Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 204, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1911 — RECALL AARON BURR [ARTICLE]

RECALL AARON BURR

Historical Reminiscence of Old New York. Wooden Water Pipes Unearthed That Were Laid by Hl# Company Many Decades Ago—Proof of Hl# Shrewd Mind. Few persons whose business took them into the neighborhood of Beekman and' Water streets within the past week or so did more than glance idly at the heaps of logs and splintered timbers piled here and there along the curbs, says the New York Press. People passed them by. bestowing upon tbem no more notice than they give to the debris that follows upon excavations at every turn. Gangs of Italians have been busy there, digging deep trenches in preparation for new water pipes. In the course of their work tftey came upon some of. the quaintest souvenirs of a day long past that have been found in New York for u any years. They &r 6in fact, no less than the ancient and moldering wooden water pipes laid by Aaron Burr’s Manhattan company in a time when his name was mentioned oftener in connection with public affairs than that of any other man. These fragments of logs bring back the memory of one of the most renowned and curious charters ever granted—that obtained for the Manhatten company. Desiring to establish a bank, and unable to obtain a charter for ope In those dayp of more or less chaotic banking conditionr, Burr’s shrewd mind Engineered a water-right charter so as to make it-a blanket affair, which might cover almost anything from a sodp fountain to a state bank. He manipulated it so as to legalize his bank as an offshoot, a detail among the other outgrowthp of the grant, thus making the tail wag the dog. The water company built its reservoir at Collect Pond, near the site of the present Tombs prison, and a vestige of It still remains In a big wooden tank occupying a triangular bit of ground close to Center street.

No doubt there are many more of these forgotten pipes hidden deep below the city traffic. Rough hewn logs, they appear to be, judging from the. splintering remnants in the neighborhood of Fulton market. They are perhaps eighteen or twenty inches in diameter, with an inner pipe made of a different kind of wood from that of the thick outer shell. The opening for the flow of water Is only two or three inches in diameter, a curiously small stream for-so clumsy a carrier. But then the problem of water supply In those times was not the weighty matter of today.