Ridgewood Reservoir
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Ridgewood Reservoir was built in 1858, by the City of Brooklyn, New York, which was rapidly outgrowing its local water supplies and the new reservoir at Mount Prospect. The reservoir, a double reservoir on a hilltop near Evergreen Cemetery in nearby Ridgewood, Queens, is sealed by puddling with clay and paving with stones.
Water from western Queens County being insufficient to keep the reservoir full, a covered, vaulted aqueduct or conduit, a little more than three feet wide and four high (1 x 1.2 meters) was built to bring water several miles from Baisley Pond to a pumping station at Atlantic Avenue and Chestnut Street near the City Line. There, steam powered pumps forced the water up through a reinforced tube into the high reservoir whence it was distributed. A third chamber or reservoir was built in 1863.
Baisley Pond failing to keep up with growing demand, new collection reservoirs were built including Hempstead Lake, a new artificial lake in the Town of Hempstead in south central Queens County (now southwestern Nassau County). Volume from Hempstead Lake was disappointing, due to the permeability of the sandy Long Island soil.
In subsequent decades the Brooklyn Water Works system was repeatedly expanded by adding wells and collection reservoirs, extending the conduit farther east, and adding pumps. Farmers in southern Queens County complained that Brooklyn's thirst was lowering the water table. Late in the century, the conduit was extended to a large pumping station in Massapequa, some 30 miles (50 km) away. Efforts to extend it farther were thwarted by legislation protecting the water of Suffolk County. At the end of the century Brooklyn merged with the City of Greater New York, thus gaining access to the superior New York City water supply system. As the Catskill and Delaware water systems expanded, the Brooklyn system, being obsolete, fell into standby status. Force Tube Avenue, Conduit Avenue, and Sunrise Highway were built, in part, atop the water conduit or within its right of way, early in the 20th century.
Expensive to operate because of the need for pumping, the Ridgewood Reservoir was last used in a drought in the 1960s, after which it fell into disuse and a small birch forest, one of few on Long Island, grew up inside, along with a grassy marsh in the center. At the end of the century it became part of Highland Park, with a bicycling trail around its perimeter, part of the 40 mile Brooklyn-Queens Greenway. The Jackie Robinson Parkway passes near the north side. Some of the Nassau County pumping stations including the one at Milburn (now Baldwin) survived into the 21st century as ruins. Valley Stream State Park, Hempstead Lake State Park, and other South Shore lakes and parks were originally Brooklyn Water Works reservoirs.
[edit] External links
- LI Oddities Brooklyn Water Works
- Brooklyn Water Works 28 minute documentary
- Ridgewood Reservoir is at coordinates Coordinates:
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