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Together these engineers and artists and milk-wagon drivers forg concept of the city, a unity for the city, out of the collective character history of its inhabitants, just as the individuality of Paris was define Villon's reckless verses, the gardens of Marie Antoinette, Julian the A tate's addresses to "my dear Lutetia," Victor Hugo, the engineer E.
METROPOLIS AND HER CHILDREN 19
die Curie's dedication and Jules Romains' great antiphonal hymn. This olay, in fact, is at the root of the caricature visualized by outsiders as "a h&New Yorker"-a certain large and shrewd liberality of thought and hvior, easy wit, compulsive energy, a liking for risk and the new, cu- enty, restlessness.
Where are those who consider that it is impossible to find any unity in Onechaotic pattern of New York; or that, romantically enough, the emer- emre of unity would cancel its major charm. But the uneconomic and anti- Paul nature of many of the city's living ways demand a clear reorienta- ng The potential unity necessary to such reorientation already exists in aCE New Yorker's own concept of his city. In this shared consciousness acgenerated by a look, a grin, an anecdote as cabalistic to outsiders as the Co talk of mathematicians-the complex of the metropolis finds its or- szing principle, deeper than civic pride and more basic than the dom- ela on of mass or power. To the degree that this principle, this wise geol- may can be instrumented by the forms and processes appropriate to it, York will emerge in greatness from the paradox of its confusions.
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II. NATURAL SETTING
Habitat Ma
Nor so long ago, as time is reckoned in geology-something 100,000 years ago, perhaps-the Hudson entered the Atlantic so east of Long Beach and about 125 miles out from what is now S. Hook. From an airplane, if the weather is bright, the old channel ma seen as a wide dark streak on the sea. In those days the whole northea: coast was a mile higher than it is now; the Palisades were twice as (glaciers hadn't yet choked the Hudson bed) ; and Manhattan, not an island, was a long chain of great hills. For 85 miles beyond wh now Sandy Hook the river flowed with smooth swiftness across the cc plain. "Then," writes William Beebe, who has cast his nets into the g "without warning, its waters plunged into the maw of a canyon mig than man has ever seen."
Attaining a width of seven miles farther out, the gorge here is ‘ a mile wide and soon reaches a depth of 1,600 feet. Four miles fa along the canyon, where the continental shelf is submerged 1,000 fee gorge bottom takes almost a mile of Mr. Beebe's sounding wire. Her full burden of the old Hudson-which drained the area of the Great ! and had the Housatonic, Passaic and Hackensack as tributaries-cası 36 miles down a great valley to the Atlantic basin, whose floor is : to 4,600 fathoms deep. The United States Coast and Geodetic Surve undertaken to chart Hudson Canyon with an automatic sounding i! ment, the fathometer; and soon, even in the foggiest weather, ship: be able to steam straight into New York Bay by following the car course.
The Hudson carved its mighty gorge more than 10,000,000 year: when eastern North America was being elevated anew. More than 40 000 years before that, during a previous elevation, the Hudson ate it across the highlands of upstate New York.
After the gorge was cut, subsidence of the land embayed the Hi made an estuary of it as far as Albany, the tides ebbing and flowi:
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21
HABITAT MAP
ugh this whole distance of 150 miles. The ragged coastal contour nd New York City has not changed much since the last glacier left its inal debris on Long Island and Staten Island some 35,000 years ago began melting its way back to Labrador. It used to be claimed that kcoast was sinking a quarter of an inch a year, or about two feet a cen- u, but geologists now dispute this-which is encouraging. For the land oldn't have to subside very much to change Manhattan into a group of les and reefs; and 100 feet of uplift would cause the ocean to retreat tout beyond Sandy Hook, making the present waterways unnavigable. ui changes have happened and are likely to happen again, but not in 1 layman-reckoned time.
