Stanley Greenberg Retraces James Reuel Smith’s Steps Documenting NYC’s Springs and Wells
Hyperallergic recently published this fascinating piece discussing NYC’s water sources, James Reuel Smith‘s springs and wells photograph collection here Stanley Greenberg and Springs and Wells: Manhattan and the Bronx:
As municipal aqueducts, transit tunnels, and paved roads began to extinguish these humble water sources, New Yorker and amateur historian James Reuel Smith set out to record their locations, patrons, and flows. Traveling on his bicycle and equipped with his camera, notebook, and tireless curiosity, Smith documented over 160 springs and wells in Manhattan, the Bronx, and the surrounding areas between 1897 and 1903. After Smith’s death, the project was published in a 1938 book by the New-York Historical Society.
Decades later, photographer Stanley Greenberg discovered Smith’s obsessive work with New York’s bygone water sources.
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