city – Page 7 – Hidden Hydrology

21 December 2017

NYC: The Welikia Project

Jason Kingarchaeology, case study, city, creeks, cultural, ecology, geology, history, infrastructure, maps, new york, places, precedents, rivers, streams1 Comment

As I mentioned, New York City and the larger metropolitan region is an important case study in hidden hydrology, with a range of interesting activities spanning urban ecology, history, open space, art, subterranean exploration, and much more. As a city with a long and vibrant history it’s not surprising that the story of water would be equally compelling. The following few posts will expand on some of the key activities that shape the hidden hydrology of the city.

Times Square then and now: the area featured a red-maple swamp frequented by beavers, wood ducks, and elk. – via the New Yorker

Almost a decade or so ago, I read this story in the New Yorker about Henry Hudson, the year 1609, a map, and an effort by a group of people, including ecologist Eric Sanderson, to research and visualize the historical ecology of New York City. I posted this and posted it to my blog Landscape+Urbanism. This was one of the catalysts, and I’ve discussed this project in the past as one the key Origin Stories around my personal interest in Hidden Hydrology.

The publication of the ideas with the publication of the Mannahatta book (originally out in 2009 and with new printing in 2013) and this broader work by Eric Sanderson (and his very well loved TED Talk) and crew on visualizing and creating rich data landscapes for Manhattan and the larger region is constantly compelling, and the shift to a broader scope under the name The Welikia Project in 2010 was really exciting to see.

The Welikia Project expands the provides a rich and well documented study of the historical and ecological study of New York City dating back over 400 years and inclusive of a range of interpretation from art, ecology, and design. The overview of Welikia here provides a much longer and more complete synopsis of the project, but I’ll pick some of the interesting ideas I think are worth of discussion in information larger ideas about hidden hydrology.

The main page offers a range of options that the project provides. Per the overview page, “The Welikia Project (2010 – 2013) goes beyond Mannahatta to encompass the entire city, discover its original ecology and compare it what we have today… The Welikia Project embraces the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the waters in-between, while still serving up all we have learned about Mannahatta. Welikia provides the basis for all the people of New York to appreciate, conserve and re-invigorate the natural heritage of their city not matter which borough they live in.”

Tools include some downloads include curriculum for teachers to use, and some publications and data also available which would be fun to explore more. A few notable bits of info worth exploration is this page “How to Build a Forgotten Landscape from the Ground Up”, which is a nice overview of the methodology used by the Welikia team, and provides a nice blueprint for organization of data that is transferable to any locale.

The original historical 1782 British Headquarters map was the genesis of any number of overlays that, once digitized into GIS, provided a historic base to layer additional information from other sources, along with inferences by professional ecologists and other members of the team. These were also able to be georeferenced, which allows for the overlay of historic to modern geography, which becomes the basis for some of the larger interactive mapping we’ll see a bit later. A map series from the Welikia site demonstrates the layering and aggregation possible.

Elevation differences from 1609 to today

The concept of Muir Webs was also a fascinating part of the original Mannahatta book, so you can learn more about this on the page and via this presentation “On Muir Webs and Mannahatta: Ecological Networks in the Service of New York City’s Historical Ecology”

This Muir Web shows all the habitat relationships for all the species on Mannahatta. Visualization by Chris Harrison of Carnegie-Mellon University. ©WCS

Welikia Map Explorer – Lots of interesting background that I’ve literally barely scratched the surface of. As I mentioned, the beauty of Mannahatta was the visualization of the historic surface, and through mapping with georeferenced location, provided an easy opportunity to create overlay maps of historic and modern. The key part of this project is the Welikia Map Explorer, which offers a simple interface that can unlock tons of information. Starting out, you have a full panned out view of the 1609 map visualization for Manhattan.

By selecting an address or zooming, you can isolate locations or just navigate. It’s got that same video game quality I mentioned in my recent post about the DC Water Atlas, with some exploratory zooming and flying around the landscape looking at the creeks, wetlands and other area, you half expect to click and launch some next part of a non-linear exploration game. The detail is amazing, and the juxtaposition between the very urban metropolis of New York City with this lush, pre-development landscape is striking both in plan, as well as some of the 3D renderings above.

You can then select any block and it will pop up a box that allows you to access lots of data underneath on a smaller level.

The interface provides layers of site specific data, and breaks down items like Wildlife, potential presence of Lenape (original native inhabitants, and Landscape Metrics. “Welcome to a wild place: this block in 1609! Through the tabs below, discover the wildlife, Native American use, and landscape factors of this block’s original ecology, as reconstructed by the Mannahatta Project. You can also explore the block today and sponsor the Mannahatta Project into the future.”

The Modern Day tab relates back to OASIS maps of the modern condition, making the connection of specific places easy to discern. “Landscapes never disappear, they just change. Click on the image below to see this block today through the New York City Open Accessible Space Information System (OASIS) and learn about open space and other contemporary environmental resources.”

For the beautiful simplicity of the map, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this is dense with real data and models that attempt to provide a real viewpoint to what each parcel was like 400+ years in the past. We discuss baseline conditions much in design, stormwater, ecology and habitat studies, and this level of evidence-based, site scale data is so important to decisonmaking not just in terms of former waterways, but in restoration and management of spaces. This is summed up on the site:

“An important part of the Mannahatta Project is not leaving ecology in the past, but to appreciate it in our current times, to see how we can live in ways that are compatible with wildlife and wild places and that will sustain people and planet Earth for the next 400 years.”

Visonmaker.NYC – Of the more recent expansions of this is the creation of Visionmaker NYC, which “allows the public to develop and share climate-resilient and sustainable designs for Manhattan based on rapid model estimates of the water cycle, carbon cycle, biodiversity and population. Users can vary the ecosystems, lifestyles, and climate of the city in an effort to find and publish sustainable and resilient visions of the city of the future.”

