Lake Innisfree

Lake Innisfree is a man-made lake and former reservoir in the city of New Rochelle and the town of Eastchester, in Westchester County, New York. Its eastern end abuts the Hutchinson River Parkway. The lake takes its name from the poem Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats.

Overview

The area surrounding the lake was once rolling woodland owned in large sections by farmers in the 1700-1800s. The New Rochelle Water Company then bought up the land using it as a watershed for the lake served as the water supply source for Upper Rochelle during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Constructed in 1885, the reservoir is impounded by the New Rochelle Reservoir No. 1 Dam on the Hutchinson River. The dam is masonry and of earthen construction, with a height of and a length of. The water surface covers an area of about and the capacity is about. It has a maximum discharge of per second and drains an area of.
The water from this reservoir flows by gravity to the southern, low level district of the city. There is a steel equalizing tank high by in diameter connected with this system on high ground 2 miles south of the dam. The dam, which impounded 300 million gallons of water, cost $60,000 to build. While at first, the water supplied New Rochelle exclusively, two additional dams were constructed so that the water could also be routed to Pelham, Eastchester, and elsewhere.
The reservoir was named Lake Innisfree in the 1930s by the developer of the adjacent Interlaken Cooperative. The same developer constructed a sandy beach for recreation.
In 2022, Eastchester took ownership of the central portion of the lake's dam.