nd by the bye, no earthquake is likely to topple the American Babylon t the sea either. The glacier here at its end couldn't have been more 2. a half mile thick, hence the post-glacial uplifts-and the rock fault- 2 that causes quakes-have been slight. Around Quebec the ice was 10 miles thick, with 8,500,000,000 tons to the square mile, and there the pft has been greatest. Tremors arising there and in New England may gelt to the southward; but no quakes have occurred in New York or e elikely to occur.
bor Outline
he present mouth of the Hudson at the Battery is 18 miles from the france to New York Harbor. Divided into Lower Bay and Upper Bay, Ho Harbor is like a giant hour-glass. Through its neck, the Narrows, the aturl- and refuse-laden tides ebb and flow. The entrance to Lower Bay is chiefive-mile stretch of ocean northeastward from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, is Rockaway Point, Queens. Ambrose Channel, seven miles long, 2,000 wide and dredged to 40 feet, is the chief of the three channels cross- Sandy Hook Bar and allowing ships into and through the Lower Bay. hitt harbor occupies a northwestern angle toward which southwesterly dids sweep from a great distance, and in the gateway the wind-driven ire currents meet and deposit some of their materials. The Hudson too entries down its sediment. Thus the bar grows, hooking away from the did. The bar can obstruct but never close the harbor, for the rush of es tide sweeps pretty clean. Sandy Hook and its bar, and Coney Island and ckaway Beach facing the sea on the South Shore of Long Island, are Flaked coastal irregularities. The shoreline here is straightening itself out. wit the reefs and barriers become dry land, then the lagoons behind them.
IS
22
NATURAL SETTING
The south part of the Lower Bay, adjacent to Sandy Hook, is Sa Hook Bay; near Staten Island it is Raritan Bay, five miles by seven. I bays are shallow, shoaling to three fathoms or less over extensive al The Narrows, connecting the Lower Bay with the Upper Bay, is a s about a mile wide between Staten Island and Long Island. As one er the Lower Bay, Coney Island stands to the right. Farther off is the R away peninsula, shielding Jamaica Bay from the ocean. Jamaica Bay, s low and thick with islets, is eight miles by four, about the same siz the Upper Bay.
As one continues northward through the Main or Anchorage Cha of the Upper Bay, Brooklyn lies to the east and Jersey City to the v while straight ahead the towers of Manhattan thrust at the sky. Main C. nel is a half mile wide and 40 to 90 feet deep. There are two other c nels in the Upper Bay: one to the east, Buttermilk Channel, leading to East River and separated from Main Channel by a broad shoal and ‹ ernors Island; the second to the west, Kill van Kull, now dredged t feet and giving access to Newark Bay.
Newark Bay is an estuary extending south from the confluence of Passaic and Hackensack Rivers to Staten Island, a distance of about miles. It is about 11/2 miles wide. The channel up the bay, leading to rivers and branching off to Port Newark Terminal as well, is dredge 30 feet.
The most extensive shallows in the Upper Bay are in the western Almost in mid-channel lies Liberty or Bedloe Island. Near by, Ellis Is is really three islands joined by causeways and has been built up from t to 27 acres. Governors Island, now pear-shaped, has also been adder In the early days cattle could cross to the island at low tide from wh now the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.
The Upper Bay is continued in the Hudson and East Rivers. The 1. really a tidal strait to Long Island Sound, is 16 miles long, 600 to 4 feet wide, and has a through channel of 35 feet at low water. There three main islands in it, under the authority of Manhattan: Welfare merly Blackwell's ), Randall's and Ward's Islands. The latter two he support Triborough Bridge.
The Hudson's width decreases gradually from 3,670 feet at the Ba to 2,770 feet opposite Fourteenth Street, increasing again to the gr part of a mile at the northern boundary of Manhattan. Its channel : feet deep. The Dutch called the Hudson the North River and the I ware the South River because these rivers, respectively, flowed through
23
HABITAT MAP
Smeme northern and southern territories held by the Dutch. From the Bat- nto about Fourteenth Street, where Manhattan loses its triangular shape, Hudson River today is officially the North River, known as such by sy native New Yorkers.
ethe rise and fall of the tide in the harbor averages only about four feet, lu permitting the pier system. Ships of every size may enter or leave at atime; but if vessels larger than the Queen Mary or the Normandie are siat:, they may have to wait for flood tide. The total water frontage of New cx City is 578.4 miles.
