The Collect Pond or Fresh Water Pond was a body of fresh water near the southern end of Manhattan Island in New York City, occupying approximately 48 acres (190,000 m2) and as deep as 60 feet (18 m). For the first two hundred years of European settlement of Manhattan, Collect Pond was the main water supply for the growing city. The pond, fed by an underground spring, was located in a valley, with Bayard Mount (at 110 feet the tallest hill in lower Manhattan) to the northeast and Kalck Hoek (Dutch for Chalk Hook, named for the numerous oyster shell middens left by the indigenous Native American inhabitants) to the west.
A stream flowed north out of the pond and then west through a salt marsh (which, after being drained, became a meadow by the name of "Lispenard Meadows") to the Hudson River, while another stream issued from the southeastern part of the pond in an easterly direction to the East River.
The southwestern shore of the Collect Pond was the site of a Native American settlement known as Werpoes. A small band of Munsee, the northernmost division of the Lenape, occupied the site until the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam was established. It is possible that members of this band were the participants in the famed sale of Manhattan (Manahatta) to the Dutch.
Read more about Collect Pond: History, John Fitch's Steamboat Experiment, Modern Day
Famous quotes containing the words collect and/or pond:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)