What Animals Were on Manhatten Island Like 200 Years Ago
Critic's Notebook
When Manhattan Was Mannahatta: A Stroll Through the Centuries
From lush woods to urban center, the evolution of Lower Manhattan. Our critic walks with Eric West. Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Club.
Credit... Eric Mehl/Hypothetical, Inc.; Eric Sanderson/Wildlife Conservation Order
Before the starting time Dutch colonists sailed through the Narrows into New York Harbor, Manhattan was withal what the Lenape, who had already lived here for centuries, chosen Mannahatta. Times Square was a wood with a beaver swimming. The Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, at Foley Square, was the site of an ancient mound of oyster middens.
Eric Westward. Sanderson is a senior conservation ecologist for the Wild animals Conservation Society, based at the Bronx Zoo. In 2009 he published "Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City." The volume geolocated old maps onto the modern metropolis to reimagine a cornucopia of hills, beaches, fields and ponds.
This is the latest in a series of (edited, condensed) virtual walks with architects and others. I spoke with Mr. Sanderson by telephone. Our "stroll" explored Lower Manhattan. Nosotros "met" where the Staten Island Ferry docks at Whitehall Terminal.
Except that we imagined it was the September afternoon in 1609 when Henry Hudson arrived, and we were standing near the shore, gazing at the water.
Michael Kimmelman Bated from Hudson'southward send, what do nosotros run across?
Eric W. Sanderson Whales and porpoises. Ane of the primeval sketches we have of Manhattan shows a whale in the Hudson River. The lease of Trinity Church includes a provision specifically saying dead whales found on beaches in the province of New York are property of the church building, which could employ them to make oil and whale bone. So whales were clearly a meaningful role of the local economy and ecosystem.
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What was the ecosystem?
Ecosystems, really. Manhattan is something like one pct the size of Yellowstone. Yellowstone is 2.2 million acres and it has 66 ecosystems. Mannahatta had 55.
It's an interesting thought exercise to imagine what might take happened had the United States been colonized from the West, instead of from the East. Nosotros might have decided to make Manhattan a national park. We would be coming to New York for an entirely different sort of wildlife.
The Dutch and English, of course, saw the isle as a commercial paradise.
Information technology had vast forests of timber. There were otter, beavers, mink, oysters, brook trout, bears. We have historical records of a black comport beingness shot in the vicinity of Maiden Lane during the 1630s. Nosotros know wolves lived on Manhattan until the 1720s.
The Dutch left behind these almost overwrought descriptions of how cute and abundant the landscape was — how, sailing here, they could smell the flowers all the way out into the ocean.
And they saw?
Sailing into the harbor they saw what the Lenape called Pagganck, or Nut Island. Today we call information technology Governors Island. Dorsum and then, it was covered with walnut copse, hickory, chestnuts. And from the ocean they could already run into Todt Hill on Aquehonga Manacknong, which was the Algonquin name for Staten Island.
That's really hard to say. Forgive me. I'm not a linguist.
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No trouble.
Todt Hill is the highest point on the unabridged Atlantic coastal plain between Cape Cod and Florida.
Todt means dead.
The hill was barren. It was arid because that spot on Staten Island is an old bit of scraped up sea floor, made of serpentine rock, which has high levels of magnesium but not much calcium, meaning it's not and then skilful for trees.
Was all of Staten Isle scraped upwards from the sea floor?
Oh no. The west side of Staten Island belonged to what is the Palisades rock germination. And the e side — the area that flooded during Hurricane Sandy — is on the littoral plain, which was mostly common salt marsh.
And then the island is a geological patchwork.
From hugely different ages, too. The rocks, which underlie much of Brooklyn and Queens, not to mention most of New England, are near 540 1000000 years old. The Palisades derive from volcanic basalts formed during the Triassic and Jurassic eras, the time of the dinosaurs.
Epitome
Meaning 250 to 150 meg years ago.
Right. And if we drilled down where we're standing now, we would notice Manhattan schist, which is even older — pre-Cambrian.
Eric, nosotros're hurtling toward the Big Bang. Could you, briefly, explain how Mannahatta got to 1609? Earlier colonists brought affliction and collection the Lenape from their state?
Information technology'south a long history, plain. The center of the North American continent is called the N American Craton, which includes some of the oldest rocks on World. New York Metropolis was on the edge of the craton — imagine Japan with respect to Asia. Information technology was part of a series of islands we call Avalonia.