Worthy of a full post on it’s own, the idea is to emphasize the link between the Mannahatta era of 1609, the current era four centuries later, around 2009, and a future world into the future another 400 years in 2049. This gives a great opportunity to create a key linkages between historical work, current scenarios, and future conditions.

As they mention: “A vision is a representation of a part of New York City as you envison it. You select an area and can change the ecosystems – buildings, streets, and natural environments – as well as the climate and the lifestyle choices that people living in that area make.” and you can also view other published visions done by users of all ages. The interface is similar to Welikia, as it allows an overlay of layers with varying transparency for comparison.

More on this as I dive in a bit, but you can also watch a more recent 2013 TEDxLongIslandCity video shows this tool in more detail:

The mapmaking is of course pretty awesome, and they keep posting new visualizations and updates, such as this 1609 topo map, posted via Twitter via @welikiaproject on the “Preurban (year 1609) topography and elevation of #NYC”

There was also some great local quirky info, such as this map and historic photo showing perhaps the strangest remnant geological remnant in a city I’ve seen. Via Twitter from December 2016, “29 Dec 2016 “Rocky outcrops in NYC, were mostly concentrated in Manhattan and the Bronx and composed of schist and gneiss.”

You can and should also follow Sanderson via @ewsanderson , continuing his work at the Wildlife Conservation Society and to see him giving talks and tours around the City. A recent one mentioned that “After seven years of effort, he will share for the first time the digital elevation model of the pre-development topography his team has built, discuss why the climate and geology of the city together make our landscape conducive to streams and springs, give a borough by borough tour of ancient watersheds, and suggest how we can bring living water back to the stony city again.”

Sounds great, and I wish sometimes to be a bit closer to be able to experience this around these parts. Continuing to inspire beyond Mannahatta to the broader Welikia Project, Sanderson and all the crew that make it a reality is a great example anywhere in the world of what’s possible in tracing the threads between history and contemporary environmental issues. If someone today gave me a chunk of money and said do this for Portland or Seattle or both (and honestly folks, we really should) I’d jump on it in a second.

19 December 2017 19 December 2017

Underground Munich

Jason Kingcity, cultural, history, infrastructure, maps, munich, places, rivers, streams3 Comments

I stumbled on an interesting short article via Environment & Society via Twitter (@env_and_society) on some of the subterranean history of Munich, Germany. The post “Munich from Below: What Happens Underground?” was developed by Lisa Bauer and Sonja Meinelt as part of the virtual exhibition “Ecopolis München: Environmental Histories of a City“. The authors paint a common story of growing cities developing new infrastructure to meet demands and deal with growth, but also delve into some interesting concepts as well, ranging from ice, beer, agriculture, mushrooms, and a dead queen.

These stairs are the entrance to Munich’s underworld. They lead down to the masonry canal that was built in 1912. Photo by Lisa Bauer

The development and growth around the Isar River set the stage for disease. “The city’s inhabitants dumped their garbage on their doorsteps or into the Isar. Only a few meters away, they extracted fresh water from wells. Germs and diseases spread ruthlessly, and epidemics of diseases like cholera and typhus killed thousands.” The caption to the map below reads: “This map shows the course of Munich’s streams that are west of the Isar. The different colors represent whether a stream is on the surface or underground. The ones mapped in dark blue are below ground. The ones in light blue are above ground. And the ones mapped in purple are abandoned streams.”

As you see, the majority of streams are now underground. While the infrastructure improvements that utilized the underground systems were driven by water pollution, there are some interesting alternative uses for the subterranean landscape of the city, mentioned in the article. Ice was critical for storage, and “In mild winters, ice for cooling beer cellars was even harvested from the Birnhorn glacier.

The ice was a vital ingredient in storage of beer, which along with clean water was critical to taste. “The cooler the temperature at which the beer was stored, the longer its shelf life. The breweries built deep cellars at the gates of the city, in the sand and gravel pits on the slopes of the Isar. Cooling methods improved steadily. As of 1830, in addition to implementing ventilation systems, breweries also began to use natural ice in their storage cellars. The quality, reputation, and economic success of Munich beer became better and better.”

With beer cellars, comes a perfect spot for a cool place to drink beer as well, such as the Augustiner beer cellar seen below:

Few cellars remain, as mentioned: “The majority of Munich’s beer cellars no longer exist today. After serving as bomb shelters in the Second World War, many were destroyed, demolished, or built over. The beer cellars have since been largely forgotten. Only here and there are they still around, hidden, mostly inaccessible—deep below the cellars of buildings.”

There were some interesting uses in that interim period, especially in the war, where “mushrooms were grown underground in an old rail tunnel beneath Goetheplatz. Today the U3/6 line runs through the “mushroom tunnel,” which was built as a section of Munich’s first subway line.” The below image is from World War II, where “…the subway shaft served as an air-raid shelter, and afterwards as a place for cultivating luxury food: button mushrooms. However, invasive ground water ended mushroom cultivation.”

The underground also was developed to manage runoff, as previous mentioned. “To ensure that wastewater does not flow into the Isar, enormous subterranean basins store excess water.” The image in the header, shows one of these, and below shows “The largest rainwater-retention basin in Europe (90,000 meters) is located below Hirschgarten…”

Beyond the underground storage tanks, the aforementioned sewers were build come with an interesting tale. The impetus for the sewerage is a common theme, to combat waterborne disease. This case was a bit different, as discussed in “The Queen’s Death Ensures Clean Water“:

“Max von Pettenkofer brought about a change in Munich’s cleanliness. The doctor found that the recurring cholera outbreaks could be traced back to unhygienic conditions. In order to counteract the causes of the epidemics, he encouraged the idea of a modern sewage system with a waste transport system and the introduction of flush toilets. He also pushed for a supply of drinking water from the Mangfall valley in the Alpine Foreland. He initially encountered strong resistance. The government took action only after the death of Queen Therese of Bavaria. In 1854 she became a victim, along with another 2,935 Munich residents, of a cholera outbreak.”

