[Sidenote: The Origin of Broadway]
From New Amsterdam, which centered about the Fort, the only road which
led through the island branched out from Bowling Green. It took the line
of what is now Broadway, and during a period of one hundred years was
the only road which extended the length of the island.
That Broadway, beyond St. Paul's Chapel, ever became a greatly traveled
thoroughfare, was due more to accident than design, for to all
appearances the road which turned to the east was to be the main artery
for the city's travel, and all calculations were made to that end.
Broadway really ended at St. Paul's.
[Sidenote: The First Graveyard]
Morris Street was called Beaver Lane before the name was changed in
1829. On this street, near Broadway, the first graveyard of the city was
situated. It was removed and the ground sold at auction in 1676, when a
plot was acquired opposite Wall Street. This last was used in
conjunction with Trinity Church until city interment was prohibited.
[Sidenote: The First House Built]
On the office building at 41 Broadway there is fixed a tablet which
bears the inscription:
THIS TABLET MARKS THE SITE OF THE
FIRST HABITATIONS OF WHITE MEN
ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN
ADRIAN BLOCK
COMMANDER OF THE "TIGER"
ERECTED HERE FOUR HOUSES OR HUTS
AFTER HIS VESSEL WAS BURNED
NOVEMBER, 1613
HE BUILT THE RESTLESS, THE FIRST VESSEL
MADE BY EUROPEANS IN THIS COUNTRY
THE RESTLESS WAS LAUNCHED
IN THE SPRING OF 1614
Adrian Block was one of the earliest fur traders to visit the island
after Henry Hudson returned to Holland with the news of his discovery.
The "Tiger" took fire in the night while anchored in the bay, and Block
and his crew reached the shore with difficulty. They were the only white
men on the island. Immediately they set about building a new vessel,
which was named the "Restless."
Next door, at No. 39, President Washington lived in the Macomb's
Mansion, moving there from the Franklin House in 1790. Subsequently the
house became a hotel.
[Sidenote: Tin Pot Alley]
There is a rift in the walls between the tall buildings at No. 55
Broadway, near Rector Street, a cemented way that is neither alley nor
street. It was a green lane before New Amsterdam became New York, and
for a hundred years has been called Tin Pot Alley. With the growth of
the city the little lane came near being crowded out, and the name, not
being of proper dignity, would be forgotten but for a terra cotta tablet
fixed in a building at its entrance. This was placed there by Rev.
Morgan Dix, the pastor of Trinity Church.
At the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector Street, where a
sky-scraper is now, Grace Church once stood with a graveyard about it.
The church was completed in 1808, and was there until 1846, when the
present structure was erected at Broadway and Tenth Street. Upon the
Rector Street site, the Trinity Lutheran Church, a log structure, was
built in 1671. It was rebuilt in 1741, and was burned in the great fire
of 1776.
[Sidenote: Trinity Churchyard]
Trinity churchyard is part of a large tract of land, granted to the
Trinity Corporation in 1705, that was once the Queen's Farm.
[Sidenote: Annetje Jans's Farm]
In 1635 there were a number of bouweries or farms above the Fort. The
nearest--one extending about to where Warren Street is--was set apart
for the Dutch West India Company, and called the Company's Farm. Above
this was another, bounded approximately by what are now Warren and
Charlton Streets, west of Broadway. This last was given by the company,
in 1635, to Roelof Jansz (contraction of Jannsen), a Dutch colonist. He
died the following year, and the farm became the property of his wife,
Annetje Jans. (In the feminine, the z being omitted, the form became
Jans.) The farm was sold to Francis Lovelace, the English Governor, in
1670, and he added it to the company's farm, and it became thereafter
the Duke's Farm. In 1674 it became the King's Farm. When Queen Anne
began her reign it became the Queen's Farm, and it was she who granted
it to Trinity, making it the Church Farm.
In 1731, which was sixty-one years after the Annetje Jans's farm was
sold to Governor Lovelace, the descendants of Annetje Jans for the first
time decided that they had yet some interest in the farm, and made an
unsuccessful protest. From time to time since protests in the form of
lawsuits have been made, but no court has sustained the claims.
The city's growth was retarded by church ownership of land, as no one
wanted to build on leasehold property. It was not until the greater part
of available land on the east side of the island was built upon that the
church property was made use of on the only terms it could be had. Not
until 1803 were the streets from Warren to Canal laid out.
Trinity Church was built in 1697. For years before, however, there had
been a burying-ground beyond the city and the city's wall that became
the Trinity graveyard of to-day. The waving grass extended to a bold
bluff overlooking Hudson River, which was about where Greenwich Street
now is. Through the bluff a street was cut, its passage being still
plainly to be seen in the high wall on the Trinity Place side of the
graveyard.
[Sidenote: Oldest Grave In Trinity Churchyard]
The oldest grave of which there is a record is in the northern section
of the churchyard, on the left of the first path. It is that of a child,
and is marked with a sandstone slab, with a skull, cross-bones and
winged hour-glass cut in relief on the back, the inscription on the
front reading:
W. C.
HEAR . LYES . THE . BODY
OF . RICHARD . CHVRCH
ER . SON . OF . WILLIA
M . CHVRCHER . WHO .
DIED . THE . 5 OF . APRIL
1681 . OF . AGE 5 YEARS
AND . 5 . MONTHS
The records tell nothing of the Churcher family.
Within a few feet of this stone is another that countless eyes have
looked at through the iron fence from Broadway, which says:
HA, SYDNEY, SYDNEY!
LYEST THOU HERE?
I HERE LYE,
'TIL TIME IS FLOWN
TO ITS EXTREMITY.
It is the grave of a merchant--once an officer of the British
army--Sydney Breese, who wrote his epitaph and directed that it be
placed on his tombstone. He died in 1767.
[Illustration]
[Sidenote: Grave of Charlotte Temple]
On the opposite side of the path, nearer to Broadway, is a marble slab
lying flat on the ground and each year sinking deeper into the earth.
It was placed there by one of the sextons of Trinity more than a century
ago, in memory of Charlotte Temple.
Close by the porch of the north entrance to the church is the stone that
marks the grave of William Bradford, who set up the first printing-press
in the colony and was printer to the Colonial Government for fifty
years. He was ninety-two years old when he died in 1752. The original
stone was crumbling to decay when, in 1863, the Vestry of Trinity Church
replaced it by the present stone, renewing the original inscription (see
page 14).
[Sidenote: Martyr's Monument]
The tall freestone Gothic shaft, the only monumental pile in the
northern section of the churchyard, serves to commemorate the unknown
dead of the Revolution. Trinity Church with all its records, together
with a large section of the western part of the city, was burned in
1776 when the British army occupied the city. During the next seven
years the only burials in the graveyard were the American prisoners from
the Provost Jail in The Commons and the other crowded prisons of the
city, who were interred at night and without ceremony. No record was
kept of who the dead were.
