Hudson River. Comparatively straight and somewhat narrow as parks go, it sometimes follows city streets and highways; at other times it traverses meadows and wooded areas. It was built with a singleness of purpose: to carry water to a thirsty, disease-ridden, fire-threatened city more than a century and a half ago. In selecting its route, engineers were mindful that the water coursing through it would be impelled only by gravity. The total drop between Croton and Manhattan is 43.63 feet, or 13-1/4 inches per mile.

The aqueduct starts near the New Croton Dam, makes its way to Ossining, crossing Quaker Bridge Road twice. In Crotonville, it traverses the Indian Brook Culvert, which allows the stream of that name to pass under the aqueduct embankment. Before reaching Main Street in Ossining, it crosses the famous Double Arch Aqueduct Bridge. It runs parallel to Main Street and then across Nelson Park. It crosses Route 9 once again to Scarborough Road and back again before passing behind the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow.

The aqueduct brings walkers close to some of Westchester's architectural gems: in Tarrytown, financier Jay Gould's Gothic Revival mansion, Lyndhurst; in Irvington, Washington Irving's home, "Sunnyside," the Armour-Stiner domed octagonal house, and Nevis, the mansion built by Col. James A. Hamilton and named for the island in the West Indies where his father, Alexander Hamilton, was born; in Hastings-on-Hudson on Aqueduct Lane, the former studio of Russian-born French sculptor Jacques Lipchitz.

More than a few hardy walkers have hiked the entire length of the Old Croton Aqueduct, 26 miles of which are within the present boundaries of Westchester County. Walking the aqueduct is one way to appreciate this engineering marvel of the nineteenth century. Although some of its features are concealed in the earth, many can be discerned by observant walkers.

Building the Aqueduct
Chief Engineer John B. Jervis organized the construction of the aqueduct into four 10-mile-long divisions, each under the supervision of a resident engineer, and 96 subdivisions called sections. Jervis's annual salary was $5,000; his assistant, Horatio Allen, earned $3,500 a year. Resident engineers made between $1,500 and $1,800. The pay of the Irish laborers who built the aqueduct ranged between 75 cents and a dollar a day.

The major portion of the aqueduct was constructed by the cut-and-fill method in which a trench was dug, the aqueduct was built, and the earth was backfilled over it. The decision to enclose the aqueduct completely with ramparts of earth was made to protect it from the weather and contamination by ground water.

The following are the specifications of the aqueduct, taken from an official report: "The foundation is stone, upon which is laid a bed of concrete, composed of broken granite and hydraulic cement; the side walls are of hammered stone, laid up with cement; the floor is composed of an inverted arch of hard brick, eight inches thick; the lining of the side walls and the upper roof arch are of the same thickness and materials, all laid with hydraulic lime mortar. No common mortar is permitted in the whole structure."

Hydraulic cement has the advantage that the more it is exposed to water, the harder it gets. Maximum interior dimensions were 8 feet 5-1/2 inches in height and 7 feet 8 inches in width--larger than any aqueducts constructed previously in Europe.

The Old Croton Dam
Simultaneous with the construction of the aqueduct, work was begun in January of 1838 on a dam in the valley of the Croton River, a huge earthen embankment about 250 feet long and 65 feet high. It was 250 feet wide at the base, tapering upwards to 55 feet wide at the top. The narrow spillway portion of the dam over which a sheet of water flowed was the only part that was constructed of stone. In times of heavy rain, it was assumed that the outflowing water would measure no more than 4 to 6 feet deep.

After the first season of construction, 2,445 feet of aqueduct had been completed and 635 feet of tunnels had been dug. At the end of the second year, 11.2 miles of the aqueduct had been completed. By January of 1841, about 32 miles, or two-thirds of the aqueduct had been constructed. The Croton Dam was nearly finished, a massive masonry arch bridge had been built at Sing Sing (Ossining) and twelve tunnels with a total length of 4,406 feet had been dug.

