Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [286]
The city had been eyeing these obstacles for some time, and in 1791 it purchased all claims to the pond from the heirs of Anthony Rutgers. It could not, however, decide on what to do next. Some advocated a Venetian strategy: making the pond into an inland harbor by cutting broad canals to both rivers. Others wanted to embark on a giant real estate development. But in the aftermath of the 1798 epidemic, the health commissioners pressed for and got a Common Council decision to drain the swamps, then in 1803 ordered the Fresh Water itself filled in. A drain was cut through the marsh along the line of present-day Canal Street to carry off water from the underground springs that fed the pond and meadows. Then Bunker Hill, east of Broadway on what is now Grand Street, was leveled and its earth and stone dumped in the pond. By 1807 the pond was “rapidly turning to dry land”; by 1813 (some say 1815) it had disappeared.
But not completely. Although the springs remained (as they do to this day), the landfill process, having ignored the old watercourses, upset the area’s natural drainage. The result was a boggy tract that oozed and sank unevenly. The principal street across it—first called Collect, later Centre—had to be laid with planks to be passable, and the cellars of the buildings that soon covered it were constantly full of water.
To correct the situation, the Common Council had an eight-foot ditch dug down the middle of Canal Street to convey storm water from the Collect Street area to the Hudson. Because the canal didn’t flow swiftly enough, however, it became a stinking open sewer. When the city covered it over in 1819, the engineers failed to install air traps, and it became a stinking closed sewer.
Canal Street was not the only pathway along which New Yorkers were forced to hold their noses despite dramatic new cleanup efforts by fever-fearing municipal authorities. The 1798 post-epidemic report had urged the city to assume direct responsibility for cleaning the streets, rather than leaving the job to individual householders, and in 1798 it created a Street Commission. The commission hired carts and laborers to clear the streets of dirt, manure, and offal twice a week. In 1802 a separate Superintendent of scavengers was appointed to oversee the collection of garbage. The sweepers and scavengers were never particularly effective, however, and the city continued to rely heavily on its ever-present hogs to clean up.
Human excrement compounded the problem. Backyard privies routinely overflowed, sending their effluvia to mix with street debris and storm water in polluted puddles. In 1800 the city required that all privy pits on the east side be cleaned out, a labor largely undertaken by poor blacks attracted by the wages, but even then problems remained. Night soil was still dumped in the river, and the haphazard construction of docks and slips had so obstructed the natural movement of water that the noxious mass piled up along the waterfront, generating nauseous stenches in warm weather. Under the 1799 legislation, the Common Council had the power to require renovation of piers and wharves, with alterations to be assessed against the property owner; this brought some relief, but it was not a real solution. Only sewers that went beyond conveying excess storm water to carrying human wastes might do the job. And although an 1803 report on the London sewer system sent back by Rufus King, ambassador to England, was well received, nothing came of it, because only indoor water closets could supplant privies, and they in turn were dependent on a nonexistent supply of water.
WATER
New Yorkers were keenly aware that the city had a water problem. The 1798 postepidemic report had blamed many of the city’s health problems on the lack of plentiful fresh water. Some citizens began agitating to revive a municipal waterworks project that had been launched just before the Revolution.
In 1774 Irish-born