🏘️ Croton Local History
Blog posts, articles, and community histories by local historians
1,661Passages
207Source Documents
Sources
Passages
crotonhistory.org
1836 to Today The Distributing Reservoir at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, now the site of the New York Public Library. Click to enlarge. Here are links to the other interactive maps: What Did Chicago Look Like Before the Great Fire? When Real Estate
44 words
crotonhistory.org
Plotters Planned Out Denver Before There Could Be a Los Angeles, There Had to be Water When the Lincoln Memorial was Underwater What Did San Francisco Look Like in the Mid-1800s? For information on georeferencing, see this Wikipedia article . ↩ Share
42 words
crotonhistory.org
this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens
46 words
crotonhistory.org
in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Published September 2, 2013
19 words
crotonhistory.org
Click the image to enlarge. Here’s a nice Colortone postcard of the New Croton Dam. This card was published by the Ruben Publishing Co. in Newburgh, N.Y. and printed by “C.T. Art” (Curt Teich Art). The code number in the lower right corner dates this
45 words
crotonhistory.org
card to 1939. 1 For a guide to dating Curt Teich cards, see here . ↩ Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window)
50 words
crotonhistory.org
X Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Post card Published October 9, 2013
35 words
crotonhistory.org
The front page of the Dollar Weekly , October 22, 1842. Click image to enlarge. This month is the 171st anniversary of the “greatest jubilee that New York or America has ever boasted—a jubilee in commemoration of the greatest blessing that a city
43 words
crotonhistory.org
like New York could receive—the introduction of an abundant supply of pure and wholesome water.” 1 The jubilee took place on October 14, 1842 and the quote is from the coverage a week later in the October 22 issue of the Dollar Weekly , a short-lived
46 words
crotonhistory.org
newspaper that the publishers, Herrick & Ropes, modestly proclaimed was “The cheapest paper ever published! The miracle of the age! One dollar a year, with two hundred original engravings!” In a way they were right to call their paper “the miracle of
42 words
crotonhistory.org
the age” because they published the kind of engravings that made Harper’s Weekly famous when it was started fifteen year later. The highlight of this issue is the 16-inch wide engraving across the front page that illustrates the “great procession
40 words
crotonhistory.org
celebrating the introduction of the Croton water into the city of New York.” Photography was not in widespread use in 1842 so there are very few images depicting the jubilee parade and none of them are quite like this wonderful panorama. If they left
44 words
crotonhistory.org
us nothing else, we could remember Herrick & Ropes as innovative publishers who paved the way for the great illustrated weekly newspapers. But at the same time they were publishing two other papers—another weekly, The Atlas , and a daily paper, The
42 words
crotonhistory.org
Aurora . On March 28, 1842 Herrick & Ropes announced in the Aurora that they had “secured the services” of a “bold, energetic and original writer as their leading editor” who would “carry out their original design of establishing a sound, fearless
42 words
crotonhistory.org
and independent daily paper.” His name was Walter Whitman, but we know him today as the poet, Walt Whitman. 2 Click the images below to see all the Aqueduct-related images published in the October 22 issue. The 16-inch long woodcut of the parade was
44 words
crotonhistory.org
engraved in three sections and bolted together. A detail from the parade woodcut. A detail from the parade woodcut. A detail from the parade woodcut. A woodcut showing what became known as High Bridge, which was then under construction, A view of
42 words
crotonhistory.org
what is now called the Old Croton Dam. The Distributing Reservoir was located where the New York Public Library and Bryant Park are today. The fountain in Central Park, which was then under construction. Dollar Weekly , October 22, 1842. ↩ Whitman’s
42 words
crotonhistory.org
relationship with the publishers did not end well. By May 1842 he was no longer associated with the paper, which referred to him as “the laziest fellow who ever undertook to edit a city paper.” That summer Whitman used his new position at a different
45 words
crotonhistory.org
newspaper to exact revenge. “There is in this city,” he wrote, “a trashy, scurrilous, and obscene daily paper, under the charge of two dirty fellows, as ever were able by the force of brass, ignorance of their own ignorance, and a coarse manner of
44 words
crotonhistory.org
familiarity, to push themselves among gentlemen.” For more see Walt Whitman’s America by David S. Reynolds. ↩ Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
43 words
crotonhistory.org
Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Croton Water Celebration High
41 words
crotonhistory.org
Bridge (Harlem River) Walt Whitman Published October 9, 2013 October 21, 2013
12 words
crotonhistory.org
A short prose piece by Walt Whitman from his 1882 collection Specimen Days & Collect . Hudson River Railroad tracks running through Sing Sing Prison. Stereoview by G. W. Patch. It was a happy thought to build the Hudson river railroad right along the
44 words
crotonhistory.org
shore. The grade is already made by nature; you are sure of ventilation one side—and you are in nobody’s way. I see, hear, the locomotives and cars, rumbling, roaring, flaming, smoking, constantly, away off there, night and day—less than a mile
41 words
crotonhistory.org
distant, and in full view by day. I like both sight and sound. Express trains thunder and lighten along; of freight trains, most of them very long, there cannot be less than a hundred a day. At night far down you see the headlight approaching, coming
46 words
crotonhistory.org
steadily on like a meteor. The river at night has its special character-beauties. Shad fishermen starting out with their net. Photo by Clifton Johnson from his book The Picturesque Hudson . The shad fishermen go forth in their boats and pay out their
43 words
crotonhistory.org
nets—one sitting forward, rowing, and one standing up aft dropping it properly—marking the line with little floats bearing candles, conveying, as they glide over the water, an indescribable sentiment and doubled brightness. I like to watch the tows
38 words
crotonhistory.org
at night, too, with their twinkling lamps, and hear the husky panting of the steamers; or catch the sloops’ and schooners’ shadowy forms, like phantoms, white, silent, indefinite, out there. Then the Hudson of a clear moonlight night. View from the
41 words
crotonhistory.org
Tunnel near Garrisons. Hudson River. From the stereoview published by E. & H. T. Anthony & Co. But there is one sight the very grandest. Sometimes in the fiercest driving storm of wind, rain, hail or snow, a great eagle will appear over the river,
45 words
crotonhistory.org
now soaring with steady and now overhended wings—always confronting the gale, or perhaps cleaving into, or at times literally sitting upon it. It is like reading some first-class natural tragedy or epic, or hearing martial trumpets. The splendid bird
39 words