Ventilators and Waste Weirs
Thirty-three cylindrical stone ventilator shafts were erected to keep the aqueduct at atmospheric pressure. In the northern part of the aqueduct these were located about a mile apart; some no longer stand. Eleven ventilators had access doors to allow for inspection of the aqueduct. Ventilator No. 8 can be seen near the Park School in Ossining.

To allow water to be drained from the aqueduct if the level rose above a certain height, six waste weirs with hand-controlled gates and waste outlets were constructed. These also provided ventilation and access. A waste weir can be seen just before Snowden Avenue at the northern end of the Double Arch Bridge in Ossining. Contracts were let for the construction of six residences for the keepers of the waste weirs. One of these, built in 1845, survives at Dobbs Ferry, along with its maintenance barn.

Inverted Siphons
As almost everyone knows, water in a U-shaped pipe will ascend to the same height on each side. Such a device is called an inverted siphon. To avoid having to use large embankments or viaduct bridges, an inverted siphon of cast iron pipes three feet in diameter crossed the deep Manhattan Valley at 125th Street in New York City. To increase the flow, the elevation at the exit was three feet lower than at the entrance.

Embankments and Culverts
To avoid crossing wide valleys on bridges or viaducts with the possibility of frost damage, large embankments were built. The aqueduct was buried at the top of these below the frost line. At the bottom, an arched culvert faced with cut stone allowed a stream or road (or both) to pass through. Buttresses and wing walls were built at each end of the culvert to lead water away; even streambeds were lined with stone. Parapet walls were constructed across the tops of culverts to hold back the earthen embankments above them.

In all, 114 culverts were constructed, ranging from spans of 1-1/2 feet to 25 feet, to permit streams or roads to pass through embankments. The total length of all culverts on the aqueduct was 7,959 feet.

Embankments may be viewed where the aqueduct crosses roads, such as Station Road in Irvington, Quarry Road in Hastings-on-Hudson and Nepperhan Avenue in Yonkers. A very large embankment some 1,900 feet in length carried the aqueduct across the broad Clendenning Valley in Manhattan between 95th and 102nd Streets. The latter proved to be such an impediment to crosstown traffic that it was removed in the 1870s and replaced by umdergound piping.

Tunnels
Whenever a hill or a ridge lay in the path of the aqueduct, a tunnel was dug. Sixteen tunnels lie along the route of the aqueduct, varying in length from 160 to 1,263 feet, with a total length of 6,841 feet. When tunnels were drilled through solid rock, the roof was not lined. The walls and floor, however, were constructed in the same manner as the aqueduct. This identical profile provided the same flow characteristics throughout the length of the aqueduct as far as the Harlem River.

Tunnels on the aqueduct are located near Quaker Bridge in Croton-on-Hudson, just before the Double Arch Bridge in Ossining, under Cedar Street in Dobbs Ferry, and in Yonkers where the aqueduct turns east to cross into the Saw Mill River Valley.

Meanwhile, Back at the Dam
Friday, January 8, 1841, was a black day for the Croton aqueduct project. A thaw had set in earlier, melting the 18 inches of snow that blanketed the surrounding hills. A heavy rain had also fallen for two days. Behind the nearly finished dam, the water rose at the alarming rate of one foot an hour.

It soon became obvious that the dam's masonry spillway was entirely too small to handle such a volume of water. The reservoir began to pour over the earthen walls that linked the spillway to the north bank of the Croton River. Sensing impending disaster, Alfred Brayton, the young son of one of the dam contractors, heroically rode off to warn residents farther downstream. His errand of mercy was made more difficult because some of the bridges had already been carried away.

Eventually, the water reached a height of fifteen feet above the spillway. At 4:30 in the morning, the earthen embankment failed, unleashing a torrent of water, mud, rocks and debris consisting of uprooted trees, small buildings and the remains of Pines Bridge that had been literally lifted of its footings by the rising waters. Three lives, one at the dam and two at Bailey's wire mill, were lost in the tremendous deluge that washed out every bridge across the Croton River, three mills and five or six houses. The cost to the city for property damage was about $75,000. So much mud and debris was carried downstream, however, that the mouth of the Croton River, formerly navigable by schooners and sloops as far as Underhill's gristmill at Quaker Bridge, became silted up and shallow.

