_The Stretch of Tradition_
Stretches of the Avenue--The Stretch of Tradition--Washington Arch--Old
Homes and Gardens--The Mews and MacDougal Alley--In the Fourth Decade--A
Genial Ruffian of the Olden Time--Sailor's Snug Harbor--The Miss Green
School--Andrew H. Green, John Fiske, John Bigelow, Elihu Root, and
Others as Teachers--The Brevoort Farm--The First Hotel of the Avenue--A
Romance of 1840--"Both Sides of the Avenue."
A snug little farm was the old Brevoort
Where cabbages grew of the choicest sort;
Full-headed, and generous, ample and fat,
In a queenly way on their stems they sat,
And there was boast of their genuine breed,
For from old Utrecht had come their seed.
--_Gideon Tucker, "The Old Brevoort Farm."_
Passing under the Washington Arch, the march up the Avenue properly
begins. To commemorate the centenary of the inauguration of the nation's
first President a temporary arch was erected in the spring of 1889. The
original structure reached from corner to corner across Fifth Avenue,
opposite the Park, and the expense was borne by Mr. William Rhinelander
Stewart and other residents of Washington Square. It added so much to
the beauty of the entrance to the Avenue that steps were taken to make
it permanent, and the present Arch was the result of popular
subscription. One hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars was the cost
of the structure, which was designed by Stanford White. Comparatively
recent additions to the Arch are the two sculptured groups on northern
façade, to the right and left of the span. They are the work of H.A.
MacNeil.
Of all the blocks in the stretch of tradition that carries the Avenue up
to Fourteenth Street, the richest in interest is, naturally, that which
lies immediately north of the Square. Dividing this block in two, and
running respectively east and west, are Washington Mews and MacDougall
Alley. When Fifth Avenue was young and addicted to stately horse-drawn
turnouts, it was in these half streets that were stabled the steeds and
the carriages. Of comparatively recent date is the remodelling that has
converted the old stables into quaint, if somewhat garish artist
studios.
From the top of a north-bound bus as it leaves the Square may be seen
the beautiful gardens that have always been a feature of these first
houses. Mrs. Emily Johnston de Forest, in her life of her grandfather,
John Johnston, has described these gardens as they were from 1833 to
1842. "The houses in the 'Row,' as this part of Washington Square was
called, all had beautiful gardens in the rear about ninety feet deep,
surrounded by white, grape-covered trellises, with rounded arches at
intervals, and lovely borders full of old-fashioned flowers." Although
some of the "Row" had cisterns, all the residents went for their washing
water to "the pump with a long handle" that stood in the Square. Of that
pump Mrs. de Forest tells the following tale. One of her grandfather's
neighbours told his coachman to fetch a couple of pails of water for
Mary, the laundress. The coachman said that this was not his business,
and upon being asked what his business was, replied: "To harness the
horses and drive them." Thereupon he was told to bring the carriage to
the door. His employer then invited the laundress with her two pails to
step in and bade the coachman to drive her to the pump. There was no
further trouble with the coachman.
As has been told elsewhere, before the Avenue was ever dreamed of, this
land belonged to the Randall estate. The founder of the family was one
Captain Thomas Randall, described as a freebooter of the seas, who
commanded the "Fox," and sailed for years in and out of New Orleans,
where he sold the proceeds of his voyages and captures. To this genial
old ruffian was born a son, Robert Richard, after which event the father
settled down and became a respectable merchant in Hanover Street, New
York. He was coxswain of the barge crew of thirteen ship's captains who
rowed General Washington from Elizabethtown Point to New York, on the
way to the first inauguration. When Robert Richard came to die, in 1801,
he dictated, propped up in bed, his last will. After the bequests to
relatives and servants, he whispered to his lawyer: "My father was a
mariner, his fortune was made at sea. There is no snug harbour for
worn-out sailors. I would like to do something for them." Incidentally,
the lawyer who drew up the will was Alexander Hamilton.
[Illustration: AT THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF THE AVENUE AND TENTH STREET IS
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION, BUILT IN 1840, AND CONSECRATED
NOVEMBER 5, 1841. IT BELONGS TO A PART OF THE AVENUE, FROM THE SQUARE TO
TWELFTH STREET, WHICH HAS CHANGED LITTLE SINCE 1845]
So the Sailor's Snug Harbor Estate came into being, later to be
transferred to its present home on Staten Island. As I survey it from
the Richmond Terrace, which it faces, I like to recall its origin. That
origin does not in the least seem to interfere with the comfort of the
old salts in blue puffing away at their short pipes before the gate or
strolling across the broad lawn. Never mind the source of Captain Tom's
money. It is not for them to worry about the "Fox," or the "De Lancey,"
a brigantine with fourteen guns, which the "financier" took out in 1757,
and with which he made some sensational captures, or the "Saucy Sally."
