Ferries and Bridges 203 



by locating a pumping station above Macomb's dam in order 

 to give the water a sufficient head to carry it into the homes 

 of the city. 



But the action of Lewis G. Morris and his associates with 

 regard to Macomb's dam, as described above, put an entirely 

 new idea of the navigable character of the river, not only into 

 the heads of the engineers and the authorities, but into those 

 of the general public as well. The decision of the highest 

 court in the State put a legal barrier to the stream's obstruction 

 that no one could surmount. Accordingly, when the Croton 

 aqueduct was under way, the Legislature, on May 3, 1839, 

 enacted that: "The water commissioners shall construct an 

 aqueduct over the Harlem River with arches and piers; 

 the arches in the channel of said river shall be at least eighty 

 feet span, and not less than one hundred feet from the usual 

 high-water mark of the river to the under side of the arches of 

 the crown; or they can carry the water across the river by a 

 tunnel under the channel of the river, the top of which shall 

 not be above the present bed of the said river." 



This at once changed the idea of a low siphon bridge, 

 "built over an embankment of stone, filling up the whole of 

 the natural channel, and with only one archway on the New 

 York side eighty feet high," to the plan of a high bridge, 

 crossing the stream; as the engineers and commissioners 

 preferred the bridge to the other alternative presented by the 

 Legislature, that of the tunnel. The bridge was contracted 

 for the following August, and was sufficiently completed in 

 time for the admission of the Croton water into the city on 

 July 27, 1842, though not completed in accordance with the 

 original plan until 1848. 



High Bridge is 1450 feet long and twenty-five feet wide, 

 connecting West 175th Street and Tenth Avenue, Manhattan, 



