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Using GIS modeling to find an historic stream in today’s sewer tunnels
Above: the historic stream overlaid on a contemporary (2010)
view of Manhattan.
Below: GIS model of the stream’s watershed in contemporary
New York City with the combined sewer pipes shown in which
the stream’s water now flows.
Steve Duncan, PhD Candidate in Public History, History Department,
University of California, Riverside
900 E. 1st St, #103, Los Angeles, CA 90012
(646) 734‐7067 ‐ steve@undercity.org
Liz Barry, Adjunct Associate Professor, Urban Design Department,
Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP),
Columbia University.
174 South 3rd Street, #1A, Brooklyn, NY 11211
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(336) 269‐1539 ‐ eeb2108@columbia.ed
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Introduction: ................................................................................................................................................ 4
History of the Minetta Brook ................................................................................................................ 6
The Minetta Brook Today .................................................................................................................... 10
Sewerage Development ........................................................................................................................ 13
Methodology ............................................................................................................................................. 18
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Introduction:
The Minetta Brook is a storied element of New York City’s distant past: a
clear stream, big enough to for 17th‐ and 18th‐century residents of the area to fish
for trout, that flowed down the route of Fifth Avenue from what is now Gramercy
Park, through what is now Washington Square Park and the NYU campus, before
passing through Greenwich Village and outletting into the Hudson. Today, however,
the Minetta has seemingly been lost beneath the past century and more of
construction, and there are few traces remaining aboveground of the waterway that
once flowed.
Our project combines traditional historical research, historic archeology, and
GIS technologies to answer the questions “What happened to the Minetta Brook?”
and “Where is the Minetta Brook today?”
We use GIS to create a multi‐layered model of the watershed of the Minetta
Brook, showing both the contemporary and the historical topography of the
stream’s route from 23rd Street to the Hudson River. The historical topography is
based on the 18th‐century pre‐urban topography as shown in the 1782 British
Headquarters map of Manhattan; the contemporary topography utilizes the most
accurate Digital Elevation Model (DEM) available for the city today.
Additional layers model the combined sewer system underlying the
watershed. These gravity‐fed sewers have replaced the original route of the brook
by providing a new route for both aquifer‐fed groundwater and for rainwater/street
runoff.
Using the historical watershed of the Minetta Brook as our subject area, this
model of the contemporary topography in the watershed area, combined with the
model of the underlying sewers and drains, allows us to create assumptive models
simulating water flow in the region based on the effects of rainfall and groundwater
flow, thus allowing us to determine where and when the water of the Minetta Brook
watershed now flows. Essentially, we will be able—for the first time in nearly a
century—to determine where the Minetta Brook actually is.
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The value of this model is primarily as a tool for examining the historical
development of the city and our constantly‐changing relationship to the natural and
built environments as a result of this continued development. We also see it as
having a high potential for communicating history to a wider public, through
accessible visual models.
However, our methodology can also provide a potentially useful model for
urban or architectural planning. There is an increasing interest today in projects
such as the daylighting of urban streams, and other efforts toward the expansion of
public consciousness of water resources and aquifers or other urban‐environmental
issues. In many ways, such projects are fundamentally involved with bridging the
wide gap that is commonly perceived between the “urban” environment and the
“natural” world. By clearly modeling the historical continuity—and the continued
intimate relationship— between the contemporary (urban) built environment and a
pre‐urban (natural) topography, our project can help bridge that gap.
As we develop this approach, our data is necessarily rough—resting, for
example, on very generalized assumptions about groundwater flow rates, surface
porosity, etc. Thus it cannot be claimed as an accurate predictive model now or in
the near future. However, with the development of the methodology itself, more
accurate data in the future will allow for more accurate modeling. Moreover, the
approach itself offers an important and unusual perspective on urban
environmental history, by emphasizing the continued connections between the pre‐
urban landscape and the urban built environment.
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History of the Minetta Brook
...The brook was a brisk little affair, hurrying along in its well‐defined channel,
apparently as full of business as it was full of trout. Yes, of trout! They were
there in abundance, darting to the higher waters like a streaks of smoke and
flame, against the foamy rush of a narrow channel, or sulking under the
shadow of the bank in the quiet pool below....
