Ridgewood Reservoir: History, Water Supply, and Urban Nature

Introduction

The grand and historic location in Highland Park, New York — known as the Ridgewood Reservoir — sits on a ridge formed by the second Pleistocene Period (Wisconsin's ice sheet's terminal moraine) roughly 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). Today 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.

This paper covers the beginnings of the enormous and critical water infrastructure that would meet the needs of a rapidly growing Brooklyn in the 19th century. It traces the legacy of that development — including the engineers and politicians who played central roles — along with its many controversial and contentious issues and its hit-and-miss engineering proposals during the era in which Brooklyn was searching for a long-term solution to its water needs. The research also encompasses other reservoirs around the country whose usefulness as a water source has run out, and a review of Olmstedian-style parks is 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. Although the land was purchased in pieces over time, the acquisition of Snediker's cornfield set the ball rolling toward a future that included a reliable water supply for the fast-growing city. It should be noted that developing the Ridgewood Reservoir may have been less a matter of foresight than pragmatism: a growing city without an adequate water source is like a new school building with no students or teachers. The key reservoir was constructed two years after that initial purchase, in 1858, and began providing the citizens of Brooklyn with approximately 154 million gallons of water (nycgovparks.org).

The city showed further intelligent vision in 1891 when it made a pivotal purchase of the land surrounding the reservoir (now called Upper Highland Park) and handed legal jurisdiction of that land over to The Highland Park Society. The surrounding land served as a buffer from pollution-generating garbage plants and from runoff associated with the management of nearby cemeteries. The reservoir gained additional sophistication in 1894 when the landscape architecture firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot designed the main road around the reservoir and the south concourse (nycgovparks.org).

A year later, in 1895, an iron fence was erected around the reservoir and electric lights were installed. More parcels were added to the park in 1905 — the land now called Lower Highland Park resulted from purchases of the Monford and Schenck estates. A year after that, a land transfer between The Highland Park Society and the New York Department of Water, Sewer, Gas and Electric added still more property to the Ridgewood Reservoir complex.

The vital contribution of the Ridgewood Reservoir was the plentiful supply of water it provided to Brooklyn from 1858 to 1959. More water became available for New York City (including Brooklyn and Queens) in 1917 when a colossal upstate water project was launched. Tunnel No. 1 was bored through the hilly terrain from the Catskill Mountains, and in 1936 Tunnel No. 2 was completed, bringing additional water to the metropolitan area (nycgovparks.org).

Those developments led to the draining of Basin One and Basin Three, leaving only Basin Two to supply a backup source of water for Brooklyn and Queens. By 1990, so much water was available from the Catskill aqueduct project that harvesting water from the Ridgewood Reservoir was deemed unnecessary, and it was formally "decommissioned." In 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided to transfer the reservoir to the Parks Department and pushed the idea of developing the reservoir spaces into a public park with ball fields and other recreational facilities.

Bloomberg's proposal met immediate resistance — resistance that continues today — from organizations that see value in preserving open space, wetlands, and habitat for plants and wildlife, especially birds. This controversy is examined in greater detail later in the paper.

How Brooklyn Tapped into Ridgewood Reservoir for its Water Source

James Pugh Kirkwood wrote an exhaustively detailed account of how Brooklyn went about finding and securing a reliable water source for its rapidly expanding population. His book, Brooklyn Water Works and Sewers: A Descriptive Memoir, published in 1867, provides solid background into how the water source was located. The text is not a smooth-flowing narrative — no one expects the prose quality of a Hemingway or Capote in a historical engineering record — nor is it elegant in tone. Nevertheless, it is among the best available sources for this topic.

Kirkwood notes that the Romans used pragmatic vision when they constructed the "largest known aqueducts until modern times" — a total of nineteen aqueducts — designed using gravity-powered flow from streams situated at higher elevations than Rome. He reports that those Roman aqueducts were built by "citizens anxious to win popularity from the government and their peers."

The leaders living in Brooklyn in 1834 were certainly anxious to earn appreciation — if not also popularity — by locating dependable sources of water. The village of Brooklyn was incorporated as a city in 1834 with a population of about 23,000, Kirkwood notes. The very first attempt at 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 to a reservoir on the hill using eleven miles of ten- and four-inch pipe, at an estimated total cost of $100,000. The report gathered dust, as no city official was willing to act on it — it was either ahead of its time or simply a bad idea for its time.

