[Sidenote: Oliver Street Baptist Church]
The Oliver Street Baptist Church was built on the northwest corner of
Oliver and Henry Streets in 1795. It was rebuilt in 1800, and again in
1819. Later it was burned, and finally restored in 1843. The structure
is now occupied by the Mariners' Temple, and the record of its burning
is to be seen on a marble tablet on the front wall.
Oliver Street--that is, the two blocks from Chatham Square to Madison
Street--was called Fayette Street before the name was changed to Oliver
in 1825.
James Street was once St. James Street. The change was made prior to
1816.
Mariners' Church, at 46 Catherine Street, was erected in 1854, on the
southeast corner of Madison Street. Prior to that, and as far back as
1819, it had been at 76 Roosevelt Street.
[Sidenote: Madison Street]
Banker Street having become a byword, because of the objectionable
character of its inhabitants, the name was changed to Madison Street in
1826.
Between Jefferson and Clinton Streets, and south of Henry, was a pond,
the only bit of water which, in early days, emptied into the East River
between what afterward became Roosevelt Street and Houston Street. A wet
meadow, rather than a distinct stream, extended from this pond to the
river as an outlet. This became later the region of shipyards.
[Illustration: Church of Sea & Land]
[Sidenote: Where Nathan Hale Was Hanged]
On what is now Cherry Street, between Clinton and Jefferson Streets, was
the house of Col. Henry Rutgers, the Revolutionary patriot, and his farm
extended from that point in all directions. On a tree of this farm
Nathan Hale, the martyr spy of the Revolution, was hanged, September 22,
1776. On this same farm the Church of the Sea and Land, still standing
with its three-foot walls, at Market and Henry Streets, was built in
1817.
In 1828, at the corner of Henry and Scammel Streets, was erected All
Saints' Church (Episcopal). It still stands, now hemmed in by
dwelling-houses. It is a low rock structure. A bit of green, a stunted
tree and some shrubs still struggle through the bricks at the rear of
the church, and can be seen through a tall iron railing from narrow
Scammel Street. In 1825 the church occupied a chapel on Grand Street at
the corner of Columbia.
[Sidenote: First Tenement House]
The first house designed especially for many tenants was built in 1833,
in Water Street just east of Jackson, on which site is now included
Corlears Hook Park. It was four stories in height, and arranged for one
family on each floor. It was built by Thomas Price, and owned by James
P. Allaire, whose noted engine works were close by in Cherry Street,
between Walnut (now Jackson) and Corlears Street.
Where Grand and Pitt Streets cross is the top of a hill formerly known
as Mount Pitt. On this hill the building occupied by the Mount Pitt
Circus was built in 1826. It was burned in 1828.
At Grand, corner of Ridge Street, is the St. Mary's Church (Catholic),
which was built in 1833, a rough stone structure with brick front and
back. In 1826 it was in Sheriff, between Broome and Delancey Streets. It
had the first Roman Catholic bell in the city. In 1831 the church was
burned by a burglar, and the new structure was built in Grand Street.
Actual work on the pier for the new East River Bridge, at the foot of
Delancey Street, was begun in the spring of 1897.
[Sidenote: Manhattan Island]
Much confusion has arisen, and still exists, in the designation of the
territory under the names of Manhattan Island and Island of Manhattan.
The two islands a hundred years ago were widely different bodies. They
are joined now.
Manhattan Island was the name given to a little knoll of land which lay
within the limits of what is now Third, Houston and Lewis Streets and
the East River. At high tide the place was a veritable island. There
seems to be still a suggestion of it in the low buildings which occupy
the ground of the former island. About the ancient boundary, as though
closing it in, are tall tenements and factory buildings. On the grounds
of this old island the first recreation pier was built, in 1897, at the
foot of Third Street.
The Island of Manhattan has always been the name applied to the land
occupied by the old City of New York, now the Borough of Manhattan.
In the heart of the block surrounded by Rivington, Stanton, Goerck and
Mangin Streets, there is still to be seen the remains of a
slanting-roofed market, closed in by the houses which have been built
about it. It was set up in 1827, and named Manhattan Market after the
nearby island.
[Illustration: Bone Alley]
[Sidenote: Bone Alley]
Work on the Hamilton Fish Park was begun in 1896, in the space bounded
by Stanton, Houston, Pitt and Sheriff Streets, then divided into two
blocks by Willett Street. This was a congested, tenement-house vicinity,
where misery and poverty pervaded most of the dingy dwellings. In wiping
out the two solidly built-up blocks, Bone Alley, well known in police
history for a generation, was effaced. On the west side of Willett
Street, midway of the block, Bone Alley had its start and extended sixty
feet into the block--a twenty-five-foot space between tall tenements,
running plump into a row of houses extending horizontal with it. When
these houses were erected they each had long gardens, which were built
upon when the land became too valuable to be spared for flower-beds or
breathing-spots. In time they became the homes of rag-and bone-pickers,
and thus the alley which led to them got its name, which it kept even
after the rag-pickers and the law-breakers who succeeded them had been
driven away by the police.
There was, forty years ago, a well of good, drinkable water at the point
where Rivington and Columbia Streets now cross.
[Sidenote: "Mother Mandelbaum"]
The little frame house at the northwest corner or Rivington and Clinton
Streets was the home of "Mother" Frederica Mandelbaum for many years,
until she was driven from the city in 1884. This "Queen of the Crooks,"
receiver of stolen goods and friend of all the criminal class,
compelled, in a sense, the admiration of the police, who for years
battled in vain to outwit her cleverness. When the play, "The Two
Orphans," was first produced, Mrs. Wilkins, as the "Frochard," copied
the character of "Mother" Mandelbaum and gave a representation of the
woman that all who knew the original recognized. Other plays were
written, and also many stories, having her as a central figure. She died
at Hamilton, Ontario, in 1894.
At the crossing of Rivington and Suffolk Streets was the source of
Stuyvesant's Creek. From there, as the streets exist now, it crossed
Stanton Street, near Clinton; Houston, at Sheriff; Second, near Houston;
then wound around to the north of Manhattan Island, and emptied into the
East River at Third Street.
[Sidenote: Allen Street Memorial Church]
In Rivington Street, between Ludlow and Orchard, is the Allen Street
Memorial Church (M. E.), built in 1888. The original Church, which was
built in 1810, is two blocks away, in Allen Street, between Delancey and
Rivington Streets. It was rebuilt in 1836, and when the new Rivington
Street structure was erected the old house was sold to a Jewish
congregation, who still occupy it as a synagogue.
In Grand Street, between Essex and Ludlow Streets, the Essex Market was
built in 1818. The court next to it, in Essex Street, was built in 1856.
[Illustration]
[Sidenote: Mile Stone On the Bowery]
On the Bowery, opposite Rivington Street, is a milestone (one of three
that yet remain) which formerly marked the distance from the City Hall,
in Wall Street, on the Post Road. The land to the east of the Bowery
belonged to James De Lancey, who was Chief Justice of the Colony in
1733, and in 1753 became Lieutenant-Governor. A lane led from the
Bowery, close by the milestone, to his country house, which was at the
present northwest corner of Delancey and Chrystie Streets. It was in
this house that he died suddenly in 1760. James De Lancey was the eldest
son of Etienne (Stephen) De Lancey, who built the house which afterwards
was known as Fraunces' Tavern, and which still stands at Broad and Pearl
Streets. He later built the homestead at Broadway and Cedar Street.
