Wa^YouDfl CHARLES HEMSTR^EET liiiiisffii 3 1822 01250 yui^ i Art-**. / (j* a When Old New York Was Young When Old New York Was Young BY CHARLES HEMSTREET Author of "Nooks and Corners of Old New York ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1902 Copyright, 1902, Bv Charles Hemstreet All Rights Reserved Published, April, 1902 Trow Directory Printing iu$t41t THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BOWLING GREEN IT has been a source of wonder how the Bowling Green has maintained its iden- tity for three centuries. Men have been born, have become famous, have died and been forgotten ; stately buildings have been erected, have crumbled away and mingled with the dust; but the land now called the Bowling Green has remained undisturbed. It was an open space when the first white man landed on the Island of Manhattan ; it is the same open space to-day. It was called the Bowling Green first in 1733, and has never been called anything else, even though no bowling has been done there these hundred or more years. For myself, I have thought of the Bowling (ireen so often, and have [3\ BOWLING GREEN come to regard it with so much respect as a place of historic interest, that at times it has seemed to me an animate being instead ot a senseless bit of ground. If it were such, I know that it could write an interesting auto- biography, which, I feel quite sure, would be written much in this style : Don't ask me to tell you anything about my infancy. I absolutely refuse. It I am to write an autobiography, I insist on begin- ning just where I choose, without being hampered by anything or anybody. I want to begin at that time when, after lying neglected for centuries, downtrodden by Indians, who beat a narrow path across me, there was a stir about, and I saw white people for the first time. I afterward learned that they were traders, who concerned them- selves with buying the skins of animals and shipping them away to Holland.. After a few [4] BOWLING GREKN years, more white people came. They built wooden houses all about me — a town. It was very good in them to let me alone. '* Petticoat Lane led into Bowling Green." They put up a rough-looking enclosure and gave it the name of Fort Amsterdam. And it was just about this time that I, too, was given a name. They called me " The Plaine," LsJ BOWLING GREEN and I now became a village green and a pa- rade-ground for the soldiers. When William Kieft came to be Governor, and went blustering about in the fashion that- brought upon him the name of *' William the Testy," and after he and his soldiers had fought the Indians, and the Indians had laid waste the bouweries, there came a quieter time, when the soldiers and Kieft and the town officials and the Indians met. Then they trampled me under foot and sat upon me — smoking their pipes of peace. It was after this that Governor Kieft thought it would be well to honor me in some special manner. So he decided to have two markets held in the fall of each year — one for hogs and one for cattle — ^nd I was considered a good ground for this pur- pose. Of all the Dutch Governors, though, I liked Peter Stuyvesant best. He was stern [6] o o i h BOWLING GRKKN and abrupt, but he was just, too, and I could forgive him ev^en when he stumped across me every day, his wooden leg leaving an imprint that was quite annoying. He established a public market close by me, alongside of the fort, that took the place of those which had been held in the tall. Fat cattle were tied to posts and exhibited for sale, and people came in great crowds driving ox-teams. There were horses with pillions on their backs, where a man and a woman rode to- gether, and all manner of vehicles. The people kept up a chattering all day long, and the horses and oxen, when they were un- hitched, wandered off by the little battery that Leisler had set up, and ate the grass all the livelong day. But the year 1733 was an eventful one for me, for in that year I was rechristened and called the Bowling Green. I was leased to three citizens. Very line men were Colonel [9\ BOWLING GREEN Philipse, John Roosevelt, and John Chambers. They were to fence me in and make a bowl- ing green, with pretty walks, for the use of themselves and other citizens. They did this very well, and left a line wide space on each side for the street that is called Broadway. I was very well satisfied with my new condition, but felt rather put out to think that I had been leased to these good citizens at such a low rate. For they were only obliged to pay one peppercorn a year for me. After ten or eleven years the price was raised to twenty shillings. This was more as it should be, and somewhat soothed my pride. My life went along smoothly after that, and I continued to be a bowling green, and a place where the people met in times of re- joicing and for merrymaking. But my days as a bowling green, the happiest and most peaceful, came to an end. In the year 1770 my troubles commenced, for the