[Sidenote: A Churchyard Cryptograph]
Close to the Martyrs' Monument is a stone so near the fence that its
inscription can be read from Broadway:
HERE LIES
DEPOSITED THE BODY OF
JAMES LEESON,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE ON
THE 28TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1794,
AGED 38 YEARS.
And above the inscription are cut these curious characters:
[Illustration]
It is a cryptograph, but a simple one, familiar to school children. In
its solution three diagrams are drawn and lettered thus:
[Illustration]
The lines which enclose the letters are separated from the design, and
each section used instead of the letters. For example, the letters A, B,
C, become:
[Illustration]
The second series begins with K, because the I sign is also used for J.
The letters of the three series are distinguished by dots; one dot being
placed with the lines of the first series; two dots with the second, but
none with the third. If this be tried, any one can readily decipher the
meaning of the cryptograph, and read "REMEMBER DEATH."
Close to the north door of the church are interred the remains of Lady
Cornbury, who could call England's Queen Anne cousin. She was the wife
of Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who was Governor of New York in 1702. He
was a grandson of the Earl of Clarendon, Prime Minister of Charles II;
and son of that Earl of Clarendon who was brother-in-law of James II. So
Lady Cornbury was first cousin of Queen Anne. She was Baroness of
Clifton in her own right, and a gracious lady. She died in 1706.
[Illustration: Tomb of Alexander Hamilton]
[Sidenote: Alexander Hamilton's Tomb]
The tomb of Alexander Hamilton, patriot, soldier and statesman, stands
conspicuously in the southern half of the churchyard, about forty feet
from Broadway and ten feet from the iron railing on Rector Street.
In the same part of the churchyard are interred the remains of Philip,
eldest son of Alexander Hamilton. The son in 1801 fell in a duel with
George L. Eacker, a young lawyer, when the two disagreed over a
political matter. Three years later Eacker died and was buried in St.
Paul's churchyard, and the same year Alexander Hamilton fell before the
duelling pistol of Aaron Burr.
[Sidenote: Last Friend Of Aaron Burr]
Close by Hamilton's tomb, a slab almost buried in the earth bears the
inscription "Matthew L. Davis' Sepulchre." Strange that this "last
friend that Aaron Burr possessed on earth" should rest in death so close
to his friend's great enemy. He went to the Jersey shore in a row-boat
with Burr on the day the duel was fought with Hamilton, and stood not
far away with Dr. Hosack to await the outcome. He was imprisoned for
refusing to testify before the Coroner. Afterwards he wrote a life of
Burr. He was a merchant, with a store at 49 Stone Street, and was highly
respected.
[Sidenote: Tomb of Capt. James Lawrence]
Within a few steps of Broadway, at the southern entrance to the church,
is the tomb of Captain James Lawrence, U. S. N., who was killed on board
the frigate Chesapeake during the engagement with H. B. M. frigate
"Shannon." His dying words, "Don't give up the ship!" are now known to
every school-boy. The handsome mausoleum close by the church door, and
the surrounding eight cannon, first attract the eye. These cannon,
selected from arms captured from the English in the War of 1812, are
buried deep, according to the directions of the Vestry of Trinity, in
order that the national insignia, and the inscription telling of the
place and time of capture, might be hidden and no evidence of triumph
paraded in that place--where all are equal, where peace reigns and
enmity is unknown. The monument was erected August 22, 1844. Before that
the remains of Captain Lawrence had been interred in the southwest
corner of the churchyard, beneath a shaft of white marble. This first
resting-place was selected in September, 1813, when the body was brought
to the city and interred, after being carried in funeral procession from
the Battery.
"D. Contant" is the inscription on the first vault at the south
entrance, one of the first victims of the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes to be buried in the city. There are many Huguenot memorials in
the churchyard, the oddest being a tombstone with a Latin inscription
telling that Withamus de Marisco, who died in 1765, was "most noble on
the side of his father's mother."
[Sidenote: Cresap, the Indian Fighter]
At the rear of the church, to the north, is a small headstone:
IN MEMORY OF
MICHAEL CRESAP
FIRST CAPTAIN OF THE
RIFLE BATTALIONS
AND SON OF COLONEL THOMAS CRESAP
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
OCT. 18, A. D. 1775.
His father had been a friend and neighbor of Washington in Virginia, and
he himself was a brilliant Indian fighter on the frontier of his native
State. It was the men under his command who, unordered, exterminated the
family of Logan, the Indian chief, "the friend of the white man." Many a
boy, who in school declaimed, unthinkingly, "Who is there to mourn for
Logan? Not one!" grown to manhood, cannot but look with interest on the
grave of Logan's foe. Tradition has been kind to Cresap's memory,
insisting that his heart broke over the accusation of responsibility
for the death of Logan's family.
There is another slab, close by the grave of Captain Cresap, which
tells:
"HERE LIETH YE BODY OF SUSANNAH
NEAN, WIFE OF ELIAS NEAN, BORN
IN YE CITY OF ROCHELLE, IN FRANCE,
IN YE YEAR 1660, WHO DEPARTED
THIS LIFE 25 DAY OF DECEMBER,
1720, AGE 60 YEARS." "HERE LIETH
ENTERRED YE BODY OF ELIAS NEAN,
CATECHIST IN NEW YORK, BORN IN
SOUBISE, IN YE PROVINCE OF CAENTONGE
IN FRANCE IN YE YEAR 1662,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 8 DAY OF
SEPTEMBER 1722 AGED 60 YEARS."
"THIS INSCRIPTION WAS RESTORED BY
ORDER OF THEIR DESCENDANT OF THE
6TH GENERATION, ELIZABETH CHAMPLIN
PERRY, WIDOW OF THE LATE
COM'R O. H. PERRY, OF THE U. S.
NAVY, MAY, ANNO DOMINI, 1846."
But the stone does not tell that the Huguenot refugee was for many
years a vestryman of Trinity Church, and that among his descendants are
the Belmonts and a dozen distinguished families. Before coming to
America, Elias Nean was condemned to the galleys in France because he
refused to renounce the reformed religion.
[Sidenote: Where Gov De Lancy Was buried]
Beneath the middle aisle in the church lie the bones of the eldest son
of Stephen (Etienne) De Lancey--James De Lancey. He was Chief Justice of
the Colony of New York in 1733, and Lieutenant-Governor in 1753. He died
suddenly in 1760 at his country house which was at the present northwest
corner of Delancey and Chrystie Streets. A lane led from the house to
the Bowery.
[Sidenote: Home of The De Lanceys]
Thames Street is as narrow now as it was one hundred and fifty years
ago, when it was a carriageway that led to the stables of Etienne De
Lancey. The Huguenot nobleman left his Broad Street house for the new
home he had built at Broadway and Cedar Street in 1730. In 1741,
at his death, it became the property of his son, James, the
Lieutenant-Governor. It was the most imposing house in the town,
elegantly decorated, encircled by broad balconies, with an uninterrupted
garden extending to the river at the back.