Two rivulets united to form the stream. The western one rose near the
intersection of Sixth Avenue and Seventeenth Street, and flowed, practically
in a straight line, to the middle of the block bounded by Fifth and Sixth
Avenues and Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, where it was joined by the
eastern branch. The latter had its origin in a spring east of Fifth Avenue and
above Twentieth Street....
‐From Old Wells and Water‐Courses of the Island of Manhattan, by George
Everett Hill and George E Waring, Jr, 1897
Prior to European settlement in New York, the waterway now known as
Minetta Brook flowed from two sources: an underground spring located near the
intersection of present‐day Sixth Ave and 17th Street, and another located north‐east
of today’s Fifth Avenue and 20th Street. The two streams flowed south and joined at
about today’s 11th Street, continuing south through what is now Washington Square
Park. Turning west, the brook extended into a swampy area without a clearly‐
defined channel, eventually flowing out into the Hudson River near the intersection
of today’s Greenwich and King streets.
Prior to European colonization, the stream provided water for a Lenape
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settlement, and both the settlement itself and the entire region between the Minetta
Brook and the Hudson shore were called Sapokanican.
In the New Amsterdam period, from 1624‐1664, the waterway was known as
Bestavaar’s Kill (Alternative spellings: Bestevaer’s Kill or Bestavors Rivulet) and the
name of the region was changed from Sapokanican to Nortwyck. Wouter Van
Twiller, who became the second director‐general of New Amsterdam in 1633, took
the entire area (present‐day Greenwich Village and more) as his personal tobacco
farm and built his house on high ground at near the present‐day intersection of 8th
Street and Macdougal Street, but was recalled from his post only five years later.1
In the British period, after 1664, the land in the watershed of Bestavaar’s Kil
or the Minetta Brook passed to other large landowners, and the waterway
functioned as the eastern border of the properties. By about 1727, “there was a
flourishing village there and the English had begun to call it Greenwich,” and the
village “was then connected with the city by a good road, nearly identical with
Greenwich Street.”2 The growing village continued to coexist with major landowners
such as Peter Warren, who owned a farm encompassing much of the Minetta
watershed during the first half of the 18th century. 3 In 1760, another mansion was
built by the Commissary of the British troops at a site just south of the Minetta
Brook’s outlet, near Charlton Street. Both the area and the home were called
Richmond Hill, and it was occupied in turn by George Washington, John Adams, and
Aaron Burr.4
Connnecting Greeenwich Village to New York City, which in the 17th and 18th
centuries remained at the distant southern tip of Manhattan, was the first step in a
1 Irene Tichenor, "The History of the Judson House Plot Up to 1899," in Remembering Judson House, ed. Elly
Dickason and Jerry Dickason, 3‐7 (New York: Judson Memorial Church, 2000).
2 John Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1902). P. 85
3 I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498‐1909 (New York: Arno Press, 1967). Vol 3, page
865‐867. Warren’s farm is described as “comprising at first about three hundred acres, extended along the
Hudson River from the present Christopher Street north to about 21st Street, with an Irregular eastern boundary,
formed by the Minetta Brook (which ran between the present Fifth and Sixth Avenues) and the Bowery Lane,
now Broadway.” According to Stokes’ analysis, he apparently acquired the land in various pieces between 1731
and 1746; it passed to his wife after his death in 1752 and then was divided into three portions and passed to his
three daughters and their British husbands in 1787.
