Collect Pond Park

Collect Pond Park occupies approximately one acre on Leonard Street between Centre and Lafayette Streets, near the courthouses of the Civic Center. The park marks the approximate location of the Collect Pond (also called Fresh Water Pond), a large freshwater lake that was once the primary drinking water source for the settlement of New Amsterdam.

The Collect Pond was originally a 48-acre body of fresh water, surrounded by rolling hills and fed by underground springs. For the Lenape people and later the Dutch colonists, the pond was an essential natural resource. By the late 18th century, however, industrial pollution from tanneries and slaughterhouses along its shores had rendered the water undrinkable.

The city drained and filled the pond in the early 19th century, but the poorly compacted fill created an unstable foundation that caused buildings to sink and streets to flood. The area became the infamous Five Points neighborhood, one of the most notorious slums in 19th-century America, before eventually being cleared for government buildings.

Today's park provides a modest green space in the middle of the dense Civic Center district. A reflecting pool and interpretive markers reference the vanished pond, connecting visitors to a landscape that has been completely transformed over three centuries of urban development.

Collect Pond Park is a place of remarkable historical layering: beneath its pavement lie the traces of a Lenape fishing ground, a Dutch water source, an industrial dumping ground, a notorious slum, and now a quiet park surrounded by courthouses. Few sites in New York City compress so much history into so small a space.