After the death of Lieutenant-Governor De Lancey in 1760, the house
became a hotel, and was known under many names. It was a favorite place
for British officers during the Revolution, and in 1789 was the scene of
the first "inauguration ball" in honor of President Washington.
The house was torn down in 1793. In 1806 the City Hotel was erected on
its site and became the most fashionable in town. It was removed in 1850
and a line of shops set up. In 1889 the present buildings were erected.
A tablet on the building at 113 Broadway, corner of Cedar Street, marks
the site, reading:
THE SITE OF
LIEUT. GOVE. DE LANCEY'S HOUSE,
LATER THE CITY HOTEL.
IT WAS HERE THAT THE NON-IMPORTATION
AGREEMENT, IN OPPOSITION TO THE STAMP
ACT, WAS SIGNED, OCT. 15TH, 1766. THE
TAVERN HAD MANY PROPRIETORS BY WHOSE
NAMES IT WAS SUCCESSIVELY CALLED. IT
WAS ALSO KNOWN AS THE PROVINCE ARMS, THE
CITY ARMS AND BURNS COFFEE HOUSE OR TAVERN.
Opposite Liberty (then Crown) Street, in the centre of Broadway, there
stood in 1789 a detached building 42 x 25 feet. It was the "up-town
market," patronized by the wealthy, who did their own marketing in those
days, their black slaves carrying the purchases home.
[Sidenote: Washington Market]
Washington Market, at the foot of Fulton Street, was built in 1833. The
water washed the western side of it then, and ships sailed to it to
deliver their freight. Since then the water has been crowded back year
by year with the growing demand for land. In its early days it was
variously called Country Market, Fish Market and Exterior Market.
[Sidenote: St. Paul's Chapel]
At the outskirts of the city, in a field that the same year had been
sown with wheat, the cornerstone of St. Paul's Chapel was laid on May
14, 1764. The church was opened two years later, and the steeple added
in 1794. It fronted the river which came up then as far as to where
Greenwich Street is now, and a grassy lawn sloped down to a beach of
pebbles. During the days of English occupancy, Major Andre, Lord Howe
and Sir Guy Carleton worshipped there. Another who attended services
there was the English midshipman who afterwards became William IV.
[Illustration: Washington Pew St. Paul's Chapel]
[Sidenote: The Washington Pew in St. Paul's]
President Washington, on the day of his inauguration, marched at the
head of the representative men of the new nation to attend service in
St. Paul's, and thereafter attended regularly. The pew he occupied has
been preserved and is still to be seen next the north wall, midway
between the chancel and the vestry room. Directly opposite is the pew
occupied at the same period by Governor George Clinton.
Back of the chancel is the monument to Major-General Richard Montgomery,
who fell before Quebec in 1775, crying, "Men of New York, you will not
fail to follow where your general leads!" Congress decided on the
monument, and Benjamin Franklin bought it in France for 300 guineas. A
privateer bringing it to this country was captured by a British gunboat,
which in turn was taken, and the monument, arriving safe here, was set
in place. The body was removed from its first resting-place in Quebec,
and interred close beside the monument in 1818.
In the burying-ground, which has been beside the church since it was
built, are the monuments of men whose names are associated with the
city's history: Dr. William James Macneven, who raised chemistry to a
science; Thomas Addis Emmet, an eminent jurist and brother of Robert
Emmet; Christopher Collis, who established the first water works in the
city, and who first conceived the idea of constructing the Erie Canal;
and a host of others.
[Illustration]
[Sidenote: The Actor Cooke's Grave]
The tomb of George Frederick Cooke, the tragedian, is conspicuous in the
centre of the yard, facing the main door of the church. Cooke was born
in England in 1756, and died in New York in 1812. Early in life he was a
printer's apprentice. By 1800 he had taken high rank among tragic
actors.
The grave of George L. Eacker, who killed the eldest son of Alexander
Hamilton in a duel, is near the Vesey Street railing.
[Sidenote: Astor House]
The Astor House, occupying the Broadway block between Vesey and Barclay
Streets, was opened in 1836 by Boyden, a hotel keeper of Boston. This
site had been part of the Church Farm, and as early as 1729, when there
were only a few scattered farm houses on the island above what is now
Liberty Street, there was a farm house on the Astor House site; and from
there extended, on the Broadway line, a rope-walk. Prior to the erection
of the hotel in 1830, the site for the most part had been occupied by
the homes of John Jacob Astor, John G. Coster and David Lydig. On a
part of the site, at 221 Broadway, in 1817, M. Paff, popularly known as
"Old Paff," kept a bric-a-brac store. He dealt especially in paintings,
having the reputation of buying worthless and old ones and "restoring"
them into masterpieces. His was the noted curiosity-shop of the period.
[Illustration]
[Sidenote: A House of Other Days]
Where Vesey and Greenwich Streets and West Broadway come together is a
low, rough-hewn rock house. It has been used as a shoe store since the
early part of the century. On its roof is a monster boot bearing the
date of 1832, which took part in the Croton water parade and a dozen
other celebrations. In pre-revolutionary days, when the ground where the
building stands was all Hudson River, and the water extended as far as
the present Greenwich Street, according to tradition, this was a
lighthouse. There have been many changes in the outward appearance, but
the foundation of solid rock is the same as when the waters swept around
it.
[Sidenote: The Road To Greenwich]
Greenwich Street follows the line of a road which led from the city to
Greenwich Village. This road was on the waterside. It was called
Greenwich Road. South of Canal Street, west of Broadway, was a marshy
tract known as Lispenard's Meadows. Over this swamp Greenwich Road
crossed on a raised causeway. When the weather was bad for any length of
time, the road became heavy and in places was covered by the strong
tide from the river. At such times travel took an inland route, along
the Post Road (now the Bowery) and by Obelisk Lane (now Astor Place and
Greenwich Avenue).
[Sidenote: St. Peter's Church]
St. Peter's Church, at the southeast corner of Barclay and Church
Streets, the home of the oldest Roman Catholic congregation in the city,
was built in 1786, and rebuilt in 1838. The congregation was formed in
1783, although mass was celebrated in private houses before that for the
few scattered Catholic families.
[Sidenote: Columbia College]
The two blocks included between Barclay and Murray Streets, West
Broadway and Church Street, were occupied until 1857 by the buildings
and grounds of Columbia College. That part of the Queen's Farm lying
west of Broadway between the present Barclay and Murray Streets--a
strip of land then in the outskirts of the city--in 1754 was given to
the governors of King's College. During the Revolution the college
suspended exercises, resuming in 1784 as Columbia College under an act
passed by the Legislature of the State. In 1814, in consideration of
lands before granted to the college which had been ceded to New
Hampshire in settlement of the boundary, the college was granted by the
State a tract of farming land known as the Hosack Botanical Garden. This
is the twenty acres lying between Forty-seventh and Forty-ninth Streets,
Fifth and Sixth Avenues. At that time the city extended but little above
the City Hall Park, and this land was unprofitable and for many years of
considerable expense to the college. By 1839 the city had crept past the
college and the locality being built up the college grounds were cramped
between the limits of two blocks. In 1854, Park Place was opened
through the grounds of the college from Church Street to West Broadway
(then called College Place). Until about 1816 the section of Park Place
west of the college grounds was called Robinson Street. In 1857 the
college was moved to Madison Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth
Streets, and in 1890 it was re-organized on a university basis.
