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 examine the Croton River in northern Westchester County as a pos- sible source. Clinton's report was a solid recommendation in favor of the Croton, a departure from the advice of all the preceding engi- neers charged with exploring for a water source. In fact, while Clinton was advocating the Croton as the place to get water, a simultaneous survey under the direction of Benjamin Wright, then New York City Street Commissioner, again heralded the virtues of the Bronx River, particularly the frugality of construction costs. In 1833, the Common Council succeeded in getting a Board of Water Commissioners appointed whose task was to determine a sufficient water source and agree on a manner to convey the water to New York City. Several surveys were made to decide between the Bronx River and the Croton River as a supply. Among the partici- pating engineers was Major David Bates Douglass (figure 10). A veteran of the War of 1812 who had been cited for heroism during the defense of Fort Erie, Douglass emerged as the new champion of the Croton River as a water source. He suggested two possible routes to get Croton water to the City, one along the Hudson and one inland, and favored a masonry aqueduct tunnel. The cost for either route averaged about $4.5 million. In aligning solidly behind the Croton as a source, Douglass supported the findings of Colonel DeWitt Clinton, but ran contrary to the "Father of American Civil Engineering," Benjamin Wright. Although in opposition to the esteemed Wright, Douglass' plan put him in favor with a leader of the Croton faction on New York's Board of Aldermen, Myndert Van Schaick. Even though the Wright report, submitted early in 1834, supported the earlier recommendations of William Weston and Canvass White in favor of the Bronx River as a source. Van Schaick felt that Wright was in error in confining his investigation to the Bronx watershed. Van Schaick's support was integral to getting the Douglass proposal adopted by the Water Commissioners, as was the fact that the chair of the Commissioners, former New York May- or Stephen Allen, was a proponent of the Croton. Douglass was selected to head the project, but not before another engineer, John Martineau, was hired to make another survey. Chiefly brought in to try to reduce Douglass' cost figure, Martineau trimmed $1 million from the previous amount by moving the dam location close to the confluence of the Croton and Hudson Rivers, thereby shortening the length of the aqueduct, and by sug- gesting an alternative to Douglass' high bridge over the Harlem River. Instead, Martineau favored the use of wrought iron pipes in the form of inverted siphons to cross the river. The pipes could be placed on an embankment containing an arch to permit navigation of the river. Martineau felt the use of inverted siphons would elimi- nate the need for the high bridge to keep a uniform grade level for the aqueduct. Douglass, in recommending the more expensive open aqueduct bridge was following the advice of Colonel Clinton who also favored a 138-foot-high, 1,000-foot-long structure across the Harlem. John B. Jervis, the second chief engineer of the Croton Aqueduct would have the actual responsibility of designing and supervising the construction of the bridge across the Harlem River. As directed by an act of the State Legislature, whose goal was to protect navigation on the Harlem River, Jervis built the High Bridge largely to the Clinton-Douglass specifications, but also using Martineau's inverted siphon idea to allow for a somewhat lower and less expensive structure (figure 12). This still would adhere to the Legislature's height requirement. The huge stone structure was a major contributor to the enormous jump in the final cost of the Aqueduct to $9.5 million. When Douglass took over as chief engineer of the Croton project in June 1835, his first task was to lead a survey party into West- chester County. Stephen Allen was less than impressed with what he regarded as an unnecessary delay, since Douglass already had made two previous examinations of the Aqueduct's line. Douglass further perturbed Allen by taking a year to furnish maps and then conducting a fourth survey. To do so Douglass