FIRST WATER SUPPLY FOR NEW YORK.

FIRST WATER SUPPLY FOR NEW YORK.

The first municipal supply in New York was provided in 1799, when the city, having a population of 60,000, purchased 2,000 shares of the stock of the Manhattan company, and this company constructed a well twenty-five feet in diameter and thirty feet deep in Centre street, and pumped the waiter to a tank on Chambers street, from which it was distributed through pipes made of bored logs. The population and the demand for water increased so rapidly that greater supply was required, and in 1830 the city constructed a well at Thirteenth street, near Broadway, sixty feet in diameter and 112 feet deep, ninety-seven feet being through rock, At 100 feet below the surface two lateral galleries were tunneled out from the main well, each seventy-five feet long. The water, which was very hard, amounted to somewhat over 10.000 gallons a day, and was conveyed in cast iron pipes over a portion of the city. The Manhattan company also sunk a well at Broadway and Bleecker street 442 feet deep, through rock, which yielded 44,000 gallons a day. Four years later the city drilled 100 feet deeper in the Thirteenth street well, increasing the supply to 21,000 gallons a day. and at about the same time a well was dug at Jefferson Market thirty feet deep, from which some water was derived. The supply from these various sources was so limited, however, that 1,600 hogsheads of water were brought in daily from wells in the country and sold, and 1,415 hogsheads of water were daily imported from wells in Brooklyn to supply shipping. A plan for securing water from the Croton river was adopted by the common council in 1835 and ratified by popular vote. Construction was begun at once, and water was introduced into the city through the Croton aqueduct in 1842. In 1883 the legislature created an independent aqueduct commission, and in 1884 construction of a new aqueduct was begun under this commission. This new aqueduct has a capacity of 290,000,000 gallons a day, and began the delivery of water in 1890. In 1891 the aqueduct commission was reorganised, and is now engaged in the construction of the new Croton dam.

Brooklyn had no public water supply until after its population reached 200,000. In 1859 a public system was completed by the city, the supply being taken from ponds and streams on the south side of Long Island east of the city. Since that time the yield of surface water has been supplemented by pumping ground water from driven wells along the line of the conduit which conveys the water from the ponds, and a further supply is furnished by water obtained from wells at two pumping stations in the southern part of the city. Three private corporations furnish water drawn from wells for portions of Brooklyn. The entire supply of the borough is pumped either into reservoirs or directly into the mains.