The High Bridge Water Tower was built in 1872
Now I’ll show you which observation platforms are visited by New Yorkers who avoid tourist areas and places from the guidebook. In my case, such unusual places are also a way to explore the city with your feet, so you have another entertainment benefit. I have never been able to remember geography or historical events well if I have not been to these places myself. I wonder if I’m the only one with this “bug”, or if there are other people like this?
The High Bridge Water Tower is such an old tower built in 1872, 61 meters high, on top of which there was a reservoir of water that supplied all of New York in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Water was supplied to the tower via the High Bridge, which is not only older than the Brooklyn Bridge, but also the oldest bridge in New York! By the way, not a single car has crossed this bridge, and it was made pedestrian again relatively recently in 2015. Strange, right? The fact is that the bridge was part of an aqueduct (the idea was frankly taken from Ancient Rome) and pipes with water were laid along it, which was delivered from natural sources from the north of the state. There was generally a special (man-made) magic with this water supply - by 1842, the Americans manually, literally with pickaxes, dug a tunnel 42 kilometers long and 2.3 meters wide, making a slope of 18 centimeters every kilometer. Thus, water entered New York under the influence of its own gravity; in other words: the courier of a gallon of water to the house was Miss Gravity herself.
Why is this even important? Such a modern and large-scale project to provide the city with drinking water in the mid-19th century became one of the factors of rapid industrial and economic growth, which gave New York the opportunity to call itself one of the richest and most famous metropolises in the world. With the development of technology in 1949, the tower lost its purpose and was mothballed for a long time until it was reopened to the public in 2021, and the tour is led by real rangers
Source: Telegram channel “Token Friend”