Originally the name was "de Lanci." It became "de Lancy" in the
seventeenth century, and was Anglicized in the eighteenth century to "De
Lancey."
Where Grand Street crosses Mulberry was, until 1802, the family
burial-vault of the Bayard family, it having been the custom of early
settlers to bury their dead near their homesteads. The locality was
called Bunker Hill.
[Sidenote: St. Patrick's Church]
St. Patrick's Church, enclosed now by the high wall at Mott and Prince
Streets, was completed in 1815, the cornerstone having been laid in
1809. It was surrounded by meadows and great primitive trees. This
region was so wild that in 1820 a fox was killed in the churchyard. In
1866 the interior of the church was destroyed by fire. It was at once
reconstructed in its present form. Amongst others buried in the vaults
are "Boss" John Kelly, Vicar-General Starr and Bishop Connelly, first
resident bishop of New York.
At Prince and Marion Streets, northwest corner, the house in which
President James Monroe lived while in the city still stands.
[Sidenote: An Unsolved Crime]
The St. Nicholas Hotel was at Broadway and Spring Street, and on the
ground floor John Anderson kept a tobacco store, to which the attention
of the entire country was directed in July, 1842, because of the murder
of Mary Rogers. This tragedy gave Edgar Allan Poe material for his
story "The Mystery of Marie Roget," into which he introduced every
detail of the actual happening. Mary Rogers was a saleswoman in the
tobacco store, and being young and pretty she attracted considerable
attention. She disappeared one July day, and, soon after, her body was
found drowned near the Sibyl's Cave at Hoboken. The deepest mystery
surrounded her evident murder, and much interest was taken in attempts
at a solution, but it remained an unsolved crime.
On the east side of Broadway, between Prince and Houston Streets, on
July 4, 1828, William Niblo opened his Garden, Hotel and Theatre, to be
known for many years thereafter as Niblo's Garden. Prior to that, he had
kept the Bank Coffee House, at William and Pine Streets.
[Sidenote: Niblo's Garden]
The Metropolitan Hotel was built in Niblo's Garden, on the corner that
is now Broadway and Prince Street, in 1852, at a cost of a million
dollars. The theatre in the hotel building was called Niblo's Garden.
The building was demolished in 1894, and a business block was put up on
the site.
Across the street from Niblo's, on Broadway, in a modest brick house,
lived, at one time, James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist.
At No. 624 Broadway, between Houston and Bleecker Streets, was Laura
Keene's theatre. On March 1, 1858, Polly Marshall made her first
appearance on any stage at that theatre. Later it became the Olympic
Theatre.
At Broadway and Bleecker Streets, a well was drilled, in 1832, which was
four hundred and forty-eight feet deep, and which yielded forty-four
thousand gallons of water a day.
[Sidenote: Tripler Hall]
Tripler Hall was at No. 677 Broadway, near Bond Street. Adelina Patti
appeared there on September 22, 1852, when ten years old, giving
evidence of her future greatness. She sang there for some time, usually
accompanied by the boy violinist, Paul Julien.
Tripler Hall had been renamed the Metropolitan Hall, when it was
destroyed by fire in 1854. Lafarge House, which stood next it, was also
burned. The house was rebuilt on the site, and opened in September,
1854, under the name of the New York Theatre and Metropolitan Opera
House.
Rachel the great was first seen in America at this house, September 3,
1855. Later the house became the Winter Garden.
[Sidenote: First Marble-Fronted Houses]
The first marble-fronted houses in the city were built on Broadway,
opposite Bond Street, in 1825. They were called the Marble Houses, and
attracted much attention. Being far out of the city, excursions were
made to view them. Afterwards they became the Tremont House, and are
still in use as a hotel.
A pipe for a well was sunk in Broadway, opposite Bond Street, in April,
1827, it being thought that enough water for the supply of the immediate
neighborhood could be obtained therefrom. The water was not found,
however.
[Sidenote: Burdell Murder]
No. 31 Bond Street was the scene of a celebrated murder. The house is
torn down now, but it was identical with the one which now stands at No.
29. On January 3, 1857, Dr. Harvey Burdell, a dentist, was literally
butchered there, being stabbed fifteen times. A portion of the house had
been occupied by a widow named Cunningham, and her two daughters. After
the murder, Mrs. Cunningham claimed a widow's share of the Doctor's
estate, on the ground that she had been married to him some months
before. This claim started an investigation, which resulted in Mrs.
Cunningham's being suspected of the crime, arrested, tried and
acquitted. Soon after her acquittal, she attempted to secure control of
the entire Burdell estate, by claiming that she had given birth to an
heir to the property. The scheme failed, for the physician through whom
she obtained a new-born child from Bellevue Hospital, disclosed the plot
to District Attorney A. Oakey Hall. The woman and her daughters left the
city suddenly, and were not heard of again. The mystery of the murder
was never solved.
The part of Houston Street east of the Bowery was, prior to November,
1833, called North Street. At the time the change in names was made the
street was raised. Between Broadway and the Bowery had been a wet tract
of land many feet below the grade. In 1844 the street was extended from
Lewis Street to the East River.
The Bleecker Street Bank, which was just east of Broadway, on the north
side of Bleecker Street, was moved in October, 1897, to Twenty-first
Street and Fourth Avenue, and called The Bank for Savings. It had
originally been in the New York Institute Building in City Hall Park.
[Illustration: Entrance to Marble Cemetery]
[Sidenote: Marble Cemetery]
In the heart of the block inclosed by the Bowery, Second Avenue, Second
and Third Streets, is a hidden graveyard. It is the New York Marble
Cemetery, and so completely has it been forgotten that its name no
longer appears in the City Directory. On four sides it is hemmed about
by tenements and business buildings, so that one could walk past it for
a lifetime without knowing that it was there. On the Second Avenue side,
the entrance is formed by a narrow passage between houses, which is
closed by an iron gateway. But the gate is always locked, and at the
opposite end of the passage is another gate of wood set in a brick
wall, so high that nothing but the tops of trees can be seen beyond it.
From the upper rear windows of the neighboring tenements a view of the
place can be had. It is a wild spot, four hundred feet by one hundred,
covered by a tangled growth of bushes and weeds, crossed by neglected
paths, and enclosed by a wall seventeen feet high. There is no sign of a
tombstone. In the southwest corner is a deadhouse of rough hewn stone.
On the south wall the names of vault owners are chiseled. Among these
were some of the best known New Yorkers fifty years ago. The records of
the city show that this land was owned by Henry Eckford and Marion, his
wife. They deeded it to Anthony Dey and George W. Strong when the
cemetery corporation was organized, July 30, 1830. There were one
hundred and fifty-six vaults, and fifteen hundred persons were buried
there. This cemetery is forgotten almost as completely as its own dead,
and its memories do not molest the dwellers in the surrounding tenements
who overlook it from their rear windows, and use it as a sort of
dumping-ground for all useless things that can readily be thrown into
it.