Pography by Boroughs
occupying about 323 square miles in the southeastern corner of the tø:, New York City is 36 miles long at its longest and 161/2 miles at its Mest. It comprises the five boroughs: (1) Manhattan (about 22 square ils, the smallest borough ) ; (2) the Bronx (almost twice as large) ; (3) oklyn-Kings (about 31/2 times as large ) ; (4) Queens (the largest bor- ot, more than five times as large); and (5) Richmond-Staten Island outgre than twice as large). The Bronx is the only borough on the main- to. With the exception of Brooklyn and Queens (on western Long dgtad, east and south of Manhattan), each borough is separated from the Ers by water; even a part of the boundary of these two boroughs is mmed by historic Newtown Creek, a four-mile tidal arm of the East Ir. Long Island is 120 miles long, 23 miles wide.
men the map, the central borough of Manhattan, about 121/2 miles long Ide 21/2 miles at its extreme width, looks like a small stone cleaver about whack at the huge loaf of Long Island. The northern handle of this yer, beginning where the East River branches off into the Sound at elox Kills, is in the main bounded by the Harlem River, which becomes o United States Ship Canal (this traces in part the course of the old hent ten Duyvil Creek) near the point where it flows into the Hudson at re ten Duyvil. The whole waterway is eight miles long. On the west or heeson side, Spuyten Duyvil is 13 miles by water from the Battery ; on the Bronx Kills is 81/2 miles above the Battery.
B-djacent to the north is the fist-and-cuff-shaped area of the Bronx, with ony knuckles in Long Island Sound and its cuff formed by the West- efter County boundary line. Opposite Manhattan to the west are the high he Inns of the Palisades and the port cities of Weehawken, Hoboken and butey City. In the harbor lies Staten Island, southwest of Manhattan.
24
NATURAL SETTING
Shaped like Africa, it hugs the mainland of New Jersey to the west, f which it is separated only by the waterways, Kill van Kull and Arthur ]
The staired and serried skyscrapers of Manhattan, rising from the to rival the Cathedrals and Great White Thrones of the National Park beauty and grandeur, are made possible by a tough bed of rock, Manha schist: a thick, unyielding, coarsely crystalline rock glinting with n This metamorphic formation, found on a major portion of the island near or at the surface uptown (there are exposures in Central Park) ; the first step in the construction of many a tower of commerce or l domicile was the stubborn blasting of a cellar. South of about Twe Third Street, however, the island is covered with glacial drift of var depths, washed down from the higher part of the island. At Trinity Ch it is 26 feet to bedrock; 90 feet at City Hall; while at Tombs Prison part of what was once the site of the large Collect Pond used by Fitc 1796 for his experiments with the first screw-propeller craft ), the buil found 40 feet of made ground, 30 feet of black mud, 5-10 feet of clay and 80 feet of gravel-total to bedrock, about 155 feet.
Manhattan schist crops up again on Governors Island, and there prong of it on Staten Island, which gives that body of land its third ( geological feature. The others are its hills of serpentine rock and its te nal moraine. Schist is also the basal rock of Brooklyn and Queens ; but ex for a few exposures (in Astoria and Long Island City) it is buried neath hundreds of feet of glacial till. From Bay Ridge to Bath Beach, of the Narrows, this drift material goes down from 200 to 500 fee spectively to bedrock; 500 feet at Woodside; and 650 feet at Greenpor
Over a period of two centuries and more, Manhattan's face has lifted and relifted unceasingly. Abrupt ledges of rock have been leve deep narrow valleys filled, forests cleared. Where pools and meande. streams made great areas of marshland, canals have been dredged and drained land filled. As the city expanded, miles of similar swamplan Brooklyn, Queens and Harlem have been reclaimed to provide space buildings and homes. Battery Park, together with Water, Front and S Streets, are all on made land. In fact, the shoreline of Manhattan was Pearl Street on the east; and on the west-below Fourteenth Street-i along Greenwich Street. Washington Square, Gramercy Park, Mac Square, Tompkins Square are all located on one-time swamps.