4 George Everett Hill and George E., Jr. Waring, "Old Wells and Watercourses of the Island of Manhattan," in
Historic New York: Being the first Series of the Half Moon Papers, ed. MW Goodwin, 303‐370 (New York City: GP
Putnam's sons, 1898). P. 336‐340
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the long process that would eventually lead to the disappearance of the Minetta
from the surface of the city. The road to Greenwich passed over both Lispenard’s
Meadows (the swamp along Canal Street) and the Minetta Brook outlet—also
swampy—on a combination of causeways and small bridges.5 Although the exact
dates of the first permanent bridges are unknowable, I. N. Phelps Stokes, in his
encyclopedic Iconography of Manhattan Island, notes that the “Bridge on Greenwich
Road over Bestevaar’s Killitje,” located at the present‐day intersection of Greenwich
Street with King Street, was erected in the “early XVIIIth century” and “demolished
and the road filled 1809.”6 This date of 1809 when the bridge was demolished could
have been one of the earliest replacements of the natural river channel with a
culvert flowing underneath the road, although the process may have also started
earlier. Regardless of the start date, however, the culverting of the river was ongoing,
and by about 1817 the brook disappears from maps between Bleeker Street and the
river.7
Stokes also notes another bridge across the Minetta, shown on a 1766 map,
and located where Monument Lane crossed the stream—close to the present‐day
North Washington Square, just west of Fifth Avenue.8 The land that is now
Washington Square Park itself was a low‐lying and marshy area at the time,
saturated with water from the Minetta and from underground springs. Between
1789 and the early 1790s, it was purchased by New York City and drained, and it
was then used as a potter’s field for the next two decades.9
The region of Greenwich Village and the Minetta watershed grew in
population and urbanized quite rapidly in the very early 19th century. Population
growth was aided by fear of yellow fever epidemics in lower Manhattan, which
drove some New Yorkers north to Greenwich, and infrastructure development was
5 John Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1902). P. 85
6 I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498‐1909 (New York: Arno Press, 1967). Vol 3, P.
925.
7 Plan of the City of New‐York: The greater part from actual survey made expressly for the purpose (the rest
from authentic documents). Thos. H. Poppleton, City Surveyor, 1817. [Map] Prior & Dunning, No. 111 Water
Street, New York
8 I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498‐1909 (New York: Arno Press, 1967). Vol 3, P.
925
9 Irene Tichenor, "The History of the Judson House Plot Up to 1899," in Remembering Judson House, ed. Elly
Dickason and Jerry Dickason, 3‐7 (New York: Judson Memorial Church, 2000).
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accelerated by the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan for laying out the Manhattan street
grid. When the grid was implemented, the already‐developed area west of Sixth
Avenue received an exemption, and today Greenwich Village’s streets remain offset
from the rest of Manhattan’s street layout. Outside of Greenwich Village, however,
the unforgiving geometry of the plan accelerated the covering‐over of natural
drainage routes elsewhere in the Minetta watershed.
By 1824, Fifth Avenue was opened up to 13th Street, and by 1830 it was
developed up to 21st Street, suggesting the brook had been relegated at that point to
sewers and culverts for its entire length.
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The Minetta Brook Today
Some clues to Minetta Brook remain visible today. The stream itself is utterly
buried, but parts of the visible built environment still reflect, in various ways, the
past in which the stream was part of the surface topography.
Most obviously, the names of Minetta Lane and Minetta Street reference the
stream. The short Minetta Street follows the old course of the stream; Minetta Lane
runs perpendicular to it. Three tiny city parks also celebrate the brook: Minetta
Triangle, Minetta Green, and Minetta Playground. Each of these parks have signage
explaining the history and context of the stream that they reference.
Washington Square Park does not have any obvious signs of the old
watercourse. Between the reconstruction of the park itself in the mid‐19th century,
after the Minetta had already been buried, and the extensive real estate
development that took place around it during the 19th century, the park’s landscape
been changed many times from its original pre‐urban topography and natural form.
Interestingly, there is a relatively common urban myth that the fountain in the park
is supplied, or originally was supplied, by the Minetta water; this is incorrect, and in
fact the fountain was installed about 1850, well after the brook was put
underground in tunnels where it combined with sewage and other pollutants from
street runoff.
Other parts of the built environment however do still retain physical
integrity from the time period when the Minetta was above‐ground, and in some
cases the physical structures clearly reflect aspects of the stream that was once
there. A 19th‐century building at 45 W 12th Street, for example, just north of where
the intersection of the two branches of the stream was located, shows the imprint of
the stream. This east side of this building was built at a sharp angle along the line of
the stream (the western branch of the Minetta). The angle is obvious today at the
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front corner of the building, though today it abuts an apartment building and there
is no trace of the old stream except the occasional sink‐hole forming in the asphalt
of 12th Street.
Most importantly, in terms of the continued existence and expression of the
Minetta Brook, the groundwater and springs that supplied it still produce water in
the same areas. Both this flowing water, and the ways that the built environment
has responded to it, are part of the city today. The gravity‐fed sewer system, for
example, not only receives the still‐flowing groundwater, but also follows to some
degree or another the topography of the original watershed. Modeling the
watershed digitally allows an examination of this alignment, providing a closer
understanding of the relationship between past and present in the city today.
