Crystal Lake (New Rochelle)
Crystal Lake (also known as "Ice Pond”) [1] was the name of a former lake in the village of New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York. This lake was originally a mill pond that supplied the early mills with water power. It was fed by Stephenson Brook which rises just north of Paine Lake, flowing south along the eastern side of Huguenot Lake before it is piped-underground, and drains the large watershed adjacent to North Avenue from beyond Quaker Ridge Road.
The lake itself appears to have existed as a natural sheet of water near the end of the brook, having two outlets into the Sound, one at the present Stephenson Boulevard, and the other at the east side of Lispenard Avenue. These outlets had an abrupt fall in the few yards between the lake's southern edge and the Long Island Sound shore, of approximately twenty to twenty-five feet. This was the greatest natural fall of any stream emptying into the Sound between New York City and Connecticut, and, from a very early date, the value of it for water power was recognized.
Mills & industry
According to the 1689 deed from John Pell to Jacob Leisler, representing the Huguenot purchasers of New Rochelle, the area originally came under the ownership of John Jefferd. Jefferd was first to use the water power of this stream, operating a saw-mill and corn-mill until his death in the early eighteenth century. The land later came under the ownership of Jacob Leisler who made a number of improvements to the lake including the construction of a pool to supply an overshot wheel at the mill.[2] The construction required Leisler to alter the route of the Boston Post Road, an action which he was later indicted for in 1711. This pool was located south of and beside the lake itself, and required the erection of several new mill-dams and the shifting of the road to a new route over the lower dam. It was at this point that the level of the lake was raised and a larger area flooded than had been covered by the natural lake. [3]
In 1734 the property came under the ownership of Anthony Lispenard who erected an additional saw-mill between the lake itself and the pool, and used the water flowing from the former into the latter before it was drawn from the pool to the old grist-mill below. By 1750, this saw-mill was changed to a grist-mill as well. By the terms of Lispenard's will, the lake, pool and two mills became the property of his daughter Abigail, wife of Jacobus Bleecker. Before the Revolutionary War, their ownership passed to Andrew Abramse, whose wife was another daughter of Anthony Lispenard, In 1795. the lake and old mill were purchased by John Searing and Samuel Wood, both Quakers. No trace has been found after the Revolutionary War of the second mill erected by Lispenard, and all knowledge of its former existence was lost. [4] In the same year 1795, permission was given by the owner of the lands adjoining the lake on the north for the raising of the dam and the flooding of a larger area of land with water. By 1806 the former milling industry shifted away from the area however the lake continued to be used to impound water to operate a tannery, distillery and button factory before it burned while being fitted up for an ink factory for Thaddeus Davids in 1846.
References
- ^ Lederer, Richard M. (1978). The Place Names of Westchester County New York. Harrison, NY: Harbor Hill Books. p. 72.
- ^ Historical Landmarks of New Rochelle, Morgan Seacord 1938 pg.6
- ^ Nichols, Herbert B. (1859). Historic New Rochelle. The Board of Education, New Rochelle. p. 135.
- ^ Nichols, Herbert B. (1859). Historic New Rochelle. The Board of Education, New Rochelle. p. 135.