Nineteen Reservoirs

As New York City incorporated, welcomed new inhabitants, and cemented itself as a center of American industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it faced an existential problem: how to sustain its ever-increasing need for water. The solution: a network of reservoirs and aqueducts built across more than one million acres in upstate New York from 1907 to 1967. This feat of engineering allowed New York City to blossom into the metropolis we know today, but also demolished, submerged, and profoundly altered twenty-six villages across the Hudson Valley and their ecosystem. Join Guggenheim fellowship recipient Lucy Sante as she examines the triumph, tragedy, and unintended consequences of these decisions on New York City’s divided public—urban and rural, rich and poor, human and animal.

Lucy Sante‘s book Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City was published by The Experiment in 2022, and recently released in paperback in February 2024. Awards include a Cullman fellowship, Whiting Writer’s Award, Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Infinity Award in Writing from the International Center of Photography, and Grammy for album notes.