19th century New Yorkers thought the Croton water supply would last forever, but by the 1880s it was clear that a larger supply was needed. Planners eventually settled on the Catskills as a source, and built the Catskill aqueduct to take water to the Kensico and Hillview reservoirs and then to the city via tunnels. City Tunnel No. 1, completed in 1917, extends the Catskill Aqueduct, traveling from the Bronx to Manhattan and then to Brooklyn, where it ends under Fort Greene Park, not far from the site of this shaft. A much more impressive structure was built on the Manhattan side, where a mechanism allowed for workers to descend to the tunnel to turn off the water to Brooklyn. Never used, it was destroyed in the early 2000s.
The street grid was disrupted to add an entrance to the Manhattan Bridge near Sands Street, but the shaft remains, unnoticed between street and highway ramp.
All photographs copyright Stanley Greenberg.
Stanley Greenberg is the author of Time Machines (2011), Under Construction (2010), Waterworks: A Photographic Journey Through New York’s Hidden Water System (2003), and Invisible New York: The Hidden Infrastructure of the City (1998). Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, and lives there now.