Maury Postal

I next stepped into 2 Fifth Avenue, an enormous white apartment building. The doorman, an Eastern European man called Peter, showed me a white stone pedestal in the corner of the lobby. On top of the pedestal was a glass tube, four feet tall, that looked like it might have been clear at one point, but was now jaundiced. It was another forgotten fountain, another vestige of the stream. Peter, who had worked in the building for twenty-five years, couldn’t remember the last time he had seen water in it. Next to the entrance was a brass plaque with an engraving. An erratic brook winds beneath this site. The Indians called it Manette or Devil’s Water. To the Dutch settlers, it was Bestevear’s Killetje or Grandfather’s Little Creek. For the Past Two Centuries familiar to this neighborhood as Minetta Brook. I couldn’t help but feel that it read like an epitaph. “Visitors come to the fountain,” Peter told me. “On walking tours.” I imagined them gathering, pilgrims paying alms, a tour guide eulogizing.