New York City Fire Hydrants: Who Makes Them and Who Keeps Them Working

New York City has more than 109,000 fire hydrants, and the Department of Environmental Protection lists every one in a public dataset. Firefighters open them to fight fires, DEP crews repair and paint them, and on hot days neighbors ask the local firehouse to fit one with a spray cap. The hydrant on the corner is built to a city specification, down to the paint on its top.

What stands on the curb

DEP’s specification covers two kinds of dry-barrel hydrant. One is the Dresser type, designated D-2-LP. The other is the Smith type, S-2-LP. New hydrants set on city projects must be one of the two, in a two-piece “breakaway” design. City construction contracts carry a separate item for the Smith type, marked for historic districts.

The castings are ductile iron. The nozzle section, the nozzle caps and the lower standpipe are coated in black polyurethane. The bonnet on top is silver or aluminum-colored. Each hydrant carries the cast letters WSNY and a metal tag with its own serial number.

Installers set each hydrant plumb, with its nozzles facing the curb at 45 degrees. The main valve opens when the operating nut is turned clockwise. The maker warrants the hydrant for ten years.

DEP lists three approved manufacturers: United States Pipe & Foundry Company, Mueller Company, and M&H Valve, which is approved for the Dresser type. Every foundry that casts city hydrants is subject to DEP inspection and approval. Wherever the parts are made, the finished hydrants are tested in the United States in front of city inspectors.

Inspections and repairs

DEP’s Bureau of Water and Sewer Operations runs the water system and answers hydrant complaints. In a 2011 safety alert, DEP put the count at approximately 109,000 hydrants. The city Comptroller counted 109,586 as of June 30, 2019. That fiscal year the bureau opened 27,641 hydrant repair work orders, and the work went to DEP repair yards in the boroughs where the hydrants stand.

Firefighters check every hydrant. Local Law 112 of 2018 requires the Fire Department to inspect all DEP hydrants at least twice a year, once by June 30 and again by December 31. The FDNY marks some as priority hydrants: those near hospitals, day care centers, schools, senior-citizen housing and large places of public assembly, and any hydrant that is the only one on its block. For fiscal 2019, DEP reported repairing inoperative priority hydrants in an average of 2.5 days.

DEP paints hydrants on a regular maintenance schedule and does not take painting requests. It also weighs requests for fender posts, based on the type of hydrant and its location.

City rules say hydrants may be routinely opened only by DEP and Fire Department employees. Anyone else needs a DEP permit and an approved hydrant wrench, and the hydrant must stay available to the Fire Department at all times. For drivers the rule is simpler: no parking within 15 feet (4.6 m) of either side of a hydrant. In February 2025 the FDNY said firefighters at a Brooklyn fire were delayed because two cars blocked the two hydrants closest to the burning building.

The spray cap

A hydrant opened without a cap generally releases more than 1,000 gallons (3,800 liters) of water a minute. DEP says that lowers water pressure, makes firefighting harder, and can knock a child down. A City-approved spray cap cuts the flow to 20 to 25 gallons (76 to 95 liters) a minute.

The cap is free. An adult asks at the local firehouse, shows ID and fills out a form. The firehouse schedules a time to turn the hydrant on and off. Opening a hydrant illegally can bring a fine of up to $1,000, up to 30 days in jail, or both.

DEP has also sent young people out to explain the rule. In the summer of 2011 its Hydrant Education Action Team put four teams of 10 to 12 students on the streets of Manhattan and the Bronx for seven weeks. They were hired through the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program. In July 2026, with triple-digit heat expected through the Fourth of July weekend, DEP parked its mobile command bus at locations around the city to track open-hydrant complaints and water pressure in real time.

From wooden pipes to high pressure

Before 1842 the city’s water was short and poor. DEP’s history links that to fires that burned out of control, including one in 1776 that destroyed a quarter of the city’s buildings. In 1799 the State Legislature gave the Manhattan Company the right to supply the city’s water. The company drew it from wells at the Collect Pond and sent it through wooden pipes. Smithsonian magazine reports that by 1802 it was running 21 miles (34 km) of them.

Croton water reached Manhattan in 1842 through the Old Croton Aqueduct. Smithsonian reports that thousands of hydrants went onto the streets over the next few years, giving free water for drinking and for fighting fires.

Tall buildings outgrew that system. The New-York Historical Society notes that ordinary pressure could not reach the new skyscrapers. Between 1903 and 1908 four high-pressure pumping stations were built, two in Brooklyn and two in Manhattan. On an alarm they raised the pressure threefold or more and sent the water through high-pressure mains to hydrants. The Gansevoort Street station had five pumps, each able to deliver 2,700 gallons (10,200 liters) a minute, and it was called into action at the Triangle Factory fire.

A DEP archive drawing dated February 19, 1905, shows one of those hydrants. According to DEP, high-pressure hydrants had nozzles for four hoses and could take far more pressure than the “low pressure” hydrants on the regular system.

Where to see one

On the street, in all five boroughs. DEP’s hydrant dataset on NYC Open Data lists 109,725 hydrants, each with a unit ID, a borough and a latitude and longitude.

The New-York Historical Society holds a cast-iron one, made by the Kennedy Valve Manufacturing Company in New York. It is painted red, and “KENNEDY VALVE MFG CO/ NEW YORK” is cast around the lid. The society also holds hydrant wrenches dated between about 1840 and 1925, and a 1999 pastel, Portrait of a Fire Hydrant, Gramercy Park, New York. The pastel shows a black hydrant with a yellow top on the southwest side of Gramercy Park, at 20th Street and Irving Place. The catalog records are online.