[Sidenote: The Second Marble Cemetery]
There is another Marble Cemetery which historians sometimes confuse with
this hidden graveyard, namely, one on Second Street, between First and
Second Avenues. Some of the larger merchants of the city bought the
ground in 1832, and created the New York City Marble Cemetery. Among the
original owners was Robert Lenox. When he died, in 1839, his body was
placed in a vault of the First Presbyterian Church at 16 Wall Street.
When that church was removed to Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street the
remains of Lenox with others were removed to this Marble Cemetery. The
body of President James Monroe was first interred here, but was removed
in 1859 to Virginia. Thomas Addis Emmet, the famous jurist, is also
buried here. One of the most conspicuous monuments in St. Paul's
churchyard, the shaft at the right of the church, was erected to the
memory of Emmet. A large column on the other side of the church
preserves the memory of another man whose body does not lie in the
churchyard, for William James Macneven was interred in the
burying-ground of the Riker family at Bowery Bay, L. I.
In Second Street, between Avenue A and First Avenue, stood a Methodist
church, and beside it a graveyard, until 1840; when the building was
turned into a public school. There were fifteen hundred bodies in the
yard, but they were not removed to Evergreen Cemetery until 1860. Only
fifteen bodies were claimed by relatives. One man who applied for his
father's body refused that offered him, claiming that the skull was too
small, and that some mistake had been made in disinterment.
Second Street Methodist Episcopal Church, between Avenues C and D, was
built in 1832, the congregation having previously worshipped in private
houses in the vicinity. At one time this was the most prominent and
wealthiest church on the eastern side of the city.
[Sidenote: Bouwerie Village]
The Bouwerie Village was another of the little settlements--once a busy
spot, but now so effaced that every outline of its existence is blotted
out. It centred about the site of the present St. Mark's Church, Second
Avenue and Tenth Street. In 1651, when Peter Stuyvesant, the last of
the Dutch Governors, had ruled four years, he purchased the Great
Bouwerie, a tract of land extending two miles along the river north of
what is now Grand Street, taking in a section of the present Bowery and
Third Avenue. As there was, from time to time, trouble with the Indians,
the Governor ordered the dwellers on his bouwerie, as well as those on
adjoining bouweries, to form a village and gather there for mutual
protection at the first sign of an outbreak. Very soon the settlement
included a blacksmith's shop, a tavern and a dozen houses. In this way
the Bouwerie Village was started. Peter Stuyvesant in time built a
chapel, and in it Hermanus Van Hoboken, the schoolmaster, after whom the
city of Hoboken is named, preached. Years after the founding of the
village, when New Amsterdam had become New York, and when the old
Governor had returned from Holland, where he had, before the
States-General, fought for vindication in so readily giving up the
province to the English, Stuyvesant returned to end his days in the
Bouwerie Village. He died there at the age of eighty, and was buried in
the graveyard of the Bouwerie Church. St. Mark's Church, at Tenth Street
and Second Avenue, stands on the site of the old church, and a memorial
stone to Peter Stuyvesant is still to be seen under the porch. It reads:
[Sidenote: Grave of Peter Stuyvesant]
IN THIS VAULT LIES BURIED
PETRUS STUYVESANT,
LATE CAPTAIN-GENERAL AND GOVERNOR IN CHIEF
OF AMSTERDAM IN NEW NETHERLAND
NOW CALLED NEW YORK
AND THE DUTCH WEST INDIES, DIED IN A. D. 1671/2
AGED 80 YEARS.
When Judith, the widow of Peter Stuyvesant, died, in 1692, she left the
church in which the old Governor had worshipped to the Dutch Reformed
Church. A condition was that the Stuyvesant vault should be forever
protected. By 1793 the church had fallen into decay. Then another Peter
Stuyvesant, great-grandson of the Dutch Governor, who was a vestryman of
Trinity Church, gave the site and surrounding lots, together with
$2,000, and the Trinity Corporation added $12,500, and erected the
present St. Mark's Church. The cornerstone was laid in 1795 and the
building completed in 1799. It had no steeple until 1829, when that
portion was added. In 1858 the porch was added. In the churchyard were
buried the remains of Mayor Philip Hone and of Governor Daniel D.
Tompkins. It was here that the body of Alexander T. Stewart rested until
stolen. Close by the church was the mansion of Governor Stuyvesant. It
was an imposing structure for those days, built of tiny bricks brought
from Holland. A fire destroyed the house at the time of the Revolution.
When Peter Stuyvesant returned from Holland he brought with him a pear
tree, which he planted in a garden near his Bouwerie Village house. This
tree flourished for more than two hundred years. At Thirteenth Street
and Third Avenue, on the house at the northeast corner, is a tablet
inscribed:
ON THIS CORNER GREW
PETRUS STUYVESANT'S PEAR TREE
* * * * *
RECALLED TO HOLLAND IN 1664,
ON HIS RETURN
HE BROUGHT THE PEAR TREE
AND PLANTED IT
AS HIS MEMORIAL,
"BY WHICH," SAID HE, "MY NAME
MAY BE REMEMBERED."
THE PEAR TREE FLOURISHED
AND BORE FRUIT FOR OVER
TWO HUNDRED YEARS.
THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE BY
THE HOLLAND SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER, 1890.
[Sidenote: First Sunday School]
In 1785 half a dozen persons in the First Bouwerie Village, then
scattering to the school east from the site of Cooper Union, met at the
"Two Mile Stone"--so called from being two miles from Federal Hall--in
the upper room of John Coutant's house, on the site where Cooper
Institute stands now. The room was used as a shoe store during the week.
Here, on Sundays, ministers from the John Street Church instructed
converts. Peter Cooper, who was a member of the church, a few years
later conceived the idea of connecting the school with the church. The
organization was perfected, and he was chosen Superintendent of this,
the first Sunday School of New York.
[Sidenote: Bowery Village Church]
The quarters becoming cramped, in 1795 the congregation moved to a
two-story building a block away, on Nicholas William Street. This
street, long since blotted out, extended from what is now Fourth Avenue
and Seventh Street, across the Cooper Institute site and part of the
adjoining block, to Eighth (now St. Mark's Place), midway of the block
between Third and Second Avenues. The street was named after Nicholas
William Stuyvesant. When the old John Street Church was taken down, in
1817, the timber from it was used to erect a church next to the Sunday
School (called the Academy). This church was called the Bowery Village
Church. In 1830, the Bowery Village Church having been wiped out by the
advancing streets of the City Plan, Nicholas William Street went with
it, and a church was then established a short distance to the east, on
the line of what is now Seventh Street, north side, and this became the
Seventh Street Church. In 1837 persons living near by who objected to
the church revivals presented the trustees with two lots, nearer Third
Avenue. There a new church was built, which still stands.
