Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [475]
Opposition to the enormous expense might have postponed or even precluded the project, but for the existence of another proaqueduct lobby. This coalition of landowners, speculative developers, banks and insurance companies feared a different urban scourge—fire. Fire threatened to undermine the real estate boom of which they were primary beneficiaries. Fires had been decimating rich areas, not just poor ones, and with increasing frequency in the thirties. The year 1834 had been a terrible one for property owners in the dry-goods district, the worst to date, and fire insurance companies had been hit with claims approaching a million dollars. Afflicted businessmen joined the campaign for new municipal initiatives, arguing that public costs were justified by private savings.
New York’s fire prevention efforts to date had concentrated on extending the “fire limits,” the part of the city where special building codes regulated the material and design of private and commercial structures. In 1812 the fire limits covered Manhattan south of Chambers Street. In 1815 they were extended to a line crossing the island just above Washington Square. In 1833 they jumped north to Second Street, and the following year, to 14th Street.
The city also abandoned reliance on church sextons to sound the alarm in case of fire, shifting to purpose-built bell towers, with the number of clangs indicating in which of five fire districts a blaze had been reported. Because these wooden stanchions too often fell prey to flames themselves, in April 1835 officials placed a twenty-four hour sentinel in the cupola of City Hall to clang a large, newly installed fire bell and hang a light in the direction of any perceived blaze.
To enhance the water-for-fire supply the Common Council had built a stopgap network of some forty cisterns, usually beside a church, to catch rainwater (at times convicts were set to filling them). In the event of a conflagration, fire engines were dragged to the nearest cistern, or if it was dry (as was often the case, given low levels of rainfall), firemen would link their machines in a chain to the nearest river. Neither method, however, could generate enough pressure to reach the upper levels of newer, taller buildings. The 13th Street Reservoir, once connected to hydrants, proved capable of lofting water to the roofs of most three-story houses, even without engines. The number of hydrants grew rapidly, accompanied by street boxes containing coiled hemp hoses, and some predicted that eventually there would be a hydrant on every block, making engines obsolete. However, one big tank could not handle simultaneous blazes nor drive water to the tops of the four-to-five-story warehouses going up downtown.
Sam Ruggles was deeply concerned—doubly so because he, like many large property owners, including Mayor Cornelius Lawrence, held substantial shares in fire insurance companies. Insurance company directors, moreover, were heavily represented on the Common Council and on the New York State Water Commission, and together with the landed interests they formed a formidable lobby. Additional support came from the manufacturing and service sectors. Industrialists needed water. The New-York Gas-Light Company’s well was drying up. Chemical works, sugar houses, brewhouses, distilleries, tanners, dyers, and soap makers: all faced dwindling liquid resources. Many businesses also relied on steam engines—there were sixty of them around town in 1834—and taverns, hotels, livery stables, and cake shops were all increasingly parched.
The water lobby was spurred on by another outbreak of cholera in 1834, which drove the number of reported deaths up 50 percent over that of 1833, in sharp and sorry contrast to Philadelphia’s success in curtailing the disease, widely credited to a vigorous street-washing