Wallet Card with remnants of the Croton Aqueduct

The Croton Aqueduct provided fresh water to New York City from 1842 to 1955. Incredibly, there are still manhole covers used for the Croton pipes in Manhattan that date from Civil War times.


This one from 1866 can be found near Times Square . . .

 . . . while this one from 1862 is across from the Port Authority bus station.

 The original distributing reservoir was located at 5th Avenue and 42nd street. It was torn down in the 1890s to build the New York Public Library. Part of the rock walls that date back to the reservoir can still be seen in the library's foundation in an area not generally open to the public.