Spring on the east side of Bronx Park, Bronx, New York City, October 14, 1897.

The James Reuel Smith Springs and Wells Photograph Collection comprises 17 boxes (seven of glass and acetate negatives) of visual and written material pertaining to Smith's book "Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, at the End of the Nineteenth Century," published by the New-York Historical Society in 1938. ; James Reuel Smith was born in 1852 in Skaneateles, New York. After the early death of his mother, his father having remarried, Smith went to live in the household of a cousin. In 1882 Smith married Elizabeth Thompson; they had no children. Family money enabled Smith to actively pursue his hobby of photographing and investigating springs and wells. This interest led him to travel around Europe, looking for springs and wells mentioned in literature. In 1922, he published "Springs and Wells in Greek and Roman Literature, Their Legends and Locations." Smith's interest was also local: He spent much of the years 1897 to 1901 bicycling around northern Manhattan and the Bronx looking for and photographing springs and wells. Smith's enthusiasm for springs and wells was well-matched with his photographic eye and his meticulous note-taking on the locations and conditions of the springs and wells he saw. James Reuel Smith died in 1935.