Bog Brook Dams and Reservoir

GENERAL

Structure/Property Name (Current and Original, if Different):  Bog Brook Dams and Reservoir

Location:  Croton Waterworks

STRUCTURE/PROPERTY

Architect/Engineer/Other Responsible Parties:  Chief Engineer Isaac Newton

Historic Use:  Dam and reservoir for the Croton System 

Present Use:  Same

Typology:  Dam/Reservoir

Period(s) of Construction:  1884-1893

Date of Decommissioning:    N/A

Date(s) of Demolition:  N/A

Structural System/Materials:  Earthen Embankment with masonry core walls; Dam 1 1340 feet long, 60 feet wide; dam 2 1956 feet long, 24 feet high; a circular tunnel ten feet in diameter, 1778 feet long, connects the two reservoirs, lined in brick, excavated entirely from bedrock 

Brief Architectural Description: See above.

MISCELLANEOUS

“Once  the New Croton Aqueduct was under construction [construction began 1884; put into use 1890; ‘substantially completed’ 1893], the commission resumed its focus on increasing water storage in the Croton drainage.  The public was skeptical about the plans for an unprecedentedly  high dam.  Even with popular support, a project of such grand scale would be years away at best, so the commission returned to Isaac Newton’s earlier strategy of building numerous smaller dams higher in the watershed.  In 1888 work began  to control the East Branch of the Croton River.  The was was inpounded by three different structures that became the fifth, sixth, and seventh dams to be built by New York City in the Croton watershed.  These dams backup water into two drainages, the East Branch and the Bog Brook, fill two separate valleys, and create the third and fourth reservoirs of the Croton system:  the East Branch (first called the Sodom) Reservoir and the Bog Brook Reservoir” (Water-works, 78).

 SOURCES

Kevin Bone, “The Extension of the Croton System,”  Water-works:  The Architecture and Engineering of the New York City Water Supply, Kevin Bone, ed. (New York:  The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union and The Monacelli Press, 2006

FICHE PREPARED BY

Jørgen G. Cleemann