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_Nooks & Corners_
_of_
Old New York
By
Charles Hemftreet
_Illustrated_
_By_
E. C. Peixotto
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
MDCCCCV
COPYRIGHT, 1899
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK
_INTRODUCTORY NOTE_
The points of interest referred to in this book are to be found in the
lower part of the Island of Manhattan.
Settlements having early been made in widely separated parts of the
island, streets were laid out from each settlement as they were needed
without regard to the city as a whole; with the result that as the city
grew the streets lengthened and those of the various sections met at
every conceivable angle. This resulted in a tangle detrimental to the
city's interests, and in 1807 a Commission was appointed to devise a
City Plan that should protect the interests of the _whole_ community.
A glance at a city map will show the confusion of streets at the lower
end of the island and the regularity brought about under the City Plan
above Houston Street on the east, and Fourteenth Street on the west
side.
The plan adopted by the Commission absolutely disregarded the natural
topography of the island, and resulted in a city of straight lines and
right angles.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
No. 7 State Street 6
Fraunces' Tavern 11
The "Jack Knife," Gold and Platt Streets 23
Golden Hill Inn 24
Cell in the Prison under the Hall of Records 35
Statue of Nathan Hale, City Hall Park 38
No. 11 Reade Street, where Aaron Burr had an office 40
The Tombs 41
Park Street, with Church of the Transfiguration 44
Hudson and Watts Streets 55
Grave of Charlotte Temple 62
Tomb of Alexander Hamilton 66
Washington's Pew, St. Paul's Chapel 76
Montgomery's Tomb 77
A House of Other Days 79
"Murderers' Row" 97
Old Houses, Wiehawken Street 112
Looking South from Minetta Lane 114
Old Theological Seminary, Chelsea Square 126
Church of Sea and Land 135
Bone Alley 139
Milestone on the Bowery 143
Entrance to Marble Cemetery 152
College of the City of New York 186
Gate of Old House of Refuge 188
The Little Church Around the Corner 192
Milestone on Third Avenue 204
NOOKS AND CORNERS
OF OLD NEW YORK
I
[Sidenote: Fort Amsterdam]
On the centre building of the row which faces bowling Green Park on the
south there is a tablet bearing the words:
THE SITE OF FORT AMSTERDAM,
BUILT IN 1626.
WITHIN THE FORTIFICATIONS
WAS ERECTED THE FIRST
SUBSTANTIAL CHURCH EDIFICE
ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN.
IN 1787 THE FORT
WAS DEMOLISHED
AND THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE
BUILT UPON THIS SITE
[Sidenote: Dutch West India Co.]
This was the starting-point of the settlement which gradually became New
York. In 1614 a stockade, called Fort Manhattan, was built as a
temporary place of shelter for representatives of the United New
Netherland Co., which had been formed to trade with the Indians. This
company was replaced by the Dutch West India Co., with chartered rights
to trade on the American coast, and the first step towards the forming
of a permanent settlement was the building of Fort Amsterdam on the site
of the stockade.
In 1664 New Amsterdam passed into British possession and became New
York, while Fort Amsterdam became Fort James. Under Queen Anne it was
Fort George, remaining so until demolished in 1787.
On the Fort's site was built the Government House, intended for
Washington and the Presidents who should follow him. But none ever
occupied it as the seat of government was removed to Philadelphia before
the house was completed. After 1801 it became an office building, and
was demolished in 1815 to make room for the present structures.
[Sidenote: Bowling Green]
The tiny patch of grass at the starting-point of Broadway, now called
Bowling Green Park, was originally the centre of sports for colonists,
and has been the scene of many stirring events. The iron railing which
now surrounds it was set up in 1771, having been imported from England
to enclose a lead equestrian statue of King George III. On the posts of
the fence were representations of heads of members of the Royal family.
In 1776, during the Revolution, the statue was dragged down and molded
into bullets, and where the iron heads were knocked from the posts the
fracture can still be seen.
[Sidenote: The Battery]
When the English took possession of the city, in 1664, the Fort being
regarded as useless, it was decided to build a Battery to protect the
newly acquired possession. Thus the idea of the Battery was conceived,
although the work was not actually carried out until 1684.
Beyond the Fort there was a fringe of land with the water reaching to a
point within a line drawn from Water and Whitehall Streets to Greenwich
Street. Sixty years after the Battery was built fifty guns were added,
it having been lightly armed up to that time.
The Battery was demolished about the same time as the Fort. The land on
which it stood became a small park, retaining the name of the Battery,
and was gradually added to until it became the Battery Park of to-day.
[Sidenote: Castle Garden]
A small island, two hundred feet off the Battery, to which it was
connected by a drawbridge, was fortified in 1811 and called Fort
Clinton. The armament was twenty-eight 32-pounders, none of which was
ever fired at an enemy. In 1822 the island was ceded back to the city by
the Federal Government--when the military headquarters were transferred
to Governor's Island--and became a place of amusement under the name of
Castle Garden. It was the first real home of opera in America. General
Lafayette was received there in 1824, and there Samuel F. B. Morse first
demonstrated the possibility of controlling an electric current in 1835.
