Spuyten Duyvil Creek, Manhattan/Bronx

A
1776 map showing the northern tip of Manhattan and Spuyten Duyvil
Creek, which is crossed by both Kingsbridge and Dyckman's Bridge.
(Taken from map image linked below).

   
Upper Manhattan and the Bronx were seperated by only a narrow tidal
strait until the end of the 19th century. This narrow, meandering, but
fast-flowing strait was the Spuyten Duyvil Creek (various alternative
spellings are also valid). New York's waterfront sees about a five-foot
variation between low tide and high tide, and as the tide came in and
out there was often a difference in water level between the Hudson
River and the East River, which is affected by the slow and massive
tidal movements of Long Island Sound. This differential created
dangerous currents.
    In his (fictional) book The Knickerbocker History of New York,
Washington Irving tells an apocryphal story of how the strait got its
name, and how violent the water could be. (The character in this
passage is Antony Corlear, a trumpeter sent by 17th-century governor of
New Amsterdam Peter Stuyvesant to warn residents that the British were
coming.)

It was a dark and stormy night when the good Antony arrived at the creek

(sagely denominated Haerlem river) which separates the island of

Manna-hata from the mainland. The wind was high, the elements were in an

uproar, and no Charon could be found to ferry the adventurous sounder of

brass across the water. For a short time he vapored like an impatient

ghost upon the brink, and then, bethinking himself of the urgency of his

errand, took a hearty embrace of his stone bottle, swore most valorously

that he would swim across in spite of the devil (spyt den duyvel), and

daringly plunged into the stream. Luckless Antony! scarce had he buffeted

half-way over when he was observed to struggle violently, as if battling

with the spirit of the waters. Instinctively he put his trumpet to his

mouth, and giving a vehement blast sank for ever to the bottom.



The clangor of his trumpet, like that of the ivory horn of the renowned

Paladin Orlando, when expiring in the glorious field of Roncesvalles, rang

far and wide through the country, alarming the neighbors round, who

hurried in amazement to the spot. Here an old Dutch burgher, famed for his

veracity, and who had been a witness of the fact, related to them the

melancholy affair; with the fearful addition (to which I am slow of giving

belief) that he saw the duyvel, in the shape of a huge mossbonker, seize

the sturdy Antony by the leg and drag him beneath the waves. Certain it

is, the place, with the adjoining promontory, which projects into the

Hudson, has been called Spyt den Duyvel ever since; the ghost of the

unfortunate Antony still haunts the surrounding solitudes, and his trumpet

has often been heard by the neighbors of a stormy night, mingling with the

howling of the blast.



Nobody ever attempts to swim across the creek after dark; on the contrary,

a bridge has been built to guard against such melancholy accidents in the

future; and as to moss-bonkers, they are held in such abhorrence that no

true Dutchman will admit them to his table who loves good fish and hates

the devil.

During
the era of the drowned Van Corlear, the normal way across Spuyten
Duyivil Creek during high tide was a ferry, operated until 1673 by
Johannes Verveelen. (During low tide it was often possible to wade
across, whether for travelers on foot or farmers bringing livestock to
the city—probably the origin of the name “Fordham” in the Bronx). But
in 1693, Manhattan got its first bridge, a wooden toll-bridge structure
run by the Philippse family, and built over the old fording spot so
that those crossing the Spuyten Duyvil were forced to pay the toll. The
charter mandated that the king of England and his representatives,
British soldiers, could cross for free, and so it was known as the
King’s Bridge.
    Around 1713, the Philipse family replaced the
wooden span with a new, 24-foot-wide bridge with a wooden deck laid
over rough stone supports. It would remain the only bridge across the
Harlem River until about 1758, when locals built the aptly-named Free
Bridge to avoid tolls on Kingsbridge. Amazingly, the Kingsbridge
structure built in 1713 lasted until 1917—after which it was destroyed
and buried in the landfill around Marble Hill, over the protests of
local historians.  But with a lifetime of more than two centuries, this
humble stone-and-wood structure remains the longest-lasting bridge that
New York City has ever had.

    Spuyten Duyvil Creek was far too
shallow for larger boats or ships,
and ship traffic between the upper Hudson and Long Island Sound had to
take
a 25-mile detour around lower Manhattan. In 1895, the Harlem River Ship
Canal was opened after nine years of
work by the Army Corps of Engineers, connecting the Hudson and Harlem
Rivers with a navigable channel for ships across the very northern end
of Manhattan. At the opening ceremonies, it
was said that “the opening of the Harlem Ship Canal was a greater event
than the opening of the Erie Canal.” Spuyten Duyvil Creek was filled
in; the historic Kingsbridge was demolished and buried in the landfill.
Today the curves of Spuyten Duyvil creek are apparent in the curving
border of New York County (Manhattan), which extends around the Marble
Hill section of the Bronx-side mainland of the Ship Canal.

See posts related to Spuyten Duyvil Creek

106th St/McGown's Pass

A very wide stream ran into the East River between 106th Street and 107th Street, according to Viele's Water Map. One source of the stream came from the west side of Manhattan, and the water flowed to the east side near McGowan's (or McGowns) Pass, which was the pass used by the Kingsbridge Road to cross the low rocky cliffs that rose above 106th St at the time.

The images below show the stream as it was in 1776, as seen by the British. The first image is the whole map for context, and then the next is just a small cropped section to see the detail of the stream itself. The bottom of the map is at about 110th Street. (This was an area of Manhattan that saw a great deal of fighting during the first part of the Revolutionary War; the official title of this map is "A map of part of New-York Island showing a plan of Fort Washington, now call'd Ft. Kniphausen with the rebels lines on the south part, from which they were driven on the 16th of November 1776 by the troupes under the orders of the Earl of Percy. Survey'd the same day by order of His Lordship by C. J. Sauthier.")

Near the bottom of the map, "McGowan's Pass" is marked. This was a key passageway for Revolutionary War troops, and George Washington's men kept a lookout for the British from the higher ground north of 106th Street. The Parks Department has more information on McGowan's Pass on one of their excellent historical signs.

I am having a hard time corrolating the British views with Viele's Water Map of the same area; is the watercourse shown on the British map merely the northern extension
of what is shown on the Viele map? If so, then it must have hooked East just past the bottom of the British map. The southern extension of the stream, which connects to other sources and flows to the East River, will be for a seperate post.

I have seen no traces of these streams on the surface of the modern city. There is also little trace of the challenging McGowan's Pass Road, which was described as late as 1893 as "wild and precipitous." However, there is a 5-foot diameter sewer underneath 106th Street east of Central Park, and there is an 8-foot by 12-foot sewer underneath East 110th St, both of which were built in the 1870s; was the stream re-routed through one of these sewers?