New York City was once a land of hills and rivers.

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Long before it was called the "concrete jungle" - Manhattan was a marshy island home to nearly 60 miles of streams and natural springs. Over the course of four centuries these ancient rivers became buried with brick and concrete. Every once and awhile though, urban legends emerge detailing an ancient and watery world still thriving deep below the bustling metropolis.

The following is a real story about a New Yorker (Jack Gasnick) and his alleged encounter with the underground world of Manhattan in 1955.

Flood in Manhattan

In August 1955…

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Two major hurricanes swept across the Northeast United States. New York City recorded nearly 12 inches of rainfall over a 32-hour period between August 11th and 12th. Subways flooded and were shut down, ferry services were suspended due to high tides and nearly a quarter of Manhattan lost power. A storm surge inundated broad areas along the coast, and flooded one particular basement of a supply warehouse on Second Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd street. This basement belonged to Jack Gasnick.

Jack wrote to the New York Times about the storm’s aftermath and on unusual discovery he made shortly after. Surveying the flood damage, Jack ventured down into the basement of his building. The flood had soaked everything in sight. For days afterwards there were still pools of water locked around the boiler room. Finally, nearly a week after the storm, the water receded. Through the muck and mud, Jack was surprised to discover strange things in his boiler room that were not there previously.

A timelapse of Jack's apartment location, on 2nd Avenue between 52nd and 53rd St. (I recorded this 400-year visualization through an amazing mapping project called Welikia.)

An Old World Below…

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On the floor, Jack found pieces of a wine cask. A strange old thing to find, even more so because Jack had never stored a wine cask in his basement. Upon lifting and inspecting the wood artifacts, he found crawfish and minnows huddling in a nearby puddle. Bizarre! A splashing sound then alerted Jack to the corner behind the boiler, where he found “two or three flapping fish.” There can’t be fish here, this doesn’t make any sense! Behind the fish, Jack discovered a muddied old iron grate that he had never seen before. He pried it open and found uncovered a watery world below.

“...[a] stream bubbling and pushing about, five feet wide and up on its either side, dark green mossed rocks. The lively riverlet was revealed to us exactly as it must have appeared to a Manhattan Indian many years ago.”

Underground Worlds

Gasnick and his brother measured the depth of the river with a plumb-bob and line, finding it to be “over six feet deep.” The size of the stream was enough to test Gasnick’s curiosity a step further, prompting him to set out with a fishing line. “Deep in the basement of an ancient tenement building on Second Avenue in the heart of midtown New York City, I was fishing. Feeling a tug, I hauled up in excitement and there was a carp skipping before me, an almost three-pounder. I was brave enough to have it pan-broiled and buttered in our upstairs kitchen...”

The Gasnick brothers re-discovered a long lost riverbed still alive beneath the concrete of Manhattan. The waterway was once called Turtle Creek and flowed along present-day 2nd Avenue. The stream was once nearly twenty feet wide, now channeled or perhaps divided to a quarter of its original size.

Bein and Johnson Map of Manhattan in 1878.

A river runs through it.

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Jack Gasnick wrote this letter to the New York Times editor in August 1971. He did so partially as a complaint of having lost his underground secret only a couple of years after discovering it. His hidden river was drying up… and he pointed the blame towards the “Corning Glass Building at 56th Street and Fifth Avenue.” The 26-story modern glass building was constructed between 1956-1959, the first International-Style skyscraper on 5th Avenue. Now called the “Steuben Building” a building so tall, modern, and out of place it as said to have “burst onto a Depression-era Fifth Avenue like a jet at an airshow of biplanes.”

In the late 1950’s - newer, bigger buildings grew heavier and dug deeper into the old world networks below. Big development in Midtown Manhattan caused the rivers to re-route once again and hundred-year-old fishing spots grew dry...

Perhaps though, there are still a handful of old buildings in New York with mysterious portals to the watery world below…

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