Progress (New York: The A. S. Barnes Co., 1896 [1877]), p.747. 20. Francis, p.70. 21. Greene, pp.185-7. 22. Rosenwaike, p.37; Duffy, Appendix I. 23. Oliver E. Allen, New York, New York: A History of the World's Most Exhilarating and Challenging City (New York: Atheneum, 1990), p.l51; George J. Lankevich and Howard B. Furer, A Brief History of New York City (Port Washington: Associated Faculty Press, Inc. 1984), p.93. 24. Tower, pp.llO-lll. 25. Lamb and Hanison, pp.730-2. PRELIMINARY PLANS FOR THE OLD CROTON AQUEDUCT AND THE Structure of its Engineering Department figure 10, above: Portrait of Major David Bates Douglass, contemporary print from glass plate negative Courtesy The Archives. Warren Hunting Smith Library, Hobart and William Smith Colleges figure 11, below: Fredericl< R. Spencer. Portrait of John B. Jervis. c.1837. oil on canvas Courtesy Jervis Public Library, (on permanent loan from Addison White) Photo: G, R. Farley Larkin The return of the dreaded cholera in a raging epidemic in 1832 final- ly moved New York City's government leaders to renew and intensify their efforts to locate an adequate and continuous supply of fresh water for the metropolis. The loss of lives was nearly four times the death toll in Philadelphia, where the city regularly flushed the streets with water from the new Fairmont Works on the Schuylkill River. New York, with its 250,000 inhabitants, had to construct a supply sys- tem not only to meet the water consumption and health require- ments of its burgeoning population, but also to serve the growing demands of its industrial and commercial expansion. Actually, New York City's quest for water predated 1832 by more than half a century. As early as July 1774, the Common Council adopted the proposal of Christopher Colles to build a reservoir in lower Manhattan, supply It with water pumped from wells, and then distribute the water throughout the community. The expense of con- struction was to be borne by £5,100 in city treasury notes issued for that purpose. However, the onset of the War for Independence in 1775 ended the project. Between the mid-1780s and the end of the 18th century, numerous proposals for supplying water tunneled into the Common Council from within Manhattan, from Upstate, and from out of state. Perhaps the most Ingenious and simultaneously ingen- uous was that of the self-serving political charlatan, Aaron Burr. Burr's plan was designed to provide him with a charter for a bank under the' guise of furnishing water to the City. In its water search, the New York Common Council even sought the advice of William Weston, an English civil engineer in the United States to supervise some early canal construction. In 1799 Weston reported in favor of the Bronx River as an adequate source to supply the 3 million gal- lons per day that he estimated the City would need. Weston recom- mended an open aqueduct to bring the Bronx water to Manhattan. The Harlem River would be crossed by a cast iron pipe 2 feet in diameter. But, other than a large well sunk by Burr's Manhattan Company, virtually nothing was done to solve New York's growing water supply problem until after the War of 1812. Beginning in 1816 committees were again appointed and experts hired to locate the long sought after abundant supply of pure water for New York City. During this round of recommenda- tions, the renowned Erie Canal engineer, Benjamin Wright, was con- sulted. Wright, with his able associate Canvass White, reported in favor of the Bronx River with iron pipes being used for the Harlem River crossing. Thus by 1824 the focus was again on Bronx water as a solution to New York's supply problem. The water would be conveyed to Manhattan in a covered masonry conduit at a construc- tion cost, including the pipes across the Harlem, of approximately $1.5 million. Again no action was taken and the City continued to rely on its insufficient and polluted wells. Perhaps most novel among the early attempts to find enough water under Manhattan was that of Levi Disbrow in the 1820s. Disbrow drilled deeply into the island's rock to locate a supply of high quality water. His first hole produced an encouraging return at 442 feet, but successive drilling was less promising. Finally when mineral water was brought up from one of the wells, the Disbrow scheme went the way of all the others. By then, at the end of the 1820s, the City's fire department was adding its support to the growing appeal to solve the water supply problem. Conflagrations occurred with alarming regularity in the largely wooden metropolis and the firefighters had no sufficient supply of water on which to rely (figure 6). At the beginning of 1832, the Common Council's Committee on Rre and Water hired Colonel DeWitt Clinton and instructed him to