Iron Works | New York City Foundries

As you can note from the small stamp in the lower right, the above ironwork is imported from a foundry in India- not the case for most of the last century.  Most of us think of Pittsburgh as being the only home of US steel, but New York City was actually the base for many foundries that originally served the growing needs of the Empire City.  Many hundreds of thousands of municipal covers were needed, beginning in the mid 1800′s (the first manhole cover dates to approx. 1860). And a lot of these little gems are still around today.

In any case, I wasn’t intending this to be a history lesson. I actually started snapping shots of the below covers because I liked the designs and couldn’t believe how many variations there were within just a block- and the photos don’t represent even half of what’s there. Imagine, with that many entry points on the surface, how complicated the underground must be. Evidently, the wide variety of designs are not as much due to their functionality as much as every company or municipality wanting their particular and unique mark.

Checking around through various urban archeology websites gives the approximate age range of the below covers from early 1900′s through very recent years (the bottom ConEd designs, most likely being the newest).