Over fourth dimension Avalonia slammed into the craton, geologically speaking. The east side of the Eastward River is pretty much the edge of the onetime continent. Virtually of Queens and Brooklyn are what used to be Avalonia.
Translation for older New Yorkers: Katz's deli on Houston Street was the craton, Inferior'southward on Flatbush Avenue was Avalonia.
More or less. Then in that location'south an all-encompassing glacial history — at least seven glaciation events over the last 620,000 years. The glacial effect that matters most peaked about 21,000 years ago. It was called the Wisconsin glaciation. The glacier stopped in Brooklyn and Queens, giving us what are now Brooklyn Heights and the hills of Bay Ridge, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights.
If the Wisconsin glaciation buried Manhattan, how much ice would we accept been standing under here?
How alpine are these skyscrapers?
Well, 1 State Street Plaza, facing the ferry terminal, is 42 stories, about 450 feet high.
The water ice was more than three times that thick.
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Then we're talking the Empire State Edifice.
And then as the climate changed, the glacier retreated and a whole serial of behemothic glacial lakes formed. We would have been at the bottom of Lake Albany, which extended all the way up to New York'due south land upper-case letter. About 13,500 years agone the lakes gave way in a cascade that brought billions and billions of cubic anxiety of water roaring downwardly from upstate, breaking through the dam that had separated Lake Albany from the coastal patently and forming the Verrazzano Narrows.
And that's when we got the harbor and the topography we at present know?
In that location were lots of steps in betwixt. Just past near five,000 years ago, nosotros had the oak and hickory forests that Henry Hudson would have seen when he arrived. He would have seen another island, too, Kioshk, every bit the Lenape chosen it — we phone call information technology Ellis Island, which was called Gibbet Isle during the 1700s because the English hanged pirates and criminals there.
Information technology became known as ane of the oyster islands because geological events had turned the harbor into an platonic dwelling for oysters and a expressway for the sort of fish that swim from saltwater upstream to breed in freshwater, like shad or sturgeon. Nosotros know from historical records that people defenseless hundreds and hundreds of fish in a few hours just casting their nets off Ellis Island during the 18th and 19th centuries — before the harbor became polluted and dams were built that airtight off streams upriver where the fish had gone to breed.
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You mean, until we screwed everything up.
No. No. Well, yep. The bespeak of the last 22 years of my life is not to make people experience bad or to say that we should just wipe out the metropolis and restore it all back to forest. I love New York. Every species has its style of being. Our human manner of being is that we talk to each other, we tin can share ideas almost the past, so that, together, we can plan a time to come that includes nature.
You lot're not from New York.
No, I grew up in the Bay Expanse. A biological science teacher in loftier schoolhouse led trips along the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada, from Yosemite to Mount Whitney — 211 miles, 22 days. When I came to New York Urban center, I was reminded of what I loved about the trail — all these layers of complexity, these alpine peaks and deep valleys, abundant life in a dramatic mural. Just a different kind of life.
I moved here in 1998, and one day I went to the Strand bookstore and was flipping through books on New York and saw "Manhattan in Maps" by Paul Cohen and Robert Augustyn, two map dealers. They had taken a photo of the British Headquarters Map.
Which British cartographers drew upwardly in the early 1780s.
I realized that if I could geolocate that map and fit information technology to Manhattan today, I could figure out what was here centuries agone.
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Which is sort of what we're doing. Past the way, where nosotros are standing, was this the shoreline in 1609 or is it landfill?
Nosotros're effectually the rocky edge of the shore. What'south at present Pearl Street marks the approximate shoreline on the East River side. The Dutch and the English language wanted to aggrandize the island into the rivers, not move uptown, so they sold water lots to people who were then nether contract to fill the lots in. They would knock down hills and use that soil or take garbage from the dump. What's now the state betwixt Water Street and the F.D.R. Bulldoze is all landfill, similar much of the w side, which in 1609 was a white sand beach all the manner up to 42nd Street.
Let'south start walking?
If nosotros were to head uptown, Broad Street takes us to the steps of Federal Hall, across from what'southward at present the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. Broad Street used to be a valley with a salt marsh. Wall Street marks the edge of the woods. It'southward called Wall Street because the Dutch congenital a defensive wall out of wood. The woods was hickory, chestnut, oak, sycamore. Sycamores are likewise called buttonwoods because they're proficient for making buttons. The Buttonwood Agreement, which legalized the trading of securities, was supposedly signed nether a sycamore outside what's now the Stock Commutation.
