The Borough of Brooklyn, which has grown from the overflow of New
York, whose people are said to go over there "chiefly to sleep or be
buried," is popularly known as the "City of Churches." A large portion
of the working population of the metropolis, as well as the merchants
and business men, make it their home and dormitory, while there are
beautiful cemeteries in the suburbs peopled largely by dead New
Yorkers. Greenwood, overlooking New York harbor from Gowanus Heights
in South Brooklyn, is regarded as one of the finest American
cemeteries. In no other city can be found such an aggregation of
churches, developed in a past generation, and under the ministry of a
regiment of distinguished clergymen, then led by Beecher and Storrs,
so that the popular title was well bestowed. Brooklyn is entirely the
growth of the nineteenth century, a growth due to the inability of New
York to spread, excepting far northward. It stretches several miles
along East River and three or four miles inland, and grows rapidly.
When the century began, however, it was hard work to find three
thousand people there, and, strangely enough, they had to cross over
to New York to go to church. Just about the time old Peter Minuit was
buying Manhattan from the Indians, a band of Walloons first settled in
Brooklyn. Their descendants drove cows across East River to Governor's
Island to graze, the Buttermilk Channel between them being then
shallow enough for fording, though it is now scoured out deep enough
to float the largest vessels, the docks located where the cows then
crossed now accommodating an enormous commerce. At first a little
ferry from Fulton Street to Peck Slip, New York, accommodated the
straggling village, and it has grown into more than a dozen steam
ferries of the largest capacity, which (besides the bridge) will carry
daily a half-million people across at one cent apiece, this fleet of
packet-boats being the greatest transporters of humanity in the world.
The Indians called the region around Wallabout Bay, and Gowanus
Mercychawick, meaning "the sandy place." When the Walloons came along,
they began settling on the shores of the bay, which they called
Waal-bogt, afterwards gradually changed to its present name of
Wallabout. In 1646 the town was organized by Governor Kieft as
Breuckelen, he appointing Jan Eversen Bout and Huyck Aertsen as
"schepens" or superintendents to preserve the peace and regulate the
community. During the Revolution the British prison-ships were moored
in the Wallabout, and it is estimated that eleven thousand five
hundred Americans, chiefly seamen, died upon them, the shores of the
bay being full of dead men's bones, which the tides for many years
washed out from the sand. In 1808 these bones were finally collected
and put in a vault near the Navy Yard, which had been established on
the bay. This is the chief naval station of the United States,
covering about eighty-eight acres, including all the available space.
There is attached a large naval hospital, while between the two is the
immense Wallabout Market, covering forty-five acres, the largest in
Brooklyn, its buildings being brick structures in the old Dutch style.
Fulton Street is the chief highway of Brooklyn, beginning almost under
the shadow of the great Bridge. It is a broad and attractive street,
stretching six miles to the eastern edge of the city, and about one
mile from the river it passes the various city buildings, including
the Post-office, Court-house and Borough Hall, all handsome
structures. In front of the Borough Hall is a fine statue of
Brooklyn's most famous clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher. From Fulton
Street radiate several of the highways leading into the fashionable
residential quarter,--Brooklyn or Columbia Heights,--overlooking East
River, where the tree-bordered streets are lined with costly and
attractive dwellings. Here in Orange Street, in a very quiet spot, is
Brooklyn's most noted edifice, a plain, wide, unornamented brick
building, with the inscription, "Plymouth Church, 1849." Here preached
for nearly forty years, until he died in 1887, Beecher, the great
Puritan, whose family was so noted. His father, Lyman Beecher, like
the son, fought slavery and intemperance in Boston, Litchfield and
Cincinnati, and was an impressive pulpit orator. The old man was
eccentric, however, and after being wrought up by the excitement of
preaching, is said to have gone home and let himself down by playing
on the fiddle and dancing a double-shuffle in the parlor. He had
thirteen children, nearly all famous, and has been described as "the
father of more brains than any other man in America." Four sons were
clergymen and two daughters noted authoresses. Henry Ward, who ruled
Brooklyn, and Harriet, who wrote _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, were among the
great leaders of the anti-slavery movement.
Clinton Street leaves Fulton a little beyond Orange, and passes
southward through Brooklyn Heights, being the chief street of the
fashionable district. Embowered in trees, handsome churches and
residences border it, and Pierrepont, Remsen, Montague and other noted
streets extend at right angles from it to the edge of the bluff, where
the Heights fall sharply off to the river. Here, at seventy feet
elevation, and overlooking the lower level of buildings and piers at
the water's edge, are the terraces where the finest residences are
located, having a magnificent outlook upon the harbor and New York
City beyond. The ships land their cargoes within almost a stone's
throw of the palaces. In this district there are several large
apartment-houses and various clubs, a statue of Alexander Hamilton
adorning the front of the Hamilton Club at Remsen and Clinton Streets.
Upon Remsen Street is another noted building, the Congregational
"Church of the Pilgrims," a spacious graystone edifice with towers,
its most prominent tower and spire being a commanding landmark for
vessels sailing up New York Bay. There is let into the outer wall of
this church, about six feet above the pavement, a small piece of the
original "Plymouth Rock" whereon the Pilgrims in 1620 landed in
Massachusetts Bay--a dark, rough-hewn fragment, projecting with
irregular surface a few inches from the wall. As an author, lecturer
and preacher, the veteran pastor for over a half-century, Dr. Richard
Salter Storrs, acquired wide renown. Upon Clinton Street is the
elegant Pointed Gothic brownstone St. Ann's Episcopal Church, famous
for its choir, and on Montague Street the Holy Trinity Church, its
spire rising two hundred and seventy-five feet. But almost everywhere
are churches, there being about five hundred in Brooklyn. The noted
Pratt Institute is one of the best known charities of the city,
founded and endowed by Charles Pratt, an oil prince, as a technical
school, its spacious and well-equipped buildings caring for
thirty-four hundred students. The object of this noble institution is
"to promote manual and industrial education, and to inculcate habits
of industry and thrift."