The Sawkill or Saw-kill (the Dutch place-name for Saw Mill Creek) was the largest hydrological network on

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

island prior to the founding of the Dutch colony of

New Netherland New Netherland ( nl, Nieuw Nederland; la, Novum Belgium or ) was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic that was located on the east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva P ...

in 1624. This stream began "within four blocks of the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

A rill flowing east from the rocky ridge overlooking Bloomingdale Village, which rose near Ninth Avenue and 85th Street, flowed in a southerly direction through Manhattan Square, where it spread into a little pond, and then turned east, crossing
Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...
to Fifth Avenue, receiving three tributaries within its limits, two from the north and one from the south. At 75th Street near
Third Avenue Third Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, as well as in the center portion of the Bronx. Its southern end is at Astor Place and St. Mark's Place. It transitions into Cooper Square ...
it was joined by another stream. Near this junction the old Boston Post Road crossed it, and then from this point, the stream ran due east to its outlet near the foot of 75th Street

emptying into the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Quee ...

between two rocky points. Along its route the stream separated into two branches, with the name 'Sawkill' reserved for the southern arm of the creek. The name for the smaller, northern stream is undocumented, but is recorded by the Randel Map (1870) as entering the East River at 79th Street.

Early history

Undoubtedly, the stream received its name from the

saw mill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ( dimens ...

that existed for some time "in the bed of 74th Street, about 250 ft east of Avenue A." The workers of the saw mill are thought to have been primarily the slaves of the Dutch West India Company, whose lodgings, stationed at the mouth of the Sawkill until at least 1639, were referenced as "the quarter of the blacks, the est Indiacompany's slaves" in the first landmark map of Manhattan Island, the Manatus Map of 1639. It is thought that the slaves would use the stream to float the logs hewn by the mill to the East River, from which they would be transported to the newly established fort at New Amsterdam, at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, or thence to the Netherlands. The creek originated at the present day site of the American Museum of Natural History. The creek ran through the park site, south of

Seneca Village Seneca Village was a 19th-century settlement of mostly African American landowners in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, within what would become present-day Central Park. The settlement was located near the current Upper West Side ne ...

, originally exiting the park under Fifth Avenue near 74th Street, where Conservatory Water lies today, before emptying in the

. To create the Lake the outlet was dammed with a broad, curving earth dam, which carries the East Carriage Drive past the Kerbs Boathouse (1954), at the end of the Lake's eastern arm, so subtly that few visitors are aware of the landform's function.

Arch Brook

Although local historian

Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (April 11, 1867 – December 18, 1944) was an American architect. Stokes was a pioneer in social housing who co-authored the 1901 New York tenement house law. For twenty years he worked on '' The Iconography of Manhat ...

regarded the Sawkill as, "the well known Saw-

kill Kill often refers to: *Homicide, one human killing another *cause death, to kill a living organism, to cause its death Kill may also refer to: Media *'' Kill!'', a 1968 film directed by Kihachi Okamoto * ''Kill'' (Cannibal Corpse album), 2006 * ...

, which played an important part in the early days of Manhattan" by 1677, when the land was transferred from the Dutch West India Company to Abraham Shotwell, the stream was known commonly as "ye run of water, formerly called ye saw mill creeke." Eventually the saw mill was replaced by a leather mill and the Sawkill was dammed and arched over in the early-mid 19th century, creating a much smaller stream called Arch Brook. It seems that the bridge traversing the Sawkill, however, remained a popular "Kissing Bridge" (first noted as such in 1806) throughout the 19th century.

Central Park

While even Arch Brook has long since disappeared, the waters of the Sawkill are still present in Central Park. Park planners used the remnants of the Saw-kill's source waters to create the picturesque

Lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

situated in the middle of the Park between 71st and 78th streets. The upper portion of the Saw-kill within the Park was also utilized to connect the two bays of Ladies Pond, a small ice skating pond west of the Lake that was reserved for women's private use. Until 1930, when Ladies Pond was filled in to serve as a pedestrian path, the Sawkill remained an active watercourse. One of the rustic bridges built as part of the park still spans the former site of the Ladies Pond. In 2000, it was dedicated the "Triplets Bridge", after Benjamin, Rachel and Justin Chasalow. The Balcony Bridge also crosses over the former pond to the east.

Notes

References

External links

The Mannahatta Project

New Netherland Project
{{authority control Central Park New Netherland Rivers of Manhattan Rivers of New York (state)