Lin Manuel Miranda‘s first Broadway musical In The Heights was a critical and box office smash and won four Tony Awards — including Best Musical. And yet its success was dwarfed by Miranda’s second offering Hamilton: The Musical.
Now In The Heights comes to the big screen — both in movie theaters and on HBO Max — bringing the music, the dancing and a few of the same stars. But it also introduces the neighborhood of Washington Heights itself into the spotlight.
Washington Heights is as much an active character in In The Heights as Uznavi (Anthony Ramos) and Vanessa (Melissa Barrera) are. In particular, the film sets up a common lurking foe — gentrification — as the primary antagonist, threatening to disintegrate the vibrant mix of communities.
How do Miranda and director John M. Chu specifically bring the action and the music into the streets? And how well does the sincerity of a Broadway musical translate onto a real-life city?
HowdoIlistentheBoweryBoysMovieClub? Once you’re signed in on Patreon, you’ll see a private RSS link that can be put directly into your favorite podcast player. Even easier, it can also be played directly from the Patreonapp if you’re signed in.
Your support on Patreon assists us in producing our podcast and website and it helps as we endeavor to share our love of New York City history with the world.
Shouldyouwatchthemoviebeforeyoulistentothis episode? This podcast can be enjoyed both by those who have seen the film and those who’ve never even heard of it.
We think our take on Auntie Mame might inspire you to look for the film’s many fascinating (but easy to overlook) historical details, so if you don’t mind being spoiled on the plot, give it a listen first, then watch the movie! Otherwise, come back to the show after you’ve watched it.
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to this Bowery Boys Movie Club episode, relive the history of some of the places featured in the movie through a couple of our older shows:
The Dutch were sold on the island’s placement in the harbor at the mouth of the mighty Hudson River, making it a convenient waypoint for explorers and traders. Soon its ports had built the foundation for New York’s and later America’s financial sector.
The city’s most influential nineteenth-century businessman, Cornelius Vanderbilt, got his feet wet in business first with ferries and steamships before building his mighty railroad empire. Manhattan is surrounded by water, and yet early New York would almost be undone due to a lack of it.
Traces of the city’s centuries-long quest for clean drinking water can be found from the island’s tip to its top from the site of spring water wells down in Bowling Green to the relics of old water systems..
But no monument to freshwater dominates quite like the High Bridge, the Romanesque wonder linking Manhattan to the Bronx over the Harlem River.
Courtesy NYPL
For many decades this majestic artifact, seemingly plucked from the hills of ancient Gaul, was a vital link in that great engineering triumph: the Croton Aqueduct.
With the dense river traffic below and the icky-brackish composition of the surrounding rivers, early New Yorkers had to look beyond their waterways for drinking water. They dug cisterns and hunted down springs, but these couldn’t support the growing city.
By the late eighteenth century, Collect Pond, a so-called freshwater source located northeast of today’s City Hall, had become polluted by the industries that surrounded it, and valiant efforts to bring water from other sources during the Colonial era were dampened by debt and war.
Courtesy MCNY
In 1799 future vice president/murderer Aaron Burr hatched a grand business plan to construct a reservoir system that would distribute water via an elaborate network of hollowed-out logs. (Above: The reservoir and grandest structure of the Manhattan Company system, pictured here in 1825.)
Unfortunately for parched New Yorkers, he ended up using most of the funding for his company to establish a successful bank instead. More than a century and a half later, Manhattan Company merged with Chase National Bank to become Chase Manhattan, known today simply as Chase, one of the largest banks in the world. But his water distribution efforts ended up being woefully inadequate, and left Manhattan high and dry.
NYPL
By the 1830s the city was on the verge of a health crisis, as putrid water, poor sanitation, and all-around squalid living conditions culminated in a series of health epidemics and breakouts—which only heightened the urgent need for clean water.
In April 1835 New Yorkers were so desperate for a freshwater supply that they voted in favor of a seemingly impossible plan: a pipeline that would bring the pure waters of the Croton River, forty miles north in Westchester County, down to city residents. Only underscoring the emergency, eight months later the Great Fire of 1835 would ravage the city. The aqueduct couldn’t be constructed quickly enough.
Wikipedia
The elaborate project employed thousands of mostly Irish immigrants for many years (1837-1842). They constructed a sophisticated system of iron piping and brick masonry, which drew upon gravity to run the water through pipes and over arches, across the lush terrain of Westchester, and through the small towns that would later form the nucleus of the Bronx.
But how would the water get into the island of Manhattan? The aqueduct’s architects would need to find a way to keep it flowing across the Harlem River. Drilling technologies were not advanced enough in the 1840s to allow for a tunnel, so planners thought bigger — and higher.
