|
|
|
|
INTRODUCTION Between
1997-2000, a team of historians, architectural historians and archaeologists
were contracted by the City of Newark to evaluate the historical significance of
the city’s brick sewer system prior to its proposed rehabilitation. The
investigation found the 68-mile network of brick sewers to be historically
significant in improving public health and fostering the urbanization and growth
of Newark. Furthermore, its design and construction, primarily egg-shaped in
cross section, represents a distinctive style of brick sewers installed in urban
America from the mid to late 19th and early 20th century. As a result of the
investigation, Newark’s 68 miles of brick sewers were found to be a
significant historic resource and therefore eligible for the National Register
of Historic Places. The
investigation was the result of a process by which historic, architectural and
archaeological sites are managed today. In 1966, the National Historic
Preservation Act was passed by Congress and signed into federal law. This law
requires agencies, such as the Newark Department of Water and Sewer Utilities,
who need certain federal funds or licenses for their projects, to consider the
effects of their actions on historic properties. Those properties that are
determined to be of national, state or local significance are listed in the
National Register of Historic Places, the official list of cultural resources
significant in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering or
culture. New Jersey’s historic cultural resources are managed by the New
Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Historic Preservation Office. THE NEWARK
SEWER SYSTEM Since the
colonial period, cities did not provide services we take for granted today-clean
water, garbage disposal, street paving, sewer facilities, and police and fire
protection. Instead, early American cities were more concerned with promoting
commerce and trade rather than improving public works, which was considered a
matter best handled by the individual. Beginning in the nineteenth century,
rapid industrialization and a soaring population burdened the built environment,
straining limited water supplies and taxing conventional patterns of waste
disposal. Cities were degenerating into unhealthy places putting their residents
at risk. For modern cities to survive, they had to implement large public works
programs to improve and safeguard public health. Sewer systems, also called the
“invisible city,” perceptibly altered the shape of the city, allowing it to
expand into its modern form. The process of constructing Newark’s sewer system
reflects the dynamic changes in nineteenth century urban America.
In May
1666, thirty Puritan families from New England landed on the south bank of the
Passaic River and established New Ark, named for the English town of
Newark-on-Trent. The settlers laid out the town on a grid pattern typical of New
England towns, with spacious tree-lined streets, public spaces such as a
commons, and a drilling ground for military training. Emanating from the
intersection Broad and Market Streets, small artisan shops, spacious homes and
churches gradually gave way to large agricultural fields on the outskirts of the
village. Being surrounded by salt marshes on three sides severely impeded
transportation to and from Newark, and throughout the colonial period, Newark
remained a relatively isolated agricultural community. Newark’s favorable location between the Passaic River and Orange Mountains provided all the natural advantages of an abundant water supply and drainage. The confluence of two streams formed a pond near the center of town known as “the watering place,” where residents came to water their cattle and fill their pails and buckets. Several watercourses originating from the high ridges of the Orange Mountains meandered through the Newark plain and carried away excess rainwater before descending into the river. These streams and watercourses also provided a convenient outlet for depositing all matter of garbage, waste and refuse. During periods of heavy rains the watercourses overflowed their banks onto the city’s unpaved streets, creating a sea of mud and filth and posing a serious health hazard.
To remove
household waste and garbage, privies, also known as outhouses, were small wooden
sheds that served as a receptacle for human waste. However, privies tended to
leak their contents into the rear yards, where the household well was also
located, thereby contaminating the water supply. To remedy the problem, Newark
employed scavengers who drove their wagons through the city during the middle of
the night and removed the contents of the privies. The “night soil” from the
privies was carted to farms on the outskirts of the city, but this only worsened
the problem as waste spilled onto streets from their uncovered wagons, garbage
was dumped in vacant lots and the outlying districts were neglected.
Beginning in the 1830's, after the completion of the Morris Canal and two
railroad lines to Newark, the city swelled from a compact village into an
industrial center. Manufactories producing a variety of goods- cabinets,
carriages, pottery, shoes and soap- were established alongside breweries,
tanneries and mills. The Irish immigrants stayed after building the canal to
work in Newark’s new factories. Soon they were followed by a large migration
of Germans. Newark’s industrialization attracted so many foreign born that
between 1840-1856, the city’s population more than tripled from 17,000 to
56,000. By 1860, Newark could boast of being not only the largest city in the
state, with double the population of second largest city, but the principal
industrial center in the nation.