The Rebuilt Old Croton Dam
because the severity of the storm was unprecedented, John B. Jervis managed to retain his job. Loss of the dam was a bitter lesson, but he profited from it. The new dam was redesigned on a radically different plan and rebuilt for $60,000. Constructed this time entirely of stone, with a rubble core and cut granite facing, it had a height of 57 feet; the spillway to carry off the overflowing water stretched almost the full width of the dam.

Jervis was acutely conscious of the scouring power of swiftly rushing water now and designed the masonry face of the new dam so that any overflow would be carried over it safely. In cross-section it was a gentle S-shaped ogee curve that eased the water over the top of the dam and down its face, discharging it horizontally into a backwater pool created by a secondary rock-and-timber cribbed apron, thus slowing it down.

Completed in 1842, the rebuilt Old Croton Dam was the first large masonry dam constructed in the United States and became the model for municipal water system dams in the United States for many years. Its site is three miles to the north of the present Cornell Dam, or New Croton Dam. At periods of extremely low water, the outlines of the intact Old Croton Dam can be seen. Interestingly, the submerged Old Croton Dam and its gatehouse and sluiceway (at its southern end near where the original inlet to the Croton Aqueduct was located) are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an underwater archeological site.

Aqueduct Bridges
Several bridges were built to carry the aqueduct over existing streets and roads. The most impressive of these is the so-called Double Arch Bridge in Ossining. Spanning the Sing Sing Kill in a north-south direction, the original arch is 88 feet long and 76 feet high, yielding a structure of striking boldness.

In the 1860's, a second arch was added through the larger arch in an east-west direction to carry Broadway across the same watercourse. The twin arches present an arresting architectural composition that is one of the conversation pieces of the Old Croton Aqueduct.

Up until 1924, a massive aqueduct arch to the south of Scarborough spanned the Albany Post Road (Route 9) and gave the hamlet of Archville its name. It was removed by court order and replaced by an unobtrusive underground inverted siphon after the comparatively narrow opening of the arch that spanned the road became a traffic hazard. After an absence of 74 years, in 1998 a rustproof COR-TEN steel footbridge replaced the former arch. Stone embankments that connected to either side of the original arch can still be seen along Route 9 about a quarter-mile north of the intersection with Route 117. This is the only location along the entire length of the aqueduct where the original right-of-way has been modified.

How to get Croton water across the Harlem River became a political football. Some wanted a tunnel under the river, estimated to cost $636,738--but tunneling technology was in its infancy at the time, and the uncertainty of pursuing this option led to its rejection. This left a bridge as the only recourse, with the Water Commission, engineers and the public split between a low bridge and a high bridge. Speculators and lobbyists for area landowners wanted a truly imposing structure. Jervis favored a low bridge, which would have been simpler, faster, and cheaper to construct. The estimate for a high bridge was $836,623. A low bridge would have been cheaper than either of the other two crossings. When concerns were raised in the State Legislature that a low bridge would obstruct boat passage along the Harlem River to the Hudson River, a high bridge was ultimately chosen.

In June of 1839, after two years of haggling, the Water Commission agreed on a high bridge. The contract for the bridge was awarded to a consortium of contractors, Timothy Ferell, Samuel Roberts, Arnold Mason and George Law. Three of these were already contractors on other sections of the aqueduct.

Reminiscent of classical aqueducts, the bridge Javis designed, aided by James Renwick, Jr. (who would later design St. Patrick's Cathedral), was 1,450 feet long with 15 arches 100 feet above the river. Eight of its fifteen arches were anchored in the river itself, with the remaining seven standing on the land. The river arches were 80 feet ide and 150 feet thigh. The seven land arches were fifty feet wide; one was on the steep Manhattan shore and 6 were on the upward-sloping Westchester (now the borough of the Bronx) side of the river.