NYPL
The High Bridge, at an elegant 1,450 feet long, is the oldest surviving bridge in New York. Completed in 1848, it not only brought the Croton water into the city, but it also made one heck of a statement noticed around the world.
New Yorkers had pulled off a technological miracle, borrowing engineering and architecture principles not attempted, on this scale, since the glory days of the Roman Empire. They were changing the course of one river forty-one miles away and sending its waters high above another.
“Water! Water!” wrote diarist and former mayor Philip Hone on October 12, 1842, “is the universal note which is sounded through every part of the city, and infuses joy and exultation into the masses.”
When the water was finally turned on — flowing on October 14, 1842 — the city threw a bash bigger than any since the expulsion of the British in 1783.
From there it moved through the city, eventually to City Hall Park, where good, clean water shot high into the air and down into the City Hall fountain, to the delight of the public. Imagine— enough water to waste in a fountain!
(At the time of the celebration, the High Bridge had not yet been completed, so Croton water crossed a temporary low bridge. The lofty span replaced the modest one a few years later.)
Below: New Yorkers gathering at City Hall in celebration at the completion of the Croton water system. For more information, check out our podcast on the construction of the Croton Aqueduct
NYPL
But the celebrated new system struggled to keep up with the demands of the growing city. In 1872, as masses of new arrivals from far-off lands crammed into tenements, an attractive water tower was constructed near the High Bridge to help increase the water pressure into the city.
The High Bridge and tower in 1915
By this time the High Bridge itself had turned into an attraction, a festive promenade where young gentlemen and their parasol-clinging lady companions could stroll, taking in the striking views of the still-forested landscape that surrounded them, while millions of gallons of clean water coursed beneath their feet.
MCNY
But New York, growing larger every day, would need more water. Much, much more. The introduction of indoor plumbing would require an entirely new and much larger Croton system to be built, which opened in 1890 and employed the massive Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx to satisfy the demand.
But alas, with a million flushes came the end of the High Bridge as an active part of the water system. Its function replaced by unromantic pipes buried underground, the bridge and water tower were retired from service by 1949, and soon these structures modeled after antiquity became historical relics themselves.
Below: The High Bridge, lost in a haze, photographed in 1920
MCNY
In a surprising twist given the unforgiving tendencies of city planners of the day, it was probably the beauty of the bridge and the tower that kept them from being ripped down in a bit of “progress.” Motorists along the Major Deegan Expressway took moments from their traffic jams to reflect on the possible story behind these strange and magnificent artifacts, which grew more incongruous as the modern highway system developed around them.
MCNY
Two years ago this month, the High Bridge was restored, not for the movement of water but for those visitors and their parasols (replaced by headphones, we imagine) to enjoy a one-of-a-kind perspective on their buzzing metropolis.
If you go — or rather, when you go, because you really must see it — reflect upon the water that once passed below you. It helped this city grow.
HOW TO GET TO THE HIGH BRIDGE
Mass Transit: Take the A/C or the 1 train to 168th Street, get out and walk east. OR the M101 bus takes you right up to Highbridge Park
On the Bronx side, you can take the 4 train to Mt Eden Ave but it’s a bit of a walk west. Instead take the Bx11 or Bx13 bus
“If you are entering the High Bridge from the Manhattan side, please enter Highbridge Park at West 172nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue and walk east to the High Bridge Water Tower Terrace staircase down to the bridge level. If entering from the Bronx side, enter at University Avenue and 170th Street in Highbridge, Bronx.”
Some images from my trip there in November. It’s three times as beautiful now!
Above: The Croton Reservoir in 1850, in what would soon become Central Park. (NYPL) PODCAST One of the great challenges faced by a growing, 19th-century New York City was the need for a viable, clean water supply.
We take water for granted today. But before the 1830s, citizens relied on cisterns to collect rainwater, a series of city wells drilled down to bubbling, underground springs, and, of course, the infamously polluted Collect Pond. But these sources were spreading disease and clearly inadequate for a city whose international profile was raising thanks to the Erie Canal.
The solution lay miles north of the city in the Croton River. New York engineers embarked on one of the most ambitious projects in the city’s history — to tame the Croton, funnelling millions of gallons of waters through an aqueduct down to Manhattan, where it would be collected and stored in grand, Egyptian-style reservoirs to serve the city’s needs.
This is the story of both the old and new Croton Aqueducts, and of the many landmarks that are still with us — from New York’s oldest surviving bridge to a former Bronx racetrack that was turned into a gigantic reservoir.