Jenny Lind, under the management of P. T. Barnum, appeared there in
1850. In 1855 it became a depot for the reception of immigrants; in 1890
the offices were removed to Ellis Island, and in 1896, after many
postponements, Castle Garden was opened as a public aquarium.
[Illustration: No. 7 State Street]
[Sidenote: State Street]
State Street, facing the Battery, during the latter part of the
eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, was the
fashionable quarter of the city, and on it were the homes of the
wealthy. Several of the old houses still survive. No. 7, now a home for
immigrant Irish girls, was the most conspicuous on the street, and is in
about its original state. At No. 9 lived John Morton, called the "rebel
banker" by the British, because he loaned large sums to the Continental
Congress. His son, General Jacob Morton, occupied the mansion after his
marriage in 1791, and commanded the militia. Long after he became too
infirm to actually command, from the balcony of his home he reviewed on
the Battery parade grounds the Tompkins Blues and the Light Guards. The
veterans of these commands, by legislative enactment in 1868, were
incorporated as the "Old Guard."
[Sidenote: The "Stadhuis"]
On the building at 4 and 6 Pearl Street, corner State Street, is a
tablet which reads:
1636 1897
ON THIS SITE STOOD THE "STADHUIS"
OF NEW AMSTERDAM----ERECTED 1636
THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE IN LOVING MEMORY
OF THE FIRST DUTCH SETTLERS BY THE
HOLLAND DAMES OF THE NEW
NETHERLANDS AND THE
KNIGHTS OF THE LEGION OF THE CROWN
LAVINIA
KONIGIN
It was set up October 7, 1897, and marks the supposed site of the first
City Hall. What is claimed by most authorities to be the real site is
at Pearl Street, opposite Coenties Slip.
Whitehall Street was one of the earliest thoroughfares of the city, and
was originally the open space left on the land side of the Fort.
[Sidenote: The Beaver's Path]
Beaver Street was first called the Beaver's Path. It was a ditch, on
either side of which was a path. When houses were built along these
paths they were improved by a rough pavement. At the end of the Beaver's
Path, close to where Broad Street is now, was a swamp, which, before the
pavements were made, had been reclaimed and was known as the Sheep
Pasture.
[Sidenote: Petticoat Lane]
Marketfield Street, whose length is less than a block, opens into Broad
Street at No. 72, a few feet from Beaver Street. This is one of the
lost thoroughfares of the city. Almost as old as the city itself, it
once extended past the Fort and continued to the river in what is now
Battery Place. It was then called Petticoat Lane. The first French
Huguenot church was built on it in 1688. Now the Produce Exchange cuts
the street off short and covers the site of the church.
[Sidenote: Broad Street]
Through Broad Street, when the town was New Amsterdam, a narrow,
ill-smelling inlet extended to about the present Beaver Street, then
narrowed to a ditch close to Wall Street. The water-front was then at
Pearl Street. Several bridges crossed the inlet, the largest at the
point where Stone Street is. Another gave Bridge Street its name. In
1660 the ways on either side were paved, and soon became a market-place
for citizens who traded with farmers for their products, and with the
Indians who navigated the inlet in their canoes. The locality has ever
since been a centre of exchange. When the inlet was finally filled in it
left the present "Broad" Street.
Where Beaver Street crosses this thoroughfare, on the northwest corner,
is a tablet:
TO COMMEMORATE THE GALLANT AND PATRIOTIC
ACT OF MARINUS WILLETT IN HERE SEIZING
JUNE 6, 1775, FROM THE BRITISH FORCES THE
MUSKETS WITH WHICH HE ARMED HIS
TROOPS. THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY
THE SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE
REVOLUTION, NEW YORK, NOV. 12, 1892
On one side of the tablet is a bas-relief of the scene showing the
patriots stopping the ammunition wagons.
[Illustration: Fraunces' Tavern]
[Sidenote: Fraunces' Tavern]
Fraunces' Tavern, standing at the southeast corner of Broad and Pearl
Streets, is much the same outwardly as it was when built in 1700, except
that it has two added stories. Etienne De Lancey, a Huguenot nobleman,
built it as his homestead and occupied it for a quarter of a century. It
became a tavern under the direction of Samuel Fraunces in 1762. It was
Washington's headquarters in 1776, and in 1783 he delivered there his
farewell address to his generals.
[Sidenote: Pearl Street]
Pearl Street was one of the two early roads leading from the Fort. It
lay along the water front, and extended to a ferry where Peck Slip is
now. The road afterwards became Great Queen Street, and was lined with
shops of store-keepers who sought the Long Island trade. The other road
in time became Broadway.
On a building at 73 Pearl Street, facing Coenties Slip, is a tablet
which reads:
THE SITE OF THE
FIRST DUTCH HOUSE OF ENTERTAINMENT
ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN
LATER THE SITE OF THE OLD "STADT HUYS"
OR CITY HALL
THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE BY
THE HOLLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER, 1890
[Sidenote: The First City Hall]
This is the site of the first City Hall of New Amsterdam, built 1642. It
stood by the waterside, for beyond Water Street all the land has been
reclaimed. There was a court room and a prison in the building. Before
it, where the pillars of the elevated road are now, was a cage and a
whipping-post. There was also the public "Well of William Cox."