The swift converging currents of the Hudson and East Rivers no lc wear away the precious shoreline of the island, as they did at a good in the city's earliest days, when the tip of Manhadoes (Island of the H
HABITAT MAP 25
tua great deal narrower. A rocky promontory projected from the shore, urging a natural breakwater, and in this sheltered cove Indians landed the canoes. Its boulders helped to construct the ramparts of Fort Amster- Part. At that time the Battery was a receding bluff which fronted the Hud- rebetween the present Bowling Green and Trinity Church.
h roadway was laid out over an Indian trail that ran along a chain of lanl from the Battery to the vicinity of Canal Street, where another trail ) teast to Maiginnac, or Corlear's Hook, and west to the Village of otunikan, where the Indians crossed the forest-fringed Hudson to Hobo- Two Hacking and on south to the Delaware. Covered with oak, hickory vac chestnut, the chain of ragged hills extended to Canal Street, where Glys and marshland on both sides of the hills spread across the island --- onow that at high tide water flowed from river to river. In the valleys Finethe grassy dales between hills were the log houses and fields of the ossettlers. Cowpaths across the marshes gave access to the upper part of cfesland, precipitous and wild, in whose somber forests and impenetrable itets of grapevines, creepers, blackberry and raspberry bushes lurked the heDres, foxes, bears and panthers that preyed on the farmers' stock. The detiful deer and turkeys, too, sometimes destroyed his crops.
sten the North River there was but one inlet or slip, that at the foot of stego, now Liberty Street; but there were many on the East River, ionties Old Slip being the first of them. Extending a mile along the chce at the foot of Rivington were Marinus Willet's and Stuyvesant's feledows. Here, by common repute, the pirates Kidd and Blackbeard paed their treasure. At Grand, Houston, Fifth, Seventh, Tenth and asbtieth Streets the island's edge was frayed by marshes. At the western of Canal Street the Lispenard Meadows-70 acres of salt marsh used skating pond in winter-was connected by the Lispenard Creek to the ancect or Fresh Water Pond. Tombs Prison on Centre Street stands at hht was about the middle of this famous Collect Pond. Called bottom- ars it actually measured from 40 to 70 feet deep. Contemporaries spoke Ift as a lovely sheet of water, and it was celebrated both for its fish and fine place for skating.
fany of the hills on the lower part of the island were 100 to 130 feet love tidewater. One such was Bunker's Hill, at the junction of Grand p Elm Streets, commanding the bay and Staten Island, the Hudson, pey and the high ridge of Long Island. Corlear's Hook was broken by ås, some 80 feet high, strewn with big boulders; and on a large knoll asig just north of Collect Pond criminals were hanged. In an adjoining
26 NATURAL SETTING
hollow Negroes suspected of inciting riots were burned alive. A fort, standing a decade or so after the Revolution, topped the hill at Prc (now Franklin) and Varick Streets. Murray Hill remains as a rather considerable elevation between Third Avenue and Broadway from Th Second to Forty-Second Streets.