[Sidenote: Chapel Place]
West Broadway was originally a lane which wound from far away Canal
Street to the Chapel of Columbia College, and was called Chapel Place.
Later it became College Place. In 1892 the street was widened south of
Chambers Street, in order to relieve the great traffic from the north,
and extended through the block from Barclay to Greenwich Street.
Evidence of the former existence of the old street can be seen in the
pillars of the elevated road on the west side of West Broadway at Murray
Street, for these pillars, once on the sidewalk, are now several feet
from it in the street.
[Sidenote: Bowling Green Garden And First Vauxhall]
In the vicinity of what is now Greenwich and Warren Streets, the Bowling
Green Garden was established in the early part of the eighteenth
century. It was a primitive forest, for there were no streets above
Crown (now Liberty) Street on the west side, and none above Frankfort on
the east. The land on which the Garden stood was a leasehold on the
Church Farm. The place was given the name of the Vauxhall Garden before
the middle of the same century, and for forty years thereafter was a
fashionable resort and sought to be a copy of the Vauxhall in London.
There was dancing and music, and groves dimly lighted where visitors
could stroll, and where they might sit at tables and eat. By the time
the city stretched past the locality, all that was left of the resort
was what would now be called a low saloon, and its pretty garden had
been sold for building lots. The second Vauxhall was off the Bowery,
south of Astor Place.
[Sidenote: A. T. Stewart's Store]
The Stewart Building, on the east side of Broadway, between Chambers and
Reade Streets, has undergone few external changes since it was the dry
goods store of Alexander T. Stewart. On this site stood Washington Hall,
which was erected in 1809. It was a hotel of the first class, and
contained the fashionable ball room and banqueting-hall of the city. The
building was destroyed by fire July 5, 1844. The next year Stewart,
having purchased the site from the heirs of John G. Coster, began the
construction of his store. Stewart came from Ireland in 1823, at the age
of twenty. For a time after his arrival he was an assistant teacher in a
public school. He opened a small dry goods store, and was successful.
The Broadway store was opened in 1846. Four years later Stewart
extended his building so that it reached Reade Street. All along
Broadway by this year business houses were taking the place of
residences. The Stewart residence at the northwest corner of
Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, was, at the time it was built,
considered the finest house in America. Mr. Stewart died in 1876,
leaving a fortune of fifty millions. His body was afterwards stolen from
St. Mark's Churchyard at Tenth Street and Second Avenue.
At Broadway and Duane Street, roasted chestnuts were first sold in the
street. A Frenchman stationed himself at this corner in 1828, and sold
chestnuts there for so many years that he came to be reckoned as a
living landmark.
At the same corner was the popular Cafe des Mille Colonnes, the
proprietor of which, F. Palmo, afterwards built and conducted Palmo's
Opera House in Chambers Street.
[Sidenote: First Sewing Machine]
In a store window on Broadway, close to Duane Street, the first
sewing-machine was exhibited. A young woman sat in the window to exhibit
the working of the invention to passers-by. It was regarded as an
impracticable toy, and was looked at daily by many persons who
considered it a curiosity unworthy of serious attention.
[Sidenote: Masonic Hall]
At Nos. 314 and 316 Broadway, on the east side of the street just south
of Pearl Street, stood Masonic Hall, the cornerstone of which was laid
June 24, 1826. It looked imposing among the structures of the street,
over which it towered, and was of the Gothic style of architecture.
While it was in course of erection, William Morgan published his book
which claimed to reveal the secrets of masonry. His mysterious
disappearance followed, and shortly after, the rise of the anti-Masonic
party and popular excitement put masonry under such a ban that the house
was sold by the Order, and the name of the building was changed to
Gothic Hall. On the second floor was a room looked upon as the most
elegant in the United States: an imitation of the Chapel of Henry VIII,
it was of Gothic architecture, furnished in richness of detail and
appropriateness of design, and was one hundred feet long, fifty wide and
twenty-five high. In it were held public gatherings of social and
political nature.
[Sidenote: New York Hospital]
The two blocks now enclosed by Duane, Worth, Broadway and Church
Streets, were occupied by the buildings and grounds of the New York
Hospital. Thomas Street was afterwards cut through the grounds. As the
City Hospital, the institution had been projected before the War of the
Revolution. The building was completed about 1775. During the war it
was used as a barrack. In 1791 it was opened for the admission of
patients. On the lawn, which extended to Broadway, various societies
gathered on occasions of annual parades and celebrations. The hospital
buildings were in the centre of the big enclosure. At the northern end
of the lawn, the present corner of Broadway and Worth Street, was the
New Jerusalem Church.
[Sidenote: Riley's Fifth Ward Hotel]
On the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street was Riley's Fifth
Ward Hotel, which was a celebrated place in its day. It was the
prototype of the modern elaborately fitted saloon, but was then a place
of instruction and a moral resort. In a large room, reached by wide
stairs from the street, were objects of interest and art in glass
cases--pictures of statesmen, uniforms of the soldiers of all nations,
Indian war implements, famous belongings of celebrated men, as well as
such simple curiosities as a two-headed calf. On Franklin Street,
before Riley's door, was a marble statue minus a head, one arm and
sundry other parts. It was all that remained of the statue of the Earl
of Chatham, William Pitt, which had stood in Wall Street until dragged
down by British soldiers. For twenty-five years the battered wreck had
lain in the corporation yard, until found and honored with a place
before his door by Riley. At the latter's death the Historical Society
took the remains of the statue, and it is in its rooms yet.
The passage of Washington through the island is commemorated by a tablet
on a warehouse at 255 West Street, near Laight, which is inscribed:
TO MARK THE LANDING PLACE OF
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON,
JUNE 25, 1775,
ON HIS WAY TO CAMBRIDGE
TO COMMAND
THE AMERICAN ARMY.
[Sidenote: St. John's Church]
St. John's Church of Trinity Parish, in Varick Street close to Beach,
was built in 1807. When the church was finished St. John's Park,
occupying the entire block opposite--between Varick and Hudson, Laight
and Beach Streets--was established for the exclusive use of residents
whose houses faced it. Before it was established, the place had been a
sandy beach that stretched to the river. The locality became the most
fashionable of the city in 1825. By 1850 there had begun a gradual
decline, for persons of wealth were moving up-town, and it degenerated
to a tenement-house level after 1869, when the park disappeared beneath
the foundations of the big freight depot which now occupies the site.
