When the Aqueduct was undertaken, New-York numbered but two hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants, so that the supply provided was a magnificent gift to the future. The work was completed within five years, years of great commercial difficulty; and what is more remarkable, the whole cost came within the estimate of the chief engineer. The abundance of water may be guessed from the fact that two of the city fountains throw away more water than would suffice for the consumption of a large city. The solidity of the structure is such that none but slight repair can be needed for centuries to come.[10]
This great work was opened, with appropriate ceremonies, and a splendid civic festival, on the 14th of October, 1842. The British consul, in accepting the invitation of the Common Council, to assist at this festival, justly remarked, "Tyrants have left monuments which call for admiration, but no similar work of a free people, for magnitude and utility, equals this great enterprise." Public feeling was very warm on this occasion. Of the procession of the trades, &c., which was three hours passing a given point, an enthusiastic citizen declared in print, that he "watched and scrutinized it closely, and could discover neither a drunkard nor a fool from first to last." It might be a difficult matter to decide on the moral and intellectual condition of the individuals composing such a procession, but we may concede that drunkards and fools are not the persons most likely to join in rejoicing for the introduction of pure water without stint or measure.
The great Aqueduct is forty-one miles in length, commencing with a dam across the Croton river, six miles above its mouth. This raises the water one hundred and sixty-six feet above tide level, forming a lake or reservoir of four hundred acres in extent, containing five hundred million gallons, above the level that would allow the Aqueduct to discharge thirty-five million gallons per day. From the Croton Dam to Harlem River, something less than thirty-three miles, the Aqueduct is an uninterrupted conduit of hydraulic masonry, of stone and brick; the greatest interior width, seven feet five inches; the greatest height, eight feet five inches; the floor an inverted arch. The commissioners and chief engineers passed through its whole length on foot, as soon as it was completed; and, when the water was admitted, traversed it again in a boat built for the purpose. It crosses the Harlem River by a bridge of stone, fourteen hundred and fifty feet long, and one hundred and fourteen feet above high-water mark. At the Receiving Reservoir forty miles from the Dam, the masonry gives place to iron pipes, through which the water is conveyed two miles further, to the distributing reservoir, from which point it runs, by means of several hundred miles of pipes, to every corner of the city. On the line of the Aqueduct are one hundred and fourteen culverts, and sixteen tunnels, and ventilators occur at the distance of one mile apart throughout the route. The Receiving Reservoir covers thirty-five acres, and contains one hundred and fifty million imperial gallons. The Distributing Reservoir has walls forty-nine feet in height, and contains twenty million gallons. The supply to each citizen is at present almost unlimited, and afforded at a very moderate annual rate. The managers complain to the Common Council of the enormous waste during the summer, when "sixty imperial gallons each twenty-four hours to every inhabitant," are delivered. But even at this enormous rate the quantity is ample, and it can be increased at will by new reservoirs. No decent house is now constructed without a bath, an advantage to the health and comfort of the city, hardly to be over-rated. Fountains adorn almost all the public places of any importance, and although in few instances as yet dignified by sculpture, these tastes and glimpses of Nature are in themselves invaluable, offering to the people at large a continual reminder of beauty, tranquillity, and innocent pleasure in the open air. There remains yet to be added those public vats for the use of poor women in washing, that may be found in so many European towns.
The facilities afforded by this abundance of water for the extinguishment of fires, are such as can hardly be over-rated. We have no space for details on this point, nor does it need. It will easily appear that, with an unlimited supply of water, and plenty of fire-plugs, a few moments suffice to bring into action whatever is needed in case of conflagration—a glorious contrast to the tardy succor of former days, when water was laboriously pumped from the rivers on either side the city, and conveyed by means of hose to the scene of danger. The perfection of the London Fire Brigade is yet to be accomplished for New-York; but promptness, or rather zeal of service, distinguishes the corps of firemen, who make their business a passion, and the perfection of their instruments their pride and glory. They receive no remuneration except exemption from military and jury duty.
After these few words on the supply of pure and life-preserving water, we may turn, by no very violent transition, to the facilities extended by New-York to her children in the matter of education,—a point on which she is naturally and justly somewhat vainglorious. The number of public, and absolutely free schools, is one hundred and ninety-nine; embracing fifteen schools for the instruction of colored children. More than one hundred thousand scholars attend in the course of the year; though the average for each day is something less than forty thousand. All is gratuitous at these schools—instruction, books, stationery, washing-apparatus, fuel, &c. Besides these, there are fifteen evening schools, for those who cannot avail themselves of the other public schools, and whose only leisure time is after the close of the labors of the day. The ages of the scholars in these schools vary from twelve to forty-five years.