The underground river is a case where the past both literally and figuratively
underlies the present‐day city, and that underlying history is signified at various
places along the Minetta’s route. In the lobby of the building at #2 Fifth Avenue, for
example, a “fountain”—really a clear pipe sunk into a wellshaft—is sometimes filled
with groundwater that seems to be from one of the same sources that supplied the
stream. A similar fountain was built in the lobby of an apartment hotel at 33
Washington Square East in 1930. An article in the New York Times from that year
announced that the “Minetta Brook [is] Out Again;”
However, this time the persistent stream was aided by pipes… Sharply
at 2:30 P.M., a signal was given, a faucet in the basement of the
building was turned and the basin of the fountain began to fill. Grover
A. Whalen made the speech of dedication. The brook has not always
waited for faucets to be turned. It has been the bane of builders in the
Greenwich Village section' for many years… Minetta Water…still flows
underground into the Hudson, fed by underground springs, as nearly
as can be determined.10
10 “Minetta Brook Out Again, But This Time Historic Old Stream Will Flow From Fountain.” New York Times,
December 4, 1930.
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These underground springs do indeed continue to flow, and as early as the
late 19th century, for example, a flooded basement along Sixth Avenue near 10th
Street was revealed to be the work of the buried Minetta Brook.11 Such
interpretations often require expert analysis, and in this case the expert was General
Viele, the famous hydrologist of the 19th century; this need for experts reflects the
difficulty city residents often have in attaching individual phenomena (such as
flooded basements) to larger historical contexts (such as the Minetta Brook) when
that larger context is invisible or forgotten. One potential value of modeling the
Minetta or other vanished urban waterways, therefore, is the possibility of making
them apparent again, and providing a conceptual construct to the urban public that
makes sense of otherwise disparate phenomena such as unexpected flooding.
Similarly, visualizing hidden water flows can help make somewhat abstract
concepts—such as aquifer replenishment—much more visible and real.
The fact that the underground flow of the Minetta waters has been
continually forgotten is apparent in the fact of its repeated unexpected discovery in
the process of construction. One of the most notable incidents occurred in 1901,
during the construction of the Simpson, Crawford & Simpson Department Store
Building at 641 Sixth Avenue, near one of the original sources of the brook; 27 feet
below the surface, the contractor encountered a heavy flow estimated at 1,750
gallons per minute.12 Similar events have occurred during construction throughout
the 20th century, and in some cases this provides an ongoing—if unplanned—
opportunity to see the Minnetta Brook flow once again. The NYU Law School Library,
for example, at the south‐west corner of Washington Square Park, has a continuous
flow of groundwater from an underground spring into its basement, at an estimated
rate of 2‐5 gallons per minute in dry weather, continually pumped from a sump into
a nearby sewer.
11 “Sources of Great Danger: Underground Streams as Breeders of Contagion.” New York Times, January 17, 1892.
12 “Minetta Brook’s Course.” New York Times, March 27, 1901.
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Sewerage Development
New York City’s first covered sewer was the Canal Street Sewer, completed
around 1819. As with many early urban sewers, the pre‐existing waterway had
effectively already become a sewer and the culverting of the channel was a response
to this fact rather than an expression of long‐range urban planning. During this
period, neither sanitary sewage disposal nor street drainage were addressed in any
comprehensive way. Cesspools remained the dominant method for disposal of
excrement.
Issues of street drainage (for rainwater or groundwater) were also
exacerbated as the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan was implemented in following years,
as the grading of streets in accordance with planned grid often involved the filling of
the natural drainage routes that had previously existed. General Viele, the civil
engineer notable for having created a hydrological reference map of Manhattan
Island in the late 19th century, noted in regard to the implementation of the
Commissioner’s Plan that:
It is seriously to be regretted that the engineers who laid out this city
did not know that the streams then observable on the island were fed
by perennial springs. They believed that they had to deal only with
surface water, and so, while providing a good system of sewers, they
made the fatal mistake of not providing a system of drains to carry off
this living water that is constantly bubbling out of the rocks on which
the city is built, and which will find an outlet somehow. 13
Thus, “until 1849 the sewers and drains of New York were built without
definite plan, the larger and more important by the Street Commissioner, the
smaller ones, usually rectangular culverts with stone sides and tops, by property
owners to drain their lots.”14
13 Metropolitan Sewerage Commission of New York, Sewerage and sewage disposal in the metropolitan district of
New York and New Jersey: Report, April 30, 1910. (New York: New York City, 1910). P. 218.
