Once, where now large buildings crowd downtown Manhattan, a substantial and beautiful pond spread out in a pristine valley between the forested countryside. Collect Pond, or Fresh Water Pond, was a body of fresh water near the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City, that covered approximately 48 acres (194,000 m²) and ran as deep as 60 feet (18 m). Collect Pond, and Little Collect Pond, that drained a little to the south of the main body of water, were fed by an underground spring and its outflow flowed north out of the pond and then west through a salt march called Lispenard Meadows to the Hudson River. Another stream issued from the southeastern part of the pond in an easterly direction and spilled into the East River. The name Collect is a corruption of the Dutch word kolk (a small body of water), which was subsequently corrupted to kalch. When the English claimed New Amsterdam as their own in 1664, the name was once more corrupted to Collect. The pond, long ago drained, filled, and built upon, was located just north of today’s Foley Square and just west of modern Chinatown.
The pond’s history and its creation dates back to the last ice age and glaciers that shaped the island known to the British as York and colonials as Manhattan. Collect Pond was what is known as a kettle pond, meaning it was created when a large block of ice broke off from the ice sheet and was abandoned by a retreating glacier. The action created a large indenture or open space in the outwash of debris carried in the ice. By the time the ice melted, it left a large gap in the sediment which was filled by local underground springs. The entire site was once a vibrant coastal plain pond full of plant and animal life and surrounded by dense forests of American Chestnut that grew up to 150 feet tall with a diameter of 10 feet (none exist today because a fungal epidemic caused a mass extinction in the early 1900’s). Around twenty or more plant species surrounded the pond with over sixty in the pond itself including: cattails, pondweed, bladderworts, and lilies. Because the pond was relatively deep with a large surface area, fish species included sunfish, alewife, yellow perch, and eels. Painted turtles, snapping turtles, bullfrogs, as well as newts and salamanders frequented the area.
A large hill, 110 feet above sea level and highest on lower island, later named Bayard Hill for a prominent landowner in the Revolutionary War era, loomed up over the pond’s banks. Maples, hickories, and other tree species thrived all around. The rich, deep soil at the base of the hill would have supported tulip trees, white ash, and tupelo while the hill itself was covered in white and scarlet oak. Beneath the canopy were blackberries, blueberries, chokeberries, gooseberries, and mulberries. All this food drew foraging animals such as grey squirrels, white-tailed deer, raccoon, and bears. They also drew predators such as cougars, grey wolves, and of course, humans. The southwestern shore of the Collect Pond was the site of a Native American settlement known as Werpoes. A small band of Munsee, the northernmost division of the Lenape Tribe, occupied the site until the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam was established in 1625. It is possible that members of this band were the participants in the famed sale of Manhattan (Manahatta – Lenape for hilly island) to the Dutch.
For the first two hundred years, from the Dutch discovery of the island until after the American Revolution, the waters that fed Collect Pond was the main freshwater source for a growing city. The pond, fed by an underground spring, was located in a valley, with Mount Bayard, to the northeast and Kalck Hoek, Dutch for Chalk Hook, to the west, named for the numerous whitish oyster shells. The first settlers discovered an incredible abundance of these foot-long oysters throughout Manhattan’s and Long Island’s coastal region. For hundreds of years, the shells were discarded first by the Native American inhabitants and later by Europeans. The shells were also used as fill to reclaim wet lands and to construct the many harbor slips that housed dockside buildings and provided anchorage to off and onloading ships.
From the 1600’s to the early 1800’s, the pond was a natural, unspoiled area. Townspeople strolled along its banks and picnicked under the shade trees in the summer. In winter, the spacious lake became a skating rink. By the mid 1700’s, the pond began to lose its charm when the city leaders allowed a tannery on the edge of the Collect Pond. The toxic chemicals the tannery released soon began to damage the pond’s tender ecosystem. After the tannery, other industries followed including additional tanneries, breweries, ropewalks, and slaughterhouses. As they clustered along its shore, the refuge from all these businesses seeped into the pond and continued to destroy both vegetation and wildlife. The small lake eventually became a dumping ground for the town’s rubbish and sewage, becoming “a very sick and common sewer.” So too the stench became so great that the pond no longer attracted residents desiring a relaxing stroll along its once former tranquil waters. By 1802, the city began draining the pond and backfilling it with construction debris and earth by leveling the nearby hills such as Bayard Hill. This in turn created another problem for the growing city.
