Ridgewood Reservoir - Introduction The grand and historic location in Highland Park, New York -- that is known as the Ridgewood Reservoir -- sits on a ridge that was formed by the second Pleistocene Period (Wisconsin's ice sheet's terminal moraine) about 12,000 years ago. The site offers scenic views of the Atlantic Ocean, and of several nearby New York cemeteries (East New York, Woodhaven, and the Rockaways). Presently it is what the New York Audubon Society calls an "accidental wilderness tucked alongside the Jackie Robinson Parkway" on the border of Queens and Brooklyn (www.nyaudubon.org).

This paper covers the beginnings of the enormous and critical water development that would provide the needs for a growing Brooklyn in the 19th century. This paper covers the legacy of that development -- including the characters that played central roles, the engineers and politicians -- with its many controversial and contentious issues and its hit and miss engineering proposals during the era in which Brooklyn was trying to arrive at a solution for its future water needs. Included in the research for this paper -- other reservoirs around the country whose usefulness as a source of water has run out, and a review of Olmstedian-style parks will also be presented.

Brief History of Water, Highland Park, and the Ridgewood Reservoir

In 1856, the city fathers in Brooklyn showed wisdom and foresight when they acquired Highland Park; albeit it was purchased in pieces over time, the acquisition of Snediker's cornfield got the ball rolling toward a future that included water for the fast-growing city. It should be noted that perhaps developing Ridgewood Reservoir wasn't so much a matter of foresight as it was pragmatism: a growing city without an adequate future source of water is like a new school building with no students or teachers. Later in this paper, the details of how the plan for developing a water source will be covered more fully, but that key reservoir was constructed two years after its purchase (1858) and began providing the citizens of Brooklyn initially with about 154 million gallons of water (nycgovparks.org).

The city did show intelligent vision in 1891 when it made a pivotal purchase of the land that surrounded the reservoir (now called Upper Highland Park); it also showed good governmental sense by handing over the legal jurisdiction of the land around Ridgewood Reservoir to The Highland Park Society. The land surrounding the reservoir served as a kind of buffer from pollution-generating garbage plants and from runoff from the care and management of the cemeteries mentioned in the opening paragraph of this paper. The reservoir got a bit more sophistication in 1894 when the landscape architecture firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot designed the main road around the reservoir and the south concourse (nycgoparks.org).

A year later, in 1895, an iron fence was built surrounding the reservoir and was classed up a lot by the installation of electric lights. More parcels were added to the park that served as the source of drinking water (and other water uses) in 1905; the land that today is called Lower Highland Park resulted from purchases of the Monford and Schenck estates. And a year later the land transfer between The Highland Park Society and the New York Department of Water, Sewer, Gas and Electric resulted in still more property for the Ridgewood Reservoir.

But the important point, the vital part of the Ridgewood Reservoir for Brooklyn, was the plentiful supply of water it provided. In fact the reservoir served Brooklyn with water from 1858 to 1959. More water came available for the City of New York (including Brooklyn and Queens) in 1917 when a colossal water project was created upstate. Tunnel #1 was bored through the hilly terrain from the Catskill Mountains; and in 1936, Tunnel #2 was completed, bringing needed water to the megalopolis that is New York City (nycgoparks.org).

Those developments led to the draining of Basin One and Basin Three in the Ridgewood Reservoir, and only Basin Two remained in the Ridgewood Reservoir; and it supplied a backup source of water for Brooklyn and Queens. By 1990, so much water was available to Brooklyn (and Queens) from the Catskill aqueduct project it was deemed unnecessary to continue to harvest water from the Ridgewood Reservoir, hence, it was "decommissioned"; and in 2004, the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, decided to have the reservoir transferred to the Parks Department, and pushed the idea of developing the reservoir spaces into a public...

More will be presented on this controversy later in the paper.
How Brooklyn Tapped into Ridgewood Reservoir for its Water Source

James Pugh Kirkwood wrote an exhaustively detailed book on how Brooklyn went about finding and securing a good source of water for their rapidly expanding population. His book, Brooklyn Water Works and Sewers: A Descriptive Memoir was published in 1867 and clearly provides a solid background into how the source of water was located. The read is not at all a smooth-flowing narrative -- no one expects the quality of a Hemingway or Capote when it comes to historical records -- nor is it elegant in its tone. But it is some of the best available background for this paper.

Kirkwood notes that the Romans used pragmatic vision when they constructed the " ... largest known aqueducts until modern times," a total of nineteen aqueducts. They were designed using gravity-power from many streams in higher locations than Rome. The author reports that the Roman aqueducts were built by " ... citizens anxious to win popularity from the government and their peers."

The founding fathers and other leaders living in Brooklyn in 1834 certainly were anxious to become appreciated -- if not also popular -- by locating and devising dependable sources of water. The village of Brooklyn was incorporated as a city in 1834, with a population of about 23,000, Kirkwood points out. The very first stab at coming up with a long-term water solution was made by a committee led by Gabriel Furman and James Walters, who reported to the city (on March 24, 1834) that "... wells should be sunk at the base of the hill on which Fort Green (which was Washington Park) was situated" (Kirkwood, x). Water would be pumped by steam pumps to a reservoir on the hill, they suggested, using eleven miles of ten and four inch pipe; and the entire project was estimated to cost $100,000. Their report gathered dust as no city official was willing to act on it. It was eighth ahead of its time or a bad idea in its time.

Plan after Plan was Summarily Rejected in Fits and Starts

In 1847 Brooklyn had grown to three times what it was in 1843, and another committed was formed (D.A. Bokee, John Stansbury, and J.W. Cochran) in the hopes of developing a sustainable supply of water for the borough. Again a steam-powered pump situation was projected (sucking water out of wells and sending up to a reservoir). No surveys were taken and no estimates offered; and again, the proposal went nowhere.

In 1849, once again a committee was appointed (there were more names than is needed for this report), and it was deja vu all over again (to reference famed Yankee Yogi Berra) as this group did not succeed in finding lightning in a bottle -- i.e., their plan was not given serious consideration. At least this latest stab at a plan included a chemical analysis, Kirkwood reported (xi).

Yet again in 1852, a report was ordered and a survey was conducted. By now Brooklyn was growing very rapidly and desperately needed a plan for future water. The Water Committee of 1852 (including a man named "Montgomery Queen" and four others) came up with plan that would cost an estimated seven million eight hundred thousand dollars. Each resident of Brooklyn would be entitled to thirty gallons daily.

Not surprisingly, the city couldn't wrap its arms around that 1852 idea and so a new Water Committee was appointed in 1854 (including a man named Samuel Booth, apparently no relation to Lincoln's assassin; four others joined Booth on the committee). The four and a half million dollar proposal from this latest committee was submitted to the voters. The math did not work out well for this committee's efforts: of the 9,105 votes cast, 6,402 were "no" votes. However, by early 1857, a new and more acceptable solution to Brooklyn's water needs got the stamp of approval from the voters and the city fathers. Hence, the Ridgewood Reservoir came to be the answer that had been sought for years; the "Board of Water Commissioners of the City of Brooklyn" was signed into law on July 9, 1857 (Kirkwood, xxii).

A year earlier, on July 31, 1856, the former ground-breaking ceremony took place at the Ridgewood Reservoir, and Brooklyn made a big deal out of it, which…