14 Metropolitan Sewerage Commission of New York, Sewerage and sewage disposal in the metropolitan district of
New York and New Jersey: Report, April 30, 1910. (New York: New York City, 1910). P. 218.
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The opening of the Croton Aqueduct in 1842 had an important impact on
sewerage in the city, and helped to provide the water flow necessary to flush
gravity‐fed sewers. (Without steady flow, deposits build up and clog the pipes, and
sewers stagnate and release foul odors.) Prior to 1849 only about 70 miles of sewers
had been built in the city, but in 1849 the Croton Aqueduct Department was
created—replacing the Board of Water Supply Commissioners and the Croton
Aqueduct Board—and this Croton Aqueduct Department was also placed in charge
of the Bureau of Pipes and Sewers.15 16 The general construction of the sewers built
during the following decade was described as follows in a 1910 history:
Many of the earlier brick sewers built about 1850 were circular in
section, about 4 feet in diameter, and laid with lime mortar.
Frequently no mortar was used in the invert, or lower portion, in
order that the sewage might soak away into the ground as much as
possible.17
A few of the sewer lines that exist today in the Minetta Brook watershed area
are shown on DEP maps as being circular in cross section and 48” inches in
diameter (as well as some 42” and others 54” in diameter). It is unclear, though
probable, that these are in fact remnants from this earliest period of New York City’s
sewer construction.
By approximately 1860, the Croton Aqueduct Department began using an
egg‐shaped cross‐section for sewers, with the narrower end downward, with “most
of those built during that period being about 4 feet high and 3 feet or 2 feet 8 inches
wide.”18 A significant number—approximately 20%—of the sewers currently extant
in the Minetta Creek watershed area fit this description, and although exact
construction dates have not been determined it is likely that they date from the
1860‐1880 period. This egg‐shaped section was adopted because it provides a
15 Ibid. P. 219
16 Two years later, in 1851, the name of this bureau was changed to the Bureau of Sewers and Drains. The
Bureau had “complete control over the construction of sewers after the authorization of their construction by
the Board of Aldermen.” (Ibid, p. 218)
17 Metropolitan Sewerage Commission of New York, Sewerage and sewage disposal in the metropolitan district of
New York and New Jersey: Report, April 30, 1910. (New York: New York City, 1910). P. 219.
18 Ibid. P. 219
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narrower, faster‐flowing channel at times of ordinary or low flow, thus helping to
avoid the buildup of deposits within the sewers, while still providing a high flow
capacity when needed.
As in the earlier period, these egg‐shaped sewers were generally built of
brick. Vitrified pipe sewers were introduced in New York City in 1864, used for
smaller sewer lines, and helped the rapid expansion of the city’s sewage system in
the following decades
By 1865, there were approximately 206 miles of sewers in Manhattan, but
still “[m]ost of these [had been] built without any definite plan by private
individuals or by the City; the records of their locations, sizes and grades [were]
consequently incomplete and unreliable.” 19 Because they had not been built with a
view toward a comprehensive system, they were “often of improper sizes and
materials, on bad foundations and out of line and grade.” 20 That year, the State
Legislature passed a general Sewerage Act with provisions for planning the
comprehensive sewerage of New York City south of 155th Street. Nearly 60 miles of
sewers were constructed in just the next five years, prior to 1870, when the
Department of Public Works was created and given control of the sewers
(superseding the Croton Aqueduct Department).21
In 1888, the sewers within the Minetta watershed provided the basis for a
new analysis of the “proper sizes for storm water sewers in New York.” 22 In that
year, the Department of Public Works commissioned a report by Mr. Rudolph
Hering on the condition of the city’s sewers, and the final report, presented in 1889,
“contained much original data…the diagrams being based on continuous discharge
measurements of the Sixth avenue sewer at Third street, which drained 221 acres of
the Minetta lane district.”23 This sewer, existing today, is 8’6” high and 8’10” wide,
and, as reported in 1910, at that time the data obtained from it still “form[ed] the
19 Ibid. P. 218