From there due north, around where Nassau Street reaches Fulton Street, in that location were tulip trees, 100 or 150 feet high.
The skyscrapers of the 1600s.
With soft, very direct trunks, which is why the Lenape dug behemothic canoes out of them. Then, where Broadway approaches what's at present Metropolis Hall Park, the forest probably opened up onto fields, where nosotros think the Lenape may have tended corn, beans and squash: Three Sisters gardens, they're called. The country was relatively flat with the correct soils. And it was s of what was chosen the Collect Pond. Nosotros think a community of Lenape probably lived only north of City Hall Park, on an inlet of the pond where the New York State Supreme Court edifice is now.
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How big a community?
Mayhap 15 people. Perhaps 100. No one knows for sure. You have to imagine this was a community that, before the Dutch and English came, would have pretty much spent their entire lives with each other, encountering mayhap the occasional trader from Northern Manhattan or Brooklyn, or farther afield, like New Jersey.
In your book it's clear that the history of Manhattan is in many means the story of the Collect Pond. Where was it?
Well, where the Javits building is today was roughly the west edge of the pond — that was a colina named Kalck Hoek by the Dutch, because of the mounds of oyster shells the Lenape had left on information technology. Kalck means "chalk or lime," from the shells. To the north of the Collect Pond, Bayard's Mountain was the tallest hill around, from the top of which you could run across to the Verrazzano Narrows.
Imagine the Collect Swimming sitting within this amphitheater of hills, protected from the wintertime winds. The water was fresh, very deep — maybe eighty feet deep — fed past springs. An outlet stream flowed north from the pond to the Hudson River, along what'south now Culvert Street. Another stream, Wolfert's Brook, flowed southeast to the East River, forth Pearl Street, past 1 Police force Plaza.
Standing the quondam-schoolhouse restaurant theme: south of Chinatown's Nom Wah Tea Parlor and the Groovy NY Noodletown.
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Correct. The Collect Pond was the freshwater source for early New York. In the American flow, commercial businesses started to settle forth the shore of the pond and by the late 18th century it was becoming polluted. As the metropolis grew, tanneries, which were essential but stank and used toxic chemicals, kept getting pushed farther n, considering no one wanted to live nigh a tannery. They concluded upwardly at the pond, dumping their waste matter in information technology.
The city poisoned its own h2o supply.
It'due south an interesting parable about unintended consequences. When the pond became a cesspool, the city decided to fill it in by leveling Kalck Hoek and Bayard'south Mountain. But the landfill was then badly done that the buildings they built on it sank into the mire. That's when the neighborhood became notorious every bit Five Points, which Charles Dickens described as the worst slum he had ever seen. And he knew his slums. The urban center finally cleared the surface area and created the neighborhood nosotros more or less now know, with the courthouses and municipal buildings.
For desire of a nail, in other words?
The ripple furnishings were fifty-fifty more dramatic. Considering the city polluted its own h2o supply, Lower Manhattan needed to find another water source, which led Aaron Burr to grade the Manhattan Visitor. The company lease included a provision that allowed Burr to use most of the assets for something too h2o. So he formed a bank, which today is JPMorgan Chase.
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Which was Burr's real ambition. He, I think, argued for the h2o company after the city suffered an outbreak of yellow fever. Then the company built a system so poor it provoked a series of cholera epidemics.
Which in plow led to the structure of the Croton Aqueduct, a remarkable engineering feat to bring water past gravity 41 miles south to reservoirs in the city, which in plow had its ain ripple furnishings on the rest of the isle. Why exercise we have the flat Great Backyard in Central Park? Because that was originally the site of a receiving reservoir called Lake Manahatta. Why is the Public Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue? Because it replaced another massive reservoir on Murray Hill.
Edgar Allan Poe described the views from the meridian of the 42nd Street reservoir, where he said he could come across "the whole metropolis to the Bombardment, and a big portion of the harbor." And then, of grade, nosotros got the library building past Carrère & Hastings.
All traceable to the Collect Pond. I have this friendly bet with an urban geographer whose theory of cities is that they just alter through crises — like the one we're experiencing right now. There's certainly the historical case for that.
But, knowing our history, we also accept the capacity to make improve decisions, to do the right thing.
That doesn't mean nosotros will.
We tin hope.
What Animals Were on Manhatten Island Like 200 Years Ago
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/arts/design/manhattan-virtual-tour-virus.html
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