[Sidenote: Second Vauxhall Garden]
Vauxhall Garden occupied (according to the present designation of the
streets) the space south of Astor Place, between Fourth Avenue and
Broadway, to the line of Fifth Street. Fourth Avenue was then Bowery
Road, and the main entrance to the Garden was on that side, opposite the
present Sixth Street. At Broadway the Garden narrowed down to a V shape.
On this ground, for many years, John Sperry, a Swiss, cultivated fruits
and flowers, and when he had grown old he sold his estate, in 1799, to
John Jacob Astor. The latter leased it to a Frenchman named Delacroix,
who had previously conducted the Vauxhall Garden on the Bayard Estate,
close by the present Warren and Greenwich Streets. During the next eight
years Delacroix transformed his newly-acquired possession into a
pleasure garden, by erecting a small theatre and summer-house, and by
setting out tables and seats under the trees on the grounds, and booths
with benches around the inside close up to the high board fence that
enclosed the Garden. He called the place Vauxhall, thereby causing some
confusion to historians, who often confound this Garden with the earlier
one of the same name. This last Vauxhall was situated a mile out of town
on the Bowery Road. It was an attractive retreat, and the tableaux were
so fine, the ballets so ingenius and the singing of such excellence,
that the resort became immensely popular, and remained so continuously
until the Garden was swept out of existence in 1855. Admission to the
grounds was free, and to the theatre two shillings. In its last years it
was a favorite place for the holding of large public meetings.
[Sidenote: Cooper Union]
Cooper Union, at the upper end of the Bowery, was built in 1854. Peter
Cooper, merchant and philanthropist, made the object of his life the
establishment of an institution designed especially to give the working
classes opportunity for self-education better than the existing
institutions afforded. His store was on the site of the present
building, which he founded. By a deed executed in 1859 the institution,
with its incomes, he devoted to the instruction and improvement of the
people of the United States forever. The institution has been taxed to
its full capacity since its inception. From time to time it has been
enriched by gifts from Mr. Cooper's heirs and friends. The statue of
Peter Cooper, in the little park in front of the building, was unveiled
May 28th, 1897. It is the work of Augustus St. Gaudens, once a pupil in
the Institute.
On a part of the site of Cooper Union, at the east side of what was then
the Bowery, and what is now Fourth Avenue, stood a house which was said
to have been haunted. It was demolished to make way for Cooper Union.
No permanent tenant, it is said, had occupied it for sixty years. It was
a peaked-roofed brick structure, two stories high.
The house of Peter Cooper was on the site of the present Bible House, at
Eighth Street and Third Avenue. He removed in 1820 to Twenty-eighth
Street and Fourth Avenue, and his dwelling may still be seen there.
[Sidenote: Astor Place]
Astor Place is part of old Greenwich Lane, which led from the Bowery
Lane past the pauper cemetery, where Washington Square is now, over the
sand hills where University Place now is, and took the line of the
present Greenwich Avenue. This was also called Monument Lane, because of
a monument to the memory of General Wolfe erected on the spot where the
road ended, at the junction of Eighth Avenue and Fifteenth Street.
Astor Place, as far as Fifth Avenue, was called Art Street when it was
changed from a road to a street. The continuation of Astor Place to the
east, now Stuyvesant Street, was originally Stuyvesant Road, and
extended to the river at about Fifteenth Street. It was also called Art
when it became a street. On the south side of this thoroughfare, just
west of Fourth Avenue, Charlotte Temple lived in a small stone house.
At the head of Lafayette Place, fronting on Astor Place, is a building
used at this time as a German Theatre. It was built for Dr. Schroeder,
once the favorite preacher of the city, of whom it was said that if
anyone desired to know where Schroeder preached, he had only to follow
the crowds on Sunday. But he became dissatisfied and left Trinity for a
church of his own. He very soon gave up this church, and for a time the
building was occupied by St. Ann's Roman Catholic congregation.
Afterward it became a theatre and failed to succeed.
The ground at the junction of Astor Place and Eighth Street was made a
public square in 1836. In the midst of it may now be seen a statue of
Samuel S. Cox.
[Sidenote: Scene of Forrest-Macready Riots]
Astor Place Opera House, at the junction of Eighth Street and Astor
Place, where Clinton Hall stands now, was built in 1847. It was a
handsome theatre for those days, and contained eighteen hundred seats.
It was opened on November 22nd with "Ernani." On May 7th, 1849, at this
house occurred the first of the Macready riots. The bitter jealousy
existing between William Charles Macready, the English actor, and Edwin
Forrest, which had assumed the proportions of an international quarrel,
so far as the two actors and their friends were concerned, was the
cause. The admirers of Forrest sought, on this night, to prevent the
performance of "Macbeth," and a riot ensued in which no particular
damage was done. On May 10th, in response to a petition signed by many
prominent citizens, Macready again sought to play "Macbeth." An effort
was made to keep all Forrest sympathizers from the house. Many, however,
gained admission, and the performance was again frustrated. The
ringleaders were arrested. A great crowd blocked Astor Place, and an
assault upon the theatre was attempted. Macready escaped by a rear door.
The Seventh Regiment and a troop of cavalry cleared Eighth Street and
reached Astor Place. The mob resisted. The Riot Act was read. That
producing no effect, and the assault upon the building and the soldiers
defending it becoming more violent each moment, the mob was fired upon.
Three volleys were fired. Thirty-four persons were killed and some
hundred injured. Over one hundred soldiers and many policemen were also
hurt.
On August 30th, 1852, the name of the house was changed to the New York
Theatre, under the direction of Charles R. Thorne. In a month's time he
gave up the venture and Frank Chanfrau took it up. He also abandoned it
after a few weeks.
[Sidenote: Clinton Hall]
In 1854 the Opera House was reconstructed and occupied by the Mercantile
Library. It was given the name of Clinton Hall, which had been the name
of the library's first home in Beekman Street. This building in time
gave way to the present Clinton Hall on the same site.
[Sidenote: Lafayette Place]
Lafayette Place was opened through the Vauxhall Garden in 1826.
The Astor Library, in Lafayette Place, was completed in 1853, and was
opened in 1854. The site cost $25,000.
The Middle Dutch Reformed Church was built in Lafayette Place in 1839,
at the northwest corner of Fourth Street after its removal from Nassau
and Cedar Streets. A new church was built at Seventh Street and Second
Avenue in 1844. In the Lafayette Place building was a bell which had
been cast in Holland in 1731, and which had first been used when the
church was in Nassau Street. It was the gift of Abraham de Peyster, and
now hangs in the Reformed Church at Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth
Street.
Next to this church, for many years, lived Madam Canda, who kept the
most fashionable school for ladies of a generation ago. Her beautiful
daughter was dashed from a carriage, and killed on her eighteenth
birthday--the age at which she was to make her debut into society. The
entire city mourned her loss.
[Sidenote: La Grange Terrace]
Soon after Lafayette Place was opened, La Grange Terrace was built. It
was named after General Lafayette's home in France. The row is still
prominent on the west side of the thoroughfare, and is known as
Colonnade Row. A riot occurred at the time it was built, the masons of
the city being aroused because the stone used in the structure was cut
by the prisoners in Sing Sing prison.