20 Ibid. P. 218
21 Ibid. P. 218‐222
22 Ibid. P. 218
23 Ibid. P. 219
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basis of present estimates of quantities of storm water to be taken care of by sewers
in Manhattan.”24
In 1897, just prior to the Consolidation of New York City, responsibility for
sewerage was taken from the Department of Public Works and given to the
Commissioner of Sewers. After the 1898 consolidation, under the Charter of Greater
New York, “sewers were placed under the supervision of the Borough Presidents,
with a Superintendent of Sewers and Chief Engineer of Sewers in each borough.” 25
As constructed or rebuilt in 1882, the mainline sewer draining the majority
of the Minetta Creek watershed was composed of twin channels, each 5’ wide by 9’6”
tall, for a total equivalent cross‐sectional area to a 10’8” diameter pipe. This sewer
passed from Sixth Avenue under Carmine Street and then Clarkson Street before
reaching the Hudson. Today, the twin‐channel 5’x9’6” remains extant under a
section of Carmine and Clarkson street near Sixth Avenue. Closer to the river, under
Clarkson Street, map data indicates that the current sewer line is a channel 6’3” high
and 12’ wide, suggesting that the original 1882 sewer has been replaced or
extended in that section sometime since 1910.26
From 1882 through the early 20th century, this sewer functioned as a
combined sewage outfall, conveying both the sanitary sewage and the street runoff
and drainage directly into the Hudson river. As of 1910, the outfall drained 468
acres of land in Manhattan; this made it one of the largest of the 172 sewer outfalls
that together drained the approximately 14,000 acres of the island.27 This Clarkson
Street sewer does follow the approximate course of the old Minetta Brook,
suggesting that the growth of the New York City sewer system during the 19th
century did follow the natural topography of the pre‐existing Minetta watershed. It
is interesting to note that most of the other largest sewer outfalls in New York in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the East 110th Street Sewer (draining 700
acres, the largest area of any sewer outfall in 1910, through a sewer tunnel with an
equivalent circular section of 10’ diameter); the East 49th Street Sewer (draining
24 Ibid. P. 219
25 Ibid. P. 220
26 A 1910 identified the sewer line under Clarkson as original 1882 construction.
27 Ibid. P. 220‐226 (“Table 1: Outlets of the Sewers of Manhattan”)
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616 acres in 1910, with an equivalent circular section of 8’9”); and the Canal Street
Sewer (draining 242 acres in 1910, with an equivalent circular section of 13’) were
also at points that had originally been the outlets of natural waterways.28 While
intuitively obvious that a gravity‐fed sewer system would follow the pre‐existing
contours of the landscape, it is at the same time interesting to note how closely this
completely fabricated system of urban infrastructure is linked with the pre‐urban
topography and history of Manhattan Island.
28 Ibid. P. 220‐226 (“Table 1: Outlets of the Sewers of Manhattan”)
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Methodology
Factors affecting the Minnetta Brook in 1782:
• Incoming water:
o Rainfall [variable]
o Groundwater [Assume: 4,000 gallons per minute. That’s about the
equivalent of a 4’ diameter pipe flowing at about ½ mile per hour,
which is my estimate of what the Minetta was like on a decent dry day.
Near one of the sources in 1901 a contractor also hit an underground
flow of 1,750 gpm in 1901. Also assume evenly spread throughout
watershed, just like rainfall.]
Flow rate = (1/4)*π*((pipe diameter)^2)*Velocity
http://www.1728.com/flowrate.htm
• Flow factors:
o Surface elevations (historic DEM) –
o Porosity (historic) [Assume: 0]
Factors affecting the Minnetta Brook TODAY:
• Incoming water:
o Rainfall [variable]
o Groundwater [Assume: 4,000 gallons per minute, unchanged.]
o NYC Water Supply Water from Croton, Catskill, and Delaware
Watersheds [Assume: (136 gallons per day)*(population within
watershed area) Note: 136 gal/day = .0944 gal/minute]
Based on 136 gallons per capita consumption of water in NYC as of
2006. This is based purely on total NYC consumption divided by total
population, but it’s the general number used by DEP.
For now, we assume 100% of water consumed is released into the
sewers. That’s not accurate, but will work as an initial number.]
• Flow factors:
o Surface elevations (Current DEM)
o Porosity (historic) [Assume: 0]
o Sewerage elevations (models from DEP data)