The New York Times, December 10, 2006
"Nearly 300 luscious pages of text and image recording New York's attempts since the mid-1800s to corral water"
Book Description
New York's water is legendary for its fresh, clean taste, but its purity has been achieved at a cost, through a massive program of exploration and construction that is still ongoing. The story of that monumental undertaking is told in Water-Works and illustrated with an astonishing archive of drawings and photographs documenting the design and construction of dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, and tunnels. This complex system brings millions of gallons of water to the city every day from rivers many hundreds of miles away.
Kevin Bone, Gina Pollara, and students from the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union spent nine years cataloging and preserving this remarkable archive, which is held by the City of New York Department of Environmental Protection. Essays by Bone, former DEP Commissioner Albert F. Appleton, and scholars Peter H. Gleick and Gerard Koeppel trace the history of the system from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to the current construction of Water Tunnel #3.
