I am an Autumn child.
My resume would suggest otherwise- summer birthday, born and raised in the south, love margaritas- but alas, my mind and body simply operate better and more efficiently in colder, darker months.
I almost shed a tear the day I set out on this walk and realized it was cool enough to go out wearing leggings- my poor, chafed inner thighs could rest easy once again. In these babies, I could walk to Staten Island if I wanted to!!
(NB: I do not want to.)
Direction: Across the High Bridge
Covid Summer in Inwood and Washington Heights isn’t too different from any other. My Dominican neighbors like to be outside the minute it gets warm- sitting in chairs, playing dominos, blasting bachata from their car speakers. The only glaring changes are the masks, and the dramatically increased outdoor seating built by bars and restaurants- some beautifully adorned in floral arrangements and bordered by nicely stained wood. I pity the restaurateurs who have had to adapt so quickly with so little money coming in, but I must admit, they are making it work, and I admire their flair.
The walk to the entrance of High Bridge Park that early Sunday evening was easy, and surprisingly quick for 20 blocks. In these times, with no car, and a crippling fear that if I even set one foot on a bicycle pedal in NYC I will die immediately, I am grateful for my able body, and my big strong legs. This part of my journey would have been completely uneventful, were it not for the dude who wanted to make sure I knew that “Black girls from Brooklyn have nice asses.” (I told him I lived in Greenpoint- a great way to deter catcallers is to make yourself geographically inconvenient.)
The original destination for this month’s essay was High Bridge Park itself, and I did attempt it, but shortly into my walk I found out that a considerable chunk of the park is currently closed for renovations. Since I do want to redo that walk someday, and explore the High Bridge Tower (which is also currently under renovation), I won’t get too much into those here.
Anyway, let’s get to the bridge already.
First of all, whoever says that an urban kid doesn’t get enough greenery has never been to an NYC park. This, for example, is the staircase that leads you to the bridge. I saw two young girls running up it surrounded by branches, leaves and vines growing in such abundance that I half-expected to look up and see a Victorian invalid child watching them from afar. They were out of breath when they reached me at the top, which made me feel better in advance about my future wheezing when I’d have to come back up this way.
After having my own Secret Garden adventure down the steps, I finally made it to the foot of the bridge, and turned on my music selection for the evening:
Album: TV on the Radio, Dear Science
The more I read about NYC history, the more sure I am of two things:
- Men have always been terrible, and
- We really don’t appreciate our water supply enough.
During the decades before New York City finally got its water via aqueducts in the mid-1800s, it relied on well water, which rapidly became befouled as the city grew due to badly sealed privies, and runoff from the cemeteries. Imagine having your only water source be one that’s filled with shit and corpse goo. Not great.
It was a problem that desperately needed a solution, and fast. Oh hey, look who’s here, it’s good ol’ Aaron Burr!
He and his buddies came in with a proposal to the city to hand over the water project to a private company (them), and the city made way for these apparent water saviors, assuming they would begin work on creating an aqueduct from the Bronx River, something that the populace had been begging for for a whole actual decade. Turns out, however, they only wanted the water project as a reason to start the company, and Burr himself made sure there were clauses in the agreement that allowed them to open up a bank in the city in 1799 using the “surplus” funds from the water project (this bank was called The Manhattan Company, now called Chase Bank today). Once they had what they wanted, they refused the expense of an aqueduct system, and fell back on an old, cheaper project started by Christopher Colles in 1774 to divert water from the (no longer) Fresh Water Pond using hollowed-out wooden logs. It sucked. It sucked so hard.
“The road you chose unloads control”
I knew I didn’t have too far to walk for a 57-minute album, so I made frequent stops along the bridge. Restored in 2015 after multiple decades of neglect and disrepair, the High Bridge itself is a sight to see. The span across the Harlem River feels like a small side street in a quaint New England town- dotted with street lamps and benches, with a red brick pathway wide enough for both foot traffic and bikes. At regular intervals along the footbridge lie round metal medallions, sunk into the brick like manhole covers. They help visitors learn historical facts about the bridge, chief among them being its role in bringing the first reliable water source to Manhattan, and its 2015 reopening.
Anyway, back to Aaron Burr’s bullshit, which had far-reaching repercussions. His meddling in the city’s water projects meant that lower Manhattan didn’t get adequate access to clean water for another four decades, when the Croton Aqueduct was completed. In the meantime, folks still had shitty-ass water, the wooden pipes were a joke, yellow fever came back, AND they got cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1849, and the Great Fire in 1835, which destroyed nearly 700 buildings. Men are the actual worst.
An aside- here is some language about the Cholera outbreak that feels very familiar today:
“In 1832 cholera roared into town. New Yorkers had seen it coming. They had read in their papers of its devastating march across Asia and the trade routes to Europe, reaching Poland, then France, then England. City authorities knew the plague might well ride the sea lanes to the Hudson, but did next to nothing with this foreknowledge.”
— Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
[one hundred million upside-down smiley face emojis]
“Laugh in the face of death under masthead
Hold your breath through late breaking disasters”
The Harlem River trundled below me, its water calmly crinkled like tissue paper that’s been balled up then smoothed out again. Every time I come to call on this river it seems to be in a different mood- sometimes busy and rattled, other times even and unbothered. I see her more frequently than I do most of my friends these days- she flows along the path of my brand new jogging habit. I huff and puff alongside her, usually to just underneath the High Bridge, then huff and puff back home.
