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In the 1858 the City of Brooklyn, New York, rapidly outgrowing its local water supplies, built a double reservoir on a hilltop in nearby Ridgewood, Queens. Water from western Queens County being insufficient to keep the reservoir full, a covered aqueduct or conduit was built to bring water from several new reservoirs including Hempstead Lake, a new artificial lake in the Town of Hempstead in south central Queens County (now southwestern Nassau County) to a pumping station at Atlantic Avenue and Chestnut Street near the City Line. The steam powered pumps forced the water up into the high reservoir whence it was distributed. A third chamber or reservoir was built in 1863.

In subsequent decades the Brooklyn Water Works system was repeatedly expanded with longer conduits and more pumps. Late in the century, the conduit was extended to a large pumping station in Massapequa and beyond into Suffolk County. At the turn of the century Brooklyn merged with the City of Greater New York, thus gaining access to its neighbor's superior water supply system. As the Catskill and Delaware water systems expanded, the Brooklyn system, being obsolete, fell into standby status. Force Tube Avenue, Conduit Avenue, and Sunrise Highway were built, in part, atop or alongside the water conduit, early in the 20th century.

The Ridgewood Reservoir was last used in a drought in the 1960s, after which it fell into disuse and a small birch forest grew up inside. Eventually it became a City park, with a bicycling trail around its perimeter. Some of the Nassau County pumping stations including the one at Milburn (now Baldwin) survived into the 21st century as ruins. Hempstead Lake State Park, Valley Stream State Park and others were originally Brooklyn Water Works reservoirs.

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