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Complaints mounted rapidly—of inadequate delivery, of the company’s refusal to provide water to flush gutters, of its unwillingness to pipe water into the markets, of its habit of not filling in streets it dug up. Burr was removed from the board of directors, but his replacement and soon-to-be company president De Witt Clinton, himself one of the leading investors in the enterprise, proved to be no more public-minded. Indeed, after he became mayor in 1803, Clinton routed a bill through the Common Council stipulating that all city funds be held by the bank of the Manhattan Company, and despite now vociferous outcries at negligent management and insufficient facilities, a Democratic-Republican state legislature renewed the charter in 1808.

Thanks to Burr and his cohorts, who had hijacked a civic movement in order to launch a profit-making venture, New York would remain without a decent water supply for another four decades, the city would grow steadily dirtier as it grew steadily bigger, and in the not too distant future it would again be visited by yellow fever and even deadlier plagues.

FIRE

The Manhattan Company didn’t do much to help the city’s efforts at expanding its firefighting capacity either. While in the beginning it refrained from charging the corporation for the use of its water in putting out blazes, its system was so limited that it reached only a small portion of the city. Also, it had no hydrants, only hard-to-find and harder-to-open fire plugs, forcing firemen to drill holes in the wooden mains to gain access.

The city nevertheless pressed ahead, energetically expanding its activities, though not to the extent of establishing a professional fire department. (The Fire Department of the City of New York, established in 1791 and incorporated in 1798, was not a municipal agency but rather an organization for the relief of disabled and indigent firemen and their families, to which the city contributed money from fees and chimney fines.)

What the city did do, in 1791, was pass an ordinance appointing fire wardens in each ward, who entered houses to check fireplaces and stoves and to make sure that each had its requisite number of leather fire buckets. Apart from the three hundred men named from among the freeholders and freemen to man the seventeen engine companies and two hook-and-ladder brigades, every citizen was required to turn out, buckets in hand, and assemble into bucket lines under the supervision of the wardens. The mayor, recorder, and aldermen were also expected to show, and they were supplied with special white wands, five feet long and topped by a gilded flame, to help direct the action.

In December 1796, however, a big fire swept through the commercial district and destroyed a million dollars’ worth of stores and merchandise, prompting city officials to adopt more effective approaches. In 1799 New York imported from Hamburg “two fire Engines with long Hoses, to convey Water from the River into the interior of the City,” and created Supply Engine Company No. 25 to man the new machines. Hoses, connected from one engine to another, soon proved more efficient than bucket lines, and after another great fire, in 1804, the Common Council redoubled its efforts to add engine companies. In 1806 it obtained authority from the legislature to pull down or blow up buildings to stop the progress of a fire. By 1807 City Inspector Pintard reported that the city’s firefighting force, under direction of a chief engineer, now included seven engineers, forty-eight fire wardens, thirty-six hook-and-ladder men, and 778 men to work the fire engines. It also invested in new equipment, soon acquiring 13,087 feet of hose. By 1811 bucket lines, and with them the colonial-era reliance on mass mobilization of the citizenry, were a thing of the past.

The municipality’s growing involvement in firefighting was echoed by its increased commitment to regulating construction. A statute requiring that new buildings be made of brick or stone and topped with slate roofs had been passed back in 1761, but its implementation had been