New Collection Alert: The NYC Department of Environmental Protection
From the glass next to your bed to ~legend has it~ the very quality of our bagels, water is an essential part of New York life. Moreover, New York City tap water is GOOD! The New York Times called it “the champagne of drinking water,” an EPA taste test earned the city’s water the honor of “Best Tasting in the Region,” and New Yorkers will regularly brag of its quality. However, this was not always the case, and the Department of Environmental Protection’s collections help tell the story of how New York’s water came to flow out of our faucets.
The Manhattan Company was New York’s first official water provider, formed in 1799, ostensibly to supply the city with a reliable supply of clean water. However, in actuality, it had been created by Aaron Burr to circumnavigate the banking monopolies of the time using a clause in its charter that allowed it to use excess funds to start a bank (it survives today as JPMorgan Chase). Raising millions, it only used a hundred thousand dollars to build its water system, and complaints about its polluted and unreliable water emphasized its shoddy work. This led to the creation of the Croton Aqueduct System and the predecessors of the Department of Environmental Protection.
The Department of Environmental Protection oversees the city’s water supply and works to reduce air, noise, and hazardous materials pollution. Every day, it provides more than a billion gallons of water to New Yorkers, upstate and in the city, and treats as much wastewater before releasing it back clean into the city’s waterways. As such, the collection is impressive in breadth. It spans the Five Boroughs and more than a century of New York City History. Its photographers documented a plethora of subjects: from the construction of water pipes underneath New York’s streets to neighborhood storefronts and bustling sidewalks.
The DEP collections offer us a glimpse into the immense and complex structures that are vital to the city’s daily life. Sitting even deeper than subway tracks, the building of these pressure tunnels facilitated the city as it exists today. A 2003 New Yorker article remarked, “As an engineering feat, the water-tunnel system rivals the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal. Yet it has the odd distinction that almost no one will ever see it, save for the sandhogs who are building it.” Through these collections, we can begin to understand how the city’s water system came into being and the immense labor that went into its creation.
Moreover, the Department of Environmental Protection brings us through these images, offering context and background to smoky workshops and deep shafts. From the Sandhogs that built the tunnels to decommissioned structures now replaced by parks and other public spaces, the Department helps sketch out these vital histories. To learn more, dive into DEP’s archives and the fabric of the city here.
