New Croton Dam
The New Croton Dam ( English: New Croton Dam ) is a part of the water supply system of the city of New York and is at the Croton River, a tributary of the Hudson River in Croton-on- Hudson, about 35 km north of the city of New York. The dam of masonry was built 1892-1906.
Building
It was designed by Alphonse Fteley (1837-1903) and is 90.5 m high, 667 m long and down to the base 81 meters wide. The foundation level is 40 m below the river bed and the structure consists of 650,000 m³ masonry. The spillway is 300 m long and its total width together with the dam is 667 m. At the time of completion, the dam was the largest earth. The reservoir holds 71.9 million m³ of water. This is just a small part of the total capacity of New York's water storage system of 2.2 billion m³. Part of the water comes from transitions from other reservoirs of the Croton Watershed. From the dam the water over the New Croton Aqueduct flows to Brooklyn and Staten Iceland.
The dam has an unusual spillway, partly artificial and partly natural, which forms a waterfall on the north side of the building. At the wall base is the Croton Gorge Park.
Architectural History
Originally, there was a smaller dam, the Old Croton Dam with the Croton Lake. It was built from 1837 to 1842 and was 15 m high. By 1881 it was repaired several times. From New York was supplied with 341,000 cubic meters of water per day via an aqueduct. To meet the increasing water demand, the Aqueduct Commission appointed by New York in 1885 to build a new water supply system.
The planned dam should play with their reservoir covers an area of 51.8 km ². On the site there was among many buildings six cemeteries and more than 400 farms. Therefore, there were many protests and court rulings, until it came to damages and construction contracts. When working masons and laborers were used, which were also involved in the old dam. The construction manager John B. Goldsborough recruited masons from southern Italy.
Construction began in 1892 6.4 km below the old dam site, which was later flooded by the new reservoir. From the new New Croton reservoirs now have 760,000 to 1.14 million cubic meters of water per day over a new aqueduct, the Croton Aqueduct, are directed into the Jerome Park Reservoir in the northern Bronx.
During the construction period, the river was diverted. For a 300 m long and 60 m wide diversion channel was built north of the river. A silent film from 1900 tells the often difficult conditions.
The bridge over the spillway was replaced in 1975 and again in 2005. In 2005, she was locked because of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 for vehicle traffic. The dam has since been open only for pedestrians and emergency vehicles.