The Collect Pond
The Collect Pond or Fresh Water Pond was a
body of fresh water near the southern end of Manhattan in New York City,
occupying approximately 48 acres and as deep as 60 feet For the first two hundred years of European
settlement of Manhattan, Collect Pond was the main water supply for the growing
city. The pond was fed by an underground spring A stream flowed north out of
the pond and then west through a salt marsh.
In the 18th century, the pond was used as a picnic area
during summer, and a skating rink during the winter. However, industries began
to use the water and dump waste there. These included tanneries, breweries,
ropewalks, and slaughterhouses. By the late 18th century, the pond was already
considered “a very sink and common sewer.
Proposals were made to solve the problem, including the
conversion of the pond to a park and the creation of a canal between the East
and Hudson Rivers. In the end, it was filled in from land removed from nearby
Bayard's Mount, the highest hill in lower Manhattan.
Inventor John Fitch was an instrument maker working in
the later part of the 18th century. As an early pioneer of steam navigation,
Fitch tested several steamboats on the Delaware River between 1785 and 1788.
Fitch’s real success, however, occurred a few years later when, in 1796 he
tested another ship equipped with a paddle wheel on New York’s Collect Pond. On
the boat with him was fellow inventor Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston, who
was the first Chancellor of New York and a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, and 16-year-old John Hutchings steering. Though Fulton seems to
have received most of the credit for the era of steam navigation it is hoped, that
some light is shed on Fitch’s contributions as well.
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