people then [loj -7^ BOWLING GREEN planted squarely upon me a heavy stone pedestal. I was a little puzzled to know what it was all about, but very soon they raised a statue of King George III. on the pedestal and put an iron fence about it. This railing still stands. The statue was not there long. Only six years, and then, at the time of the Revolution, the people, no longer honoring the king whose image they had erected so joyfully, pulled it down and dragged the royal figure in the dust. But they left the stone pedestal, and there it re- mained for several years. I had been quite neglected while the Brit- ish held possession of the city. They dumped all sorts of things upon me and loaded me down with rubbish. I was very glad when they left New York, and had I had a voice would have cried out as loudly as did the people when the soldiers of the Continental Army came trooping about me. r>3i BOWLING GREEN Very soon after the war I was put in spick and span order. It was a sad day for me when the old fort was torn down, but then the Government House, which was put up in its place, was a fine building. It stood facing The Government House which Faced Bowling Green. me, and I must say it would not have looked half so well had I not been there, making it so that no other house could be crowded near it and obstruct the view. But nothing seems to be enduring. I have [14J BOWLING GRP:EN seen houses grow old and fall down all around me. The Government House didn't last long — not nearly so long as some of the others. After it went, I settled down into an easy life as a little park, and have not been disturbed very much since. The houses are growing higher and higher about me, shut- ting out more light and air every day, and making me quite gloomy at times, but there never has been anything said, that I have heard, about putting a house on me, and thus blotting out my existence, and I hope that such a misfortune will never take place. 15 HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL GOLDEN HILL ! What memories rise, like shadows at the sound of the name ! Sturdy Dutch colonists working in the fields of ripened grain ; Dutch maidens walking by the side of clear brooks ; sleepy cows wandering along grass-grown roads ; picturesque, angular houses on sloping hillsides. This was the infancy of Golden Hill. It is different now. From St. Paul's churchyard, in Broadway, two minutes' walk toward the east, and we stand on Golden Hill, the ground reddened by the first drop of blood shed in the War of the Revolution. Where John Street touches William, there is a dingy tablet on a still more dingy house-wall, which tells of [19J HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL the shedding of that martyr blood in 1770. Cross William Street from the tablet, count six houses toward the north, and we stand before Golden Hill Inn, which is so fresh- ened up externally that it is hard to believe it to be over one hundred years old. The colonists bitterly opposed the Stamp Act, passed in 1765, from which the British Government sought to obtain a revenue by compelling them to buy stamps and to affix them to all documents. When it was re- pealed in 1766, they set up a Liberty Pole. The dragging down ot this pole by the Brit- ish soldiers led to the Battle of Golden Hill. The battle-field was back of the inn, on what is now a small, ill-conditioned yard. It is a cramped space, divided by a tottering fence. There is a solitary tree, whose gnarled branches lean against the nearest wall as though for support, that has stood there as long as the inn itself. HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL Gold Street, a few feet east of the battle- ground, commemorates the name of Golden Hill. Where once a narrow lane led through green fields, and at every step the underbrush became more tangled, until it ended in a for- est of great trees. Gold Street now winds and turns. The flowers that bloomed there have given place to ragged walls of brick ; the undergrowth to a mass of pavements, door- ways, iron shutters, and tangled railings. Here and there an old building bears witness to the days of long ago, and nowhere more interestingly than in the picturesque lines that go to make up the " Jack-Knife," at Gold and Piatt Streets, This building, rising four stories high, is at one end so narrow that a man with extended arms can measure its width. It is a verv cupboard, with rooms branching from the staircase like shelves. The best view is obtained from the Piatt Street side. The name, ** Jack-Knife," was L21J HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL given to it years ago by those who decided that it looked more like a giant knife-blade than anything else. It was a square tavern until the present Piatt Street was cut through the property of Jacob S. Piatt, in 1834, and reduced it to its present dimensions. Turn from the " Jack-Knife " into Will- iam Street, and from there around the corner into John, to