John Jacob Astor lived on this street. He died March 29th, 1848, and was
buried from the home of his son, William B. Astor, just south of the
library building.
[Sidenote: Sailors' Snug Harbor]
A line drawn through Astor Place and continued to the Washington Arch in
Washington Square, through Fifth Avenue to the neighborhood of Tenth
Street, with Fourth Avenue as an eastern boundary, would roughly enclose
what used to be the Eliot estate in the latter part of the eighteenth
century. It was a farm of about twenty-one acres in 1790, when it was
purchased for five thousand pounds from "Baron" Poelnitz, by Captain
Robert Richard Randall, who had been a ship-master and a merchant.
Randall dying in 1801, bequeathed the farm for the founding of an asylum
for superannuated sailors, together with the mansion house in which he
had lived. The house stood, approximately, at the present northwest
corner of Ninth Street and Broadway. It was the intention of Captain
Randall that the Sailors' Snug Harbor should be built on the property,
and the farming land used to raise all vegetables, fruit and grain
necessary for the inmates. There were long years of litigation, however,
for relatives contested the will. When the case was settled in 1831, the
trustees had decided to lease the land, and to purchase the Staten
Island property where the Asylum is now located. The estate, at the
time of Captain Randall's death, yielded an annual income of $4,000. At
present the income is about $400,000 a year. It is conceded that the
property would have increased more rapidly in value had it been sold
outright, instead of becoming leasehold property in perpetuity.
Many efforts have been made to cut through Eleventh Street from Fourth
Avenue to Broadway. The first was in 1830, when the street was open on
the lines of the City Plan. Hendrick Brevoort, whose farm adjoined the
Sailors' Snug Harbor property, had a homestead directly in the line of
the proposed street, between Fourth Avenue and Broadway. He resisted the
attempted encroachment on his home so successfully that the street was
not opened through that block. He was again similarly successful in
1849, when an ordinance was passed for the removal of his house and the
opening of the street.
[Sidenote: Grace Church]
Grace Church, at Tenth Street and Broadway, was completed in 1846.
Previous to that date it had been on the southwest corner of Broadway
and Rector Street, opposite Trinity Church.
There is a reason for the sudden bend in Broadway at Tenth Street, close
by Grace Church. The Bowery Lane, which is now Fourth Avenue, curved in
passing through what is now Union Square until, at the line of the
present Seventeenth Street it turned and took a direct course north and
was from thereon called the Bloomingdale Road. This road to Bloomingdale
was opened long before Broadway, and it was in order to let the latter
connect as directly as possible with the straight road north that the
direction of Broadway was changed about 1806 by the Tenth Street bend
and a junction effected with the other road at the Seventeenth Street
line.
At Thirteenth Street and Fourth Avenue there was constructed in 1834 a
tank which was intended to furnish water for extinguishing fires. It had
a capacity of 230,000 gallons, and was one hundred feet above tide
water. Water was forced into it by a 12-horse power engine from a well
and conducting galleries at the present Tenth Street and Sixth Avenue,
on the site of the Jefferson Market Prison.
[Sidenote: Wallack's Theatre]
In 1861 James W. Wallack moved from Wallack's Lyceum at Broome Street,
and occupied the new Wallack's, now the Star Theatre, at Thirteenth
Street and Broadway. His last appearance was when he made a little
speech at the close of the season of 1862. He died in 1864.
[Sidenote: Union Square]
Union Square was provided for in the City Plan, under the name of Union
Place. The Commissioners decided that the Place was necessary, as an
opening for fresh air would be needed when the city should be built up.
Furthermore, the union of so many roads intersecting at that point
required space for convenience; and if the roads were continued without
interruption the land would be divided into such small portions as to be
valueless for building purposes.
The fountain in the square was operated for the first time in 1842, on
the occasion of the great Croton Water celebration.
The bronze equestrian statue of Washington was erected in the square
close by where the citizens had received the Commander of the Army when
he entered the city on Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783. The statue is
the work of Henry K. Brown. The dedication occurred on July 4, 1856,
and was an imposing ceremony. Rev. George W. Bethune delivered an
oration, and there was a military parade.
[Sidenote: Academy of Music]
The Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, was built
in 1854 by a number of citizens who desired a permanent home for opera.
On October 2nd of that year, Hackett took his company, headed by Grisi
and Matio, there, the weather being too cold to continue the season at
Castle Garden. The building was burned in 1866 and rebuilt in 1868.
In Third Avenue, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets, is an old
milestone which marked the third mile from Federal Hall on the Post
Road.
The Friends' Meeting House, at East Sixteenth Street and Rutherford
Place, has existed since 1860. In 1775 it was in Pearl Street, near
Franklin Square. In 1824 it was taken down and rebuilt in 1826 in Rose
Street, near Pearl.
[Sidenote: St. George's Church]
St. George's (Episcopal) Church, at Rutherford Place and Sixteenth
Street, was built in 1845. The church was organized in 1752, and before
occupying the present site was in Beekman Street.
Early in the century a stream of water ran from Stuyvesant's Pond, close
by what is now Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue, to First Avenue and
Nineteenth Street, having an outlet into the East River at about
Sixteenth Street. In winter this furnished an excellent skating-ground.
[Sidenote: Gramercy Park]
Gramercy Park, at Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets and Lexington
Avenue, was originally part of the Gramercy Farm. In 1831 it was given
by Samuel B. Ruggles to be used exclusively by the owners of lots
fronting on it. It was laid out and improved in 1840. In the pavement,
in front of the park gate on the west side, is a stone bearing this
inscription:
GRAMERCY PARK
FOUNDED BY
SAMUEL B. RUGGLES
1831
COMMEMORATED BY THIS TABLET
IMBEDDED IN
THE GRAMERCY FARM BY
JOHN RUGGLES STRONG.
1875.
[Sidenote: Madison Square]
There was no evidence during the last part of the eighteenth century
that the town would ever creep up to and beyond the point where
Twenty-third Street crosses Broadway. This point was the junction of the
Post Road to Boston and the Bloomingdale Road. The latter was the
fashionable out-of-town driveway, and it followed the course that
Broadway and the Boulevard take now. The Post Road extended to the
northeast. At this point, in 1794, a Potter's Field was established.
There were many complaints at its being located there, where pauper
funerals clashed with the vehicles of the well-to-do, and there was much
rejoicing three years later, when the burying-ground was removed to the
spot that is now Washington Square.
[Sidenote: Arsenal in Madison Square]
In 1797 was built, where the burying-ground had been, an arsenal which
extended from Twenty-fourth Street and over the site of the Worth
Monument.
In the City Plan, completed in 1811, provision was made for a
parade-ground to extend from Twenty-third to Thirty-fourth Streets, and
Seventh to Third Avenue. The Commissioners decided that such a space was
needed for military exercises, and where, in case of necessity, there
could be assembled a force to defend the city. In 1814, the limits of
the parade-ground were reduced to the space between Twenty-third and
Thirty-first Streets, Sixth and Fourth Avenues, and given the name of
Madison Square.