According to Tom Dowling, writing for New York City H2O (nych2o.org), there were more than fifteen reservoirs and more than twenty "driven wells" and streams running through Massapequa in Nassau County on Long Island. Water from these sources flowed via brick conduit to the Ridgewood Reservoir. Gravity carried water from Hempstead Pond to the pump station at the reservoir. Originally there were two basins, but a third was added in 1863, expanding total capacity to 150 million gallons. Thick, sticky clay at the bottom of the reservoir was topped with stones.

Baisley Pond (also known as Jamaica Pond) became a reservoir in 1852, though only after dredging revealed parts of a mastodon skeleton — providing an unexpected history lesson for those involved and for the public. There is a report that the Brooklyn Historical Society holds a tooth from that mastodon, though a search of its website did not confirm this. Brooklyn's population grew from 150,000 in 1850 to 180,000 in 1860, then to 600,000 in 1880, and by 1894 the city counted one million citizens (Dowling, p. 2).

The New York Times reported on May 30, 1859, that "every plumber in the city is so busy that but few can fill an order for water in less than three weeks." Once a household was connected to the Ridgewood Reservoir, water rates were paid annually on May 1. A hookup less than 16 feet from the pipe cost $4.00; one between 37½ and 50 feet cost $14.00 (nytimes.com).

As residents demanded indoor plumbing and industry — including Brooklyn's breweries — required ever-larger quantities of water, wells were drawn down dangerously low and ocean water began to seep into fresh water wells, rendering them brackish (Dowling, p. 2). The solution was consolidation: Brooklyn joined New York City in 1898, which helped relieve pressure on the Ridgewood Reservoir, although the reservoir continued to supply some water well into the 20th century.

Plan after Plan was Summarily Rejected in Fits and Starts

By 1847, Brooklyn had grown to three times its 1843 size, and another committee was formed — composed of D. A. Bokee, John Stansbury, and J. W. Cochran — to develop a sustainable water supply. Once again a steam-powered pump arrangement was proposed, drawing water from wells up to a reservoir. No surveys were conducted and no estimates were offered; the proposal went nowhere.

In 1849, yet another committee was appointed, and the result was, as the famed Yankee Yogi Berra might have put it, "déjà vu all over again" — the group did not succeed in finding a workable plan. At least this latest effort included a chemical analysis, Kirkwood noted (xi).

In 1852, a report was ordered and a survey was conducted. By then Brooklyn was growing rapidly and desperately needed a plan. The Water Committee of 1852 — including a member named "Montgomery Queen" and four colleagues — proposed a solution estimated to cost $7,800,000, under which each Brooklyn resident would be entitled to thirty gallons of water daily.

Not surprisingly, the city could not embrace that 1852 proposal, and a new Water Committee was appointed in 1854, including one Samuel Booth (apparently no relation to John Wilkes Booth) and four others. The committee submitted a $4,500,000 proposal to the voters, but the math did not favor the committee: of the 9,105 votes cast, 6,402 were "no" votes. By early 1857, however, a new and more acceptable solution gained approval from both the voters and the city fathers. The Ridgewood Reservoir became 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, a ground-breaking ceremony had taken place at the Ridgewood Reservoir site, and Brooklyn made a significant occasion of it — which indeed it was. The Common Council of Brooklyn arranged for "30 horse-drawn stage coaches to leave Brooklyn City Hall to journey to the reservoir site" (Save Ridgewood Reservoir, 2015). The Ridgewood Reservoir ultimately occupied 48.4 acres of land (including 25.58 acres of water). No trees were originally permitted on the grounds because falling leaves could "clog the gates and screens of the outlet-chamber" (Kirkwood, p. 4). When water began to flow into the reservoir in November 1858, it marked the end of the long and often futile search for Brooklyn's water supply.

Conclusion

This paper has presented the history of the Ridgewood Reservoir — tracing how it returned to its natural state — and has examined other reservoirs that have similarly been allowed to revert to nature. The paper has also reviewed the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, whose vision and philosophy have made it possible for millions of people to enjoy parks in the midst of otherwise strictly urban environments. The fact that parks can thrive in cities is a measure of the competence and foresight of people like Olmsted and Vaux, and the ongoing debate over Ridgewood Reservoir's future reflects a continuing tension between urban development and the preservation of accidental wilderness.