This magnificent offer of instruction by the city to her children is confined to no class, country, sect, nor fortune. Every child, without exception, is received, taught, and furnished with all the requisites for a good school education. Not content with this, a free academy for the classics, modern languages, natural sciences, and drawing, was established in 1848, with fourteen professors, and proper appliances, including a handsome and commodious building. This academy receives male pupils from the common schools, after due examination; and retains them for a four years' course, or longer, if desirable. It is contemplated to establish a free high school for females, on a corresponding plan.
It is not to be supposed that the benefit of the public school system is shared only by the necessitous. The children of respectable citizens, of the plainer sort, make up a large part of the attendance. It is computed that only about twenty thousand children of both sexes are found in private schools. There are many free schools of private charity, some of which receive by law a certain share of public money, as the school of the House of Refuge, various orphan asylums, &c., including, in all, about three thousand five hundred children. The Roman Catholics have some free schools of their own, but most Roman Catholic children are educated at the public schools. The prodigious amount of immigration (on the day on which we write, we happen to know that the number of steerage passengers arrived in the city is seventeen hundred and seventy-nine, and, on another, within a week, three thousand)—makes this provision for education doubly important; since a large portion of the hordes thus emptied on these hospitable shores are entirely unable to pay any thing for the instruction of their children.
This fact gives added lustre to the no less munificent provision by the city for the gratuitous care of the sick and indigent—a care almost monopolized by foreigners, because comparatively few Americans are in a condition to need it. All accidental cases are provided for at the New-York Hospital; the attendant physicians and surgeons of which, selected from the most eminent of the profession, give their services without pecuniary remuneration. A branch of this institution is the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane. The New-York Dispensary provides some thirty thousand patients annually with advice, medicines, and vaccination, gratis. The Almshouse Department maintains five establishments, which, together, support about seven thousand persons, and afford weekly aid to some three thousand others. The Nursery Branch of this department maintains and instructs more than a thousand children of paupers and convicts. The Institution for the care of deaf mutes has about two hundred and fifty pupils, of whom one hundred and sixty are supported at the expense of the State. The Asylum for the Blind, originally established by a few members of the Society of Friends, has about one hundred and fifty pupils. Besides these, private charity has opened refuges for almost every form of human misery and destitution, so that it may safely be said that no one of any age, sex, nation, or character need suffer, in New York, for lack of Christian kindness in its ordinary manifestations. Among these beneficent offers of relief and aid, we may mention one in particular, whose worth is not as fully appreciated by the public as that of some others, though none is more needed. The Prison Association takes care of the interests of accused persons, whose poverty and ignorance make them the easy prey of the designing and heartless; attends to them while in prison, and after their release, holds out the helping hand, and provides relief, occupation, and countenance for all those who are willing to reform. A house with matrons is provided for discharged female convicts, who are instructed and initiated into various modes of employment until they have had time to prove themselves fit to be recommended to places. The success of this most benign and difficult charity has been very encouraging.
It would be vain to attempt, in this desultory sketch, any account of the means of morals and religion in New-York. In these respects she differs but little from English commercial towns. The number of places of worship is something under three hundred, and each form of religious benevolence has its appropriate society, as elsewhere. Sabbath Schools are very popular, and attended by the children of the first citizens. An immense number of persons are associated as Sons and Daughters of Temperance, who present a strong front against that vice which turns the wise man into a fool. But as there is nothing distinctive in these and similar associations, we pass them by. A puritan tone of manners prevails; that is to say, with the mass of the well-to-do citizens, puritan manners are the beau-ideal of propriety and safety. Yet New-York is fast assuming a cosmopolitan tone which will make it difficult, before very long, to speak of any particular style of manners as prevailing. Representatives of every nation, and tongue, and kindred, and people, meeting on a footing of perfect equality of political advantages, must in time produce a social state, differing in some important particulars from any that the world has yet seen. The population of New-York will, at the past rate of increase, be in ten years greater than that of Paris, and in thirty equal to that of London. How can one speculate on a social state formed under such circumstances? The present aspect of what claims to be New-York society is certainly rather anomalous.
An exceptional American—John Quincy Adams—in some patriotic speech, mentioned, among other occasions of thankfulness to Heaven, that excellent gift, "a heritable habitation;" but there is nothing which the prosperous citizen of New-York so much despises. If he read Ruskin, he thinks the man benighted when he utters such sentiments as these: "There must be a strange dissolution of natural affection; a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught; a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our father's honor, or that our lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only * * * *. Our God is a household god, as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly, and pour out its ashes!"