Mannahatta/Manhattan

If you've never been to the Museum of the City of New York, it's definitely worth checking out. It's not a huge overwhelming place like the Met but a small quiet museum dedicated to the history of our fair town. It's located at 103rd street and Fifth Avenue, on the north end of Museum Mile.

They have a few permanent exhibits including some beautifully decorated period rooms. Also, there's a short film you can watch that explains the evolution of NYC from a forest in the New World to the world's greatest metropolis.

Speaking of which, you must see the special exhibit on now called Mannahatta/Manhattan. This is a multimedia exhibit that explores the ecology and topography of Manhattan island and how it evolved and changed after Henry Hudson discovered it 400 years ago this month.

It's amazing to see how Manhattan island went from being an isolated, wooded refuge for the Lenape Indians to the headquarters of the world. You see some of the original maps that the Dutch and later the English made of the island, and you see how they built in and around the island and changed it into what we know as Manhattan today. There were lots of huge forests and fields where the Lenapes grew their corn. There were also streams and rivers and little islets within and around the main island. You also can understand where neighborhoods like Kips Bay and Turtle Bay got their names.

Also, down around what is now Foley Square, there was a huge lake called the Collect Pond where the Lenapes got their fresh drinking water. This pond/lake actually existed until around 1809 when it became too polluted and was filled in with concrete. (One of the prices of progress I guess.)

This exhibit has a huge model of the original, unspoiled island where various graphics pop up on it and you see where all the forests were, where the Lenapes had camps, what kinds of soils and animals existed here back then, and on and on. They have also some computer monitors where you can sit down, type in your address (not just those in Manhattan but anywhere in New York City) and see what your place of residence looked like in 1609 (both of the places I've lived in NYC were in the middle of thick forests. Cool.).

This exhibit runs through early October so I urge you to go now. You'll literally see the world's greatest city in a whole new way.

P.S. As some of you may know, "Manhattan" means "Island of Manhattan Hills" in the language of the Lenapes. And boy, did Manhattan have lots of hills back then! Also, it sheds some light on the myth that the Dutch bought this island for $24 or 600 Guilders. Some money was exchanged but also some goods were exchanged too. While this still remains a hell of a good real estate deal, it wasn't quite as cheap as history has made it out to be.

Remembering the Croton Reservoir

As I get older I find myself fascinated by things that would have bored me stiff as a kid and, if I was a normal adult, would bore me now.

One of those odd things is water -- I'm obsessed with the connection between water and power, how water shapes the destinies of cities and their people, and about the simple fact that irrigation, aqueducts, reservoirs and the delivery of clean water to the masses is one of mankind's greatest achievements. 

I've blogged about this several times. 

For NYC, a city of nearly 9 million people, the city delivers gargantuan amounts of water to the populi every day. It comes from reservoirs from upstate, down through water tunnels, into reservoirs, and, finally, into our taps. One of those reservoirs is smack dab in the middle of Central Park -- it's so famous that it's even become a movie star.

The original NYC reservoir was the Collect Pond in lower Manhattan but, by 1838, as the city's population grew, it became polluted. A jail called "The Tombs" was eventually built on top of it. That triggered the building of a new, much better constructed reservoir in the heart of Manhattan -- 42nd street and 5th avenue, right where the flagship branch of the New York Public Library exists today.

Called the Croton Reservoir (because, I believe, the water came from Croton upstate,) it was a massive, almost fortress like thing covering 4-acres and containing 180 millions gallons of water. This reservoir was a fascinating thing to see and it kept the city hydrated until the late 1890s when it was dismantled. By 1902, it was a gone -- and a new public library in the new 5-borough NYC was built in its place.

All in all, the Croton Reservoir's lifespan was short and obviously no one alive today remembers it. But for a time, at a key moment of the city's history, it stood proudly and magnificently at one of the city's most important intersections -- and it literally kept NYC alive.

The Dirty History of NYC's Clean Water

If you want to understand the history of America, particulary its growth and development, you could study the history of one thing -- water. Without access to water, without bringing it to all parts of the country, America would not be what it is today.

The history of American water is the history of American power. Who got it? Who didn't? Who brought the water to what part of the country and controlled the flow? Who used it to make money and gain power over others? All the gold, all the land, all the money, all the oil, all the tech, etc. -- none of that would matter if it wasn't lubricated and supported by a constant supply of fresh clean water to the people. 

"Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over," is a quote attributed to Mark Twain -- and man, oh, man, is it true. There have been numerous battles in American history over water including into the present day -- look at Flint, Michigan!

In NYC, we are blessed with some of the best fresh water in the country, and it runs copiously and almost without interruption from our taps. But the history behind our superior and clean water supply is down and dirty.

Prior to the American Revolution, New Yorkers got their fresh water from well springs and reservoirs like the downtown Collect Pond. Attempts were made to create pipes that would channel the water from the reservoirs to buildings but the Revolutionary War delayed these plans. In the late 1790s, those Founding Fathers and musical hip-hop stars Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr -- the most powerful politicians in New York State -- developed a plan to build a massive water system for NYC, sinking more reservoirs in the city and transporting fresh water from upstate down into the city.

But Aaron Burr, lifelong corrupt sneak that he was, had a plan to use it to enrich himself.

The bill passed by the New York State Legislature to create this company and water system included a provision to have the water supplied by a private company -- one that Burr and his cronies owned call the Manhattan Water Company. And the bill included a loophole that allowed the company to use any "surplus capital" i.e. profit for whatever the owners of this company wanted.

So the Manhattan Water Company, under Burr's direction, built a cheap and shoddy system of wooden pipes, keeping the overhead low. While New Yorkers now had easier access to water, it was polluted, and people still got sick from it. The whole purpose of this new system had been to bring clean water to the city and improve public health but greed and corruption kept it dirty and people literally died from it. It wasn't until 1842 that the city took control and built a new aqueduct from upstate, bringing vastly more -- and vastly cleaner -- water to the city, spurring its growth. But that doesn't excuse the fact that, among Aarron Burr's crimes, killing Alexander Hamilton in that duel wasn't the worst thing he did -- he literally comdemned the entire City of New York to drinking and bathing and cooking with dirty water for a generation.

Oh, and what did Burr and his cronies do with the profit they made from the water company? They used it to create a bank, the Bank of Manhattan, that later became Chase and is now called JP Morgan Chase, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world. 

So NYC's water supply and biggest bank are funamentally based on corruption. Nothing changes.

Yet it also proves that access to clean water means economic and population growth, the development of infrastructure and real estate, wealth, political power, and the building of civilization. To paraphrase the movie Chinatown, the history of water in NYC and elsewhere proves that you don't bring water to a city-- you bring the city to the water.

And it's not just money or power the people who build and supply the water gain -- they also control the future.