Thus Munich built the modern system, per the map above. The image above shows this “…masonry canal was built in 1912. Even today it drains wastewater from surrounding houses.”

The hidden hydrology of any city starts to become similar when you start looking at how cities have developed, development pressures, and the inevitable ‘modernization’ by burying of surface waters into underground systems. The thread that exists in modern urban areas around the globe, concurrent with the Industrial Era in the 1850s to 1900s, is telling as within a short timeframe of a century, most world cities will have undergone a massive reconfiguration from surface to subsurface water. Not to say Munich is special in this case, just brings up the point that all stories lead to a similar conclusion. Worthy of some comparative exploration.

From this inquiry also emerges some interesting stories of how subterranean spaces have been used, re-purposed, and are woven in the histories of places and their people.

Citation: Bauer, Lisa, and Sonja Meinelt. “Munich from Below.” In “Ecopolis München,” edited by L. Sasha Gora. Environment & Society Portal, Virtual Exhibitions 2017, no. 2. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/8052.

16 December 2017 17 December 2017

Glimpse of Early Seattle

Jason Kingcity, cultural, history, maps, places, precedents, seattle2 Comments

It was great see, via Twitter, local resource @HistoryLink post “100 years ago today, Thomas Phelps’s 1856 map of Seattle was published in the Town Crier”. I saw the post today, so I’m a day late, but the Phelps map is one of those fascinating documents that highlights the historical origins of Seattle and intrigues because it so far removed from want exists today. The article about the map, website, penned by David B. Williams, mentions the map’s original publication on December 15, 1917 as part of the article in the Town Crier (map shown to the left). The article was about “Seattle’s First Taste of Warfare”, found via the Seattle Public Library which outlines an early battle between new settlers and the original residents of Seattle. The full page shows the map in the center (quality of the online version is a bit fuzzy as well – click to enlarge)

The history is summed as such by Williams via HistoryLink.org:

“Phelps’s map depicts what has become known as the Battle of Seattle, when Native Americans battled settlers and the Decatur’s crew on January 26, 1856. The death toll for the skirmish, which ended at 10 p.m., was two settlers and an unknown number of Indians. The map provides what appears to be an accurate depiction of the city on that day, although there is one notable mistake. The settlement’s northern blockhouse, or fort, is in the wrong location; it should be two blocks south, at what is now Cherry Street. (Phelps also shows a southern blockhouse, which was not built until two weeks or so after the battle.) The only other map to depict Seattle around the time of the battle is a U.S. Coast Survey map of “Duwamish Bay, W.T.” Published in 1854, it shows a roughly similar landscape and distribution of buildings.”

A known reprint appeared inr Arthur Denny’s book “Pioneer Days on the Puget Sound”, originally published in a 1888, this map appearing in a reprint from 1908 (but also great is to see the book available as a Third Place Books Rediscovery Edition here). A small version of the map of it from HistoryLink.org (see below for a larger, adapted similar version), with caption from Williams: “1856 map of Seattle by Thomas Phelps of USS Decatur, as published in Arthur Denny’s Pioneer Days on Puget Sound with later street grid superimposed, 1908”

Many historical maps just exist as a singular object to depict a place in a point in time. Phelps’ map seems to exist along a continuum from it’s original sketch of which there is no record, to various prints, updates, hybrids, and transformations over the span of decades, all of which are adaptations of events that had happened some half-century or more in the past. As Williams mentioned separately in a blog post, on his GeologyWriter site about the map: “Many, many editions of the map have been produced.”

The other version that has a fixed date, and mostly commonly used as I’ve seen it, is that redrawn version by Clarence Bagley from 1930, recreating the “1856 map of Seattle by Thomas Phelps of USS Decatur, enlarged and revised.” The 1930 version shows the “Officers of the Sloop of War Decatur”, and a more extensive street grid, and is signed by Bagley. (This image is from Pinterest here as finding a good digital original with source is tough) There’s also a sepia version around cropped with tape marks and a big seattlepi.com watermark, but the same map.

As Williams outlines the unknowns and uncertain history of the map deftly in his article, he mentions “We do not know why Bagley produced this map, who he produced it for, or how he distributed it. Nor is an original of it known to exist. Copies are found in the holdings of Seattle Public Library and University of Washington Special Collections. Nor is it known how Bagley acquired a copy of the Phelps map. Perhaps he could have acquired it from whoever supplied the map to Alice Harriman, who published it in her 1908 reprint of Arthur Denny’s Pioneer Days. Bagley had originally published Pioneer Days, in 1888, but that edition did not include the Phelps map. Harriman did consult with Bagley so he may have had access to an original, though it is unclear why Bagley would wait until 1930 to produce his edition of the map.”

The provenance of others is a question, below is one of those alternative versions that just includes some format changes but unknown date, and stripped of the additional information added in 1930. This larger version via DorpatSherrardLomont that also points out one flaw in the original, as included the annotation: “Phelps map of Seattle. He by now famously misplaced the blockhouse one block too far north of its real location on a knoll at the waterfront foot of Cherry Street.”

The map shown below is titled ‘Map of the Attack on Seattle’, which alludes the the original story. In this case it is from Access Genelology site for the Washington Indian Wars, 1855-1856. It looks like a version of the original that uses the same graphic style, in a sepia tone that cleans up the original map with updated fonts, and the titleblock shifting to the upper right (not sure about date of this one)

An alternate version that David Williams has on his blog, and as he mentions, “This is one of the more unusual. It is owned by the University of Washington Special Collections. I have no idea where it was printed or who the engravers were.” adding, that there were “…several unusual aspects. 1. Addition of “hostile” to Hills & Woods thronged with 2. Addition of “skidroad” to Lake Trail & Skidroad 3. Labels Thomas Phelps as a Lieutenant instead of Commander” ( date unknown)

This expanded version from DorpatSherrodLomond locates the original map within the larger grid of streets and pioneer claims, using the original graphic style as published in Denny’s book.