Meanwhile, living conditions deteriorated. Pigs roamed the streets in search of
garbage, animal carcasses littered the streets, and the waterways that traversed
the city carried away household wastes in full view for all to see. The poor and
immigrant classes lived in dark, wretched tenements without running water or
basic sanitary amenities. Consequently, Newark, like most northeastern cities,
was periodically plagued by outbreaks of epidemics. Infectious diseases such as
cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, dysentery and small pox claimed thousands of
lives, mostly the poor. For years, the medical profession believed that these
infectious diseases were caused by the inhalation of poisonous gases known as
“miasmas-” noxious fumes emanating from rotting animal and vegetable matter.
At
the same time, sanitary reformers in other cities were taking extensive surveys
connecting disease with squalid living conditions. In 1842, Edwin Chadwick, a
London sanitarian, found a positive correlation between the location of sewers
and the lessening of disease. His report on London’s slums claimed that an
integrated sewer system would vastly improve the “uncoordinated morass” of
individually administered sewers. Three years later, John Griscom, the New York
City health inspector, published a report clearly influenced and modeled after
Chadwick’s that called for more sewers to carry away refuse and wastewater.
Despite these reports citing the correlation between improved health and
sewerage, it would take over a generation before these ideas would finally be
accepted. By
the middle of the nineteenth century, it was clear that Newark’s natural
drainage was no longer adequate. In 1849, at the urging of Newark’s business
class, an addendum to the city charter authorized the Common Council to build
and repair sewers. These “common sewers,” merely open ditches dug in the
middle of the street, only exasperated the problem. Since almost all of
Newark’s streets were still unpaved, during heavy rains the sewers overflowed
their banks creating a quagmire of mud and waste. In some instances, the streets
were clogged with household garbage, human waste and decaying animals, flooding
nearby homes and gardens. The city’s newspapers lambasted the Common
Council’s futile attempt to improve drainage, calling their efforts “utter
folly” and a “public nuisance.” In
an effort to remedy the situation, a citizens committee formed to urge the
Common Council on Sewerage and Drainage to construct underground sewers that it
believed “would prove permanently useful and durable public works.” In
August 1852, the Common Council adopted a plan to build underground sewers that
would empty into the Passaic River. The plan had been devised after length
consultation with engineers employed in sewer construction in New York City and
was based on sewer advances that had been made in Europe. Work
began on the Newark’s first sewer in 1852 and was completed in 1854. Built
under Broad Street, the sewer ran east under Park Place and Rector Street before
emptying into the Passaic River. This circular brick conduit, which still serves
the city today, is five feet in diameter, 1305 feet long and 23 feet below
ground. Market Street was sewered later that year between Washington Street and
New Jersey Railroad Avenue under three separate contracts, the longest segment
over a mile long with an outfall also at the Passaic River. In
addition to man-made sewers, the extant streams that once flowed through the
city were used as sewer receptacles but were gradually covered over to contain
offensive odors. Of these vanished streams, Mill Brook or First River was the
largest and most important. Mill Brook was formed by the junction of two smaller
brooks near what is now the southern end of Branch Brook Park. By 1863 Mill
Brook, as a watercourse, had outlived its usefulness and began to disappear as
new streets were laid out above it, until by 1890 the last piece was covered to
from the approach to the Clay Street Bridge. Mill Brook still flows today, but
it is contained within a twin-tubed sewer, each 6 feet 9 inches high and 9 1/4
feet wide.
Almost all of the city’s sewer built in this period and up until the early
twentieth century were brick. Although limited sewer systems built during
colonial period used wood- Boston being the most notable example- it proved to
be too porous and was replaced by brick in the mid-nineteenth century.
Newark’s sewers were built in all different shapes and sizes- circular,
arch-shaped, U-shaped, horseshoe-shaped, box-shaped, egg shaped and eye shaped.
Circular sewers were considered to be the strongest, but oval shaped sewers gave
the optimal flow. The egg-shaped design was introduced in 1846. It promised both
optimal flow capacity and the greatest movement during low levels of use. Most
of Newark’s brick sewers employ the egg-shaped
with horseshoe-shaped and circular-shaped used to a lesser extent.
