Construction
The need for a new supply of fresh water was crucial and in 1837 construction began on a massive engineering project. supervised by Chief Engineer John B. Jervis, to divert it from sources upstate. The Croton River was dammed, aqueducts were built, tunnels dug, piping laid and reservoirs created. Iron piping encased in brick masonry was laid from the Croton Dam in northern Westchester County to the Harlem River, where it continued over the High Bridge at 173rd Street and down the west side of Manhattan and finally into a Receiving Reservoir located between 79th and 86th streets and Sixth and Seventh Avenues that is now the site of the Great Lawn and Turtle pond in Central Park. The Receiving Reservoir was rectangular tank within fortress-like rusticated retaining walls, 1,826 feet (557 m) long and 836 feet (255 m) wide; it held up to 180,000,000 US gallons (680,000 m3) of water. 35,000,000 US gallons (130,000 m3) flowed into it daily from northern Westchester.
From the Receiving Reservoir water flowed down to the Distributing Reservoir, better known simply as the Croton Reservoir, a similar fortification located on Fifth Avenue between 40th Street and 42nd Street, where the main branch of the New York Public Library and Bryant Park are located today. This reservoir was built to resemble ancient Egyptian architecture. New Yorkers drove out of town for the fine view of the city obtained from atop its walls.
The Aqueduct opened to public use with great fanfare on October 14, 1842. The day-long celebration culminated in a fountain of water that spouted to a height of fifty feet from the beautifully decorated cast-iron Croton Fountain in City Hall Park. Among those present were then-President of the United States John Tyler, former presidents John Quincy Adams and Martin van Buren, and Governor of New York William H. Seward. James Renwick, Jr., who went on to design Grace Church, New York, the Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington, DC, and St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, was involved in the architectural and engineering work on the Aqueduct as an up-and-coming 18-year-old.
Read more about this topic: Croton Aqueduct
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—John Dewey (1859–1952)