I’m sure it’s not uncommon, but it’s one of the interesting aspects of the map, as summarized, that it is not just a snapshot of an event in a place, but that it has yielded lots questions about copyright in later years between those wishing to use the map for publication. Williams concludes: “For such a famous map, there are many unanswered questions: When exactly did Phelps draw the original? Does an original exist?”

And for me, when looking at a map that provides a foundation for a place, the questions are both fascinating and make one questions the fidelity of memory, production, reproduction and tracings. Whole explicit or accidental it shows the agendas (and talents or lack thereof) of the mapmakers. The story of the Phelps map is a crucial one for Seattle history and hidden hydrology, and it does offer some context for early shoreline and land fill to office later. While we’d like highly accurate and globally positioned map or story, often reality is that we get a different, more subjective and fluid tale. And as it is a touchstone to what ends up being a crazy development of the City of Seattle, perhaps a little mystery isn’t such a bad thing.

Original text quotes from “Thomas Phelps’s 1856 map of Seattle is published in the Town Crier on December 15, 1917″ via HistoryLink.org, by David B. Williams, originally published 3/24/2015. Maps are credited to other sources because they are so incredibly small on the HistoryLink.org site to even be legible (one of my few pet peeves with an otherwise amazing resource).

David’s site Geology Writer also has more history, and tons of great info on Seattle History, by Paul Dorpat, Jean Sherrard, and Bérangère Lomont on the DorpatSherrardLomont site.

14 December 2017 15 December 2017

DC Water Atlas

Jason Kingcase study, city, history, infrastructure, maps, places, rivers, streams, washington dc1 Comment

Last year, I did a review of some of the hidden hydrology of Washington DC showcasing contemporary studies along with a range of historical maps. Since that post, an amazing mapping project by John Davis (@jnddavis) has launched that’s worth some further examination.

Called the D.C. Water Atlas, the site is hosted by the Dumbarton Oaks, and is summarized as:

“A digital atlas of waterways big and small in Washington, D.C., from the eighteenth century to the present. The online atlas provides a clear sense of the relationship in scale between a city block and the course of an entire river, and facilitates visualizing changes over time in layers or phases.”

A simple blueprint theme provides the foundation for data organized into larger groupings of Aqueduct, Canal, Watefrtont, Watershed, and Sewer. Each of these can be accessed via the navigation or through exploration of the map. The larger theme maps give a short text description and some dashed boxes highlighting more information such as the aqueduct below (click images to see larger images).

The regional scale makes way for the urban, concentrating on the DC area, in terms of Watefront and Sewer, with a cool rollover method of depicting the growth of the sewer system from the 1870s to 90s.

Or the larger system of water conveyance and reservoirs, including the aqueducts, explained: “The original distribution system, built as part of the construction of the aqueduct itself, served only a relatively small area of the city, as compared to the extent of water service now. Shown as a dashed line on the map, the original water-supply mains prioritized government buildings, such as the Capitol and the White House, and areas of concentrated population, like Georgetown. To ensure adequate pressure throughout the system, and to get water to places that were at higher elevation than downtown, the engineers built a series of “high service” reservoirs in high points around the city. Most have been demolished in modernization efforts. A few fragments of trident-shaped fencing, however, remain in the special collections of the Georgetown Public Library, which was built on the site of one of these domed reservoirs.”

This also expands out into the fringes, to show the reach of water systems in watershed, canal, scales, and aqueducts that connect hinterland with urban center. The maps below shows the watershed north of the urban area.

Each map contains the ‘Year Depicted’ so there’s continuity of some form of linearity time-wise (most depicting a timeline from the mid-1800’s through early 1900s and later. There area also some hidden ‘ghosts’ such as a proposed reservoir in the Rock Creek Valley, a dam that could have been as “…engineers eyed the valley as a convenient site for a water reservoir close to downtown. Luckily for the city’s residents, a group of citizens led by Charles C. Glover urged Congress to purchase the land comprising today’s park, and blocked construction of the dam, which would have inundated a large part of the urban landscape.”

It has the feeling of an exploratory video game, as the opening page was fun to see what emerged, and as you zoomed in on scale, the layers of history was revealed in a nonlinear narrative. The highlighted sections were cues, but the users

The scale at some times get’s relatively micro, with zoomed area such as the Navy Yard, below, the nested scales working well in revealing significant water system landmarks.

And the Cabin John Bridge, in which “…engineers designed and built a masonry arch bridge to support the aqueduct’s conduit in its course across the valley. This graceful structure, noted for its simplicity of design and elegant form, was the longest single-span masonry arch in North America for nearly one hundred years.”

The extensive bibliography shows a richness of data that can be layered and unified (often a missing piece for critical analysis using sources of different types). There’s also a complementary essay, in which Davis discusses his take on the digital format in flattening the narrative structure of maps, as well as some methodology, including the pains of digitization and archiving and a switch to open source GIS, and some thoughts on the way we present spatial data. As Davis mentions, scale is one of the key elements that needs to be considered in representation:

“The Water Atlas, because of extensive processing, does convey a sense of place and space to the structures and landscapes it considers. A combination of cartography and orthographic drawing conventions, the Water Atlas resists the ubiquitous tendency to reduce events, structures, and landscapes to icons. Instead, it portrays these structures as visible at an urban scale, and the drawings reflect the true impact of these structures on the landscape. Though not as fluid and seamless as the Google Maps-powered Panorama, or Leaflet, or Neatline; orthographic, architectural scale drawings convey information at that middle scale necessary for representation and analysis of landscape.”

