Urban environmental history is often the pursuit of what's no longer there. Cities obliterate landscapes, filling in or paving over shorelines, streams and forests. Other vanished features tell happier stories of healing � think of Pittsburgh's choking smoke, or the Thames' filthy water.
I've always been intrigued by stories of a lost feature of Manhattan's landscape: the Collect Pond. This small lake was located not far from the southern tip of the island. One of the city's original sources of fresh water, it was said to be up to 60 feet deep. Here's an early image (1796) of the pond with a ship steaming across it (more about this image below):
It was, apparently, once an excellent source of water � a "clear and sparkling pond� fed by large springs of great reputed purity" (quoted in Eric Sanderson, Mannahatta, p.248).
According to Sanderson, the Collect Pond was probably a kettle pond, formed when a retreating glacier left a chunk of ice in the ground. It fed two streams: Lispenard Creek, flowing west to the Hudson, and Old Wreck Brook, which emptied into the East River. The Lenape people camped by its shore, and colonists fished, skated, and drank the pond.
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| Toronto's harbor: created from garbage |
But, alas, the lake attracted industry that no one wanted anywhere else � tanneries, breweries and the like. The pond became a convenient waste dump, and soon a filthy cesspool. By 1813 it had been filled in, using earth from Bayard's Mount, a nearby hill, as well as piles of garbage.
(An aside: it's often forgotten how much of our cities have been built on garbage � a point we tried to make when we designed the cover of our book on the environmental history of Toronto, distributed at the 2014 American Society for Environmental History conference).
The obliteration of the pond and hill created more flat land for development; Mannahatta (Lenape for "island of many hills") took another step towards becoming Manhattan. New water systems, including the Croton Aqueduct, were engineered to provide the city with fresh water � not so much to replace the Collect Pond (it was long gone by then), but the city's filthy wells.
But filling the lake created a muddy, unhealthy mess. Buildings stank as they sank into unstable ground filled with garbage and decomposing vegetation. Only those who couldn't afford anywhere else lived here � perpetuating the historical pattern of poorer neighborhoods tending to be located near (or atop) environmental or health hazards. The neighborhood became known as Five Points � the city's most notorious slum. (Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York was set there.) When Charles Dickens visited America in 1842 his account became famous: the neighborhood was "reeking everywhere with dirt and filth," and "all that is loathesome, drooping and decayed is here".
On the other hand, this community also served generations of immigrants � German Jews, Irish, Italians and many others � as an essential stepping stone to a better life.
Jacob Riis's classic How the Other Half Lives(1890) brought the neighborhood to wider attention. In the twentieth century much of the area was demolished: replaced by Columbus Park, court houses, city and state office buildings and the Manhattan Detention Complex. Some of the neighborhood still remains, and is now a bustling part of Chinatown.
The Collect Pond is long gone. But I wanted to see if any trace remained. So I headed out, walking south and east from Greenwich Village. The 1878 Viele Map (and other sources), were my guides:
My first stop was the original Five Points intersection, from which the neighborhood gained its name. It's not easy to find, since there are no longer five points: one street was obliterated when Columbus Park was created, and another is now a pedestrian walk. And several streets now have different names. But by comparing these two images � George Catlin's 1827 painting, and a photo today � we can catch a glimpse of how the neighborhood has changed. Both views are from the same spot:
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| George Catlin, Five Points, 1827 (Public Domain, PD-US) |
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| S.B., Five Points, June 2014 |
Two other images of the Mulberry Bend (a curve on Mulberry Street, in the heart of Five Points): the first taken by Jacob Riis in 1896, and the other one yesterday, give another view of a changing neighborhood:
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| Jacob Riis, Mulberry Bend, 1896 (Public Domain, PD-US) |
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| S. B., Mulberry Bend, June 2014 |
But let's move on to the Collect Pond. Guided by the Viele map excerpt, we walk two blocks north, to the intersection of Walker and Center streets. We're standing now just north of the pond, near the same site as this painting from 1798:
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| Archibald Robertson, Bayard's Mount and the Collect Pond, 1798 (Public Domain, PD-US) |
This view has changed a little � no more hill, no more pond. Here is the same view in 2014: the Manhattan Detention Complex is on the left (on the site of Bayard's Mount), and civic buildings fill the rest of the view:
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| North of the Collect Pond, June 2014 |
And finally, we walk a block south on Center Street (it's still a slight downhill slope, just as it was two centuries ago), to near the middle of the pond. Here there's a newly renovated city park � Collect Pond Park � complete with information panels and an engineered pond, all commemorating the original lake. So the Collect Pond lives again � as an engineered simulacrum constrained by the city grid and twenty-first century ideas of historical commemoration and landscape design. Once a source of water, then a waste dump, now it's a good place to eat lunch and mark time before jury duty:
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| Collect Pond Park, June 2014 |
Two final points. First, the Collect Pond provides some interesting examples of the instability of historical evidence. Recall the 1796 image above of the steamboat in the Collect Pond. It portrays the test by the inventor Robert Fitch of his new steamboat � an interesting link between environmental history and the history of technology. The only problem is that this scene never happened: the whole event was dreamed up by a fan of Fitch decades later. Nevertheless, various sources (even wikipedia!) report this story as true.
And look again at the painting above of the pond in 1798. It portrays a bucolic scene � a nice place for a stroll and a picnic, perhaps. But there's a problem with using this scene as historical evidence. It is far from an exact record: the landscape has been heavily modified to conform to late eighteenth century conventions of landscape representation. And in fact, just two years before this lovely scene was painted the pond had been described as "stagnant and foul" � not exactly the sense conveyed by the painting.
And finally, there's apparently still at least one trace of the squishy terrain created when the pond was filled in. I found this sign in an obscure garden in a restricted zone behind the U.S. District Court building, on land near the former southern edge of the Collect Pond:
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| What happens when you build on Collect Pond fill |
Two centuries after the pond disappeared, it still seems to be making its presence felt. Here too, the past is not quite past.
(And my sincere thanks to the author of the plaques in the Collect Pond Park � these are lovely examples of popular historical explanation.)
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