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What Shall We Call the Water?

About This Item

  • Title: What Shall We Call the Water?
  • Date: 21 January 1859
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01427
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 21 January 1859: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Tara Ballard Stephanie Blalock Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "What Shall We Call the Water?." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01427.xml (TEI)
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WHAT SHALL WE CALL THE WATER?—

The grand question of the day in Brooklyn is, what shall we christen our water? Cannot we think of some name euphonious enough to be worthy of its virgin purity and to outvie the Croton1 in appropriateness of designation as much as in quantity and quality? The Croton is named from the locality from which it comes, but all of the spots from whence our supply is gleaned labor under the misfortune of having very stupid and ill-sounding designations. "Parsonage Creek,"2 "L. Cornell's Pond,"3 "Baiseley's Pond,"4 &c., are not the sort of designations that we should wish to introduce our water supply with. The name of the reservoir, however, is sufficiently brief and euphonious to answer every purpose both of convenience and sound. "Ridgewood" is every way as graceful and appropriate a word as "Croton."5 We have already learned to speak of "the Ridgewood reservoir," and it will not take long to call its contents the Ridgewood water. In any future Legislative acts or public documents relating to the subject, and particularly in the forthcoming celebration, let the name of the reservoir preface the allusions to its contents, and we shall soon have "the Ridgewood" as well and more favorably known that "the Croton."

Notes:

1. The Croton Aqueduct was constructed between 1837 and 1842, and it carried water 41 miles from the Croton River to reservoirs in Manhattan. [back]

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4. Baisley's Pond was a major supply reservoir for the Brooklyn Water Works located in what is today the borough of Queens. It was a former mill pond, named after its owner David Baisley, who had sold it to the local water authorities in 1852. It was also occasionally referred to as Baisley's Pond, Jamaica Pond, or Rider's Pond. For a period in 1857, it housed a team of engineers, including Walt's brother Thomas Jefferson Whitman ("Jeff"). [back]

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