It’s worth clicking and just exploring and seeing for yourself the layers, often easily discerned and sometimes hidden in the relatively simple interface. And as Davis mentions, it works at a scale that unlocks stories at a range that seems both comprehensive and accessible. As mentioned on the Dumbarton Oaks page, the Atlas “… shows the development of the city’s water infrastructure over time, from large features like canals to the sewer grid and water treatment facilities…” adding “It’s interesting to be able to visualize things that aren’t always apparent when you’re walking around the city,” says John Davis, Tyler fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies. “It’s a totally different conception of how the city works.”

As I compile precedents for my own mapping, this stands out as a really inspiring example of what could be. The interface isn’t seamless, but in a way that works in a way where you have to dig a little and move around to unearth all of the secrets. The multi-scalar approach could be adapted to any area and allow for spatial and temporal layering. I likened it to an exploratory video game, but perhaps it more a metaphor for hidden hydrology, that all is not immediately revealed, and that part of the fun is in the journey.

All images – screen shots taken of the DC Water Atlas. The footer for the site reads: “This project was completed as part of work for a Tyler Fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C. Copyright John Davis and the Trustees of Harvard University, 2016. All Rights Reserved.”

12 December 2017 14 December 2017

Boston’s Made Land

Jason Kingboston, case study, city, geology, history, landfill, landscape, maps, places1 Comment

The history of hidden hydrology isn’t just that of erasure, but of ‘made land’, significant areas that were added to cities through the process of landfilling. A June, 2017 post from National Geographic’s All Over the Map blog captures this on the east coast, telling the story of “How Boston Made Itself Bigger” illustrated with some fantastic maps. The focal map shows the extent of landfilling throughout the span from 1630 to present, from the original shape of the downtown area (Shawmut Pennisula), and the modern shoreline in blue. The massive extent of fill is pretty evident with significant percentage of the metro area on land that at one point in the not-so-distant past was water.

Much of Boston’s coastline is man-made land. The original shoreline, from 1630, is visible in dark green on this map. Land made between 1630 and 1995 is light green. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NORMAN B. LEVENTHAL MAP CENTER, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY; CARTOGRAPHY BY HERB HEIDT AND ELIZA MCCLENNEN, MAPWORKS

A 1630’s map shows the Shawmut, and the narrow spit of land that connected this (for a time at least) to the mainland (rotated north to the right).

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE NORMAN B. LEVENTHAL MAP CENTER, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

The impetus for the post on Boston was driven by lowering of the water table to levels that started to potentially reveal many of the wood piles, which stay preserved in anerobic conditions – as similar situation to a water-based city like Venice, for instance, but once water levels reveal them, makes them highly susceptible to rot. From All Over the Map:

” A large portion of the city sits on man-made land. Structures built on the landfill are supported by dozens of 30- to 40-foot-long wood pilings, similar to telephone poles, that reach down through the landfill to a harder layer of clay. These pilings sit entirely below the water table, which protects them from microbes that would attack them in dry air, causing rot.”

The filling also was facilitated by damming, such as seen below, where what was the current Back Bay “neighborhood is marked “Receiving Basin” on this map. Boston Common is the uncolored area marked “Common.” By damming the areas, thus separating them from the larger bodies of water and tidal changes, it was easier to then start to develop and fill in with railroads, industrial lands and more development. The image shows expansion parcels, notably widening of the neck and further encroachment into the water.

As mentioned, it wasn’t just increased development area that was driving the land filling: “Over the years there were many other motivations for making new land, including making harbor improvements, burying pollution from wastewater, safeguarding public health, building public parks, adding railroad tracks and depots, adding more shipping facilities to compete with other port cities, establishing appealing neighborhoods to entice Yankees to stay (and to counter Irish immigration), and creating space for the city’s airport.” Another driver was public health, including filling in ponds and creeks, which were starting to smell. Concurrent with filling (and a great source of fill) was removal of hillsides, another common city strategy, which provided plenty of earth to create more land while levelling, in this case, Beacon Hill. (via Wikipedia)

Cutting down Beacon Hill in 1811; a view from the north toward the Massachusetts State House

The Back Bay was a source of both significant filling due to its location as a locus of sewage (and a super complicated hydrological regime change that was involved), as mentioned in All Over the Map: “…an 1849 report from a city committee that reads: “Back Bay at this hour is nothing less than a great cesspool into which is daily deposited all the filth of a large and constantly increasing population … A greenish scum, many yards wide, stretches along the shores of the Western Avenue [Mill Dam], whilst the surface of the water beyond is seen bubbling like a cauldron with the noxious gases that are exploding from the corrupting mass below.” The area was filled with trash and other debris, as fill material was less available, along with being set on the aforementioned pilings, placing it in the awkward position of being even now “one of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods, but also among the most vulnerable to foundation rot.”

I’d be remiss as well if I didn’t mention, in the context of this, one of my favorite Olmsted projects, the Back Bay Fens, which came at the tail end of the filling, in the 1870s (via Wikipedia): “Olmsted’s challenge was to restore the spot of marsh which was preserved into an ecologically healthy place that could also be enjoyed as a recreation area. Combining his renowned landscaping talents with state-of-the-art sanitary engineering, he turned a foul-smelling tidal creek and swamp into “scenery of a winding, brackish creek, within wooded banks; gaining interest from the meandering course of the water.”

The extent of land filling is hard to visualize, but the map that shows it most clearly in terms of downtown is a simple overlay of the original Shawmut Pennisula over the new shoreline (you can see the tip of the Back Bay Fens in the lower left hand corner).

And while not the most up-to-date map in terms of graphic style, a good way to illustrate the evolution of landfilling over time that is hard to capture on maps is this animation via the Boston: History of the Landfills page at Boston College. Someone has probably updated this, so if you know of it, let me know any updated sources.

A later map in 1867 from the NOAA US Coast Survey below shows further expansions closer to the modern coast. Although the land and coast changed less in the ensuing century and a half, the continuing legacy of the land filling continues to be costly to maintain, exacerbated especially in times of changing water levels that we are experiencing with global climate change.