Between the hills were waterholes, and sometimes a stream issued, w ing to east or west. The area along the East River north of Central was marked by creeks and muddy estuaries. Harlem Lane began at al 130th Street on the west and flowed into Hell Gate at Ninety-Sec Street. Harlem Creek meandered to the Hudson from Goldfish Pon basin between Lenox and Seventh Avenues, 117th and 119th Streets IIoth it crossed to Fifth Avenue and entered the Harlem Marsh. A stre let ran from a little pond in Manhattan Square to the large lake in Cer Park, then on down to the East River. Minetta Brook, troublesomely re covered by subway sandhogs in the 1920's, started at about Unive Place; flowed through a section of the old Potter's Field in Washing Square; on past Sandy Hill; collected into a pond north of Richm Hill; and then, beyond Varick Street, fell off into a salt marsh be finding its way to the North River. This brook separated Greenwich lage from the contemporary city. Another brook ran through Tomp Square to the soggy meadows of the East River; and a stream flowing al Broad Street had a branch, the Beaver Canal, running down Beaver St.
In 1670 there were several public wells in the middle of the c streets, their indifferent water being drawn with buckets, not pumped. source of the most potable water was one of the springs feeding Co Pond, at a point on the present Park Row between Baxter and Mulb Streets. This became known as the Tea-Water Pump. The "tea-water m bought this water at four pence the hogshead and peddled it about village for a penny bill a gallon. Tea-Water Garden became a cente social activity where village boys played and matrons gossiped.
The overflow from the pump created a pool of stagnant water; and Collect Pond degenerated at the end of the 18th century into a f disease-breeding cesspool. In 1774 Christopher Colles built a reser near the "New Gaol," which was more commonly known as Debt Prison. "Good pitch pipes, well-hooped with iron," were used to distril the water to subscribing households. The Revolution caused suspension this development, and service was not resumed until the beginning of 19th century, when Aaron Burr organized the Manhattan Company. '. company dug a well near Broadway, north of the present Spring Street,
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HABITAT MAP
ay use of which, as it turned out, was to serve as the "hiding place for body of beautiful Gulielma Snow in one of New York's most famous rder mysteries." Another well was sunk in Reade Street. This tapped subterranean springs of the old pump and gave the growing city a mall supply of water.
The springs which provided the city's early water supply have been a jotinual source of trouble. All attempts effectually to block their flow have 2.ed. Adjoining basements ooze with their seepage, and engineers say that the walls of the IRT subway station at Canal and Lafayette Streets were irced, water would gush forth as from a fountain.
The first successful attempt to relieve Manhattan from dependence on uncertain flow of private and public wells was made in 1842, when municipal authorities tapped the Croton River with an aqueduct having apacity of 35 million gallons a day. Brooklyn was served by private vils until 1859. At that time a city water system was installed, using the Face and subterranean streams of Long Island-sources which remain nessential part of the system today. In 1917 the first supply of water In the Catskill system was available-250 million gallons daily.
ich n 1936 the municipally owned and operated system supplied 913,- -. 9,000 gallons of water daily to New York City and sold about 20,- 9,000 gallons daily to other communities. Costs of construction to sauary 1, 1936, amounted to well over $513,000,000. Experts agree that system is the greatest in the world, and that the water is unexcelled in ed uity and palatability. Principal sources are four watersheds in the Catskill Auntains and the Putnam and Westchester hills, which have an aggregate rinage area of 968 square miles. Aqueducts as large as railroad tunnels y this water from the reservoirs to the city. Much of the terrain about reservoirs is under public ownership, beautifully landscaped, and intained as restricted parks. About the Croton watershed alone there r some 10,000 acres of such land. Work going forward in 1937 was unded eventually to swell the present huge water supply by 60 per- e:, developing new watersheds in the upper tributaries of the Delaware lier. There are still five private companies operating driven wells which ply some 59,000,000 gallons daily to localities in Brooklyn and Queens. The island of Manhattan rises in the north, with its highest places on upper West Side; perhaps for this reason the section was not built up till later than the upper East Side. A ridge on the West Side, rising gently ochward from Fifty-Ninth Street, forms the imposing Cathedral Plateau ch drops down again from 116th to 125th Streets-this latter section
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NATURAL SETTING
called the Hollow Way in Washington's time-and rises once mor St. Nicholas Heights.