Around the corner from the church, a block away in Beach Street, is a
tiny park, one of the last remnants of the Annetje Jans Farm. The bit of
farm is carefully guarded now, much more so than was the entire
beautiful tract. It forms a triangle and is fenced in by an iron
railing, with one gate, that is fast barred and never opened. There is
one struggling tree, wrapped close in winter with burlap, but it seems
to feel its loneliness and does not thrive.
[Sidenote: The Red Fort]
From the centre of St. John's Park on the west, Hubert Street extends to
the river. This street, now given over to manufacturers, was, in 1824,
the chief promenade of the city next to the Battery Walk. It led
directly to the Red Fort at the river. The fort was some distance from
the shore. It was built early in the century, was round and of brick,
and a bridge led to it. It was never of any practical use, but, like
Castle Garden, was used as a pleasure resort.
[Sidenote: Lispenard's Meadows]
[Sidenote: Cows on Broadway]
Early in the eighteenth century, Anthony Rutgers held under lease from
Trinity a section of the Church Farm which took in the Dominie's
Bouwerie, a property lying between where Broadway is and the Hudson
River. The southern and northern lines were approximately the present
Reade and Canal Streets. It was a wild spot, remaining in a primitive
condition--part marsh, part swamp--covered with dwarf trees and tangled
underbrush. Cattle wandered into this region and were lost. It was a
dangerous place, too, for men who wandered into it. To live near it was
unhealthy, because of the foul gases which abounded. It seemed to be a
worthless tract. About the year 1730, Anthony Rutgers suggested to the
King in Council that he would have this land drained and made wholesome
and useful provided it was given to him. His argument was so strong and
sensible that the land--seventy acres, now in the business section of
the city--was given him and he improved it. At the northern edge of the
improved waste lived Leonard Lispenard, in a farm house which was then
in a northern suburb of the city, bounded by what is Hudson, Canal and
Vestry Streets. Lispenard married the daughter of Rutgers, and the land
falling to him it became Lispenard's Meadows. In Lispenard's time
Broadway ended where White Street is now and a set of bars closed the
thoroughfare against cows that wandered along it. The one bit of the
meadows that remains is the tiny park at the foot of Canal Street on the
west side. Anthony Rutgers' homestead was close by what is Broadway and
Thomas Street. After his death in 1750 it became a public house, and,
with the surrounding grounds, was called Ranelagh Garden, a popular
place in its time.
[Sidenote: Canal Street]
On a line with the present Canal Street, a stream ran from the Fresh
Water Pond to the Hudson River, at the upper edge of Lispenard's
Meadows. A project, widely and favorably considered in 1825, but which
came to nothing, advocated the extension of Canal Street, as a canal,
from river to river. The street took its name naturally from the little
stream which was called a canal. When the street was filled in and
improved, the stream was continued through a sewer leading from Centre
Street. The locality at the foot of the street has received the local
title of "Suicide Slip" because of the number of persons in recent years
who have ended their lives by jumping into Hudson River at that point.
In Broadway, between Grand and Howard Streets, in 1819, West's circus
was opened. In 1827 this was converted into a theatre called the
Broadway. Later it was occupied by Tattersall's horse market.
[Sidenote: Original Olympic Theatre]
Next door to Tattersall's, at No. 444 Broadway, the original Olympic
Theatre was built in 1837. W. R. Blake and Henry E. Willard built and
managed the house. It was quite small and their aim had been to present
plays of a high order of merit by an exceptionally good company. The
latter included besides Blake, Mrs. Maeder and George Barrett. After a
few months of struggle against unprofitable business, prices were
lowered. Little success was met with, the performances being of too
artistic a nature to be popular, and Blake gave up the effort and the
house. In December, 1839, Wm. Mitchell leased the house and gave
performances at low prices.
At No. 453 Broadway, between Grand and Howard Streets, in 1844 John
Littlefield, a corn doctor, set up a place, designating himself as a
chiropodist--an occupation before unknown under that title.
At No. 485 Broadway, near Broome Street, Brougham's Lyceum was built in
1850, and opened in December with an "occasional rigmarole" and a farce.
In 1852 the house was opened, September 8, as Wallack's Lyceum, having
been acquired by James W. Wallack. Wallack ended his career as an actor
in this house. In 1861 he removed to his new theatre, corner Thirteenth
Street and Broadway. Still later the Lyceum was called the Broadway
Theatre.
[Illustration]
"Murderers' Row" has its start where Watts Street ends at Sullivan,
midway of the block between Grand and Broome Streets. It could not be
identified by its name, for it is not a "row" at all, merely an
ill-smelling alley, an arcade extending through a block of battered
tenements. After running half its course through the block, the alley
is broken by an intersecting space between houses--a space that is taken
up by push carts, barrels, tumbledown wooden balconies and lines of
drying clothes. "Murderers' Row" is celebrated in police annals as a
crime centre. But the evil doers were driven out long years ago and the
houses given over to Italians. These people are excessively poor, and
have such a hard struggle for life as to have no desire to regard the
laws of the Health Board. Constant complaints are made that the houses
are hovels and the alley a breeding-place for disease.
[Sidenote: Greenwich Village]
Greenwich Village sprang from the oldest known settlement on the Island
of Manhattan. It was an Indian village, clustering about the site of the
present West Washington Market, at the foot of Gansevoort Street, when
Hendrick Hudson reached the island, in 1609.
The region was a fertile one, and its natural drainage afforded it
sanitary advantages which even to this day make it a desirable place of
residence. There was abundance of wild fowl and the waters were alive
with half a hundred varieties of fish. There were sand hills, sometimes
rising to a height of a hundred feet, while to the south was a marsh
tenanted by wild fowl and crossed by a brook flowing from the north. It
was this Manetta brook which was to mark the boundary of Greenwich
Village when Governor Kieft set aside the land as a bouwerie for the
Dutch West India Company. The brook arose about where Twenty-first
Street now crosses Fifth Avenue, flowed to the southwest edge of Union
Square, thence to Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, across where
Washington Square is, along the line of Minetta Street, and then to
Hudson River, between Houston and Charlton Streets.
[Sidenote: Sir Peter Warren]
The interests of the little settlement were greatly advanced in 1744,
when Sir Peter Warren, later the hero of Louisburg, married Susannah De
Lancey and went to live there, purchasing three hundred acres of land.
Epidemics in the city from time to time drove many persons to Greenwich
as a place of refuge. But it remained for the fatal yellow-fever
epidemic of 1822, when 384 persons died in the city, to make Greenwich a
thriving suburb instead of a struggling village. Twenty thousand persons
fled the city, the greater number settling in Greenwich. Banks, public
offices, stores of every sort were hurriedly opened, and whole blocks of
buildings sprang up in a few days. Streets were left where lanes had
been, and corn-fields were transformed into business and dwelling
blocks.