The hydrology as well, although hidden, is evident in repairs for pilings and other issues of groundwater – a symptom of building and ‘making land’ on areas formally water. And as concluded in All Over the Map, “…with more than 5,000 acres of man-made land—more than any other American city (except perhaps San Francisco, where the landfill hasn’t been comprehensively totaled)—Bostonians will be living with this problem for the foreseeable future.”

ADDENDA

Plenty of folks have covered this in Boston and the idea of land filling, with a variety of maps and imagery, such a Boston Geology, and some more context on the pilings from the Boston Groundwater Trust. Also, this great post from the Library of Congress ‘Putting Boston on the Map: Land Reclamation and the Growth of a City’ features a few maps, including one of the earliest maps, which highlights the former tight pennisula.

William Burgis and Thomas Johnston. “To his excellency William Burnet, esqr., this plan of Boston in New England is humbly dedicated by his excellencys most obedient and humble servant Will Burgiss.” 1728. Geography & Map Division, Library of Congress.

And a fabulous birdseye from the late 1800’s showing more significant filling.

Charles R. Parsons and Lyman W. Atwater. “The city of Boston.” 1873. Geography & Map Division, Library of Congress.

See the some of the timeline of history via the USGS series of maps of Boston here, or a more interactive map via MapJunction with an array of base and historical map overlays of Boston, including a cool 4-way slider that allows you to do an overlay left-to-right and control transparency top-to-bottom. A couple of screen shots of these.

1776 Hybrid Map (Boston and Environs – Pelham)

And an out-of-print book worth tracking down is Nancy S. Seasholes Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (MIT Press, 2003) where the “story of landmaking in Boston is presented geographically; each chapter traces landmaking in a different part of the city from its first permanent settlement to the present.”

Many cities share this trait, using fill to gain area, which has been both boon and boondoggle. Locally, a great resource worthy of a deep dive is Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography by David B. Williams (University of Washington press, 2015), which I’ve read and re-read which explores in detail, a similar massive manipulation and use of made land here in my current particular West coast City.

HEADER: Image via National Geographic, “A map of Boston in 1775 shows the dam that closed off Mill Pond, which was later filled in to make new land. “ PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

11 December 2017

Dining on Tanner Creek

Jason Kingart, city, creeks, cultural, explorations, history, infrastructure, places, portland, streamsLeave a Comment

A quick visit to Portland this weekend didn’t feature much in the way of exploration, but it was a pleasure to stumble upon the Tanner Creek Tavern, a new restaurant in the Pearl District (corner of 9th and Everett) with a nice connection to hidden hydrology. The name says it all, but the spot has the distinction of housing some notable historical remnants celebrating Tanner Creek, including some maps and photos of the creek, which ran nearby for many of the early years of Portland’s history before being encased underground in the early 1900s.

The far wall of the restaurant contains a 1870s aerial lithograph of downtown, viewed from the east across the Wilamette River, with the ‘route’ of the creek highlighted in a faint blue. Some questions arise about the fidelity of the tracing of the mouth of the creek, but it does aid in reinforcing Tanner Creek.

Oddly enough, I’ve collected other versions of this map that are not as crisp of a reproduction (it typically comes with a chunky border and is oddly cropped on both sides, but hadn’t seen this particular one, via a link on their website gallery as well., which is beautifully shaded with the wooded West Hills up from the nascent downtown grid and a sparsely filled in east side.

Birds-eye view of the City of Portland, Oregon. Photo file #1924-b

There’s some references to the creek history on the menu, and a bit of a longer text via the website, a sidebar on the Legend of Tanner Creek:

“Tanner Creek was named after the tannery established in 1845 by Kentucky settler and Portland founding father, Daniel Lownsdale. With its headwaters originating in the West Hills, the creek traced its surface path down Canyon Road and through Goose Hollow before emptying into Couch Lake and the surrounding wetlands that now make up the modern Pearl District. Portland’s heavy storm runoff would often cause the creek to overflow, damaging property on the expanding Westside. City fathers tackled this problem in the late 19th century by burying the creek in an enormous brick-lined culvert excavated at some points to a depth of 50 feet. Today this subterranean public works project still functions much the way it did over a century ago. The creek meanders below the Pearl on its final destination to the Willamette River where it empties somewhere between the Broadway Bridge and the Portland Police Horse Paddock.”

A few other views show the space, an airy semi-industrial central bar surrounded by open seating with some wood accents. A really loved the central visibility of the map as the focal point.

Another wall visible from outside has photos of the demise, a set of 1920s era construction photos of the installation of the pipes that took the surface waters underground.

While I am probably same in assuming I was the only one in the place geeking out on a giant wall map of a hidden stream, it’s a decent attempt at connecting a place to place and imbuing a story into what are often sort of hollow legends that are crafted for bars and restaurants in lieu of real context. And, hidden hydrology nerdiness aside, the food and drinks are pretty good as well.

05 December 2017

San Francisco’s Hidden Water Tanks

Jason Kingart, city, history, infrastructure, maps, photography, places, san francisco4 Comments

A fascinating history of hidden hydrology (of a sort) are the mysterious infrastructure traces often in plain sight. We may do a double take, or wonder about some random pattern on the surface, but often dismiss this as legacies of historical cycles of building and erasure. Those on the lookout and with an inquring spirit may discover, if you’ll pardon the pun, a deeper story.

A recent article in May 2017 from CityLab shows “The Sublime Cisterns of San Francisco”, and offers some clues to the origins, namely “Subterranean vats were an emergency response to the city being repeatedly and savagely burned to the ground.” The circles exist at a number of intersections throughout the city, noted with a circle of brick or stone.

“To date there are 170 to 200 of the tanks stashed around town—the city’s numbers vary quite a bit—functioning as emergency watersources apart from the water mains and suction stations pumping saltwater from the Bay.”

