Everyone who has lived in the city for some time hears about the urban legend of underground streams flowing into people's basements (usually catching a fish is involved), and it turns out one of those said waterways are actually flowing beneath the Sheffield Dairy Building in Manhattanville. Columbia owns the former bottling facility on 125th Street and Broadway, which is currently called Prentis Hall, and it turns out that the white terracotta building was constructed on top of the old Manhattanville Indian Spring that flows underground in the area. Apparently the basement kept flooding in the building and a rough tunnel was made so that the flowing water could drain into an open channel (lower photo) that eventually connects to a sewer pipe along 125th Street. We recently received information on a website that researches lost streams in New York City, so check it out for more details:
LINK. Photo of the Prentis Hall basement taken in 2006 by Steve Duncan. Current photo by Ulysses. Read more about the Sheffield Dairy factory in our past post:
LINK
Everyone who has lived in the city for some time hears about the urban legend of underground streams flowing into people's basements (usually catching a fish is involved), and it turns out one of those said waterways are actually flowing beneath the Sheffield Dairy Building in Manhattanville. Columbia owns the former bottling facility on 125th Street and Broadway, which is currently called Prentis Hall, and it turns out that the white terracotta building was constructed on top of the old Manhattanville Indian Spring that flows underground in the area. Apparently the basement kept flooding in the building and a rough tunnel was made so that the flowing water could drain into an open channel (lower photo) that eventually connects to a sewer pipe along 125th Street. We recently received information on a website that researches lost streams in New York City, so check it out for more details: LINK. Photo of the Prentis Hall basement taken in 2006 by Steve Duncan. Current photo by Ulysses. Read more about the Sheffield Dairy factory in our past post: LINK
Yes it's true, a friend use to own a brownstone that had a small stream passing through it's cellar. Usually it was no problem except on really rainy days the cellar would flood more than usual.
ReplyDeleteactually that church on 116th st., below lenox and above 5th ave. - on the North side of the street, across from that new co-op bldg...that specific church has had extensive damage in their basement due to the underwater aqua flow. in fact in the late 90's an underground stream damaged the trackways on the #2 & #3 at Lenox Avenue from 110th Street to 116th Street.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! We live on 104th, next to the old firehouse that's being transformed into the new MNN community building, and they've had quite the time trying to tame the spring running underneath that structure. I think they've almost got it...almost :)
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