[Sidenote: Evolution of Greenwich Streets]
The sudden influx of people and consequent trade into the village
brought about the immediate need for street improvements. Existing
streets were lengthened, footpaths and alleys were widened, but all was
done without any regard to regularity. The result was the jumble of
streets still to be met with in that region, where the thoroughfares are
often short and often end in a cul-de-sac.
In time the streets of the City Plan crept up to those of Greenwich
Village, and the village was swallowed up by the city. But it was not
swallowed up so completely but that the irregular lines of the village
streets are plainly to be seen on any city map.
Near where Spring Street crosses Hudson there was established, about
1765, Brannan's Garden, on the northern edge of Lispenard's Meadows. It
was like the modern road-house. Greenwich Road was close to it, and
pleasure-seekers, who thronged the road on the way from the city to
Greenwich Village, were the chief guests of the house.
[Sidenote: Duane Street Church]
Crowded close between dwellings on the east side of Hudson Street, fifty
feet south of Spring, is the Duane M. E. Church, a quaint-looking
structure, half church, half business building. This is the successor of
the North Church, the North River Church and the Duane Street Church,
founded in 1797, which, before it moved to Hudson Street, in 1863, was
in Barley (now Duane) Street, between Hudson and Greenwich Streets.
In Spring Street, near Varick, is the Spring Street Presbyterian Church,
which was built in 1825. Before its erection the "old" Spring Street
Presbyterian Church stood on the site, having been built in 1811.
[Sidenote: Richmond Hill]
Although the leveling vandalism of a great city has removed every trace
of Richmond Hill, the block encircled by Macdougal, Charlton, Varick
and Vandam Streets, is crowded thick with memories of men and events of
a past generation.
Long before there was a thought of the city getting beyond the wall that
hemmed in a few scattering houses, and when the Indian settlement, which
afterwards became Greenwich Village, kept close to the water's edge, a
line of low sand hills called the Zandtberg, stretched their curved way
from where now Eighth Street crosses Broadway, ending where Varick
Street meets Vandam. At the base of the hill to the north was Manetta
Creek.
The final elevation became known as Richmond Hill, and that, with a
considerable tract of land, was purchased by Abraham Mortier,
commissioner of the forces of George III. of England. In 1760 he built
his home on the hill and called it also Richmond Hill.
[Sidenote: Burr's Pond]
The house was occupied by General Washington as his headquarters in
1776, and by Vice-President Adams in 1788. Aaron Burr obtained it in
1797, entertained lavishly there, improved the grounds, constructed an
artificial lake long known as Burr's Pond, and set up a beautiful
entrance gateway at what is now Macdougal and Spring Streets, which he
passed through in 1804 when he went to fight his duel with Alexander
Hamilton.
Burr gave up the house in 1807, and, the hill being cut away in the
opening of streets in 1817, the house was lowered and rested on the
north side of Charlton Street just east of Varick. It became a theatre
later and remained such until it was torn down in 1849. A quiet row of
brick houses occupies the site now.
[Sidenote: St. John's Burying Ground]
What is now a pleasant little park enclosed by Hudson, Leroy and
Clarkson Streets, was part of a plot set aside for a graveyard when St.
John's Chapel was built. It was called St. John's Burying-Ground. Its
early limits extended to Carmine Street on one side and to Morton Street
on the other. Under the law burials ceased there about 1850. There were
10,000 burials in the grounds, which, unlike the other Trinity
graveyards, came to be neglected. The tombstones crumbled to decay, the
weeds grew rank about them and the trees remained untrimmed and
neglected.
About 1890 property owners in the vicinity began steps to have the
burying-ground made into a park. Conservative Trinity resisted the
project until the city won a victory in the courts and the property was
bought. Relatives of the dead were notified and some of the bodies were
removed. In September, 1897, the actual work of transforming the
graveyard into a park was begun. Laborers with crowbars knocked over
the tombstones that still remained and putting the fragments in a pit at
the eastern end of the grounds covered them with earth to make a
play-spot for children.
[Sidenote: Bedford Street Church]
At Morton and Bedford Streets is the Bedford Street M. E. Church. The
original structure was built in 1810 in a green pasture. Beside it was a
quiet graveyard, reduced somewhat in 1830 when the church was enlarged,
and wiped out when the land became valuable and the present structure
was set up in 1840. The church was built for the first congregation of
Methodists in Greenwich Village, formed in 1808 at the house of Samuel
Walgrove at the north side of Morton Street close to Bleecker.
[Sidenote: Where Thomas Paine Lived And Died]
Thomas Paine--famous for his connection with the American and French
revolutions, but chiefly for his works, "The Age of Reason," favoring
Deism against Atheism and Christianity; and "Common Sense," maintaining
the cause of the American colonies--died in Greenwich Village June 8,
1809, having retired there in 1802.
The final years of his life were passed in a small house in Herring (now
Bleecker) Street. On the site is a double tenement numbered No. 293
Bleecker Street, southeast corner Barrow. This last named street was not
opened until shortly after Paine's death. It was first called Reason
Street, a compliment to the author of "The Age of Reason." This was
corrupted to Raisin Street. In 1828 it was given its present name.
Shortly before his death Paine moved to a frame building set in the
centre of a nearby field. Grove Street now passes over the site which is
between Bleecker and West Fourth Streets, the back of the building
having been where No. 59 Grove Street is now.
About the time that Barrow Street was opened Grove Street was cut
through. It was called Cozine Street, then Columbia, then Burrows, and
finally, in 1829, was changed to Grove. When the street was widened in
1836, the house in which Paine had died, until then left standing, was
demolished.
[Sidenote: Admiral Warren and His Family]
The homestead of Admiral Sir Peter Warren occupied the ground now taken
up in the solidly built block bounded by Charles, Fourth, Bleecker and
Perry Streets. The house was built in 1744, in the midst of green
fields, and for more than a century it was the most important dwelling
in Greenwich. Admiral Warren of the British Navy was, next to the
Governor, the most important person in the Province. His house was the
favorite resort of social and influential New York. The Admiral's
influence and popularity had a marked effect on the village, which, by
his coming, was given an impetus that made it a thriving place.
Of the three daughters of Admiral Warren, Charlotte, the eldest, married
Willoughby, Earl of Abingdon; the second, Ann, married Charles Fitzroy,
afterwards Baron Southampton, and Susannah, the youngest, married
William Skinner, a Colonel of Foot. These marriages had their effect
also on Greenwich Village, serving to continue the prosperity of the
place. Roads which led through the district, of which the Warren family
controlled a great part, were named in honor of the different family
branches. The only name now surviving is that of Abingdon Square.
In the later years of his life, Sir Peter Warren represented the City of
Westminster in Parliament. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
[Sidenote: State Prison]
In 1796 the State Prison was built on about four acres of ground,
surrounded by high walls, and taking in the territory now enclosed by
Washington, West, Christopher and Perry Streets. The site is now, for
the most part, occupied by a brewery, but traces of the prison walls are
yet to be seen in those of the brewery. There was a wharf at the foot of
Christopher Street. In 1826 the prison was purchased by the Corporation
of the State. The construction of a new State Prison had begun at Sing
Sing in 1825. In 1828 the male prisoners were transferred to Sing Sing,
and the female prisoners the next year.
