

All was forgiven when they returned with freshly baked pies. The youngsters would inevitably get caught and reprimanded by the soldiers. “We wandered about, picking berries for mother,” recalls Madeline Kappauf in a 1987 oral history recording. Fencing, however, did not stop the local children from finding their way into the watershed. In 1907, with much opposition from Nassau County, a 72-inch steel pipeline was constructed from Ridgewood to Massapequa its easternmost pond.ĭuring World War I, the watershed was protected by soldiers the perimeter was surrounded by a wrought-iron picket fence.
Stream state property 2 trial#
The last trial awarded Reisert $6,000 for injury to his property and $8,000 for the city’s right to maintain its pumping station. His case made it to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Reisert could no longer irrigate his fields. Through relentless pumping, the stream and springs dried up. Clear Stream and its springs ran vertically through his property. Reisert’s farm bordered the nine-acre watershed. In 1900, Frederick Reisert, who owned what is now the Green Acres Mall and the community of Mill Brook, filed a $60,000 claim with NYC. Galleries are safer from surface contamination than wells. Other ponds were abandoned, too, but were re-purposed as infiltration galleries horizontally placed wells that collect groundwater from the top of the upper glacial aquifer. By then, Clear Stream Pond was shut down because of pollution and seawater invasion. Their water system was transferred to the City of New York. In 1898, Brooklyn became one of five boroughs. It carried the coal that fueled the steam-powered pumping engines.

A railroad spur, located at the foot of modern-day Midwood Street, made its way into the watershed each day. The pumping station’s 152 wells were laid out in two rows, spaced eight feet apart. The cost of the building was about $9,000 to $10,000. The masonry and roof were built by day labor. The walls are painted a delicate salmon color, relieved by bands of dark red at the window arches, and wainscoting of enameled brick, while the ceiling is a shade of turquoise between the trusses. The woodwork is oak, except for the roof. The Clear Stream station is faced with Croton brown brick. A professor, and later, the director of Columbia University’s Architecture Department, Hamlin consulted on many public buildings, designing only a few, Clear Stream Pumping Station one of themįrom the Januissue of The American Architect and Building News: He completed his education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Born in Turkey (his missionary father was a first cousin to Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln’s vice president), Alfred came to the States at 15 to study history at Amherst College and architecture at MIT. Cahill Memorial Park) and Clear Stream pumping stations opened in 18.Ĭlear Stream’s station, located north of Target on modern-day Sunrise Highway, was designed by Alfred D. Valley Stream’s Watts Pond (Mill Pond at Edward W. From 1881 through 1897, 18 pumping stations were added to the water supply. Suffolk would not permit the pumping of the Pine Barrens, so instead of going east, the waterworks went south purchasing land in southern Queens (now Nassau County) to sink driven wells. After that, however, the ponds had a hard time meeting their daily quotas. Up until the 1880s, they had done a splendid job of keeping Brooklyn hydrated: such a good job, in fact, that the borough’s population grew exponentially from more than 266,000 souls in 1860 to 566,000 in 1880. The six ponds that dotted Merrick Road from Jamaica to Rockville Centre had a strong start and a weak finish.