Eventually the "De Lancey" was taken by the Dutch and the "Saucy Sally"
by the English. But before these misfortunes befell him Captain Tom had
amassed a fat property. Ostensibly he plied a coastwise trade mostly
between New York and New Orleans. But the same chronicler to whom we owe
the significant expression: "In those days a man was looked upon as
highly unfortunate if he had not a vessel which he could put to
profitable use," summed the matter up when he said: "The Captain went
wherever the Spanish flag covered the largest amount of gold."
At the northeast corner of Washington Square and Fifth Avenue is the
James Boorman house, now, I believe, the residence of Mr. Eugene
Delano. Helen W. Henderson, in "A Loiterer in New York," alludes to
certain letters about old New York written by Mr. Boorman's niece.
"She writes," says Miss Henderson, "of her sister having been sent to
boarding school at Miss Green's, No. 1 Fifth Avenue, and of how she
used to comfort herself, in her home-sickness for the family, at
Scarborough-on-the-Hudson, by looking out of the side windows of her
prison at her uncle, 'walking in his flower-garden in the rear of his
house on Washington Square!'" When James Boorman built his house, it was
all open country behind it. Mr. Boorman built also the houses Nos. 1 and
3 Fifth Avenue and the stables that were the nucleus of the Washington
Mews of the present day. In the houses was opened, in 1835, a select
school for young ladies, presided over at first by Mr. Boorman's only
sister, Mrs. Esther Smith.
Soon, from Worcester, Massachusetts, came a Miss Green, a girl of
eighteen, to teach in the school. Another sister followed and in the
course of a few years the establishment became the Misses Green School,
which, for a long period, before and after the Civil War, was one of the
most distinguished institutions of its kind in the city. Later it was
carried on by the Misses Graham. There were educated the daughters of
the commercial and social leaders of New York. Among the pupils were
Fanny and Jenny Jerome, the latter afterwards to become Lady Randolph
Churchill, and the mother of Winston Churchill. A brother of Lucy and
Mary Green was Andrew H. Green, the "Father of Greater New York." He had
for a time a share in the direction of the establishment, and in 1844,
taught a class in American history. Some of the younger teachers came
from the Union Theological Seminary in Washington Square. Among the men
later to become distinguished, who lectured at the school, were Felix
Foresti, professor at the University, and at Columbia College, Clarence
Cook, Lyman Abbott, John Fiske, John Bigelow, teaching botany and
charming the young ladies because he was "so handsome," and Elihu Root,
then a youth fresh from college. To quote from Miss Henderson: "Miss
Boorman has often told me of the amusement that the shy theological
students and other young teachers afforded the girls in their classes,
and how delighted these used to be to see instructors fall into a trap
which was unconsciously prepared for them. The room in which the
lectures were given had two doors, side by side, and exactly alike, one
leading into the hall and the other into a closet. The young men having
concluded their remarks, and feeling some relief at the successful
termination of the ordeal, would tuck their books under their arms, bow
gravely to the class, open the door, and walk briskly into the closet.
Even Miss Green's discipline had its limits, and when the lecturer
turned to find the proper exit he had to face a class of grinning
schoolgirls not much younger than himself, to his endless mortification.
Elihu Root recently met at a dinner a lady who asked him if he
remembered her as a member of his class at Miss Green's school. 'Do I
remember you?' the former secretary of State replied. 'You are one of
the girls who used to laugh at me when I had to walk into the closet.'"
It was in 1835, when the new avenue was in the first flush of its lusty
infancy, that a hotel was opened at the northeast corner of Eighth
Street. They call it the Lafayette today: tomorrow it may have still
another name. But to one with any feeling for old New York it will
always be remembered by its appellation of yesterday, which it drew from
the old proprietors of the land on which it stands, that family that is
descended from Hendrick Brevoort who had served Haarlem as constable and
overseer, and later emigrated to New York, where he was an alderman from
1702 to 1713. The Brevoort farm adjoined the Randall farm and ran
northeasterly to about Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. Among the
descendants of the Dutch burgher was one Henry Brevoort, to whose
obstinacy of disposition is owed a curious inconsistency of the city of
today. His farmhouse was on the west side of Fourth Avenue and on his
land were certain favourite trees. When the Commissioners were
replanning the town in 1807 there was a projected Eleventh Street. But
the trees were in the way of the improvement, so old Brevoort stood in
the doorway, blunderbuss in hand, and defied the invaders to such
purpose that to this day Eleventh Street has never been cut through.
