A public walk was given as part of the Works on Water 2017 exhibition FIELDWORKS. A poster and fabric pond “visualization” were shown as part of the exhibition Shifting Landscapes at Washington State University. Exhibition PDF
This walk and map traces the edges of the former Collect Pond in Lower Manhattan — a 48-acre, 60-foot-deep freshwater lake that once stretched from the current courthouses to the edge of Chinatown, before being polluted and filled in by the early 19th century.
The project uncovers layered histories of water, finance, and speculation. Aaron Burr’s Manhattan Company, founded ostensibly to provide clean water from Collect Pond’s tributaries, instead hoarded its profits to establish what would become Chase Bank — an early and startling instance of private enterprise capturing a public commons. The walk extends this history forward through Hurricane Sandy and ongoing struggles over water rights, asking what it means to treat water as liquid capital rather than shared resource.