The river bottom proved to be a mix of mud, hard sand and boulders over the underlying bedrock. To support the graceful arches of the bridge, clusters of oak piles had to be driven into the rver bed to support five of the eight piers. The Croton water was carried across the bridge in an inverted siphon of twin 48-inch pipes, covered for protection from the elements by five feet of earth. To increase pressure and flow, the exit on the Manhattan side was placed two feet lower than the entrance.

After its completion in 1848, the High Bridge and its picturesque arches quickly became a popular romantic subject for paintings by artists of the Hudson River School. Unfortunately, the bridge lost much of its classical look in the twentieth century when five of the arches resting on the river bed were removed and replaced by a soaring steel span that offered no impediment to busy ship traffic. The opening ceremonies for the new bridge were held on Oct. 27, 1928.

Today, the grand old aqueduct itself remains remarkably unchanged, a unique legacy somnolently waiting for a later generation to discover it and explore it. And the best way to do this is afoot. Readers interested in walking the aqueduct will find useful a large-format pamphlet entitled A Walker's Guide to the Old Croton Aqueduct, published by and obtainable from the N.Y. State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Taconic Region, Staatsburg, NY 12580 (914/889-4100). It is also available in most Westchester public libraries. A free trail map can be obtained by sending a stamped and self-addressed envelope to Old Croton Trailway State Park, 15 Walnut Street, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522 (914/693-5259).

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a four-part series of articles about the building of the Old Croton Aqueduct. The previously published articles in this series can be found at

http://notorc.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-disease-and-fire-led-to-building-of.html
http://notorc.blogspot.com/2009/04/no-irish-need-apply-culture-clashes.html

Labels: Croton Water, Lower Hudson Valley, New York City, Old Croton Aqueduct

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY

Four hundred years ago, a virgin North America stretched invitingly from ocean to ocean waiting to be explored. Its forests were so thick, one could have walked from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and beyond under a continuous green canopy of trees. Explorers--Columbus in 1492, John Cabot in 1497 and Verrazzano in 1524--had tentatively sailed the Atlantic coast, carefully observed by curious yet apprehensive native inhabitants. Adventurous cod fishermen, whose identities are lost to history but who may have been Portuguese, worked the prolific fishing grounds, called "banks," off Newfoundland. But no Europeans penetrated very deeply into the interior of the vast continent.

First Contact
On September 2, 1609, Henry Hudson, an English captain in the service of the Dutch East India Company, piloted his ship, the Dutch-built Halve Maen (Half Moon), into a broad bay and sailed northward a few miles until it narrowed to form the mouth of a mighty river. His vessel was tiny--only 65 feet in length and 17 feet in width. The crew is believed to have numbered sixteen.

Lured by its tides and brackish water, Hudson sailed 150 miles up this tempting waterway until its shallowness convinced him that he had not found the elusive Northwest Passage to the riches of the Far East. We are indebted to a journal kept by Robert Juet, a mate on the Halve Maen, for observations about the land. For example, after anchoring in the vicinity of what is now Peekskill, here is Juet's entry:

The people of the country came around and brought some small skins with them which we bought for knives and trifles. This is a very pleasant place to build a town. There is a good spot where ships may conveniently lie at anchor near the shore, and it is protected from all winds except those out of the east northeast. The mountains look as though they contain some metal or mineral, for some of them are almost barren of trees, and what few trees that do grow there are blighted. The people brought us a stone which like emery cuts iron or steel. Yet when powdered, and water added to it, made a color like glittering black lead. It is also good for painter's colors. At three o'clock they departed and we rode to anchor all night. [Note: Until comparatively recently, emery in commercial quantities was mined at two locations in the town of Cortlandt in Westchester County, N.Y.]

Henry Hudson has been badly served by history. We know almost nothing about him--except the information contained in the logs of his four memorable voyages between the years 1607 and 1611. Two years after his voyage of exploration of the river that now bears his name, he would be dead. A mutinous crew tragically cast him adrift with his young son and seven of his men on the bay named for him in the Canadian Arctic. Hudson's journals were sold at public auction in Amsterdam in 1821, and have never been seen since. Nevertheless, his glowing reports of the fertile soil, equable climate and abundance of furs and minerals in the Hudson Valley made the Dutch decide to exploit this land.

