Brooklyn’s long-abandoned 1874 water-supply lands became available for parkland

Evidence

One weekend he went to Babylon Town Hall and asked what the woods were. An old-timer told him he must be talking about the old Brooklyn water-supply properties, the streams and the areas around them in Nassau and Suffolk counties that Brooklyn, then an independent city, had purchased in 1874, fenced off and kept guarded so that, in case of a water shortage, it would be able to dam the streams and use their water. On Monday morning, Moses stopped by the New York Municipal Building and asked a clerk in the Department of Water Supply if the city used those properties. Why, no, the clerk said, it never had. There had never been any need. And, come to think of it, now that New York had acquired the huge Croton and Ashokan reservoirs upstate and built aqueducts from them to the city, there probably never would be. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 699

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the standing theme of cities quietly holding buffer lands whose original purpose lapsed - parallels utility easements and submerged city assets in other infrastructure histories.