The New York City Hall Park was the ancient "Commons," or public
pasturage, and it now contains the headquarters of the city
government, and may be regarded as the political and business centre.
It is enclosed by Broadway, Park Row and Chatham Street, a triangular
space, formerly a sort of garden around the City Hall, but now well
occupied by other buildings. At the southern extremity is the
Post-office, which cost $7,000,000, a grand granite structure in Doric
and Renaissance, with a fine dome and tower, which are a landmark for
miles. Around this Park, and in the many streets radiating from it,
are a vast aggregation of corporate institutions and great buildings
devoted to all kinds of business. Here are the offices of newspapers,
banks, trusts, insurance companies, railways, lawyers, politicians,
exchanges, etc., with lunch-rooms and restaurants of every grade,
liberally provided to feed or stimulate the multitude. The famous
hotel of a past generation, the Astor House, rich in historical
associations, stands on the opposite side of Broadway from the
Post-office. Along Park Row are the great newspapers, and here is
Printing House Square, adorned with statues of Benjamin Franklin and
Horace Greeley, appropriate in this region deluged with printer's ink.
Here is the Ivins Syndicate Building, finished in 1898, the loftiest
structure in New York, twenty-nine stories, its towers rising three
hundred and eighty-two feet. The tall and narrow Tribune Building, of
red brick with white facings, has its clock tower reared two hundred
and eighty-five feet, while beyond is the Pulitzer Building, of
brownstone, with a gilded dome, its apex rising three hundred and
seventy-five feet. The building of the American Tract Society on
Nassau Street is twenty-three stories and three hundred and six feet
high, with a restaurant on the top. Park Row runs into Chatham Square,
over which the Brooklyn Bridge terminal comes out, with elevated and
surface railroads all about. This is a location of cheap shops and
concert halls, and is prolonged into the Bowery, an avenue of the
humbler classes, lined with shops, theatres and saloons, generally
crowded, and having four sets of street cars running on the surface,
besides the elevated roads above. The ancient Dutch farms on this part
of the island were known as the "Bauereies," whence came the name of
the street.
Chambers Street bounds the City Hall Park on the north, and upon it
faces the Court-house, a massive Corinthian building of white marble,
finished in 1867, famous as the structure which the "Tweed Ring" of
that time used to extract about $15,000,000 from the city treasury on
fraudulent bills, or more than five times the actual cost of the work.
It stands on part of the site of an old fort, which in the Revolution
was the British outpost commanding the approach to the city by the
Northern or Bloomingdale Road, now Broadway. The City Hall, to the
southward, is a less pretentious and much older building, constructed
in the Italian style, of white marble with freestone at the back to
the northward, it being supposed at the time of its completion, 1812,
that "no one of importance would ever live to the north of the
building," then a broad expanse of farms. Here is the office of the
Mayor and the meeting-place of the Board of Aldermen, and its chief
apartment is the "Governor's Room," adorned with portraits of various
Governors of New York and Revolutionary patriots, and having among its
treasures Washington's desk and chair which he used when first
President of the United States, and also the chairs of the First
Congress. To the southwest of the City Hall a fine statue of Nathan
Hale, an early victim of the Revolution, executed by the British in
New York in 1776, faces Broadway.
Near Chambers Street and the northern end of the Park a noted building
stands on the opposite side of Broadway, a modest brownstone structure
without any pretension nor of much height, but containing a famous
bank, whose phenomenal success is everywhere known. This is the
Chemical Bank, originally started as a chemical manufacturing company
with banking privileges. The chemistry seems to have been a failure
and soon abandoned, but the banking talents were so well developed
that the shares of $100 par value have sold for over forty times that
sum. The capital is only $300,000, but it has amassed a surplus over
twenty times the amount, and is the strongest bank in New York. Among
the large shareholders are said to be three New York ladies who
married foreign titles--the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (who was
Miss Pine, afterwards Mrs. Hamersley, and now Lady Beresford), the
Duchess de Dino (Miss Sampson), and the Comtesse de Trobriand (Miss
Jones). It is here that the noted Mrs. Hetty Green generally conducts
her financing, a lady of immense fortune and peculiar ideas, who has
been one of the greatest money accumulators of New York. Across
Chambers Street, and occupying an entire block, is the building that
originally was "Stewart's Store," where the late Alexander T. Stewart
made most of his success in the dry-goods trade, now converted into a
vast office building for all kinds of business. This was the outpost
of the "Dry Goods District," for Broadway northward for several
blocks, including a wide belt of adjacent streets, now deals with all
kinds of products of the mill and loom, clothing and similar articles.
Here are located the agents and factors for many mills at home and
abroad, and their traffic sometimes exceeds a thousand millions of
dollars a year. The pulse of the American dry-goods trade throbs in
this locality, weakening or strengthening as poor or good crops give
the farmers and working-people a surplus to spend upon dress. Mr.
Stewart once said that if every woman decided to pass a single season
without a new bonnet it would sufficiently diminish trade to bankrupt
this whole district. Canal Street crosses New York through the
northern portion of the district, a broad highway, formerly a water
course draining an extensive swamp across Broadway to the Hudson
River. In this locality, east of Broadway, are two famous regions--the
"Five Points," now, however, much improved, and "Chinatown." The
latter, in Mott Street, has its Joss House, restaurant, theatre and
opium joints, and is picturesque with swinging lights and banners. In
Leonard Street, standing where once was part of the swamp, is the
noted Tombs City Prison, thus named because originally it was a sombre
gray building in the gloomy Egyptian style, but this was recently
replaced by a modern structure. The Criminal Courts adjoining are
connected with it by a bridge.