see another relic of Golden Hill — the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church. This is a solid, dingy building, pressed upon almost to extinction by sur- rounding structures. The record of the sev- eral remodellings of this church, since it was built in 1768, can be seen on the faded marble tablets of the present building. A few steps farther, and we stand on ground Washington often trod, for the open space behind the houses numbered 17, 19, and 21 John Street formerly bounded the old John Street Theatre, where Washington wit- HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL nessed the performances. A dreary arcade is all that is left of the covered way which led to the little play-house. When the British held possession of the town, the army officers turned actors in this theatre. It was a merry place then, and resounded to bursts of ap- plause. Nowadays, instead of shouts of laughter, is heard the buzz of machinery, and the resonant voices of the actors are replaced by strident tones of workingmen. The wooden walls, painted red without, are gone, making way for structures of brick, with a rusty tangle of fire-escapes clinging to them. Around the corner, one block along Broadway, and then into the ancient Maiden's Lane. With the first step into it, one can see the street winding out of sight among the distant houses, just as it did around the base of Golden Hill when it was a tiny stream between steep green banks. Dutch HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL maidens took their way to this stream to do the family washing. Their many feet wore a path, and what more appropriate name for it could be found than the *' Virgin's Path," which, in time, became the Maiden's Lane. In the walk down Maiden Lane, the first street crossed is Nassau ; peculiarly narrow and undulating, and still showing strong traces of the hills and valleys it traversed when it was the ** Pie Woman's Lane," in the latter days of the seventeenth century. Here, as everywhere else in the Golden Hill district, there is a continual conflict between the old and the new. This conflict has left, at William Street, one section of a house, plastered up against a larger structure. The house-end on William Street is scarcely a foot wide, and the rooms inside would be barely large enough for a doll. Where the stream that flowed beside the Maiden's Lane emptied into the river, a HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL blacksmith set up a shop that gave to the locaUty the name of Smit's V'lei, or the Smith's Valley. This was the starting-point of a little settlement that grew year by year. As the houses multiplied, the land became more valuable. The stream was filled in and became a street. The river was forced back, and houses were erected on the land thus reclaimed. In the early part of the eighteenth century a market was built upon this land. It was in the centre of Maiden Lane, and extended three blocks from Pearl Street to the water-front. Being in Smit's V'lei, and that name having been corrupted, it was called the " Fly " Market. Although there is now no trace of the King's Head, at the present northwest corner of Maiden Lane and Pearl Street, it stood there at the close of the seventeenth cen- tury. It was a substantial inn, this house of Roger Baker. Baker is remembered in his- [27J HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL tory as the man who said, during the trial for treason of Colonel Nicholas Bavard, in 1702, that '' William HL had a nose of wax, and was no longer king than the English pleased." He was heavily tined for this saying. From Maiden Lane enter Pearl Street. Li the early days, when New York was New Amsterdam, the favorite walk of the colo- nists followed the course of the East River. Walk along Pearl Street, and we are follow- ing that once beautiful river-path. The foot-path in time became a lane; then a street. In 1695 it was called Great Queen Street; in 1725 simply Queen Street. Bv 1765 the portion south of Wall Street had become Pearl Street. When Washington became President of the new nation he lived on this street, near by the open space now Franklin Square. It was a main thoroughfare, with buildings [28] HALF AN HOUR ON GOLDEN HILL from four to six stories high — skyscrapers for those days. In the first days of the nine-^ teenth century the entire thoroughfare had become Pearl Street. Whatever it may once have enjoyed of country green, and unob- structed river breezes, no trace of them remains. It is now a cramped and gloomy way, darkened by the structure of the elevat- ed road from above, and by an irregular line of unattractive buildings on each side. Within sight of the ground on which stood Washington's house, turn off and fol- low Fulton Street to the west, and you have completed the circuit of Golden Hill. ,!>] KIP'S BAY AND KIP'S HOUSE Kip'5 6/ / /\N0 nip'i nou^^ ^i=- - Z ^tt.■^!r£?iy.