[Sidenote: House of Refuge]
The Arsenal in Madison Square was turned into a House of Refuge in 1824,
and opened January 1, 1825. This was the result of the work of an
association of citizens who formed a society to improve the condition of
juvenile delinquents. The House of Refuge was burned in 1839, and
another institution built at the foot of Twenty-third Street the same
year. A portion of the old outer wall of this last structure is still to
be seen on the north side of Twenty-third Street, between First Avenue
and Avenue A.
In 1845, at the suggestion of Mayor James Harper, Madison Square was
reduced to its present limits and laid out as a public park. Up to this
time a stream of water had crossed the square, fed by springs in the
district about Sixth Avenue, between Twenty-first and Twenty-seventh
Streets. It spread out into a pond in Madison Square, and emptied into
the East River at Seventeenth Street. It was suggested that a street be
created over its bed from Madison Avenue to the river. This was not
carried out, and the stream was simply buried.
[Sidenote: Post Road]
The road which branched out of the Bloomingdale Road at Twenty-third
Street, sometimes called the Boston Post Road, sometimes the Post Road,
sometimes the Boston Turnpike, ran across the present Madison Square,
striking Fourth Avenue at Twenty-ninth Street; went through Kipsborough
which hugged the river between Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets,
swept past Turtle Bay at Forty-seventh Street and the East River,
crossed Second Avenue at Fifty-second Street, recrossed at Sixty-third
Street, reached the Third Avenue line at Sixty-fifth Street, and at
Seventy-seventh Street crossed a small stream over the Kissing Bridge.
Then proceeded irregularly on this line to One Hundred and Thirtieth
Street, where it struck the bridge over the Harlem River at Third
Avenue. The road was closed in 1839.
The monument to Major-General William J. Worth, standing to the west of
Madison Square, was dedicated November 25, 1857. General Worth was the
main support of General Scott in the campaign of Mexico. His body was
first interred in Greenwood Cemetery. On November 23rd the remains were
taken to City Hall, where they lay in state for two days, then were
taken, under military escort, and deposited beside the monument.
[Sidenote: Fifth Avenue Hotel]
For twenty years, or more, prior to 1853, the site of the present Fifth
Avenue Hotel, at Twenty-third Street and Broadway, was occupied by a
frame cottage with a peaked roof, and covered veranda reached by a
flight of wooden stairs. This was the inn of Corporal Thompson, and a
favorite stopping-place on the Bloomingdale Road. An enclosed lot,
extending as far as the present Twenty-fourth Street, was used at
certain times of the year for cattle exhibitions. In 1853 the cottage
made way for Franconi's Hippodrome, a brick structure, two stories high,
enclosing an open space two hundred and twenty-five feet in diameter.
The performances given here were considered of great merit and received
with much favor. In 1856 the Hippodrome was removed, and in 1858 the
present Fifth Avenue Hotel was opened.
The Madison Square Presbyterian Church, at Madison Avenue and
Twenty-fourth Street, was commenced in 1853, the earlier church of the
congregation having been in Broome Street. It was opened December, 1854,
with Rev. Dr. William Adams as pastor.
[Illustration: College of the City of New York]
[Sidenote: College of City of New York]
At the southeast corner of Twenty-third Street and Lexington Avenue, the
College of the City of New York has stood since 1848, the opening
exercises having taken place in 1849. In 1847 the Legislature passed an
Act authorizing the establishment of a free academy for the benefit of
pupils who had been educated in the public schools of this city. The
name Free Academy was given to the institution, and under that name it
was incorporated. It had the power to confer degrees and diplomas. In
1866 the name was changed to its present title, and all the privileges
and powers of a college were conferred upon it. In 1882 the college was
thrown open to all young men, whether educated in the public schools of
this city or not. In 1898 ground was set aside in the northern part of
the city, overlooking the Hudson River, for the erection of modern
buildings suitable to meet the growth of the college.
[Illustration: Gate of Old House of Refuge]
[Sidenote: Old House of Refuge Wall]
The House of Refuge in Madison Square was, after the fire in 1839,
rebuilt on the block bounded by Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Streets,
First Avenue and the East River. It was surrounded by a high wall, a
section of which is still standing on the north side of Twenty-third
Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A. The river at that time
extended west to beyond the Avenue A line. The old gateway is there
yet, and is used now as the entrance to a coal-yard. Some of the barred
windows of the wall can still be seen. In 1854 the inmates were removed
to Randall's Island, and were placed in charge of the State.
[Sidenote: Bellevue Hospital]
Bellevue Hospital has occupied its present site; at the foot of East
Twenty-sixth Street, since about 1810. The hospital really had its
beginning in 1736, in the buildings of the Public Work-house and House
of Correction in City Hall Park. There were six beds there, in charge of
the medical officer, Dr. John Van Beuren. About the beginning of the
nineteenth century, yellow fever patients were sent to a building known
as Belle Vue, on the Belle Vue Farm, close by the present hospital
buildings. In about 1810 it was decided to establish a new almshouse,
penitentiary and hospital on the Belle Vue Farm. Work on this was
completed in 1816. The almshouse building was three stories high,
surmounted by a cupola, and having a north and south wing each one
hundred feet long. This original structure stands to-day, and is part of
the present hospital building, other branches having been added to it
from time to time. The water line, at that time, was within half a block
of where First Avenue is now.
In 1848 the Almshouse section of the institution was transferred to
Blackwell's Island. The ambulance service was started in 1869, and was
the first service of its kind in the world.
[Sidenote: Bull's Head Village]
Bull's Head Village was located in the district now included within
Twenty-third and Twenty-seventh Streets, Fourth and Second Avenues. It
became a centre of importance in 1826, when the old Bull's Head Tavern
was moved from its early home on the Bowery, near Bayard Street, to the
point which is now marked by Twenty-sixth Street and Third Avenue. It
continued to be the headquarters of drovers and stockmen. As at that
time there was no bank north of the City Hall Park, the Bull's Head
Tavern served as inn, bank and general business emporium for the
locality. For more than twenty years this district was the great cattle
market of the city. As business increased, stores and business houses
were erected, until, toward the year 1850, the cattle mart, which was
the source of all business, was crowded out. It was moved up-town to the
neighborhood of Forty-second Street; later to Ninety-fourth Street, and
in the early 80's to the Jersey shore. The most celebrated person
connected with the management of the Bull's Head Tavern was Daniel Drew.
He afterwards operated in Wall Street, became a director of the New York
and Erie Railroad upon its completion in 1851, and accumulated a fortune
by speculation.
[Sidenote: Peter Cooper's House]
At Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue, on the southeast corner, the
house numbered 399-401, stands the old "Cooper Mansion," in which Peter
Cooper lived. It was formerly on the site where the Bible House is now,
at the corner of Eighth Street and Fourth Avenue. Peter Cooper himself
superintended the removal of the house in 1820, and directed its
establishment on the new site so that it should be reconstructed in a
manner that should absolutely preserve its original form. Now it
presents an insignificant appearance crowded about by modern structures,
and it is occupied by a restaurant.
This corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue was directly on
the line of the Boston Post Road. Just at that point the Middle Road ran
from it, and extended in a direct line to Fifth Avenue and Forty-second
Street.
[Illustration: The Little Church around the Corner]
[Sidenote: Little Church Around the Corner]
The Little Church Around the Corner, a low, rambling structure,
seemingly all angles and corners, is on the north side of Twenty-ninth
Street, midway of the block between Fifth and Madison Avenues. It is
the Episcopal Church of The Transfiguration. Its picturesque title was
bestowed upon it in 1871, when Joseph Holland, an English actor, the
father of E. M. and Joseph Holland, the players known to the present
generation, died. Joseph Jefferson, when arranging for the funeral, went
to a church which stood then at Madison Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street,
to arrange for the services. The minister said that his congregation
would object to an actor being buried from their church, adding: "But
there is a little church around the corner where they have such
funerals." Mr. Jefferson, astonished that such petty and unjust
distinctions should be persisted in even in the face of death,
exclaimed: "All honor to that Little Church Around the Corner!" From
that time until the present day, "The Little Church Around the Corner"
has been the religious refuge of theatrical folk. For twenty-six years
of that time, and until his death, the Rev. Dr. George H. Houghton, who
conducted the services over the remains of actor Holland, was the firm
friend of the people of the stage in times of trouble, of sickness and
of death.
[Sidenote: Lich Gate]
The lich gate at the entrance of the church is unique in this country,
and is considered the most elaborate now in existence anywhere. It was
erected in 1895, at a cost of $4,000.
The congregation worshipped first in a house at No. 48 East
Twenty-fourth Street, in 1850. The present building was opened in 1856.
Lester Wallack was buried from this church, as were Dion Boucicault,
Edwin Booth, and a host of others. In the church is a memorial window to
the memory of Edwin Booth, which was unveiled in 1898. It represents a
mediaeval histrionic student, his gaze fixed on a mask in his hand. Below
the figure is the favorite quotation of Booth, from "Henry II": "As
one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; a man that fortune's
buffets and rewards has taken with equal thanks." And the further
inscription: "To the glory of God and in loving memory of Edwin Booth
this window has been placed here by 'The Players.'"
At Lexington Avenue and Thirtieth Street is the First Moravian Church,
which has occupied the building since 1869. This congregation was
established in 1749. In 1751 their first church was built at No. 108
Fair (now Fulton) Street. In 1829 a second house was erected on the same
site. In 1849 a new building was erected at the southwest corner of
Houston and Mott Streets. This property was sold in 1865, and the
congregation then worshipped in the Medical College Hall, at the
northwest corner of Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, until the
purchase of the present building from the Episcopalians. It was erected
by the Baptists in 1825.
[Sidenote: Brick Presbyterian Church]
At Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street is the Brick Presbyterian
Church, which stood at the junction of Park Row and Nassau Street until
1858, when the present structure was erected. The locality was a very
different one then, and the square quaintness of the church looks out of
place amid its present modern surroundings. There is an air of solitude
about it, as though it mourned faithfully for the green fields that shed
peace and quietness about its walls when it was first built there.
It is related of William C. H. Waddell, who, in 1845, built a residence
on the same site, that when he went to look at the plot, with a view to
purchase, his wife waited for him near by, under the shade of an apple
tree. The ground there was high above the city grade.
[Sidenote: Bryant Park]
The ground between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Fortieth and Forty-second
Streets, now occupied by Bryant Park and the old reservoir, was
purchased by the city in 1822, and in 1823 a Potter's Field was
established there, the one in Washington Square having been abandoned in
its favor. The reservoir, of Egyptian architecture, was finished in
1842. Its cost was about $500,000. On July 5th water was introduced into
it through the new Croton aqueduct, with appropriate ceremonies. The
water is brought from the Croton lakes, forty-five miles above the city,
through conduits of solid masonry. The first conduit, which was begun in
1835, is carried across the Harlem River through the High Bridge, which
was erected especially to accommodate it. At the time the reservoir was
put in use the locality was at the northern limits of the city. On
Sundays and holidays people went on journeys to the reservoir, and from
the promenades at the top of the structure had a good view from river to
river, and of the city to the south. The reservoir has not been in use
for many years.
The park was called Reservoir Square until 1884, when the name was
changed to Bryant Park.
[Sidenote: A World's Fair]
On July 4, 1853, a World's Fair, in imitation of the Crystal Palace,
near London, was opened in Reservoir Square, when President Pierce made
an address. The fair was intended to set forth the products of the
world, but it attracted but little attention outside the city. It was
opened as a permanent exposition on May 14, 1854, but proved a failure.
One of the attractions was a tower 280 feet high, which stood just north
of the present line of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. In August,
1856, it was burned, and as a great pillar of flame it attracted more
attention than ever before. The exposition buildings and their contents
were in the hands of a receiver when they were destroyed by fire October
5, 1858.
Bryant Park has been selected as the site for the future home of the
consolidated Tilden, Astor and Lenox Libraries.
[Sidenote: Murray Hill]
Murray Hill derives its name from the possessions of Robert Murray,
whose house, Inclenberg, stood at the corner of what is now Thirty-sixth
Street and Park Avenue, on a farm which lay between the present
Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, Bloomingdale Road (now
Broadway) and the Boston Post Road (the present Third Avenue). The house
was destroyed by fire in 1834. On September 15, 1776, after the defeat
on Long Island, the Americans were marching northward from the lower end
of the island, when the British, marching toward the west, reached the
Murray House. There the officers were well entertained by the Murrays,
who, at the same time, managed to get word to the American Army: the
latter hurried on and joined Washington at about Forty-third Street and
Broadway, before the English suspected that they were anywhere within
reach.
The Murray Farm extended down to Kip's Bay at Thirty-sixth Street. The
Kip mansion was the oldest house on the Island of Manhattan when it was
torn down in 1851. Where it stood, at the crossing of Thirty-fifth
Street and Second Avenue, there is now not a trace. Jacob Kip built the
house in 1655, of brick which he imported from Holland. The locality
between the Murray Hill Farm and the river, that is, east of what is now
Third Avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, was called
Kipsborough in Revolutionary times.
[Sidenote: Turtle Bay]
The British forces landed, on the day of the stop at the Murray House,
in Turtle Bay, that portion of the East River between Forty-sixth and
Forty-seventh Streets. It was a safe harbor and a convenient one.
Overlooking the bay, on a great bluff at the present Forty-first Street,
was the summer home of Francis Bayard Winthrop. He owned the Turtle Bay
Farm. The bluff is there yet, and subsequent cutting through of the
streets has left it in appearance like a small mountain peak. Winthrop's
house is gone, and in its place is Corcoran's Roost, far up on the
height, whose grim wall of stone on the Fortieth Street side at First
Avenue became in modern times the trysting-place for members of the "Rag
Gang."
