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.
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Newark in 1668. Newark’s topography
afforded the town all the natural advantages of
drainage and an abundant water supply. By the late nineteenth century, all of the city’s
watercourses, including the Mill Brook, Newark’s
most important waterway(shown at the upper right) were covered over and used
to transport sewage to the Passaic River. (From William H. Shaw, History of Essex and
Hudson Counties, New Jersey [1884]).
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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.”
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On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, Newark
resembled an overgrown village. Unsanitary conditions
prevailed as streets were unpaved, pigs roamed freely, and
garbage and waste were left to rot in the open air. (Courtesy of Newark Public Library)
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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.
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Plaque commemorating the 1887 completion of Newark Trunk Sewer
that alleviated drainage
problems in the city and the meadows.
(Photograph by Glenn R. Modica)
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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.
CONCLUSION
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.
Illustration
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