Water, water everywhere, somebody wise once said, and not a drop to drink. New York City is surrounded by water, and none of it is fit for human consumption. This, naturally, presented a conundrum to city officials, especially as the population grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
That conundrum piqued the interest of Lucy Sante, who is renowned for her social histories of various dark and gritty underbellies (she’s perhaps best known as the author of Low Life, a masterful look at early twentieth century New York). But Sante wasn’t as interested in the actual solutions to the city’s water woes as she was in their side effects - the massive human toll, over a nearly fifty-year period, of razing and relocating rural communities to make way for the reservoirs that would provide Manhattan with potable water.
Some of you may be fighting an urge to nod off right about now, and I get it—“Hey, would you like to read a fascinating book about the history of water reservoirs?” isn’t necessarily a line that works on everybody. But stick with me here.
Because, for one thing, Nineteen Reservoirs, the book that came out of Sante’s research, is fascinating. From the story of New York City’s long, long fight over water metering (did you know that, as recently as 1999, more than half of the residential buildings in the city didn’t have water meters, or that meter graft was a common and lucrative criminal enterprise?), to the construction of the dams and reservoirs themselves, this slim, lushly illustrated volume is full of largely untold, or forgotten, history that I found myself eagerly devouring. But it’s the stories of the towns and farms in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills - places like Brown’s Station and Shavertown - that are most moving. Between the early 1900s and the late 1960s, dozens of upstate towns and villages were either moved or completely obliterated to clear a path for reservoirs. Century-old family homes were seized by eminent domain, sometimes with very little compensation, and even town cemeteries had to be exhumed and reburied.
And for another thing, this stuff is important. While Nineteen Reservoirs is a work of history, and is centered on the geography of upstate New York, it’s easy to draw parallels to events throughout Vermont and New Hampshire history (like the story of Romaine Tenney, the Weathersfield farmer who burned himself rather than surrender his land to the interstate highway system), and to present-day questions about water - who has access to it, how much they can get, and where it comes from.
And to round it all out, this book is beautiful. Sante incorporates photographs—both historical and contemporary—into the layout, along with period news clippings, postcards, and (perhaps my favorite) full color reproductions of historic maps. The result is a work to get lost in, and to revisit even after you’ve read it through.
The perfect gift for the eccentric history buff in your life (you know you have one), or the aspiring archivist, or anyone interested in water rights and conservation, Nineteen Reservoirs is a remarkable and singular book. Water, water, everywhere, indeed.
Sam Kaas and Emma Nichols own and run the Norwich Bookstore.