Croton Distributing Reservoir

The site you are approaching was once occupied by a massive, fortress-like structure that defined the midtown skyline in the nineteenth century. Between 1842 and the turn of the century, the Croton Distributing Reservoir stood here as a vital engineering marvel. Designed in an imposing Egyptian Revival style, its fifty-foot-high granite walls were twenty-five feet thick at the base. It served as the final stop for fresh water traveling over forty miles from the Croton River to provide a reliable, clean supply to a city previously plagued by contaminated wells and deadly epidemics.