The residents of New York City soon discovered that although they filled in the pond, the spring-fed water had nowhere to go. The surrounding low-lying area was already marshland and therefore it occasionally flooded. Because of health concerns with mainly malaria, the city drafted a plan in 1807 to build a canal to the Hudson River to channel the pond’s water. Work began in 1808 and by 1811, the pond was finally drained and filled. The canal continued to channel the spring water that flowed through the area including the polluted soil in and around the filled in Collect Pond. Though pleasantly landscaped and lined by trees, the forty-foot-wide canal, soon after it was finished, began to stink. By 1821, the canal had gotten to the point of smelling so badly that the city covered it up, turning it into Canal Street; the water flowing as an underground sewer.
Collect Pond Witnessed the First Steamboat
In 1796, John Fitch (1743-1798) launched one of the first experimental steamboats on the waters of Collect Pond. John Fitch was an instrument maker and an early pioneer of steam navigation. He had tested some steam prototypes on the Delaware River shortly after the Revolutionary War between 1785 and 1788. He had some success, however his real triumph occurred on Collect Pond eight years later. The ship he launched in New York City was equipped with a paddle wheel that eventually became the workhorse of the Mississippi River and ships conversing the high seas. With him on the boat was a fellow inventor, Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston, the first Chancellor of New York and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. This was six full years before Fulton and Livingston launched “Fulton’s Folly” on the Seine River in France, a paddle wheel boat very similar to Fitch’s invention. It seems that Fulton stole the limelight from Fitch’s invention, having received most of the credit for the era of steam navigation.
African American Graveyard & the Near Drowning of England’s Future King
Interesting to note, from the mid-sixteen hundreds until drained, over 150 years, the area around the Collect Pond was also the home to a large community of African American slaves and freemen. Most of us were taught that the southern colonies imported large number of slaves to sustain their agricultural life style. However, New York City, for decades, had the largest number of slaves per capita than any other colonial cities including the southern colonies. In 1991, while digging a foundation for a new Federal building, the government discovered the remnants of an African burial ground experts estimate once covered four to five acres and contained approximately ten to twenty thousand burials of predominately African American slaves.
England’s future King William IV, paid a visit to New York City in 1782, during the American Revolution and under British rule (though by 1782 peace talks were underway and hostilities had toned down a fair bit). It was reported that he almost drowned while skating on the pond, having fallen through the ice. This was first reported in an 1869 biography of the prince. Though England’s future King did skim around the pond on the ice, he had been pushed by energetic aids on a blade-fitted chair without incident.
Tea Water Pumps
The first public well was dug in New Amsterdam in 1658 in front of the old fort just south of Bowling Green. It was the only public well in the city until 1677, when several more were ordered to be dug. Over the years, many more were sunk at busy street corners. These wells used primitive buckets that were gradually replaced with pumps. As the city’s population increased, the water became brackish and polluted by organic matter and inefficient in supply. A few wells had tapped into underground springs, some of which supplied the water to Collect Pond. This water was reputed to be fresh and of superior quality. A country addicted to tea as a beverage realized the importance of clean, fresh water to brew the tea leaves. One of the most famous springs, situated in a hollow near the junction of Chatham and Roosevelt Streets, just south of Collect Pond, was known as “The Old Tea Water Pump.” In 1748, a traveler to New York wrote: “There is no good water in the town itself, but at a little distance, there is a large spring of good water, which the inhabitants take for their tea, and for the uses of the kitchen…” Shortly before the American Revolution, a pump was placed over this spring and ornamental grounds laid out. The “Tea Water Pump Garden” became a famous resort where tea and stronger beverages could be obtained. It became so popular that by 1797, the spout had to be raised so carts could pass beneath.
Steam Pumps and Aaron Burr’s Manhattan Company
By 1774, New York’s population had grown to 22,000 and the city’s Council saw a need to provide better water for the growing metropolis. Christopher Colles, an English civil engineer, proposed to construct a waterworks using steam engines to distribute the water from wells and reservoirs, including Collect Pond. The works finally were established in 1776, but with the Revolutionary War in full swing, it was abandoned. It had been a precursor to future waterworks projects; however, the next similar attempt would not occur until some years after peacetime.
