Lake Innisfree (also known as Lake Isle or Interlaken, and originally as Reservoir No. 1)
is a man-made
lake and former
reservoir in the city of
New Rochelle, in
Westchester County,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
. The lake is located along the border of the neighboring town of
Eastchester,
and its eastern end abuts the
Hutchinson River Parkway. The lake takes its name from the poem ''
Lake Isle of Innisfree
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is a twelve-line poem comprising three quatrains, written by William Butler Yeats in 1888 and first published in the '' National Observer'' in 1890. It was reprinted in '' The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends ...
'' by
W. B. Yeats.
Overview
The area surrounding the lake was once rolling woodland owned in large sections by farmers in the 1700-1800s. The New Rochelle Water Company then bought up the land using it as a
watershed
Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to:
Hydrology
* Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins
* Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...
for the lake served as the water supply source for Upper Rochelle during late 19th & early 20th centuries.
Constructed in 1885,
the reservoir is impounded by the New Rochelle Reservoir #1 Dam on the
Hutchinson River. The dam is masonry and of earthen construction, with a height of 34 feet and a length of 680 feet. The water surface covers an area of about 65 acres and the capacity is about 271,700,000 gallons. It has a maximum discharge of 744 cubic feet per second and drains an area of 2.2 square miles.
The water from this reservoir flows by gravity to the southern, low level district of the city. There is a steel equalizing tank 34 feet high by 44 feet in diameter connected with this system on high ground 2 miles south of the dam.
The dam, which impounded 300 million gallons of water, cost $60,000 to build. While at first, the water supplied New Rochelle exclusively, two additional dams were constructed so that the water could also be routed to
Pelham,
Eastchester, and elsewhere.
The reservoir was named Lake Innisfree in the 1930s by the developer of the adjacent Interlaken Cooperative. The same developer constructed a sandy beach for recreation.
See also
*
History of New Rochelle, New York
References
ssembly of the State of New York(1914)
''Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York'', Volume 41
Innisfree
Geography of New Rochelle, New York
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