While peering south towards downtown, I spotted a tiny boat sitting quietly next to a dock jutting out to the river, and I wondered what it was for. Who fills their days with concern, annoyance, and maybe love for this little vessel?
There are so many ways to live in this city.
The High Bridge is the oldest standing bridge in New York City! I had no clue. At first glance you would never guess this- it’s had some facelifts over the years.
Constructed in 1848 as part of the Croton Aqueduct project that began at the Croton River in Westchester and flowed down to the city in an incredible feat of 19th century engineering, the bridge later gained a footpath in 1864, soon becoming the “High Line” of its time, with visitors taking the ferry or carriages up to enjoy the walkway and other attractions.
Originally designed to resemble ancient Roman aqueducts, the arches, while beautiful, became an increasingly problematic navigational issue as commerce in the Harlem River began to grow. Several ideas bounced around in engineering circles before they finally settled on replacing the arches in the river with one long, wide arch made of steel in 1928.
So now we have the bluish steel arch that spans the water, with the original Roman-style arches flanking it on either side- one on the Manhattan side of the river, ten on the Bronx side.
About halfway across the bridge I stopped and watched two dogs playing on a bench- a pit mix and a lab mix. The younger one, the lab, was still learning boundaries and his owner had to keep him from doing too much ear/face biting. A few minutes later, I made some gentle eye contact with another, smaller friend.
“Oh let it free, that caged on fire thing”
I wasn’t living in Washington Heights when the High Bridge reopened to the public in 2015, but I still had many friends who did, including a pitbull named Clara, who may have been one of the first dogs to walk across the newly renovated bridge with her owner, my friend Allison.
Author’s Note: Thinking about all these dogs on the bridge led me down a rabbit hole, and I ended up writing an entire second essay about the history of dogs in New York City! It was originally going to just be a section in this essay, but it got too long!
“Your haunted heart and me”
I saw a tall glowering man three times. White beard and trilby. The first time his red Chinese parasol was open. The second time he had it closed and tucked under his arm. The third time it was open once again.
Downtown shone faintly in the setting sunlight. These days that southern metropolis feels more accessible than the last time I wrote about it. I’m still not riding the subway as regularly as I used to, but it certainly doesn’t scare me anymore. Progress?
“Well there’s a golden age coming round”
I truly can’t remember the last time I was in the Bronx.
A fun aspect of living in upper Manhattan, with its narrow span snug against the mainland like a puzzle piece, is that it is remarkably easy to walk to the Bronx. Years ago, when I lived on 156th Street, I could walk to Yankee Stadium in 20 minutes, crossing the Macombs Dam Bridge that lies just south of the High Bridge. Upper Manhattan has around 12 or so bridges connecting it to the Bronx, which honestly just seems like a desperate move on the Bronx’s part. Clingy much?
I got to the other side of the High Bridge as the sun was setting. The neighborhood in the Bronx around the bridge is called, fittingly, High Bridge, and the park there is also called High Bridge Park (very original). This High Bridge Park is much smaller than its Manhattan counterpart, acting basically as a small landing for the bridge- benches, play sprinklers, with a small canal leading to little waterfalls that drain the water away.
In the waning light I nearly missed a monument to the aqueduct- a strip of concrete embedded in the brick, about 20 yards long, that reads in large, serious, typeface:
UNDER THIS STRIP LIES THE OLD CROTON AQUEDUCT WHICH SUPPLIED WATER TO NEW YORK CITY 1842–1958
I couldn’t get a good picture of it, but it’s worth looking for if you ever find yourself on the Bronx side of the High Bridge. Its weather-worn lettering makes it seem like a secret message hiding in plain view.
“Stone cast me out so I can feel it in another way”
While the (Old) Croton Aqueduct and the High Bridge are still regarded as incredibly important to the health and growth of the mid-19th century New York, population growth soon outpaced what its water supply was able to provide. A little over a decade after the aqueduct opened they had to add another, larger pipe to the line to get more water into the city, and then a whole nother aqueduct (The New Croton Aqueduct) in 1890. The old aqueduct remained in operation until the mid-1900s, when the city was receiving sufficient water supply from the New Croton and two even newer aqueducts, Delaware and Catskill. These aqueducts remain our three major water supply systems to this very day.
I saw the parasol man one last time as I was making my way back to Manhattan- parasol open in the twilight, continuing his faithful rounds on the now empty bridge. Behind him loomed the High Bridge Tower- once used to provide water pressure to the higher elevations of upper Manhattan, then becoming the holder of a 5-octave carillon, and now finds itself in the midst of a multi-million dollar reconstruction project. I’ve been mildly obsessed with the tower ever since I found out that it might still have a carillon inside. I took carillon lessons in college! I was very bad!! Anyway, I very much want to find out more about these bells, and will talk about them no more here. That is an adventure for another day.
As I steeled myself for the many stairs awaiting me on the other side of the river, TV on the Radio carried me back across the bridge and into the dark gloom of an early Sunday night:
“I’m gonna take you home.”
Thank you for reading! There was so much I couldn’t fit into this essay, including lots more historical photos/drawings I found of the bridge, Edgar Allen Poe’s connection to it, and a whole essay about dogs! I will be posting all of this as bonus content for my Patreon followers- you can get it all for just 4 bucks! Join here. ❤
*Walk #8 was my foiled High Bridge Park walk. It will be avenged.
