Manahattan: A Natural History of New York City by Eric W. Sanderson - Abrams

Chapter One

The Mannahatta Project As the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees . . . had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 1925

Mannahatta, 1609.

above “Georeferencing� the British Headquarters Map in a geographic information system (GIS) allowed us to overlay the modern-road grid.

Note the match between the colonial and modern streets. opposite Adding another layer to the GIS shows the modern building footprints against the eighteenth-century geography of the city.

streams, ponds, and springs

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chapter three

Mannahatta’s waterways consisted of sixty-six miles of streams, over three hundred springs, and twenty-one ponds and salt pannes, of which a selection are shown here. See Appendix A for more details.

form a pond. Seventy feet deep and fed by underground springs sufficiently abundant to keep the water “fresh,” even though the pond surface was only about ten feet above sea level, the Collect Pond’s embellishments included rumors of a Loch Ness–type sea monster that reputedly seized a Hessian soldier during the Revolution. Fishing was such a passion for early New Yorkers that in 1734 the City Council was forced to enact fishing regulations; from then on, only rods and reels, and not nets, were allowed when fishing in the Collect.

Other ponds on the island included the Little Collect, beside the big Collect; Sun-fish Pond and Rose Hill Duck-Pond, south and north of Murray Hill, respectively; and the Stuyvesant Skating Pond, in the East Village.

The waters that flowed into these ponds often came from springs. The greatest commentator on the “active” and “bubbling, wholesome springs on Manhattan Island” was James Reuel Smith, who, after a successful career as a merchant on Front Street, found a second career peddling his bicycle around Manhattan Island and the newly formed borough of the Bronx to measure, photograph, and document the condition of springs and wells as he found them between 1898 and 1901. Apparently he took to his chosen task with relish, as revealed in the following passage from the introduction to his book on the subject:

Spuyten Duyvil Creek Sherman Creek Harlem River Hudson River Grant’s Spring Harlem Creek

Montayne’s Rivulet Unquenchable Spring Saw Kill Coble Kill Kill of Schepmoes Great Kill

Sun-fish Pond Ash Brook

Greatly satisfying indeed is the draught from a spring where none is said to exist, and which has been come upon after patiently and inductively following a trail marked only by a moistened stone here, a willow farther on, and then a piece of watercress. . . . Springs are attractive not only to the thirsty traveler, but also to the artist, the photographer, and the lover of pretty nooks and rustic scenery. In general the Spring seems to delight in picturesque surroundings, and its moisture freshens and encourages neighboring vegetation, and offers attractions that allure the denizens of the pasture whose presence redeems the solitude from loneliness without disturbing the restful stillness that soothes the admiring wayfarer. A city spring frequently possesses all the beautiful surroundings of a rural one, and besides exciting that pathetic interest aroused by something pleasurable which will shortly cease to exist, it is, for the meditative, a link which connects the thoughts with the past.

East River Cedar Creek Iron Spring Stuyvesant’s Creek Minetta Water

The Collect Pond

Lispenard’s Creek Old Wreck Brook Maagde Paetje [Kill] Heere Gracht

waterways Intermittent streams Permanent streams and creeks Springs Ponds

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