Beside the house ran a lane. It is there yet, still called Coenties Lane
as in the days of old. But it is no longer green. Now it is narrow,
paved, and almost lost between tall buildings.
Opposite Coenties Lane is Coenties Slip, which was an inlet in the days
of the Stadt Huys. The land about was owned by Conraet Ten Eyck, who was
nicknamed Coentje. This in time became Coonchy and was finally
vulgarized to "Quincy." The filling in of this waterway began in 1835
and the slip is now buried beneath Jeanette Park. The filled-in slip
accounts for the width of the street. For the same reason there is
considerable width at Wall, Maiden Lane and other streets leading to the
water front.
[Sidenote: First Printing Press in the Colony]
At 81 Pearl Street, close by Coenties Slip, the first printing-press was
set up by William Bradford, after he was appointed Public Printer in
1693. A tablet marks the site, with the inscription:
ON THIS SITE
WILLIAM BRADFORD
APPOINTED
PUBLIC PRINTER
APRIL 10, A. D. 1693
ESTABLISHED THE FIRST
PRINTING PRESS
IN THE
COLONY OF NEW YORK
ERECTED BY THE
NEW YORK
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
APRIL 10, A. D. 1893
IN COMMEMORATION OF
THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE INTRODUCTION
OF PRINTING IN
NEW YORK
[Sidenote: Fire of 1835]
Across the way, on a warehouse at 88 Pearl Street, is a marble tablet of
unique design, to commemorate the great fire of 1835, which started in
Merchant Street, burned for nineteen hours, extended over fifty acres
and consumed 402 buildings.
Directly through the block from this point is Cuyler's Alley, a narrow
way between the houses running off Water Street. Although it is a
hundred years old the only incident connected with its existence that
has crept into the city's history, is a murder. In 1823, a Boston
merchant was waylaid and murdered for his money, and was dragged through
this street for final disposition in the river, but the murderer made so
much noise in his work that the constable heard him and came upon the
abandoned corpse.
[Sidenote: Stone Street]
Through a pretty garden at the back of the Stadt Huys, Stone Street was
reached. It was the first street to be laid with cobble-stones (1657),
and so came by its name, which originally had been Brouwer Street.
Delmonico's establishment at Beaver and William Streets is on the site
of the second of the Delmonico restaurants. (See Fulton and William
Streets.)
[Sidenote: Flat and Barrack Hill]
Exchange Place took its name from the Merchants' Exchange, which was
completed in William Street, fronting on Wall, in 1827 (the present
Custom House). Before that date it had been called Garden Street. From
Hanover to Broad Street was a famous place for boys to coast in winter,
and the grade was called "Flat and Barrack Hill." Scarcely more than an
alley now, the street was even narrower once and was given its present
width in 1832.
[Sidenote: Wall Street]
Wall Street came by its name naturally, for it was a walled street once.
When war broke out between England and Holland in 1653, Governor Peter
Stuyvesant built the wall along the line of the present street, from
river to river. His object was to form a barrier that should enclose
the city. It was a wall of wood, twelve feet high, with a sloping
breastwork inside. After the wall was removed in 1699, the street came
to be a chief business thoroughfare.
[Sidenote: Federal Hall]
A new City Hall, to replace the Stadt Huys, was built in 1699, at Nassau
Street, on the site of the present Sub-Treasury building. In front of
the building was the cage for criminals, stocks and whipping-post. When
independence was declared, this building was converted into a capitol
and was called Federal Hall. The Declaration of Independence was read
from the steps in 1776. President Washington was inaugurated there in
1789. The wide strip of pavement on the west side of Nassau Street at
Wall Street bears evidence of the former existence of Federal Hall. The
latter extended across to the western house line of the present Nassau
Street, and so closed the thoroughfare that a passage-way led around the
building to Nassau Street. When the Sub-Treasury was built in 1836, on
the site of Federal Hall, Nassau Street was opened to Wall, and the
little passage-way was left to form the wide pavement of to-day.
[Sidenote: Where Alexander Hamilton Lived]
Alexander Hamilton, in 1789, lived in a house on the south side of Wall
Street at Broad. His slayer, Aaron Burr, then lived back of Federal Hall
in Nassau Street.
The Custom House at William Street and Wall was completed in 1842. At
this same corner once stood a statue of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.
In 1776, during the Revolution, the statue was pulled down by British
soldiers, the head cut off and the remainder dragged in the mud. The
people petitioned the Assembly in 1766 to erect the statue to Pitt, as
a recognition of his zealous defence of the American colonies and his
efforts in securing the repeal of the Stamp Act. At the same time
provision was made for the erection of the equestrian statue of George
III in Bowling Green. The statue of Pitt was of marble, and was erected
in 1770.
[Sidenote: Tontine Coffee House]
The Tontine Building at the northwest corner of Wall and Water Streets
marks the site of the Tontine Coffee House, a celebrated house for the
interchange of goods and of ideas, and a political centre. It was a
prominent institution in the city, resorted to by the wealthy and
influential. The building was erected in 1794, and conducted by the
Tontine Society of two hundred and three members, each holding a $200
share. Under their plan all property was to revert to seven survivors of
the original subscribers. The division was made in 1876.