Despite these initial advances, by 1858, the city had built only 4 ½ miles of
sewers; by 1870, only 12 miles. Immediately following the Civil War, sewers were
built on the outskirts of the city as real estate promoters acquired cheap land
in the hope of attracting new residents to the area. Public improvements “ran
mad...Streets were laid out in pasture lands where they would not be needed for
years to come...Sewers were built in streets that were not graded, and while all
this was going on, the center of the city was neglected.” For a city with the
largest and densest population in the state, a city attracting more and more
factories and warehouses, a city building outward every year, the pace of sewer
construction was woefully inadequate.
Newark was not alone. Most of the nation’s urban centers lacked the necessary
infrastructure to ensure public health. As was common in the nineteenth century,
sewers were built in an arbitrary fashion without a master plan. The result was
poor drainage, constant blockages, chronic leaks and expensive maintenance
costs. In some cities, such as Baltimore and New Orleans, sewers were simply not
built at all.
Several reasons particular to the era explain Newark’s lack of sewers. Sewer
construction was an expensive and time consuming process. By 1855, only one year
after its first sewer had been completed, Newark had spent over $111,000 on
sewer construction. During the nineteenth century, all excavation had to be
performed by hand, and costs could further escalate if rock was encountered that
had to be blasted away. Additionally, the Common Council required that proposed
improvements had to be advertised in the press; the cost of these advertisements
could sometimes amount to one-third of the total cost of construction. All of
Newark’s early sewers were built of brick, an expensive material to produce.
Not until the latter part of the nineteenth century did technological
improvements, improved methods of financing, and use of cheaper materials make
sewers easier and cheaper to build. For
years, Newark’s Common Council pursued a policy to keep taxes low and avoid
public debt in an effort to attract capital and labor to the city. While this
policy did have the desired effect of promoting industrial growth, it bankrupt
the city with regard to all public improvements. As a result, sewers were
financed by assessing all property owners to be connected. Consequently, private
sewers accounted for almost 12% of all sewer miles by 1910. While private
financing allowed for new sewer construction, it precluded the possibility of
designing an integrated system. It also ensured that sewers were built in only
the more affluent areas, leaving the poorest and most overcrowded areas without
means of sanitation.
Construction of an effective sewerage system demanded technical expertise and
the efforts of technical experts who possessed a knowledge of hydraulics,
surveying and construction. Newark’s first City Surveyors, men such as Gustave
Lehlback, Peter Witzer, John S. Schaeffer and Ernest Adam, who were oversaw the
city’s sewer construction had little training in either sanitary or civil
engineering. Not until the twentieth century when a growing cadre of civil,
municipal and sanitary engineers, such as Edward Rankin, who held the post of
Newark City Engineer from 1903-1945, did they assume a central role in the
growth and planning of the American city.
Finally, the long-held belief in the miasma theory severely limited
public support for new sewer construction, as the inhalation of sewer gas was
held responsible for all sorts of afflictions ranging from arthritis to
insanity. The prevailing attitude is best exemplified in Lott Southard’s 1877
report on the status of Newark’s mortality. After the studying the effect of
dumping excreta and waste water into privies, cesspools and sewers and allowed
to putrefy and decay, Southard concluded that it created “an untold amount of
deadly gas, which if it does not find its way into the dwellings and sleeping
apartments, diffuses itself into the atmosphere surrounding these
dwellings...with the effect of silently, slowly, but surely poisoning the
unconscious victim.”
But
in 1880, Edgar Holden, president of the board of medical directories for the
Mutual Life Insurance Company produced a landmark report. Plotted on two sewer
maps of Newark, one from 1872 and the other from 1876, Holden marked the
location of “preventable diseases,” such as diphtheria, cholera and typhus,
then he compared the mortality rates between both years. Holden was a firm
believer in the miasma theory, but seeing the direct correlation between sewer
location and the reduction of mortality altered his opinion: “Indeed own
conviction prior to this investigation was, that the sewers were a source of
increased mortality, a conviction which does not appear justified by the
facts.” Holden’s report provided the first local evidence proving the
beneficial effects of sewers. And, as a result, Newark’s Board of Health
launched a vigorous campaign to construct sewers and rid the city of privies,
cesspools, manure pits, and other vestiges of an unsanitary era.