In 1617, they built Fort Orange as a fur-trading post on the present site of Albany, replacing an earlier fort on an island in the river that had been carried away by spring floods. Formed in 1621, the Dutch West India Company transported about 20 families, mostly French-speaking Walloons, to the new colony of New Netherland in 1624. They settled in a village called Beverwyck (Dutch for "beavertown"), near Fort Orange. Other Dutch settlements were begun along the river first explored by Hudson at Wiltwyck (Kingston), Kinderhoek, Kuxakee (Coxsackie), Pokeepsie, Colendonck (Yonkers), and at Schenectady on the Mohawk River.

What's in a Name?
The Dutch were practical about names, often adopting the native name for a place with only minor variations. The Mohawks had called the site of Schenectady Scheaenhechstede ("big flats"), so the Dutch merely simplified the spelling. Kuxakee ("hoot of an owl") became Coxsackie. The native's Pokeepsie ("reed-covered lodge by the little water place") later was modified only slightly to Poughkeepsie. The first substantial settlement on the island of Manhattan, called Nieuw Amsterdam, was begun in 1626, and a fort consisting of a blockhouse surrounded by a palisade of wood and sod was constructed there.

Curiously, for many years the river that would become the main artery of New Netherland went unnamed. Dutch cartographers inscribed it simply as Groote Rivier (Great River), and let it go at that. To the east was the Varsse Rivier (Fresh River, so designated because--unlike the Hudson--the tide did not penetrate very far). The English named this river the Connecticut. To the south was the Zuydt Rivier (South River), called the Delaware by the English.

Officially, the Dutch named the river Hudson discovered Mauritius, the Latinized form of the name of the Dutch prince, Maurice of Nassau; it was also called the Nassau Rivier. And from the name of the island or the native tribe, Manahatta, it was sometimes called Manhattans Rivier. Thanks to a legend of early Spanish discovery, another name found on maps of New Netherland was River of the Mountains, usually rendered in French. Eventually, to be consistent with geography and in contrast to the South River, it was called Noort Rivier by the Dutch and the North River by the English. The latter name stubbornly persists to this day.

The Dutch left us another legacy in the form of the names of topographical features. Many Dutch words for such features were much like English, so the transfer was easily done: kreek became "creek"; nek became "neck"; vlachte became "flat." Bosch, for "wood," became "bush." In parts of what was once New Netherland, a stand of maple trees is still called a "sugar bush."

Across from New Amsterdam, Breukelen (broken land), an early Dutch settlement whose name came directly from the Netherlands, metamorphosed first into Brookland and ended up as Brooklyn, perhaps ostentatiously aping the New England towns of Brookline and Lynn. On Long Island, Vlissingen, the name of a town in the old country, became Flushing; Vlachte-bosch and Midwout were transformed into Flatbush and Midwood. Greene-bosch, just outside of Albany, became Greenbush.

The Great River was the highway of commerce, and Dutch boatmen soon named every reach and point along its course. With time, hoek for "point" became "hook." The Dutch gat was sometimes translated as "hole" or "passage" and occasionally as "gate." Thus, we now say Sandy Hook and Hellgate, or gat was retained, as in Barnegat. Kill, the suffix meaning "stream," was common, as in Peekskill, Fishkill, Catskill and Cobleskill. But just as some people insist on referring to the Rio Grande River, we also find redundancies like Kill Brook (in Ossining), Bushkill Creek in Pennsylvania and the Wallkill River, a north-flowing river in Orange and Ulster counties, N.Y. In New Jersey, Achter Cul ("Back Bay") became Arthur Cul's Bay and then the totally confusing Arthur Kill.

The Dutch suffix bergh, signifying "mountain" or "hill," survives in somewhat altered form. Paradoxically, Collabergh, a hill on old maps of the area north of the Croton River has metamorphosed into "Colabaugh" as the name of a pond; Spitzenbergh, south of Blue Mountain, near Peekskill, is now redundantly called Spitzenberg Mountain. Dunderbergh, ("thunder mountain"), just south of Bear Mountain, was reputed to be the dwelling place of the Heer, described by Washington Irving as a Dutch-clad "bulbous-bottomed goblin" who touches off violent summer storms and plays pranks with the rigging of ships. This mountain's name also has lost a final letter and is now Dunderberg.