[Sidenote: Meal Market]
Close to where the coffee house was built later, a market was set up in
the middle of Wall Street in 1709, and being the public market for the
sale of corn and meal was called the "Meal Market." Cut meat was not
sold there until 1740. In 1731 this market became the only public place
for the sale and hiring of slaves.
Trinity Church has stood at the head of Wall Street since 1697. Before
1779 the street was filled with tall trees, but during the intensely
cold winter of that year most of them were cut down and used for
kindling.
The ferry wharf has been at the foot of the street since 1694, when the
water came up as far as Pearl Street. It was here that Washington
landed, coming from Elizabethport after his journey from Virginia, April
23, 1789, to be inaugurated.
The United States Hotel, Fulton, between Water and Pearl Streets, was
built in 1823 as Holt's Hotel. It was the headquarters for captains of
whaling ships and merchants. A semaphore, or marine telegraph, was on
the cupola, the windmill-like arms of which served to indicate the
arrival of vessels.
[Sidenote: Middle Dutch Church]
On the building at the northeast corner of Nassau and Cedar Streets is a
tablet reading:
HERE STOOD
THE MIDDLE DUTCH CHURCH
DEDICATED A. D. 1729
MADE A BRITISH MILITARY PRISON 1776
RESTORED 1790
OCCUPIED AS THE UNITED STATES POST-OFFICE
1845-1875
TAKEN DOWN 1882
This church was a notable place of worship; the last in the city to
represent strict simplicity of religious service as contrasted with
modern ease and elegance. The post-office occupied the building until
its removal to the structure it now occupies. The second home of the
Middle Dutch Church was in Lafayette Place.
[Sidenote: Pie Woman's Lane]
Nassau Street was opened in 1696, when Teunis de Kay was given the right
to make a cartway from the wall to the commons (now City Hall Park). At
first the street was known as Pie Woman's Lane.
[Sidenote: The Maiden's Lane]
Where Maiden Lane is there was once a narrow stream or spring water,
which flowed from about the present Nassau Street. Women went there to
wash their clothing, so that it came to be called the Virgin's Path, and
from that the Maiden's Lane. A blacksmith having set up a shop at the
edge of the stream near the river, the locality took the name of Smit's
V'lei, or the Smith's Valley, afterwards shortened to the V'lei, and
then readily corrupted to "Fly." It was natural, then, when a market
was built on the Maiden's Lane, from Pearl to South Streets, to call it
the Fly Market. This was pulled down in 1823.
[Illustration: The Jack Knife, Gold & Platt Sts.]
[Sidenote: The Jack-Knife]
On Gold Street, northwest corner of Platt Street, is a wedge-shaped
house of curious appearance. It is best seen from the Platt Street side.
When this street was opened in 1834 by Jacob S. Platt, who owned much of
the neighboring land and wanted a street of his own, the house was large
and square and had been a tavern for a great many years. The new street
cut the house to its present strange shape, and it came to be called the
"Jack-knife."
[Illustration: Golden Hill Inn]
[Sidenote: Golden Hill]
Golden Hill, celebrated since the time of the Dutch, is still to be
seen in the high ground around Cliff and Gold Streets. Pearl street near
John shows a sweeping curve where it circled around the hill's base, and
the same sort of curve is seen in Maiden Lane on the south and Fulton
Street on the north. The first blood of the Revolution was shed on this
hill in January, 1770, after the British soldiers had cut down a liberty
pole set up by the Liberty Boys. The fight occurred on open ground back
of an inn which still stands at 122 William Street, and is commemorated
in a tablet on the wall of a building at the corner of John and William
Streets. It reads:
"GOLDEN HILL"
HERE, JAN. 18, 1770
THE FIGHT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE
"SONS OF LIBERTY" AND THE
BRITISH REGULARS, 16TH FOOT
FIRST BLOODSHED IN THE
WAR OF THE REVOLUTION
The inn is much the same as in early days, except that many buildings
crowd about it now, and modern paint has made it hideous to antiquarian
eyes.
[Sidenote: Delmonico's]
On the east side of William Street, a few doors south of Fulton, John
Delmonico opened a dingy little bake shop in 1823, acted as chef and
waiter, and built up the name and business which to-day is synonymous
with good eating. In 1832 he removed to 23 William Street. Burned out
there in 1835, he soon opened on a larger scale with his brother at
William and Beaver Streets, on which site is still an establishment
under the Delmonico name. In time he set up various places--at Chambers
Street and Broadway; Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue; Twenty-sixth
Street and Broadway, and finally at Forty-fourth Street and Fifth
Avenue.
[Sidenote: John Street Church]
John Street Church, between Nassau and William Streets, was the first
Methodist Church in America. In 1767 it was organized in a loft at 120
William Street, then locally known as Horse and Cart Street. In 1768 the
church was built in John Street. It was rebuilt in 1817 and again in
1841. John Street perpetuates the name of John Harpendingh, who owned
most of the land thereabout.