The first reference to this urban feature traces back to the always prescient Burrito Justice, who first unlocked the story in 2011, in a post link “Cole Valley Alley Solves Cistern Mystery”, and expanded on this in the 2013 post “What’s Underneath Those Brick Circles”, both of which highlight the origins of the stone circles, some dating back as far as the 1850s.

The original Cole Valley Alley post got some info from the SF Department of Public Works, including the “original 1909 plans for the 75,000 gallon cistern on Frederick & Shrader”

The original CityLab post links to a few more pics from Robin Scheswohl/San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, showing the amazing interior of these spaces:

The CityLab article also mentions the map by Mapzen’s John Oram (Burrito Justice himself), who built a fantastic interactive map of the cisterns available here – a few screenshots of which are found below – which reveals more info when zoomed in, such as location and size.

Another mapping project mentioned is by artist Scott Kildall, as part of his more expansive Water Works project, focused some energy on creating a Map of San Francisco’s Cisterns here.

A model of cisterns as well.

The randomness of these traces is also interesting, with juxtapositions outside of the formal symmetry but off-grid and partially obscured, such as this image. via Kildalls site, where you can read more about his project

Cistern at 22nd and Dolores – via kildall.com

The significance of fire that created this system of cisterns that folks are discovering is driven by several major fires in the 1850s. Thus the distributed reservoirs have been installed since the original founding of the City, seen in a key plan from July 1852 – from Burrito Justice (linking to a David Rumsey map of San Francisco 1853) and identifying intersections where these existed.

The fires culminated in the most notable fire is the aftermath of the 1906 Earthquake, discussed in this April 2017 CityLab story “The Ultimate Photo Map of the 1906 San Francisco Quake” which identifies photographs documenting the event.

Market Street on fire. Looking east to the Ferry Building from Fremont Street, April 18, 1906. (Willard E. Worden photograph. Glass negative courtesy of a private collector). via Open SF History

Quoting Woody LaBounty from this Open SF History Post “Rise of the Phoenix: A Closer Look:

“One hundred and eleven years ago, in the early morning of April 18, San Francisco shook and trembled through a massive earthquake. Stone buildings shed their skins. Chimneys and brick walls collapsed on streets and adjoining buildings. Roadways split and sunk. People were gravely injured or killed by crumbling boarding houses, apartments, and warehouses…

The disaster became much worse as fires broke out from the Embarcadero to Hayes Valley and, aided by wind and inept attempts to create fire breaks with explosives, joined into larger maelstroms that gobbled up almost 500 city blocks of cottages, factories, tenements, hotels, stores, banks, and government buildings over the next three days.”

The extent of the fire is captured in this view from Oakland, via CityLab, showing “A view of the San Francisco earthquake’s aftermath from Oakland” (Credit – Oakland Museum of California)

There’s a pretty extensive history of the SF Fire Department via the SF Museum site (published in 1925) for some historical perspective and some illustrations of these early 1850s fires.

The City of San Francisco Fire Departments page drops a link to the cisterns as well as a video via the exploratorium, ‘The Science of Firefighting: Cisterns’ which has some FD folks “discuss the history and function of these cisterns, and demonstrate the drafting procedures used to access the water.”

Header image via Burrito Justice.

02 December 2017 02 December 2017

Montreal’s Underground Cavern

Jason Kingaquifers, city, geology, history, montrealLeave a Comment

While the focus of investigations in Hidden Hydrology are often around the lost, buried and disappeared, the true nature of the hidden comes up in some interesting ways. A recent article via the CBC discusses a new find “‘This is a major discovery’: Explorers find massive ice-age cavern beneath Montreal” and discusses a hidden “Cathedral-like chamber, formed more than 15,000 years ago, [which also] features underground lake”.

The spot was found by cavers who busted through a wall in the popular the Saint-Leonard Cavern, The cavers, “Le Blanc and Caron said they were able to pinpoint the location of the passageway using a dowsing rod, similar to the wooden divination tools sometimes used to find groundwater. The two men, who first got into caving as a hobby, said they’ve been searching for an unknown branch of the Saint-Léonard cavern for years.”

A video of the exploration:

While groundwater and aquifers are well known to exist in cities, the relationship of surface and subsurface geology and hydrology makes for some interesting interactions with hidden hydrological regimes – in this case subterranean interface with the aquifer. Perhaps few examples as extreme as this in modern cities, but interesting to see something hidden for years emerging after so long.

Source of the header image: Massive Underground Cavern Formed During Ice Age Discovered By Amateur Explorers (IBT)

08 November 2017 11 December 2017

Farming Tanner Creek

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, history, landscape, places, portland, streams1 Comment

The margins of history, ecology, and culture overlap in stories about hidden hydrology. This is evident in a 2016 article by Putsata Reang in Oregon Humanities, entitled ‘The Farmers of Tanner Creek’ that looks at this convergence in Portland and the history in the Goose Hollow area to the southwest of downtown.

The article investigates the shadow economy of Chinese immigrants that gardened on the fringes of the city of Portland around the turn of the century. Alternatively referenced as “Vegetable Man” or “Chinaman”, Reang leads with the legders of the Mills family, who “likely hefted his produce in wicker baskets hung from a pole and slung across his shoulder, trekking uphill from the gulch along Tanner Creek in Southwest Portland where his garden grew and along the hill to the Mills’ mansion every day, faithfully, for much of 1907.”

The photo above shows the area around 1892, where “Tanner Creek runs between Chinese gardens and shanties” on what is now the site of Providence Park, where the Portland Timbers soccer team plays.

The story also notes that around 1910 that these gardens and “vegetable men” started to disappear from life, a combination of urban expansion and racism which made the land more valuable and more likely to lead to displacement. Perhaps something we can learn from again with massive growth and gentrification that is occuring in Portland and many other cities. As Tracy Prince is quoted:

““It was real estate that was once undesirable and became desirable that disbanded the vegetable garden community,” says Tracy J. Prince, professor emeritus at Portland State University. “The same pressures are gentrifying Northeast Portland, having the black community move out.”

