Collect Pond Park

That shallow pool in front of you is a memory. Right here lay a real lake: Collect Pond, about 48 acres and up to 60 feet deep, fed by springs. For nearly two centuries it was New York's main source of water. Its name comes from the Dutch Kalck Hoek, «chalk point», after the heaps of oyster shells the Lenape left on its shore.

1From drinking water to sewer

By the late 18th century, tanneries, breweries and slaughterhouses were dumping their waste into the pond. The water became unhealthy. Pierre L'Enfant proposed cleaning it up and turning it into a park, but the city chose to fill it in, and by 1811 the job was done.

The fill was poorly done: the buried vegetation rotted, the ground sank and the streets flooded.

Well-off families moved away, and the damp, cheap land filled up with tenements: that is how Five Points, the next stop, was born. In 1838 an Egyptian-style jail, The Tombs, was built on top of the old pond and began sinking almost at once. Its successor, across the street, still carries the nickname.

2The steamboat

An 1846 broadside by John Hutchings, who claimed to have witnessed it as a boy, says that in 1796 John Fitch tested a steamboat on this pond, years before Robert Fulton. The park's plaque warns that there is no evidence for some details of his account.

3What to look for

• The pool and boardwalk, which evoke the original pond.
• The Tombs, the jail complex on Centre Street.
• The park plaque about Collect Pond.