The Manhattan Municipal Building Water Shed

   Several of my last postings dealt with the ease of creating a watershed map using ARCGIS on-line vs. the difficulty of doing it several years ago in GRASS.  One blog that deals with streetlamps and New York and various forms of Transportation (Forgotten NY) had a posting on the mysterious and perhaps haunted Chamber Street subway station at Chambers  and Centre Street Manhattan, under the Municipal Building.  That station has what is called a "water condition" and the site where the Municipal Building  is located was once the site of a pond or some sort of collect pool, according to old maps.  I ran a watershed analysis in ARCGIS on-line and the results are above for a focal point of Chambers and Centre Streets.  The watershed is shown bounded by the red line..  It is interesting to note that in the bounded region, there is a park called the "Collect Pond Park" and is one source perhaps of the water.  The range was set at 1000 feet.  Larger ranges over 2000 feet creates a watershed that goes to Brooklyn, which is an impossibility because of the East River.

More About the Municipal Building in Manhattan

  In the Google Map shot above, try to find the lamppost (green) and see a heavy set man in uniform entering the North Wing of the Municipal Building.  Notice at his feet the glass circular dots.  These are glass disks that provide natural light to the former north entrance to the Chambers Street Station (BMT).    That entrance has been closed and the space may be now used for the city archive.

Here is the same shot but taken further west from Centre Street.  Notice that the left section of the building is not an archive but it is occupied by the "City Store".

 

 

Here the Google shot is taken facing northeast towards Foley Square.  You see the north wing of the building and some of the famous court houses in the area.  The pointed white building toward the left side of the picture is the "Tombs" just north of Worth Street:  the location of the abandoned IRT Worth Street Station.  Foley Square and its surrounding buildings, courts and steps is the backdrop of many TV crime related programs such as (Crime Scene Investigation)?

The IRT Brooklyn Bridge Station is just below the street while the BMT Chambers Street Station, which was the last stop of the Culver Line and some other BMT subway routes at times is underneath the Municipal Building.