Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City

Without the nineteen upstate reservoirs that supply its water, New York City as we know it would not exist today.



From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties. This feat of engineering served to meet New York City's ever-increasing need for water, sustaining its inhabitants and cementing it as a center of industry. West of the Hudson, it meant that twenty-si...