The
administration of sewer contracts came under the purview of the Newark Board of
Trade. Organized in 1868 by New Jersey State Legislature to “promote the
material interests and prosperity of the city,” the Board of Trade comprised
men from Newark’s industrial and mercantile class, men of power, money and
influence, men who controlled the city’s factories, warehouses, piers, docks,
freight terminals, railroads, just about anything that came into or out of the
city. As the Board kept a close eye on safeguarding their material interests,
and, in turn, the city’s, they pursued ways to keep Newark a viable place for
economic growth. Members of the Board were well aware that improved health and
sanitation of the city was of utmost concern. Meeting in 1873, when Newark had
only 15 miles of sewers, to discuss the quality of the city’s water supply,
the Board warned presciently that “with the constant increase in population,
the multiplying of mills and factories...that supply will be neither increasing
in quantity nor improving in quality.” Of course it was their “mills and
factories” that poured industrial waste into the Passaic River.
The
Passaic River had once been an idyllic place for boating, swimming and fishing.
Some Newark’s finest estates faced the river and much of the city’s social
life, including annual regattas, revolved around the waterway. Contamination of
the river reached dangerous levels after the Civil War as factory waste and raw
sewage poured directly into the river. Newark tried to blame upriver towns, such
as Paterson, for the contamination, but an 1882 study confirmed that all of
Newark’s 60 miles of sewers emptied directly into the Passaic River. Water
samples taken from the Passaic River showed it to be of dreadful quality:
“Instead of sweet-tasting, limpid water, we have a bluish-red liquid,
disgusting to the taste and smell.” In 1892, Newark tapped into the Pequannock
watershed for its water supply and abandoned the Passaic River entirely, using
it solely as a repository of sewerage.
In
1884, the Board of Trade established a special sanitary committee to improve
Newark’s pollution and sanitation crisis. Pointed references made by the Board
highlighted the deleterious social and economic consequences emanating from such
“malaria-producing conditions,” stating further that “stagnant water and
filth raises the death rate, and all this, besides distress and sorrow means
injury to our reputation as a healthful city.” So pressing had the sewerage
problem become to businessmen that they felt compelled to take the initiative to
eliminate it. So with its own funds, they invited a group of engineers to survey
Newark’s sewage disposal system and recommend improvements.
Some
of the country’s most prominent and respected civil engineers of the late
nineteenth century- Julius W. Adams, Alphonse Fteley and Rudolph Hering-
consulted on this project. Years earlier, Julius W. Adams was an advisor to New
York City when they implemented their sewer system. Alphonse Fteley’s had a
long career in sanitary engineering consulting cities throughout the northeast
on the construction of sewers, dams and reservoirs. But perhaps the most
well-known sanitary engineer of his era was Rudolph Hering. Born in Philadelphia
in 1847, Hering earned a civil engineering degree in Dresden, Germany, and after
returning to the United States, embarked on a prolific career, consulting on
water supply and sewage disposal projects in over 100 cities, including Trenton
and Plainfield in New Jersey, Chicago, Boston, New York and Los Angeles. The
principal fault with Newark’s sewers, observed the engineers, was that they
had been constructed without a preconceived plan. Their report stated: “The
condition of things which you desire to improve is, or has been, common to other
cities because of the lack of a comprehensive system of sewers; as the
population of Newark grew and the limits of the inhabited portion of its
territory were extended, sewers were built for the immediate relief of the new
districts.” By this time, only 54 miles of sewers existed for Newark’s 131
miles of paved streets, and about two-thirds of the city’s residents were
still dependent on privies and cesspools. For
years, the most pressing concern for the city was the inadequate sewerage in the
meadows. Sewers in this area had little fall and emptied into sluggish tidal
creeks that overflowed their banks during high tide or heavy rains. As early as
1874, the Common Council hoped to reclaim the salt meadows for residential and
commercial use. “If wisely treated,” the council claimed, “{it} can be
prepared and become a healthful home of 250,000 inhabitants.” Years earlier,
the Peddie Street Ditch, 25 feet wide, 6 feet deep and 3 miles long, was dug
through the meadows towards Newark Bay. The ditch required constant dredging,
requiring a great outlay of money and proved to be an utter fiasco. The
engineers proposed a large trunk sewer that would collect wastewater from sewers
in the meadows divert it into Newark Bay. In 1884, work began on an intercepting
sewer and pumping station in the meadows. Known as the Great Intercepting Sewer.
It was completed three years later at a cost of $600,000. Sewage was conveyed to
a pumping station on the edge of the meadows, where it was lifted and pumped
through culverts to an outlet some 200 feet into Newark Bay. The sewer was a
success. Proposals soon followed to connect sewers within the city to the
intercepting sewer, thereby reducing the pollution of the Passaic River.