[Sidenote: John Street Theatre]
At what is now 17, 19 and 21 John Street, in 1767 was built the old John
Street Theatre, a wooden structure, painted red, standing sixty feet
back from the street and reached by a covered way. An arcade through the
house at No. 17 still bears evidence of the theatre. The house was
closed in 1774, when the Continental Congress recommended suspension of
amusements. Throughout the Revolutionary War, however, performances were
given, the places of the players being filled by British officers.
Washington frequently attended the performances at this theatre after he
became President. The house was torn down in 1798.
The site of the Shakespeare Tavern is marked by a tablet at the
southwest corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets. The words of the tablet
are:
ON THIS SITE IN THE
OLD SHAKESPEARE TAVERN
WAS ORGANIZED
THE SEVENTH REGIMENT
NATIONAL GUARD, S. N. Y.
AUG. 25, 1824
[Sidenote: Shakespeare Tavern]
This tavern, low, old-fashioned, built of small yellow bricks with
dormer windows in the roof, was constructed before the Revolution. In
1808 it was bought by Thomas Hodgkinson, an actor, and was henceforth a
meeting-place for Thespians. It was resorted to--in contrast to the
business men guests of the Tontine Coffee House--by the wits of the day,
the poets and the writers. In 1824 Hodgkinson died, and the house was
kept up for a time by his son-in-law, Mr. Stoneall.
[Sidenote: First Clinton Hall]
At the southwest corner of Beekman and Nassau Streets was built, in
1830, the first home of the Mercantile Library, called Clinton Hall. In
1820 the first steps were taken by the merchants of the city to
establish a reading room for their clerks. The library was opened the
following year with 700 volumes. In 1823 the association was
incorporated. It was located first in a building in Nassau Street, but
in 1826 was moved to Cliff Street, and in 1830 occupied its new building
in Beekman Street. De Witt Clinton, Governor of the State, had presented
a History of England as the first volume for the library. The new
building was called Clinton Hall in his honor. In 1850, the building
being crowded, the Astor Place Opera House was bought for $250,000, and
remodeled in 1854 into the second Clinton Hall. The third building of
that name is now on the site at the head of Lafayette Place.
[Sidenote: St. George's Church]
The St. George Building, on the north side of Beekman Street, just west
of Cliff Street, stands on the site of St. George's Episcopal Church, a
stately stone structure which was erected in 1811. In 1814 it was
burned; in 1816 rebuilt, and in 1845 removed to Rutherford Place and
Sixteenth Street, where it still is. Next to the St. George Building is
the tall shot-tower which may be so prominently seen from the windows of
tall buildings in the lower part of the city, but is so difficult to
find when search is made for it.
[Sidenote: Barnum's Museum]
Barnum's Museum, opened in 1842, was on the site of the St. Paul
Building, at Broadway and Ann Street. There P. T. Barnum brought out Tom
Thumb, the Woolly Horse and many other curiosities that became
celebrated. On the stage of a dingy little amphitheatre in the house
many actors played who afterwards won national recognition.
[Sidenote: Original Park Theatre]
The original Park Theatre was built in 1798, and stood on Park Row,
between Ann and Beekman Streets, facing what was then City Hall Park and
what is now the Post Office. It was 200 feet from Ann Street, and
extended back to the alley which has ever since been called Theatre
Alley. John Howard Payne, author of "Home, Sweet Home," appeared there
for the first time on any stage, in 1809, as the "Young American
Roscius." In 1842 a ball in honor of Charles Dickens was given there.
Many noted actors played at this theatre, which was the most important
in the city at that period. It was rebuilt in 1820 and burned in 1848.
[Sidenote: First Brick Presbyterian Church]
At the junction of Park Row and Nassau Street, where the _Times_
Building is, the Brick Presbyterian Church was erected in 1768. There
was a small burying-ground within the shadow of its walls, and green
fields stretched from it in all directions. It was sold in 1854, and a
new church was built at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street.
[Sidenote: Where Leisler Was Hanged]
Within a few steps of where the statue of Benjamin Franklin is in
Printing House Square, Jacob Leisler was hanged in his own garden in
1691, the city's first martyr to constitutional liberty. A wealthy
merchant, after James III fled and William III ascended the throne,
Leisler was called by the Committee of Safety to act as Governor. He
assembled a Continental Congress, whose deliberations were cut short by
the arrival of Col. Henry Sloughter as Governor. Enemies of Leisler
decided on his death. The new Governor refused to sign the warrant, but
being made drunk signed it unknowingly and Leisler was hanged and his
body buried at the foot of the scaffold. A few years later, a royal
proclamation wiped the taint of treason from Leisler's memory and his
body was removed to a more honored resting-place.
[Sidenote: Tammany Hall]
The walls of the _Sun_ building at Park Row and Frankfort Street, are
those of the first permanent home of Tammany Hall. Besides the hall it
contained the second leading hotel in the city, where board was $7 a
week. Tammany Hall, organized in 1789 by William Mooney, an upholsterer,
occupied quarters in Borden's tavern in lower Broadway. In 1798 it
removed to Martling's tavern, at the southeast corner of Nassau and
Spruce, until its permanent home was erected in 1811.