[Sidenote: Convict Labor]
The yard of the early prison extended down to the river, there were
fields about and a wide stretch of beach. It was here that the first
system of prison manufactures was organized. A convict named Noah
Gardner, who was a shoemaker, induced the prison officials to permit him
the use of his tools. In a short time he had trained most of the
convicts into a skilled body of shoemakers.
The gathering together of a number of convicts in a workroom was at
first productive of some disorder, owing to the difficulty of keeping
them under proper discipline under the new conditions. In 1799 came the
first riot. The keepers fired upon and killed several convicts. There
was another revolt in 1803.
Gardner had been found guilty of forgery, but was reprieved on the
gallows through the influence of the Society of Friends, of which he was
a member, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Because of his services in
organizing the prison work, he was liberated after serving seven years.
Becoming then a shoe manufacturer, he was successful for several years,
when he absconded, taking with him a pretty Quakeress, and was never
heard of again.
[Illustration: Old Houses Wiehawken St.]
[Sidenote: Quaint Houses in Wiehawken Street]
Although the prison has been swept away, an idea of its locality can be
had from the low buildings at the west side of nearby Wiehawken Street.
These buildings have stood for more than a hundred years, having been
erected before the prison.
That part of Greenwich Village that was transformed from fields into a
town in a few days, during the yellow fever scare of 1822, centered at
the point where West Eleventh Street crosses West Fourth Street. At this
juncture was a cornfield on which, in two days, a hotel capable of
accommodating three hundred guests was built. At the same time a
hundred other houses sprang up, as if by magic, on all sides.
[Sidenote: Bank Street]
Bank Street was named in 1799. The year previous a clerk in the Bank of
New York on Wall Street was one of the earliest victims of yellow fever,
and the officials decided to take precautions in case of the bank being
quarantined at a future time. Eight lots were purchased on a then
nameless lane in Greenwich Village. The bank was erected there, and gave
the lane the name of Bank Street.
[Sidenote: Washington Square]
Washington Square was once a Potter's Field. A meadow was purchased by
the city for this purpose in 1789, and the pauper graveyard was
established about where the Washington Arch is now.
[Illustration: Looking South from Minetta Lane]
Manetta Creek, coming from the north, flowed to the west of the arch
site, crossed to what is now the western portion of the Square, ran
through the present Minetta Street and on to the river. In 1795, during
a yellow fever epidemic, the field was used as a common graveyard. In
1797 the pauper graveyard which had been in the present Madison Square,
was abandoned in favor of this one. There was a gallows on the ground
and criminals were executed and interred on the spot as late as 1822.
In 1823 the Potter's Field was abandoned and removed to the present
Bryant Park at Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue. In 1827, three and
one half acres of ground were added to the plot and the present
Washington Square was opened.
[Sidenote: Obelisk Lane]
Past the pauper graveyard ran an inland road to Greenwich Village. This
extended from the Post Road (now the Bowery) at the present Astor Place
near Cooper Union, continued in a direct line to about the position of
the Washington Arch, and from that point to the present Eighth Avenue
just above Fifteenth Street. This road, established through the fields
in 1768, was called Greenwich Lane. It was also known as Monument Lane
and Obelisk Lane. A small section of it still exists in Astor Place from
Bowery to Broadway. A larger section is Greenwich Avenue from Eighth to
Fourteenth Streets. Monument Lane took its name from a monument at
Fifteenth Street where the road ended, which had been erected to the
memory of General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. The monument disappeared
in a mysterious way during the British occupation. It is thought to have
been destroyed by soldiers.
[Sidenote: Graveyard In a Side Street]
A few feet east of Sixth Avenue, on the south side of Eleventh Street,
is a brick wall and railing, behind which can be seen several battered
tombstones in a triangular plot of ground. This is all that is left of a
Jewish graveyard established almost a century ago.
Milligan's Lane was the continuation of Amos (now West Tenth) Street,
from Greenwich Avenue to Twelfth Street where it joined the Union Road.
This lane struck the line of Sixth Avenue where Eleventh Street is now.
At the southwest corner of this junction the course of the lane can be
seen yet in the peculiar angle of the side wall of a building there, and
in a similar angle of other houses near by. Close by this corner the
second graveyard of Shearith Israel Synagogue was established early in
this century. It took the place of the Beth Haim, or Place of Rest, down
town, a remnant of which is to be seen in New Bowery off Chatham Square.
[Sidenote: Milligan's Lane]
The Eleventh Street graveyard, established in the midst of green fields,
fronted on Milligan's Lane and extended back 110 feet. When Eleventh
Street was cut through under the conditions of the City Plan, in 1830,
it passed directly through the graveyard, cutting it away so that only
the tiny portion now there was left. At that time a new place of burial
was opened in Twenty-first Street west of Sixth Avenue.
[Sidenote: Union Road]
At a point just behind the house numbered 23 Eleventh Street, midway of
the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Union Road had its
starting-point. It was a short road, forming a direct communicating line
between Skinner and Southampton Roads. Skinner Road, running from
Hudson River along the line of the present Christopher Street, ended
where Union Road began; and Union Road met Southampton at what is now
the corner of Fifteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. This point was also
the junction of Southampton and Great Kiln Roads.
Evidences of the Union Road are still to be seen in Twelfth Street, at
the projecting angle of the houses numbered 43 and 45. It was just at
this point that Milligan's Lane ended. On Thirteenth Street, the course
of Union Road is shown by the slanting wall of a big business building,
numbered 36.
[Sidenote: First Presbyterian Church]
In Twelfth Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, is the First
Reformed Presbyterian Church. The congregation was started as a praying
society in 1790 at the house of John Agnew at No. 9 Peck Slip. In 1798
the congregation worshipped in a school house in Cedar Street. They
soon after built their first church at Nos. 39 and 41 Chambers Street,
where the American News Company building is now. It was a frame
building, and was succeeded in 1818 by a brick building on the same
site. In 1834 a new church was erected at Prince and Marion Streets. The
foundation for the present church was laid in 1848, and the church
occupied it in the following year.
[Sidenote: Society Library]
The New York Society Library, at 107 University Place, near Fourteenth
Street, claims to be the oldest institution of its kind in America. It
is certainly the most interesting in historical associations, richness
of old literature and art works. It is the direct outcome of the library
established in 1700, with quarters in the City Hall, in Wall Street, by
Richard, Earl of Bellomont, the Governor of New York.
In 1754 an association was incorporated for carrying on a library, and
their collection, added to the library already in existence, was called
the City Library. The Board of Trustees consisted of the most prominent
men in the city. In 1772 a charter was granted by George III, under the
name of the New York Society Library.