Relief could not come soon enough. In 1890, Newark had the highest mortality
rate in the country. With over 27 deaths per 1000 population, more people in the
city were dying from disease than before the Civil War. Years of neglect,
improper maintenance, and political indecision were taking its toll on human
life. In his 1894 inaugural message, Mayor Lebkuecher stated that Newark’s
sewers, “built in the main without regard to general utility or future
requirements, fall far short of our needs, and the lack of them, in many
sections, is a menace to public health.” During the Lebkuecher administration,
the city embarked on an extensive sewer building campaign. Between 1894-1910,
approximately 200 miles of sewers were built, almost double the amount already
in existence, marking the city’s greatest era of sewer construction. In fact,
during this period over 17,000 miles of sewers were built throughout the United
States. By 1919 Newark had sewered over 95%of its improved area, and its
mortality rate had dropped nearly 60%.
While almost all of Newark’s homes and businesses were properly sewered, all
waste still flowed into the Passaic River. In 1895, the boards of health of the
lower Passaic River Valley in 1895 met to discuss and remedy the nauseating
odors, increased sickness, and economic losses brought on by the river’s
pollution. Pressure was also applied by the Newark Board of Trade and the
communities bordering the river. Organized the following year, a state
investigatory commission studied various methods of sewage disposal in the
United State and Europe. They recommended constructing a trunk sewer along the
course of the Passaic River below Paterson to intercept and carry away sewage
into Newark Bay. In 1902, the Passaic Valley Sewage Commission was established
to oversee construction of the sewer, but with the outlet in New York Bay
instead. Not begun until 1912 and delayed by World War I, the trunk sewer was
completed in 1924, with a pumping station built in the meadows. The Passaic
Valley Trunk Sewer linked 22 municipalities along the Passaic River and drained
an area of 80 square miles. After raw sewage was treated at the pumping station,
it plunged into the Newark shaft to an outfall in Newark Bay and eventual
diffusion into New York Bay. This shaft, some 280 feet deep, and lined with
concrete, was America’s first deep shaft outfall pressure tunnel. The
system of sewers that designed in this period served two purposes: to remove
human waste and to remove excess rainwater from the city streets. Household
wastewater is introduced into the sewer system through small pipes (generally
12"-18" in diameter) known as lateral sewers that lead from the house
and connect to a collector pipe, or sub-main. The sub-mains carry wastewater to
large mains or trunk sewers that are connected to treatment plants by
interceptors. Since World War II, combined sewer overflow regulators and
wastewater treatment plants have been added to the sewer system. Today, the
western portion of the city is served by the Essex and Union County Treatment
Plants in Elizabeth, while the remainder is served by the Passaic Valley
Sewerage Commission treatment plant in southeastern Newark.
Sewer construction in Newark reflects a nationwide shift in nineteenth
century urban planning. As municipal governments moved from a long-standing
policy of promoting commerce and trade to ensuring the public health, they
embarked on an unprecedented public works campaign. Made possible by improved
construction methods and advances in science, American cities strove to
eradicate disease, improve living conditions and ensure future prosperity. What
began as a piecemeal and poorly administered program developed into
intelligently designed public works. By the early twentieth century, sewer
systems were some of the largest, most ambitious and expensive capital
improvements ever undertaken by American cities.
Newark’s present 170-mile sewer system is largely the result of construction
that took place during the nineteenth century. The system has remained largely
intact and functioning for over 100 years, with some segments nearly 150 years
old. The 68 miles of brick sewers, primarily of the egg-shaped design, rank
second in the city to reinforced concrete. Although part of the “invisible
city,” Newark’s sewer system was an essential ingredient that reduced
mortality, enhanced public health and made the city a viable place to live and
work. Without this system, Newark’s residential and industrial growth, from a
small village to a modern metropolis, would not have been possible. Galishoff, Stuart
1975 Safeguarding
the Public Health: Newark, 1895 -1918.
1988
Newark: The Nation’s Unhealthiest City 1832 -1895. Melosi, Martin V.
2000 The Sanitary City.
The Johns Hopkins University Press, Metcalf, Leonard and Harrison P. Eddy
1914 American Sewerage
Practice. McGraw‑Hill Book Popper, Samuel Harry
1952 Newark, N.J.,
1870‑1910: Chapters in the Evolution Ralph, Raymond 1978
From Village to Industrial City: The Urbanization of Newark,
|
|
|
© 1998-2006 Old Newark WebMaster. All rights reserved. |