[Sidenote: A Liberty Pole]
There is a tablet on the wall of the south corridor of the post-office
building, which bears the inscription:
ON THE COMMON OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK,
NEAR WHERE THIS BUILDING NOW STANDS, THERE
STOOD FROM 1766 TO 1776 A LIBERTY POLE
ERECTED TO COMMEMORATE THE REPEAL OF THE
STAMP ACT. IT WAS REPEATEDLY DESTROYED BY
THE VIOLENCE OF THE TORIES AND AS REPEATEDLY
REPLACED BY THE SONS OF LIBERTY, WHO ORGANIZED
A CONSTANT WATCH AND GUARD. IN ITS
DEFENCE THE FIRST MARTYR BLOOD OF THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION WAS SHED ON JAN. 18, 1770.
The cutting down of this pole led to the battle of Golden Hill.
[Sidenote: City Hall Park]
[Sidenote: Potter's Field In City Hall Park]
The post-office building was erected on a portion of the City Hall Park.
This park, like all of the Island of Manhattan, was a wilderness a few
hundred years ago. By 1661, where the park is there was a clearing in
which cattle were herded. In time the clearing was called The Fields;
later The Commons. On The Commons, in Dutch colonial days, criminals
were executed. Still later a Potter's Field occupied what is now the
upper end of the Park; above it, and extending over the present Chambers
Street was a negro burying-ground. On these commons, in 1735, a
poor-house was built, the site of which is covered by the present City
Hall. From time to time other buildings were erected.
[Illustration: Cell in the Prison under the Hall of Records]
The new Jail was finished in 1763, and, having undergone but few
alterations, is now known as the Hall of Records. It was a military
prison during the Revolution, and afterwards a Debtors' Prison. In 1830
it became the Register's Office. It was long considered the most
beautiful building in the city, being patterned after the temple of
Diana of Ephesus.
The Bridewell, or City Prison, was built on The Commons in 1775, close
by Broadway, on a line with the Debtors' Prison. It was torn down in
1838.
[Sidenote: Third City Hall]
[Sidenote: Governor's Room]
The present City Hall was finished in 1812. About that time The Commons
were fenced in and became a park, taking in besides the present space,
that now occupied by the post-office building. The constructors of the
City Hall deemed it unnecessary to use marble for the rear wall as they
had for the sides and front, and built this wall of freestone, it being
then almost inconceivable that traffic could ever extend so far up-town
as to permit a view of the rear of the building. The most noted spot in
the City Hall is the Governor's Room, an apartment originally intended
for the use of the Governor when in the city. In time it became the
municipal portrait gallery, and a reception room for the distinguished
guests of the city. The bodies of Abraham Lincoln and of John Howard
Payne lay in state in this room. With it is also associated the visit of
Lafayette when he returned to this country in 1824 and made the room his
reception headquarters. The room was also the scene of the celebration
after the capture of the "Guerriere" by the "Constitution"; the
reception to Commodore Perry after his Lake Erie victory; the
celebration in connection with the laying of the Atlantic cable; and at
the completion of the Erie Canal. It contains a large gilt punch-bowl,
showing scenes in New York a hundred years ago. This was presented to
the city by General Jacob Morton, Secretary of the Committee of
Defense, at the opening of the City Hall.
At the western end of the front wall of City Hall is a tablet reading:
NEAR THIS SPOT IN THE PRESENCE OF
GEN. GEORGE WASHINGTON
THE DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE
WAS READ AND PUBLISHED
TO THE
AMERICAN ARMY
JULY 9TH, 1776
[Sidenote: First Savings Bank]
Other buildings erected in the Park were The Rotunda, 1816, on the site
of the brown stone building afterwards occupied by the Court of General
Sessions, where works of art were exhibited; and the New York Institute
on the site of the Court House, occupied in 1817 by the American, or
Scudder's Museum, the first in the city. The Chambers Street Bank, the
first bank for savings in the city, opened in the basement of the
Institute building in 1818. In 1841 Philip Hone was president of this
bank. It afterwards moved to the north side of Bleecker Street, between
Broadway and Crosby, and became the Bleecker Street Bank. Now it is at
Twenty-second Street and Fourth Avenue, and is called The Bank for
Savings.
[Illustration: Statue of NATHAN HALE City Hall Park]
[Sidenote: Fences of City Hall Park]
The statue of Nathan Hale was erected in City Hall Park by the Sons of
the Revolution. Some authorities still insist that the Martyr Spy was
hanged in this park. Until 1821 there were fences of wooden pickets
about the park. In that year iron railings, which had been imported from
England, were set up, with four marble pillars at the southern entrance.
The next year trees were set out within the enclosure, and just within
the railing were planted a number of rose-bushes which had been supplied
by two ladies who had an eye to landscape gardening. Frosts and vandals
did not allow the bushes more than a year of life. Four granite balls,
said to have been dug from the ruins of Troy, were placed on the pillars
at the southern entrance, May 8, 1827. They were given to the city by
Captain John B. Nicholson, U. S. N.