Instead, Grace Church, its garden and rectory cover the site of the old
homestead. Later the vestry of Grace Church was to play old Brevoort's
game. "Boss" Tweed determined to cut through or make the church pay
handsomely for immunity. The vestry defied him. Tweed never acted.
There was another Henry Brevoort in the family. He it was who built the
house that now stands at the northwest corner of the Avenue and Ninth
Street. That Henry was the grandfather of James Renwick, Jr., the
architect who built Grace Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. His house
was one of the great houses of the early days. Now known as the De Rham
house--Brevoort sold it in 1857 to Henry De Rham for fifty-seven
thousand dollars,--it still strikes the passer-by on account of its
individuality of appearance. But long before the De Rhams entered in
possession it had its romance. There, the evening of February 24, 1840,
was held the first masked ball ever given in New York. It was, to quote
Mr. George S. Hellman, "the most splendid social affair of the first
half of the nineteenth century." But it was also the last masked ball
held in the town for many years.
The name of the British Consul to New York at the time was Anthony
Barclay, and he had a daughter. Her name was Matilda; she is described
as having been a belle of great charm and beauty, and as having had a
number of suitors. Of course, after the fashion of all love stories, the
suitor favoured by her was the one of whom her parents most disapproved.
He was a young South Carolinian named Burgwyne. Opposition served only
to fan the flame, and the lovers met by stealth, and the gay Southerner
wooed the fair Briton in the good old school poetical manner. In soft
communion of fancy they wandered together to far lands; to:
"that delightful Province of the Sun,
The first of Persian lands he shines upon,
Where all the loveliest children of his beam,
Flow'rets and fruits, blush over every stream,
And, fairest of all streams, the Murga roves
Among Merou's bright palaces and groves."
It was "Tom" Moore's "Lalla Rookh" that was dearest to their hearts.
Then came the great masked ball, to which practically all "society" was
invited.
Matilda and Burgwyne agreed to go in the guise of their romantic
favourites; she as Lalla Rookh, and he as Feramorz, the young Prince.
She wore "floating gauzes, bracelets, a small coronet of jewels, and a
rose-coloured bridal veil." His dress was "simple, yet not without marks
of costliness, with a high Tartarian cap, and strings of pearls hanging
from his flowered girdle of Kaskan." Till four o'clock in the morning
they danced. Then, still wearing the costumes of the romantic poem, they
slipped away from the ball and were married before breakfast. It seems
quite harmless, and natural, and as it should have been, when we regard
it after all the years. But it caused a great uproar and scandal at the
time, and brought masked balls into such odium that there was, a bit
later, a fine of one thousand dollars imposed on anyone who should give
one,--one-half to be deducted in case you told on yourself.
There is a little magazine published in New York designed to entertain
and instruct those who view from the top of a bus of one of the various
lines that are the outgrowth of the old Fifth Avenue stage line. The
magazine is called "From a Fifth Avenue Bus," and a feature from month
to month is the department known as "Both Sides of Fifth Avenue." In the
stretch between the Square and Eleventh Street, it points out as
residences of particular interest those of Paul Dana, No. 1, George T.
Bestle, No. 3, F. Spencer Witherbee, No. 4, and Lispenard Stewart, No.
6; all below Eighth Street. Then, between Eighth and Ninth, Pierre Mali,
No. 8, John C. Eames, No. 12, Miss Abigail Burt, No. 14, Dr. J. Milton
Mabbott, No. 17, Dr. Edward L. Partridge, No. 19, and Dr. Robert J. Kahn
(former Mark Twain home), No. 21. Between Ninth and Tenth, Charles De
Rham, No. 24, Mrs. George Ethridge, No. 27, Mrs. Peter F. Collier, No.
29, and Edwin W. Coggeshall, No. 30. On the next block, Frank B. Wiborg,
No. 40, Gen. Rush Hawkins, No. 42, Miss Elsie Borg, No. 43, Howard
Carter Dickinson, No. 45, Mrs. J.P. Cassidy, No. 49, and William W.
Thompkins, No. 68. Besides the private residences are mentioned the
Hotel Brevoort (the traditional name is used), the Berkeley at No. 20,
and the Church of the Ascension, at Tenth Street, one of the very first
of the Fifth Avenue churches, and the scene, on June 26, 1844, of the
marriage of President John Tyler and Miss Julia Gardiner, the first
marriage of a President of the United States during his term of office.
The church a block farther north, on the same side of the Avenue is the
First Presbyterian, dating from 1845, when the congregation moved uptown
from the earlier edifice on Wall Street, just east of New Street.