Aaron Burr, considered a Founder of suspicious and questionable morals, founded the Manhattan Company in 1799 after an epidemic of yellow fever ravished the city. The company’s main purpose was to provide clean water, yet it soon became obvious that the sole interest of its investors was in banking; to underscore Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of New York and the First Bank of the United States. A clause in the charter to build a water system, approved by the state, granted banking privileges to the company and allowed it to use surplus money to that effect. Burr and his investors took this clause to the limit and far beyond. They raised two million dollars and spent just one hundred thousand on water projects. The rest established their dominance in the banking industry. As for providing water to the city’s residents, they were rubbish, especially for the poorer classes. Wells were dug in congested areas where there was the danger of raw sewage seeping into the water. For forty years, though of poor quality, New Yorkers continued to drink from water provided by Burr’s dubious company. After a multitude of cholera epidemics, in 1837, a water system was begun to transport pure water to the city. The Ceroton Aqueduct, which carried fresh water from Westchester County, north of Manhattan, was completed in 1842. As to Burr’s Manhattan Bank, it remained viable for the next 150 years, eventually merging with another megabank in 1955, becoming Chase Manhattan. In 1996, Chase was acquired by Chemical Bank, becoming the largest bank holding company in the United States. In 2000, the bank merged with JPMorgan becoming JPMorgan Chase & Company.
The Land of Collect Pond and the First Great Slum of America
The pond was finally filled by 1808. What remained was a mud and rubbish mound of several acres that loomed over the remaining water that slowly drained through the canal. A grand jury claimed that the pond contained “great quantities of stagnant water, dead animals, and filth of all kinds. An effort was undertaken to clean up some of the filth and a neighborhood sprung up that was at first highly fashionable. Called “Paradise Land”, businessmen cashed in on cheap land to build fancy apartments for the city’s elite. This quickly declined after the site began to sink and release putrid gases. As the elites of the city moved out, the apartments were rented or sold off to the city’s poorer residents or recently arrived immigrants. The region that was once Collect Pond eventually became the notorious Five Points District, the nation’s first great slum. The squalid Five Points neighborhood slowly gave way to the Civic center and the first large construction on the site – the New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention. This massive prison was appropriately labeled “The Tombs”. The land continued to sink and the building sagged and stank even before it first opened in 1838.
The Five Points slums continued throughout the latter half of the 19th century as a ghetto of high crime and sickness. Because of the high population density of the neighborhood and the existence of the old buried Collect Pond, now a subterranean swamp, precipitated the outbreak of disease. Though by the mid-1800’s, much of the city’s drinking water came from aqueducts from Westchester County and points further north, the slum’s residents continued to drink water from wells. Throughout the 19th century, nearly all of the city’s cholera outbreaks originated in the Five Points area sitting on top of what was once a pristine pond. By the end of the 19th century, a popular publication by Jacob Riis entitled “How the Other Half Lives”, portrayed and revealed the squalid conditions by the city’s poor living in the Five Points District. Within four years, the tenements were condemned and eventually torn down, replaced by a Civic Center composed of mostly government buildings. On April 28, 1960, Civil Court Park was established over what was once the pond and later, the name was changed to Collect Pond Park.
Want to Read More about New York City’s history? Check out these Previews of Great Books on Amazon
Shades of Liberty, is an exciting new series about African American Soldiers of the American Revolution. Josiah Book 1 is set on September 15, 1776 and the Battle of Kip’s Bay and Washington’s Army’s defense of Manhattan.
Also of interest on Revolutionary War Journal
SOURCE
Barrows, Edward G. & Wallace, Mike. Gotham, A History of New York City to 1898. 1999: Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Kadinsky, Sergey. Hidden Waters of New York City. 2016: The Countrymen Press, division of W. W. Norton, New York, NY.
Lamb, Martha Joanna & Harrison, Burton. History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise and Progress, Vol. 2. 1877: A. S. Barnes & Company, New York, NY.
Sanderson, Eric W. Mannahatta, A Natural History of New York City. 2009: Abrams, New York, NY.
Wegmann, Edward. The Water Supply of the City of New York 1658-1895. 1896: John Wiley & Sons, 1896, New York, NY.
Weil, Francois with translation by Gladding, Jody. A History of New York. 2000, Translated 2004: Columbia University Press, New York, NY.