FEATURING: An entire town moved on logs, a famous writer’s strange musings on Irish laborers, the birth of a banking titan, and guest appearances by Isaac Newton, DeWitt Clinton, and Gouverneur Morris (or, at least, men who share those names).
A fireman’s map of New York in 1834, detailing the location of the city water supply, in cisterns and hydrants fueled by the 13th Street Reservoir. (NYPL)
Wall Street in 1847. The Manhattan Company is at 40 Wall Street. Founded by Aaron Burr ostensibly as a public works to distribute water, the Company soon shed its water responsibilities to become a full-fledged financial institution.
The Croton Dam and the start of the aqueduct system. After a partial collapse in 1841, the dam was quickly rebuilt for the opening of the entire system the following year. Today, the location of this dam is submerged under the current Croton. (NYPL)
Examples of the various tunnels created to accommodate the various topographical challenges encountered during construction. Miles of these water tunnels were constructed by a team mostly comprised of Irish laborers. (NYPL)
The glorious High Bridge, the oldest surviving bridge in New York — although much of it has been replaced and quite altered. (NYPL)
High society flocked to Jerome Park Racetrack on the weekends in the 19th century. But the park was turned into a reservoir at the beginning of the 1900s. (NYPL)
Also: please see my post from yesterday The Art of the Reservoir for pictures of some of the receiving and distributing reservoirs used in the Croton system and others through the New York region.
The Fortress of Fifth Avenue: the Murray Hill Reservoir
We share a lot of the same needs as New Yorkers of the past, but we’ve just gotten better at hiding the unpleasant ones. There are a great many mental institutions and specialized medical facilities in the city; they just aren’t in creepy, old Gothic buildings anymore. Prisons are out on islands or in nondescript beige towers flaunting only the barest hint of iron bars. We don’t dress them up in Egyptian morbidity like the famous Tombs prison of Five Points.
Our trains and our electricity reside underground, and so does our water, mostly. There are only a few places that seem to suggest that New York City’s water supply doesn’t just magically appear. Water towers dot the skyline, recalling romantic comic book landscapes, while water treatment plants, spread mostly through the outer boroughs, obviously do not. Then there are the reservoirs, the grandest of these, the Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx, is a landmarked structure of enormous, albeit hidden, beauty. It’s currently drained and sitting like the Earth’s largest off-season swimming pool.
But New Yorkers used to live with their water, contained in reservoirs meant to evoke might, sophistication and security. After all, New York only got fresh water from the Croton Aqueduct in 1842; before that, it was mostly obtained from wells, cisterns, and that nasty old Collect Pond. People were proud of their new water system, so why not show it off?
Here’s a gallery of New York’s old 19th century reservoirs. In tomorrow’s podcast, we’ll elaborate on the marvelous story on how the city got its water:
The Manhattan Company reservoir on Chambers Street was opened in 1801 and was quickly deemed inadequate. Looks lovely though. If it were still around — it was demolished in the early 1900’s — it would probably be a nightclub today.
13th Street Reservoir: Opened in 1830 as a water-pooling resource for fire fighting, it pumped water to hydrants on Broadway, the Bowery and other streets, but was little help in stopping the blazes of the Great Fire of 1835.
The Yorkville reservoir, how it looked on its opening in 1842. It was located between 79th and 86th Streets and between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Many years later, was surrounded by Central Park and was later torn down to become the park’s Great Lawn. What does remain, however, is….
…the Central Park receiving reservoir, built in the 1850s and, unlike the Yorkville, incorporated into the park’s designs. Today it’s named for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who lived nearby and frequently jogged around it.
The spectacular High Bridge, part of the Croton system, with its adjoining smaller reservoir and water tower, serving the needs of residents of Manhattan’s higher elevations.
The grand Murray Hill Reservoir, probably the most popular of the reservoirs with 19th century tourists. Situated on land that had held the fabulous Crystal Palace (destroyed by fire in 1858), the reservoir was demolished in the 1890s to make room for Bryant Park and the New York Public Library.
Brooklyn was maintained in the 19th century in two reservoirs, one in Ridgewood and the other high atop Mount Prospect, although the ultimate source of the water came from a variety of places.
An issue of Scientific American in 1906, celebrating ‘the concreting’ of the Bronx’s Jerome Park Reservoir which opened that year and contained portions of both the old and new Croton Aqueduct systems.
The 1917 Silver Lake reservoir in Staten Island was constructed, like the Central Park reservoir, to be a functional feature of a park setting.
Pictures courtesy the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum and the Library of Congress. Thanks as always to these institutions. The Scientific American can be found here.
