7 Section 1: Introduction to the Croton Waterworks 10 Studying the Croton Waterworks, New York City’s first water system, in a graduate level studio course in historic preservation at Columbia University, required the widening of our preservation lens. The system is complex, spanning multiple decades and building technologies. The Croton Waterworks is a unique and mostly extant combination of a infrastructural system which is partially offline and defunct, and partially adapted to modern use. The Old Croton Aqueduct has been decommissioned, and contains more visible physical markers, while the New Croton Aqueduct is still online and has adapted over time to meet modern needs. Historically, infrastructure was not entirely hidden, and in the case of the Old Croton Aqueduct, architectural expressions were strategically placed along the Aqueduct to signify its importance. These structures, many of which are no longer used, dot the landscape, standing as historic reminders of civic need. Modern infrastructure, however, is by nature designed to be as invisible as possible. We only see it when we are confronted with the necessities it provides. Preservation of the Croton Waterworks requires embracing the system holistically: the seen and unseen, and the commissioned and decommissioned. Methods of documentation, maintenance, rehabilitation, and reuse, and means of protection are explored in the following pages. Ultimately, we have discovered that it is through interpretation that the Croton Waterworks, and historic infrastructure in general, can be most effectively preserved. Top: Route 66, one of the earliest U.S. highways Middle: Boat entering a lock on the Erie Canal Bottom left: Interior of a Metrorail station in Washington, D.C. Preservation of Historic Infrastructure As preservationists, we have been taught to research, analyze, document, and curate the built environment. Our predominant focus has been on what one traditionally defines as a building, from skyscrapers to brownstones. There are accepted guidelines and systems for maintenance and preservation of those historic structures, as well as formalized tools for their protection. The built environment, however, encompasses more than Rockefeller Center or the Merchant’s House Museum. Integrated into the built environment is a no less vital system of connection: infrastructure. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, infrastructure is “the basic physical and organizational structures (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.”1 More simply, infrastructure takes the form of something which conveys something else. As a network, infrastructure can assume the form of a multitude of typologies, ranging from a mundane telephone pole to a majestic bridge. It can be the outmoded remains of past systems, as well as incorporated vestiges of past systems into current ones. By nature, historic infrastructure tells a story about the evolution of vital technology and the history of the societies it has impacted and sustained. Historic infrastructure is often overlooked and thus under threat. The obsolete is quickly torn down. Or, in some cases, especially with infrastructure that is still active, structural deficiencies may necessitate some level of intervention to ensure public safety and the continuation of utility. Many types of infrastructure were designed with a life expectancy in mind. For instance, the Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO) estimates the life expectancy of a dam to be fifty years.2 Oxford Reference Online, http://www.oxfordreference. com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t23. e28509. 2 Serena McClain, Stephanie Lindloff, and Katherine Baer, “Dam Removal and Historic Preservation: Reconciling Dual Objectives,” American Rivers, http:// www.americanrivers.org/library/reports-publications/ dam-removal-and-historic.html: 16. Section 1: Introduction Preservation of Historic Infrastructure “Infrastructure n,” The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Twelfth edition, Edited by Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford University Press, 2008), 1 11 12 Wealthy Manhattanites imported their drinking water in casks from more pristine sources outside of the city. Remaining New Yorkers either relied on the dubious product of the Manhattan Water Company or drew their water from wells that discharged fluids of even more insalubrious character. As a consequence of these conditions, New York regularly fell victim to the twin scourges of the nineteenth century city: fire and disease. The Great Fire of 1835 and the cholera epidemic of 1832 (a victim of whom is illustrated below) were two of the most catastrophic instances of these periodic phenomena; occurring on the eve of the construction of the Croton system, they galvanized public support in favor of a public utility designed to prevent such calamities in the future, or at least lessen their severity. When the City and State Governments finally gave their formal support to the construction of an aqueduct that would draw water from the distant Croton River Watershed in Westchester and Putnam Counties, Major David Bates Douglass, a West Point professor little construction could be completed, and then raised again in the spring when full-scale building resumed. But if it failed to rise, as it sometimes did in the economically uncertain years following the Panic of 1837, the workers were