But all the while the city panted like a hart for its Croton water brooks, and the engineers redoubled their efforts. They decided not to wait for the High Bridge and improvised a temporary passage across and under the Harlem River. The hope was revived that water would come into the city on Independence Day.
Swarms of masons toiled at the two reservoirs until they stood at last waiting, like vast empty bowls held up to heaven for a new Deluge. The flood was to be received at the Yorkville reservoir, carried on by iron pipes to Murray’s Hill, and distributed thence by pipes about the city, with a special dispensation to the old well and tank that had been erected in 1829 at Thirteenth Street to feed the hydrants that replaced the foul old public cisterns.
Everywhere the streets and the houses were torn to pieces, pipes were laid in all directions and fountains built. The plumber was the hero of the hour.
The test of fashion was a faucet in the kitchen.
On a hot day in June the Water Commissioners and the engineers, including Harry Chalender, began a strange pilgrimage through the thirty-three miles of tunnel, for a last anxious inspection. It took them three days to make the patrol on foot.
The vents along the way for the escape of water from deep cuttings and leakages were closed once for all. And on the twenty-second of June the Croton River began its march upon New York. At five o’clock in the morning the head of the stream was admitted and on the primal tide, some eighteen inches deep, a boat was launched. The Croton Maid weighed anchor to descend upon New York with the “navigable river” from the north.
Harry Chalender made one of the four passengers on that “singular voyage” through the great pipe at the rate of a little better than a mile an hour. The “Maid” came up for air at the Harlem River the next day, a Thursday, soon after the first ripple of the water laved the borders of Manhattan Island.
The Commissioners formally notified the Mayor and Common Council that the Croton River had arrived and would proceed after a brief rest to Yorkville Reservoir.
On Monday afternoon the Governor of the State, the Lieutenant Governor, the Mayor, and other distinguished guests drew up in solemn array and greeted the “extinguishing visitor,” while the artillery fired a salute of thirty-eight guns.
When the Croton Maid sailed into the reservoir she was made grandly welcome and then presented to the Fire Department, with appropriate remarks on the “important results pecuniary and moral which may be expected to flow from the abundance of the water with which our citizens are hereafter to be supplied.”