The Sanitary City (1872-1946)  The City of Kingston (incorporated in 1872) took on many engineering projects, including constructing drinking water, storm sewer, and sanitary sewer systems. Large properties that had supported agriculture were divided into small residential lots. The Tannery Brook provided opportunities for recreation, including ice skating on Carter's Pond at Lucas Ave.

Carter's Pond, location of family court, green street houses on left. circa 1890. Friends of Historic Kingston, W.A. Carl Collection.

In 1872, the villages of Kingston and Rondout combined to form the City of Kingston. While improving drainage had been a role of local government for a long time, the city was able to hire municipal staff and had more capacity to take on engineering projects. New forms of water infrastructure were emerging. Drinking water infrastructure carried water from the Saw Kill in Woodstock into people’s homes in Kingston starting in 1883, and the system transitioned from private to public by 1896. Prior to this, residents relied on well water, and since the colonial era many buildings had cisterns to collect roof runoff for household use.

The first ward-wide wastewater system (1889) collected sewage in a trunk line along the Tannery Brook, and released it into the Esopus Creek. At the time, it was believed that rivers were able to naturally treat waste and no additional treatment was necessary. The Esopus Creek appeared to have sufficient flows to dilute sewage and reduce the risk to the Village of Saugerties downstream. Sanitary sewers replaced cess pools, water closets, and other rudimentary on-site systems. In 1914, the Kingston Daily Freeman described a sanitary ordinance that required all property owners to connect with the sewer and abandon outside vaults; that year, the newspaper also reported on the “stench” of the “that famous Tannery brook which has been the subject of considerable discussion at board of health meetings from time immemorial.”

The original trunk line sewer along the Tannery Brook was only used for about 20 years. In 1909, before construction on the Ashokan Reservoir was completed, New York City’s Board of Water Supply constructed a large sewer interceptor within a tunnel 80 feet below Washington Avenue. This redirected sanitary sewage in Uptown Kingston away from the Esopus Creek and into the Twaalfskill and Rondout Creek. The Board of Water Supply anticipated that the Ashokan Reservoir would reduce flows in the Esopus Creek such that it would no longer be able to dilute the sewage. The City of Kingston eventually constructed a wastewater treatment plant on the Rondout Creek in 1946.

Residential development continued to expand outside the original Stockade area and up the hills west of Washington Avenue. These changes in land use and domestic water use impacted water quality and quantity in the Tannery Brook and the Main St. Brook, its largest tributary. The Main St. Brook does not appear on early maps, likely because this area was not well-known. Main Street was extended past Green Street to Washington Avenue in 1887, then to Johnston Avenue (1896) and Grand View Avenue (1918).

Despite the reliance on the Tannery Brook to convey waste, it still played an important role for recreation. William C. DeWitt wrote in 1943, “The Tannery brook was large 60 years ago… We used to try to catch brown trout when the stream rose. Maybe they were only small pike or inferior fish.” He also described Carter’s Pond, which was constructed on the Tannery Brook south of Lucas Avenue, and was well used for ice-skating in the winter.