During the Revolutionary War the books became spoil for British
soldiers. Many were destroyed and many sold. After the war the remains
of the library were gathered from various parts of the city and again
collected in the City Hall. In 1784 the members of the Federal Congress
deliberated in the library rooms. In 1795 the library was moved to
Nassau Street, opposite the Middle Dutch Church; in 1836 to Chambers
Street; in 1841 to Broadway and Leonard Street; in 1853 to the Bible
House, and in 1856 to the present building.
[Sidenote: Great Kiln Road]
At the point that is now Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street, then
intersected by the Union Road, the Great Kiln Road ended. Its
continuation was called Southampton Road. From that point it continued
to Nineteenth Street, east of Sixth Avenue, and then parallel with Sixth
Avenue to Love Lane, the present Twenty-first Street.
The line of this road, where it joined the Great Kiln Road, is still
clearly shown in the oblique side wall of the house at the northwest
corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street. Here, also, it has a
marked effect on the east wall of St. Joseph's Home for the Aged. The
first-mentioned house, with the cutting through of the streets, has been
left one of those queer triangular buildings, with full front and
running to a point in the rear.
[Sidenote: Weavers' Row]
When the road reached what is now Sixteenth Street, a third of a block
east of Seventh Avenue, it passed through the block in a sweeping curve
to the present corner of Seventeenth Street and Sixth Avenue. The
evidence of its passage is still to be seen in the tiny wooden houses
buried in the centre of the block, which are remnants of a row called
Paisley Place, or Weavers' Row. This row was built during the
yellow-fever agitation of 1822, and was occupied by Scotch weavers who
operated their hand machines there.
The road took its name from Sir Peter Warren's second daughter, who
married Charles Fitzroy, who later became the Baron Southampton.
[Sidenote: Graveyard Behind a Store]
In Twenty-first Street, a little west of Sixth Avenue, is the unused
though not uncared-for graveyard of the Shearith Israel Synagogue. The
graveyard cannot be seen from the street, but from the rear windows of a
nearby dry-goods store a glimpse can be had of the ivy-covered
receiving-vault and the time-grayed tombstones.
When this "Place of Rest" was established the locality was all green
fields. The graveyard had been forced from further down town by the
cutting through of Eleventh Street in 1830. Interments were made in this
spot until 1852, when the cemetery was removed to Cypress Hills, L. I.,
the Common Council having in that year prohibited burials within the
city limits. But though there were no burials, the congregation have
persistently refused to sell this plot, just as they have the earlier
plots, the remains of which are off Chatham Square and in Eleventh
Street, near Sixth Avenue.
[Sidenote: Love Lane]
Abingdon Road in the latter years of its existence was commonly called
Love Lane, and more than a century ago followed close on the line of the
present Twenty-first Street from what is now Broadway to Eighth Avenue.
It was the northern limit of a tract of land given by the city to
Admiral Sir Peter Warren in recognition of his services at the capture
of Louisburg.
From this road, when the Warren estate was divided among the daughters
of the Admiral, two roads, the Southampton and the Warren, were opened
through this upper part of the estate.
The name Love Lane was given to the road in the latter part of the
eighteenth century, and was retained until it was swallowed up in
Twenty-first Street. This last was ordered opened in 1827, but was not
actually opened until some years later. There is no record to show where
the name came from. The generally accepted idea is that being a quiet
and little traveled spot, it was looked upon as a lane where happy
couples might drive, far from the city, and amid green fields and
stately trees confide the story of their loves. It was the longest drive
from the town, by way of the Post Road, Bloomingdale Road and so across
the west to Southampton, Great Kiln roads, through Greenwich Village
and by the river road back to town.
The road originally took its name from the oldest daughter of Admiral
Warren, who married the Earl of Abingdon.
There are still traces of Love Lane in Twenty-first Street. The two
houses numbered 25 and 27 stood on the road. The houses 51, 53 and 55,
small and odd appearing, are more closely identified with the lane. When
built, these houses were conspicuous and alone, at the junction where
Southampton Road from Greenwich Village ran into Love Lane. They are
thought to have been a single house serving as a tavern.
Close by, at the northeast corner of Twenty-first Street and Sixth
Avenue, the house with the gable roof is one that also stood on the old
road, though built at a later date than the three next to it.
The road ended for many years about on the line with the present Eighth
Avenue, where it ran into the Fitzroy Road. Some years previous to the
laying out of the streets under the City Plan in 1811, Love Lane was
continued to Hudson River. Before it reached the river it was crossed, a
little east of Seventh Avenue, by the Warren Road, although there is no
trace of the crossing now.
[Sidenote: Chelsea Village]
[Illustration: Old Theological Seminary Chelsea Square]
Although Chelsea Village was long ago swallowed up by the city, and its
boundaries blotted out by the rectangular lines of the plan under which
the streets were mapped out in 1811, there is still a suggestion of it
in the green lawns and gray buildings of the General Theological
Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which occupies the block
between Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets, Ninth and Tenth Avenues.
Chelsea got its name in 1750, when Captain Thomas Clarke, an old
soldier, gave the name to his country seat, in remembrance of the
English home for invalided soldiers. It was between two and three miles
from the city, a stretch of country land along the Hudson River with not
another house anywhere near it. The house stood, as streets are now, at
the south side of Twenty-third Street, about two hundred feet west of
Ninth Avenue, on a hill that sloped to the river. The captain had hoped
to die in his retreat, but his home was burned to the ground during his
severe illness, and he died in the home of his nearest neighbor. Soon
after his death the house was rebuilt by his widow, Mrs. Mollie Clarke.
The latter dying in 1802, a portion of the estate with the house went to
Bishop Benjamin Moore, who had married Mrs. Clarke's daughter, Charity.
It passed from him in 1813 to his son, Clement C. Moore. The latter
reconstructed the house, and it stood until 1850.
Clement C. Moore's estate was included within the present lines of
Eighth Avenue, Nineteenth to Twenty-fourth Streets and Hudson River.
These are approximately the bounds of Chelsea Village which grew up
around the old Chelsea homestead. It came to be a thriving village,
conveniently reached by the road to Greenwich and then by Fitzroy Road;
or by the Bowery Road, Bloomingdale, and then along Love Lane.
[Sidenote: London Terrace]
In 1831 the streets were cut through and the village thereafter grew up
on the projected lines of the City Plan. It was for this reason that
Chelsea, when the city reached it, was merged into it so perfectly that
there is not an imperfect street line to tell where the village had
been and where the city joined it. There are houses of the old village
still standing; notably those still called the Chelsea Cottages in
Twenty-fourth Street west of Ninth Avenue, and the row called the London
Terrace in Twenty-third Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.
The block on which the General Theological Seminary stands was given to
the institution by Clement C. Moore, and was long called Chelsea Square.
The cornerstone of the East Building was laid in 1825, and of the West
Building, which still stands, in 1835.
It was this Clement C. Moore, living quietly in the village that had
grown up around him, who wrote the child's poem which will be remembered
longer than its writer--"'Twas the Night before Christmas."
[Illustration]