The draw for Chinese immigrants to the area may have been the location adjacent to the creek, which Reang mentions “the lure of that wild land and an interest in cultivating crops that many had brought from their homes in the agrarian Pearl River Delta of China, an area known for terraced farming,”

The land was considered less desirable by settlers, but for immigrants aligned with floodplain food production, using the rich soils to maximize yields. The first removal of the natural channel of Tanner Creek was also the reason for the gardens to exist:

“When a wooden bridge over the creek that connected the burgeoning neighborhoods from 14th Street to 17th Avenue North collapsed during a flood in 1873, the city used the calamity as an opportunity not only to repair the bridge, but also to tame Tanner Creek. That summer, the City of Portland contracted Chinese workers to build a 115-foot cylindrical culvert to pipe the creek sixty feet below Burnside Street, a solution that both controlled and ultimately prevented flooding in the area.”

The workers stayed and cultivated the areas, eventually growing on 20 acres of land, with many gardeners avoiding the perils of other urban jobs and selling their produce to local residents, many who employed Chinese cooks, according to the article. While the land was undesirable, there was no issue, even without ownership, to using it for production. The dark history of racism in Portland started early, as mentioned, and this was directed specifically at Chinese, as “Oregon’s state constitution of 1859 barred anyone of Chinese descent from owning property, which meant that the Chinese gardeners could be evicted from their farms at any moment.”

Eventually expansion and development led to the demise of both Tanner Creek and the gardeners that capitalized on the floodplains, land was taken for building the Multnomah Athletic Club in 1893, moving gardeners south, until eventually they were move out completely, as populations spiked around the turn of the century.

Ironically for a town that prides itself on food carts, the other mechanism, the adoption of policies limiting street vending – as the article mentions, quoting Marie Rose Wong, who wrote about the Chinese gardens in her book, Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: “In 1897, the Portland Common Council adopted an ordinance requiring street vendors within city limits to obtain a license—a move that angered white owners of several fish companies that were affected by the law. The white business owners protested and by 1910, the city adopted an additional ordinance limiting the area of downtown where street peddlers could sell their wares to an area that effectively covered most of downtown Portland. Those who sold meats, fish, ice, bread, and newspapers were exempted from the ordinance, which effectively banned only the Chinese vegetable peddlers from operating.”

The crux of the story is that there are hidden stories of people embedded in the narratives of hidden hydrology, in this case the fates of Tanner Creek intertwined with those that helped to literally build grow Portland, attempting to use the creek to cultivate a life amidst forces of racism and development.

A tintype depicts a Chinese cook named Ho posing on the corner of Sixth Street and Ankeny Street in Portland, circa 1870. Photo by JW Applegate, courtesy of Gholston Collection

The article is a great reminder of the layers of history that exist, from native peoples that occupied spaces these places prior to European settlement, as well as the diversity of those, many often overlooked in white washed histories, that contributed to the early life of these cities, and continue to contribute today. It also is a tale about development, and marginal spaces that seem worthless until pressures make them desirable, and that impulse to remove impediments to development.

A great additional narrative of Goose Hollow, and where I remember first seeing these images of farms, is the book “Portland’s Goose Hollow” by Prince, worthy of a good summary on the site as well, as it does unlock some mysteries about “how Goose Hollow got its name and how Tanner Creek Gulch was filled.” Another photo from the Oregon Encyclopedia history of Goose Hollow shows a slightly different view, capturing the view, circa 1890s, of the creek running under the trestle bridge, with the Chinese vegetable gardens in the lowlands and Portland High School in the distance.

Courtesy Oregon Historical Society Research Library

Another from the same source shows the Chinese truck gardens sprawling around Tanner Creek Gulch a bit earlier, from the 1880s.

Many thanks to my Portland friend and hidden hydrology contributor Matt Burlin for this link.

04 November 2017 04 November 2017

Forgotten Streams – Cristina Iglesias

Jason Kingart, city, creeks, london, precedents, rivers, streams1 Comment

Quick post to show the installation by artist Cristina Iglesias, ‘Forgotten Streams’ which is located at Bloomberg’s new European Headquarters in London. The revelatory landscape is woven through three different plaza spaces, evoking the Lost Rivers of London, namely the Walbrook.

Via ArtNet News:

London’s “lost” river Walbrook, which the Victorians built over, appears to have been uncovered this week. The Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias’s Forgotten Streams (2017) now flows gently through the heart of the capital’s financial district, appearing in three places in the pavement outside financial media giant Bloomberg’s new £1 billion ($1.3 billion) headquarters. It is her first public work in London.

While obviously a metaphorical interpretation, the proximity to the actual route (not exact but close) to the Walbrook activates the historical ecology of place. And I was surprised, actually shocked as I was looking at the original images trying figure out the material used, that it is cast in bronze, developing layers of matted shoreline along with differing water flows and pools. As abstracted ecology, the integration of this type of artwork into a high-visibility project is great, and while providing minimal ecological value, the historical value is a positive.

I think they are pretty beautiful, but it was funny to read the review from the Guardian on the Norman Foster designed building, and a specific reference to this work: “In a civic-minded gesture, there are three new public spaces at the corners of the site, adorned with water features by Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias, although her green-patinated bronze layers of matted foliage resemble fetid swamps – perhaps a sly comment on the financial services industry.”

The theme is not a new one for Iglesias, who has tackled similar water-centric themes in previous work (amidst one of the most confounding web interfaces I’ve encountered in some time) and uses the cast bronze as a medium for waterways in other projects in her native Spain, as well as Belgium. More to come on her work as I dive in a bit, but a cool project to encounter. An image of Iglesias, working with a similar material in the swamp, if you will via CNN:

Thanks much to David Fathers for the tip on this one via Twitter.