In the East River, Deutel Bogt, ("Wedge Bay," because of its shape) has become Turtle Bay. Kolck (a "pond") became "Kollick" and later "The Collect." After it was drained, the infamous Tombs prison was constructed on this site. Krom Moerasje ("little crooked swamp") was corrupted to Crommessie and eventually to the Gramercy of Gramercy Park.

The area that is now the Bronx was purchased from the Indians by the Dutch West India Company in 1639. Two years later, Jonas Bronck, a Dane, became the first white settler when he purchased 500 acres between the Harlem River and a stream that emptied into the East River, a tidal strait connected to Long Island Sound. Bronck's name was soon applied to the river boundary of his property, displacing the native name of Aquahung. It was only a short stretch before Bronck's name would be applied to the entire borough.

Many of the names of streets at the lower end of Manhattan Island betray their Dutch origins: New Street originally was Nieuw Straat; Maiden Lane was Maagde Paatge (Maidens Path); Broadway between Bowling Green and Park Row was Breedwegh. Upper Broadway was formerly the Bloomingdale Road--in Dutch days the area from 59th Street to 135th Street was called Bloemendael (vale of flowers) in remembrance of a town near Haarlem in the old country. Well into the nineteenth century, this section was still known as the Bloomingdale district.

Settled early, Yonkers was known as Colendonck, the colony of Adrian Van der Donck, the first lawyer and first historian of New Netherland. By reason of his position, he enjoyed the courtesy title of jonker, from which the city's name was derived. Farther north, Washington Irving claimed that Tarrytown was named by irate Dutch farm wives who complained that their husbands lingered too long at the village tavern after delivering their produce to the Philipse wharf. More serious historians insist that "tarry" is a corruption of tarwe, Dutch for "wheat," which became part of the name of the Tarrytowns, important shipping points for grain and agricultural products.

Despite the name, the inhabitants of the famous Pennsylvania Dutch country in eastern Pennsylvania were not Dutch; the word "Dutch" was a corruption of the word for the German language: Deutsch. Referring to someone as a "Dutchman" could mean that the person was from the Netherlands, or--more likely--from Germany.

The Dutch governed New Netherland until 1664, when Col. Richard Nicolls at the head of a British fleet demanded the surrender of New Amsterdam. Autocratic old Peter Stuyvesant found himself with little support elsewhere in New Netherland and capitulated. The Dutch recaptured the colony--by then called New York--in 1673, but it was restored to the English by treaty. The terms of surrender were highly favorable to the Dutch. Land titles were confirmed, and toleration was granted to Dutch churches. Imposition of English political institutions was slow. In Albany and along the wharves in New York City the Dutch language persisted for generations.

Our Debt to Hudson and the Dutch
We owe a vast debt of gratitude to Henry Hudson for his discovery of the rich Hudson Valley and to the Dutch for many of our values and institutions. In 1579, the seven northern provinces of the Netherlands proclaimed their independence from Spain. This Union of Utrecht was the inspiration for both the American and the French Revolutions two centuries later. Taking their cue from this, in the village of Coxsackie on January 27, 1775, 225 residents--almost all with Dutch surnames--signed a "declaration of independence" calling for opposition to "the execution of several arbitrary and oppressive acts of the British Parliament." This action antedated the formal Declaration of Independence by more than a year.

Other legacies of the Dutch are our free public school system, the recognition of the legal equality of men and women, and a pervasive spirit of industriousness. So, thank you, Henry Hudson for venturing up this way. And a tip of the hat to those doughty Dutch burghers of New Netherland for their boldness, their spirit of rugged individualism and their entrepreneurial courage. We wouldn't be what we are today without them.

Labels: Dutch, Henry Hudson, Lower Hudson Valley