The building 39 and 41 Chambers Street, opposite the Court House, stands
on the site of the pretty little Palmo Opera House, built in 1844 for
the production of Italian opera, by F. Palmo, the wealthy proprietor of
the Cafe des Mille Colonnes on Broadway at Duane Street. He lost his
fortune in the operatic venture and became a bartender. In 1848 the
house became Burton's Theatre. About 1800, this site was occupied by
the First Reformed Presbyterian Church, a frame building which was
replaced by a brick structure in 1818. The church was moved to Prince
and Marion Streets in 1834.
[Illustration: No. 11 Reade St. where Aaron Burr had an office....]
[Sidenote: Office of Aaron Burr]
At No. 11 Reade Street is a dingy little house, now covered with signs
and given over to half a dozen small business concerns, about which
hover memories of Aaron Burr. It was here he had a law office in 1832,
and here when he was seventy-eight years old he first met Mme. Jumel
whom he afterwards married. The house is to be torn down to make way for
new municipal buildings.
[Sidenote: An Historic Window]
At Rose and Duane Streets stands the Rhinelander building, and on the
Rose Street side close by the main entrance is a small grated window.
This is the last trace of a sugar-house, which, during the
Revolutionary War, was used as a British military prison. The building
was not demolished until 1892, and the window, retaining its original
position in the old house, was built into the new.
[Illustration: The Tombs]
[Sidenote: The Tombs Prison]
[Sidenote: The Collect]
Where the Tombs prison stands was once the Collect, or Fresh Water Pond.
This deep body of water took up, approximately, the space between the
present Baxter, Elm, Canal and Pearl Streets. When the Island of
Manhattan was first inhabited, a swamp stretched in a wide belt across
it from where Roosevelt Slip is now to the end of Canal Street on the
west side. The Collect was the centre of this stretch, with a stream
called the Wreck Brook flowing from it across a marsh to the East River.
At a time near the close of the eighteenth century a drain was cut from
the Collect to the North River, on a line with the present Canal Street.
With the progress of the city to the north, the pond was drained, and
the swamp made into firm ground. In 1816, the Corporation Yards occupied
the block of Elm, Centre, Leonard and Franklin Streets, on the ground
which had filled in the pond. The Tombs, or City Prison, was built on
this block in 1838.
[Sidenote: The Five Points]
The Five Points still exists where Worth, Baxter and Park Streets
intersect, but it is no longer the centre of a community of crime that
gained international notoriety. It was once the gathering-point for
criminals and degraded persons of both sexes and of all nationalities, a
rookery for thieves and murderers. Its history began more than a century
and a half ago. During the so-called Negro Insurrection of 1741, when
many negroes were hanged, the severest punishment was the burning at
the stake of fourteen negroes in this locality.
[Sidenote: Mulberry Bend Slum]
One of the five "Points" is now formed by a pleasant park which a few
years ago took the place of the last remnant of the old-time locality.
In no single block of the city was there ever such a record for crime as
in this old "Mulberry Bend" block. Set low in a hollow, it was a refuge
for the outcasts of the city and of half a dozen countries. The slum
took its name, as the park does now, from Mulberry Street, which on one
side of it makes a deep and sudden bend. In this slum block the houses
were three deep in places, with scarcely the suggestion of a courtyard
between them. Narrow alleys, hardly wide enough to permit the passage of
a man, led between houses to beer cellars, stables and time-blackened,
tumbledown tenements. Obscure ways honeycombed the entire block--ways
that led beneath houses, over low sheds, through fragments of
wall--ways that were known only to the thief and the tramp. There
"Bottle Alley," "Bandit's Roost" and "Rag-picker's Row" were the scenes
of many wild fights, and many a time the ready stiletto ended the lives
of men, or the heavy club dashed out brains.
The Five Points House of Industry's work was begun in 1850, and has been
successful in ameliorating the moral and physical condition of the
people of the vicinity. The institution devoted to this work stands on
the site of the "Old Brewery," the most notorious criminal resort of the
locality.
[Illustration: Park St. with Church of the Transfiguration]
[Sidenote: An Ancient Church]
At Mott and Park Streets is now the Church of the Transfiguration
(Catholic). On a hill, the suggestion of which is still to be seen in
steep Park Street, the Zion Lutheran Church was erected in 1797. In
1810 it was changed to Zion Episcopal Church. It was burned in 1815;
rebuilt 1819, and sold in 1853 to the Church of the Transfiguration,
which has occupied it since. This last church had previously been in
Chambers Street, and before that it had occupied several quarters. It
was founded in 1827, and is the fourth oldest church in the diocese.
Zion Episcopal Church moved in 1853 to Thirty-eighth Street and Madison
Avenue, and in 1891 consolidated with St. Timothy's Church at No. 332
West Fifty-seventh Street. The Madison Avenue building was sold to the
South (Reformed) Dutch Church.
[Sidenote: Chatham Square]
Chatham Square has been the open space it is now ever since the time
when a few houses clustered about Fort Amsterdam. The road that
stretched the length of the island in 1647 formed the only connecting
link between the fort and six large bouweries or farms on the east
side.