[Sidenote: The Elgin Garden]
Forty-seventh and Forty-ninth Streets, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues,
enclose the tract formerly known as the Elgin Garden. This was a
botanical garden founded by David Hosack, M. D., in 1801, when he was
Professor of Botany in Columbia College. In 1814 the land was purchased
by the State from Dr. Hosack and given to Columbia College, in
consideration of lands which had been owned by the College but ceded to
New Hampshire after the settlement of the boundary dispute. The ground
is still owned by Columbia University.
The block east of Madison Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth
Streets, was occupied in 1857 by Columbia College, when the latter moved
from its down-town site at Church and Murray Streets. The College
occupied the building which had been erected in 1817 by the founders of
the Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb--the first asylum
for mutes in the United States. The original intention had been to erect
the college buildings on a portion of the Elgin Garden property, but
the expense involved was found to be too great. The asylum property,
consisting of twenty lots and the buildings, was purchased in 1856.
Subsequently the remainder of the block was also bought up.
[Sidenote: St. Patrick's Cathedral]
At Fiftieth Street and Fifth Avenue is St. Patrick's Cathedral, the
cornerstone of which was laid in 1858. The entire block on which it
stands was, the preceding year, given to the Roman Catholics for a
nominal sum--one dollar--by the city.
The Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in the adjoining block, on Fifth
Avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty-second Streets, was organized in
1825, but not incorporated until 1852, when the present buildings were
erected.
[Illustration: Milestone 3rd Ave. near 47th St.]
[Sidenote: Four Mile Stone]
There is still standing, in Third Avenue, just above Fifty-seventh
Street, a milestone. It was once on the Post Road, four miles from
Federal Hall in Wall Street.
Close by Fiftieth Street and Third Avenue, a Potter's Field was
established about 1835. Near it was a spring of exceptionally pure
water. This water was carried away in carts and supplied to the city.
Even after the introduction of Croton water the water from this spring
commanded a price of two cents a pail from many who were strongly
prejudiced against water that had been supplied through pipes.
[Sidenote: Beekman House]
Memories of Nathan Hale, the Martyr Spy of the Revolution, hover about
the neighborhood of Fifty-first Street and First Avenue. The Beekman
House stood just west of the Avenue, between Fifty-first and
Fifty-second Streets, on the site where Grammar School No. 135 is now.
It was in a room of this house that Major Andre slept, and in the
morning passed out to dishonor; and it was in a greenhouse on these
grounds that Nathan Hale passed the last of his nights upon earth. The
house was built in 1763 by a descendant of the William Beekman who came
from Holland in 1647 with Peter Stuyvesant. During the Revolution it was
the headquarters of General Charles Clinton and Sir William Howe. It
stood until 1874, by which time it had degenerated into a crumbling
tenement, and was demolished when it threatened to fall of natural
decay.
[Sidenote: An Old Shot Tower]
A very few steps from the East River, at Fifty-third Street, stands an
old brick shot tower; a lonely and neglected sentinel now, but still
proudly looking skyward and bearing witness to its former usefulness. It
was built in 1821 by a Mr. Youle. On October 9th it was nearing
completion when it collapsed. It was at once rebuilt, and, as has been
said, still stands. In 1827 Mr. Youle advertised the sale of the lots
near the tower, and designated the location as being "close by the Old
Post Road near the four mile stone."
[Sidenote: The De Voor Farm]
Within half a dozen steps of the old tower, in the same lumber yard, is
a house said to be the oldest in the city. It is of Dutch architecture,
with sloping roof and a wide porch. The cutting through and grading of
Fifty-third Street have forced it higher above the ground than its
builders intended it to be. The outer walls, in part, have been boarded
over, and some "modern improvements" have made it somewhat unsightly;
but inside, no vandal's art has been sufficient to hide its solid oak
beams and its stone foundations that have withstood the shocks of time
successfully. It was a farm-house, and its site was the Spring Valley
Farm of the Revolution. It is thought to have been built by some member
of the De Voor family, who, after 1677, had a grant of sixty acres of
land along the river, and gave their name to a mill-stream long since
forgotten, save for allusion in the pages of history.
A block away in Fifty-fourth Street, between First Avenue and the river,
is another Dutch house, though doubtless of much later origin. It stands
back from the street and has become part of a brewery, being literally
surrounded by buildings.
[Sidenote: Central Park]
The first suggestion of a Central Park was made in the fall of 1850,
when Andrew J. Downing, writing to the _Horticulturist_, advocated the
establishment of a large park because of the lack of recreation-grounds
in the city. On April 5, 1851, Mayor Ambrose C. Kingsland, in a special
message to the Common Council, suggested the necessity for the new park,
pointing out the limited extent and inadequacy of the existing ones. The
Common Council, approving of the idea, asked the Legislature for
authority to secure the necessary land. The ground suggested for the new
park was the property known as "Jones' Woods," which lay between
Sixty-sixth and Seventy-fifth Streets, Third Avenue and the East River.
At an extra session of the Legislature in July, 1851, an Act known as
the "Jones' Woods Park Bill" was passed, under which the city was given
the right to acquire the land. The passage of this Act opened a
discussion as to whether there was no other location better adapted for
a public park than Jones' Woods. In August a committee was appointed by
the Board of Aldermen to examine the proposed plot and others. This
committee reported in favor of what they considered a more central site,
namely, the ground lying between Fifty-ninth and One Hundred and Sixth
Streets, Fifth and Eighth Avenues. On July 23, 1853, the Legislature
passed an Act giving authority for the acquirement of the land,
afterward occupied by Central Park, to Commissioners appointed by the
Supreme Court. The previous Jones' Woods Act was repealed. These
Commissioners awarded for damages $5,169,369.69, and for benefits
$1,657,590.00, which report was confirmed by the court in February,
1856.
In May, 1856, the Common Council appointed a commission which took
charge of the work of construction. On this commission were William C.
Bryant, Washington Irving and George Bancroft. In 1857, however, a new
Board was appointed by the Legislature, because of the inactivity of the
first one. Under the new Board, in April of the year in which they were
appointed, the designs of Calvert Vaux and Frederick L. Olmsted were
accepted and actual work was begun.
The plans for the improvement of the park, which have been consistently
adhered to, were based upon the natural configuration of the land. As
nearly as possible the hills, valleys and streams were preserved
undisturbed. Trees, shrubs and vines were arranged with a view to an
harmonious blending of size, shape and color--all that would attract the
eye and make the park as beautiful in every detail as in its entirety.
The year 1857 was one of much distress to the poor, and work on the park
being well under way, the Common Council created employment for many
laborers by putting them to work grading the new park.
The original limits were extended from One Hundred and Sixth to One
Hundred and Tenth Street in 1859.
As it exists to-day, Central Park contains eight hundred and sixty-two
acres, of which one hundred and eighty-five and one-quarter are water.
It is two and a half miles long and half a mile wide. Five hundred
thousand trees have been set out since the acquisition of the land.
There are nine miles of carriageway, five and a half miles of
bridle-path, twenty-eight and one half miles of walk, thirty buildings,
forty-eight bridges, tunnels and archways, and out-of-door seats for ten
thousand persons. It is assessed at $87,000,000 and worth twice that
amount. More than $14,000,000 have been spent on improvements.
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