Descending in terraces toward the Hudson, to the east it falls sudd through Morningside Park-a declivity which extends northward f Iroth Street to Coogan's Bluffs-into Harlem Flats, an alluvial plain many parts of this craggy area there were rather deep bowls, as at Seve Sixth Street, since filled in with debris from neighboring bosses of r These pits, as late as 1880, held the shacks of the period's Hoovervi Mount Morris, in the section of that name at Fifth Avenue between I: and 124th Streets, is itself the terminal peak of an interrupted ridge.
The ridge on the West Side rises again to Washington Heights pro from 155th to 176th Streets, and toward the Hudson reaches the hig natural altitude in Manhattan-267.75 feet-near the site of old J Washington, just north of 18Ist Street and Fort Washington Aver This elevation extends into Fort Tryon Park. Just to the eastward, the another sharp depression at Dyckman Street; then the ridge climbs Inwood Park. Inwood Hill, northern tip of the island, is 232.75 fee height. The street level at High Bridge water-tower, on the high bluff o looking the Harlem River, is 203.25 feet.
Several transverse ravines, caused by faulting, lie in this handle sec of Manhattan. These were probably courses worn by the four or n. glaciers that scraped across the northern part of the island during the. ice age. In Manhattan and the Bronx the glaciers have grooved and po the rock. Striated slabs, and granite boulders known as "travelers," especially prevalent in Bronx Zoological Park. Most famous is the Rock Stone, large as a small house, which hails from New England. Sim boulders tinted with greenish mica and milky quartz are found near ball field in Central Park. Mount Tom, at Eighty-Third Street and Hudson, is smoothed and planed by the ice, its base furrowed with gla grooves.
Inwood dolomite, a limestone, is found in large quantities in the Inw and Harlem sections. It is an organic rock, formed by the metamorph of animal and vegetable deposits. An intrusion of granite near the Hud between Forty-Eighth and Fifty-Fifth Streets used to be quarried, and still be seen in a vacant lot opposite the Normandie's dock.
Granite veins occur all through the schist, and it is in these veins precious and semi-precious stones are found: garnets, amethysts, OF tourmalines, beryls, chrysoberyls and what not. Ninety-nine species 170 varieties have been found in Manhattan, a record probably not exce
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HABITAT MAP
The United States by any other locality of the same size. A deposit of mets which netted a small fortune for the finder was uncovered at radway and Sixty-Fifth Street in 1888. Later, the largest perfect garnet tal ever found in this country was thrown out of a ditch in West Thirty- th Street, used as a doorstop in a shop, and eventually turned over to New York Mineralogical Club, which exhibits its collections in the Frerican Museum of Natural History. Apatite, columbite and menaccanite nflare or unusual size are among the minerals found on Manhattan Island. Though some amber has been taken from Staten Island, the other four Doughs of the city, whose foundational rock has been less disturbed by prlating in connection with construction work, have yielded relatively few mieral specimens.
ordham gneiss is the chief basal rock of the Bronx; it is also found in meledges of Spuyten Duyvil. The hills of the Bronx are a part of the hwchills and worn extensions of the Green Mountains and the Berkshires. bs highest point in the Bronx is Riverdale Hill-284.5 feet-at Iselin fenue and West 250th Street. Other high elevations, varying from 210 feito 14I, are at Jerome Avenue, near East 233d Street; Van Cortlandt a: at Jerome and Moshulu Avenues; Spuyten Duyvil; the Grand Boule- star and Concourse at East 199th Street; and the Hall of Fame Terrace. rtthe Bronx River, which courses through the center of the borough with theopth varying from a few inches to ten feet and a width of from ten to feet, is fed by its tributaries: Sprain Brook, Hutchinson Brook and the s drake River. It is 15 miles long and empties into the East River II s northeast of the Battery. In the main the borough of the Bronx re- Sindluces the geological features of Manhattan. Its group of north and heath ridges declines eastward to the Sound from the high bluff of the ando lham section and Van Cortlandt Park.
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