The bouwerie settlers in the early days were harassed by Indians, and
spent as much time defending themselves and skurrying off to the
protection of the Fort as they did in improving the land. The earliest
settlement in the direction of these bouweries, which had even a
suggestion of permanency, was on a hill which had once been an Indian
outlook, close by the present Chatham Square. Emanuel de Groot, a giant
negro, with ten superannuated slaves, were permitted to settle here upon
agreeing to pay each a fat hog and 22-1/2 bushels of grain a year, their
children to remain slaves.
North of this settlement stretched a primeval forest through which
cattle wandered and were lost. Then the future Chatham Square was fenced
in as a place of protection for the cattle.
[Sidenote: Bouwerie Lane]
The lane leading from this enclosure to the outlying bouweries, during
the Revolution was used for the passage of both armies. At that period
the highway changed from the Bouwerie Lane of the Dutch to the English
Bowery Road. In 1807 it became "The Bowery."
[Sidenote: Kissing Bridge]
The earliest "Kissing Bridge" was over a small creek, on the Post Road,
close by the present Chatham Square. Travelers who left the city by this
road parted with their friends on this bridge, it being the custom to
accompany the traveler thus far from the city on his way.
What is now Park Row, from City Hall Park to Chatham Square, was for
many years called Chatham Street, in honor of William Pitt, Earl of
Chatham. In 1886 the aldermen of the city changed the name to Park Row,
and in so doing seemed to stamp approval of an event just one hundred
years before which had stirred American manhood to acts of valor. This
was the dragging down by British soldiers in 1776 of a statue of the
Earl of Chatham which had stood in Wall Street.
[Sidenote: Tea Water Pump]
The most celebrated pump in the city was the Tea Water Pump, on Chatham
Street (now Park Row) near Queen (now Pearl) Street. The water was
supplied from the Collect and was considered of the rarest quality for
the making of tea. Up to 1789 it was the chief water-works of the city,
and the water was carted about the city in casks and sold from carts.
[Sidenote: Home of Charlotte Temple]
Within a few steps of the Bowery, on the north side of Pell Street, in a
frame house, Charlotte Temple died. The heroine of Mrs. Rowson's "Tale
of Truth," whose sorrowful life was held up as a moral lesson a
generation ago, had lived first in a house on what is now the south side
of Astor Place close to Fourth Avenue. Her tomb is in Trinity
churchyard.
[Sidenote: Bull's Head Tavern]
The Bull's Head Tavern was built on the site of the present Thalia
Theatre, formerly the Bowery Theatre, just above Chatham Square, some
years before 1763. It was frequented by drovers and butchers, and was
the most popular tavern of its kind in the city for many years.
Washington and his staff occupied it on the day the British evacuated
the city in 1783. It was pulled down in 1826, making way for the Bowery
Theatre.
[Sidenote: First Bowery Theatre]
The Bowery Theatre was opened in 1826, and during the course or its
existence was the home of broad melodrama, that had such a large
following that the theatre obtained a national reputation. Many
celebrated actors appeared in the house. It was burned in 1828, rebuilt
and burned again in 1836, again in 1838, in 1845 and in 1848.
New Bowery Street was opened from the south side of Chatham Square in
1856. The street carried away a part of a Jewish burying-ground, a
portion of which, crowded between tenement-houses and shut off from the
street by a wall and iron fence, is still to be seen a few steps from
Chatham Square. The first synagogue of the Jews was in Mill Street (now
South William). The graveyard mentioned was the first one used by this
congregation, and was opened in 1681, so far from the city that it did
not seem probable that the latter could ever reach it. Early in the
nineteenth century the graveyard was moved to a site which is now Sixth
Avenue and Eleventh Street.
[Sidenote: Washington's Home on Cherry Hill]
The Franklin House was the first Cherry Hill place of residence of
George Washington in the city, when he became President in 1789. It
stood at the corner of Franklin Square (then St. George Square) and
Cherry Street. A portion of the East River Bridge structure rests on the
site. Pearl Street, passing the house, was a main thoroughfare in those
days. The house was built in 1770 by Walter Franklin, an importing
merchant. It was torn down in 1856. The site is marked by a tablet on
the Bridge abutment, which reads:
THE FIRST
PRESIDENTIAL MANSION
NO. 1 CHERRY STREET
OCCUPIED BY
GEORGE WASHINGTON
FROM APRIL 23, 1789
TO FEBRUARY 23, 1790
ERECTED BY THE
MARY WASHINGTON COLONIAL CHAPTER, D.A.R.
APRIL 30, 1899
At No. 7 Cherry Street gas was first introduced into the city in 1825.
This is the Cherry Hill district, sadly deteriorated from the merry
days of its infancy. Its name is still preserved in Cherry Street, which
is hemmed in by tenement-houses which the Italian population crowd in
almost inconceivable numbers. At the top of the hill, where these
Italians drag out a crowded existence, Richard Sackett, an Englishman,
established a pleasure garden beyond the city in 1670, and because its
chief attraction was an orchard of cherry trees, called it the Cherry
Garden--a name that has since clung to the locality.
[Illustration]