^'•^ i^y-.'jf <^' fi I virJf rt>*V ^"^ C AA//* •- ffTT T3 ^R£.e.N^/^tc$^ THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH IF anyone should wish to see a great deal of Old New York in a single walk, let him go by the Inland Road to Green- wich. Although the road, which was opened in 1768, does not exist to-day, it is easy to trace by following Park Row, the Bowery, Astor Place, and Greenwich Avenue. This road connected the town of New York with the village of Greenwich, points quite two miles apart in early days. There was another road — along the western water- side — but the tide and the marshes made it at times unfit for travel. Park Row, where the walk begins, was Chatham Street in Revolutionary days, and its old name bore witness to the gratitude of [47J THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH the people to William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, for his efforts in behalf of the American colonies. But the city authorities, regard- less of sentiment, early in the nineteenth century, renamed the street Park Row where it extended past City Hall Park, and in 1886 that name was given to the thor- oughfare for its entire length. Park Row has sadly degenerated since its early days. Walk from the park past a series of cheap restaurants, cross three inter- secting thoroughfares, and one comes to Baxter Street. This point, now far down- town — twenty minutes' walk from the Bat- tery — was the limit of the city boundary shortly before the Revolution. A little brook crossed the road right here, spanned by the earliest Kissing Bridge, where the townsfolk met friends and parted from travellers, with certain interesting ceremo- nies. Over there, at the southwest corner, [48J THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH that dilapidated, peaked-roof building with the number i66 above the door, stands just where the Tea-Water Pump was — a won- derful pump, the chief water-works of the city during most of the eighteenth century, that gave pure water which was supposed to contain qualities that made it especially valuable in the making of good tea. In later days, subsequent to 1839, diago- nally across the way was the Chatham Thea- tre, where " Kirby used to die," and where *< Uncle Tom's Cabin " was first produced in the city, in 1852. On, a few steps, and one reaches Chat- ham Square, whose history began in 1647 as a fenced-in space tor cattle in the midst of a forest. Close by, where Pell Street runs into the square, stood the house where Char- lotte Temple died. That unfortunate English- woman came to this country just before the Revolution, with an English officer, and when [49] THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH • she was deserted found shelter in this house, then some distance from the city. The inci- dents of her Hfe formed the basis of a novel by Mrs. Susanna Rowson, and through this mieans her memory has lived, for more than a century, to " point a moral and adorn a tale." In the time when Kieft governed, six bouweries, or farms, were laid out on the lower eastern part of the island. When Governor Stuyvesant bought one of these bouweries in 1651, he started the Bou- werie Village, which centred about where Cooper Union is now. The road which led to this village was called Bouwerie Lane. This was the commencement of the first road which extended the length of the island — the Post Road, called by the English the Bowery Road, and now the Bowery. In time, low, picturesque Dutch houses lined both sides of Bouwerie Lane, and later the [50] THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH British army of occupation encamped beside them. Almost at the point where the Bowery- has its beginning, at the northern edge of Chatham Square, stands a building of mas- sive front, noticeable in contrast to the en- vironing houses. This is all that remains of the old Bowery Theatre, the fifth of its name, for it was four times burned. It was the first theatre to be lighted by gas, and in it Charlotte Cushman made her first appear- ance in New York ; here also the elder Booth, Lester Wallack, and Edwin Forrest won their greatest triumphs. In the final years of its existence, before it became the Thalia Theatre in 1879, the Bowery was given over to melodrama, and it is in con- nection with these last days that it is best remembered. Long before the days of the Bowery Theatre, the Bull's Head Tavern stood upon [5-] THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH this site, having been built about 1760. It was the chief inn of the day, being on the main road to the town, and was much fre- quented by drovers, as the slaughter-houses were close by. It was here that Washing- ton and his staff rested, after the British troops had marched along Bowery Road in the evacuation of the town. On up the Bowery, and in a few minutes one reaches Rivington Street, and comes to a battered bit of stone standing upright at the curb line. Passed unnoticed by the hurry- ing throngs, it is a landmark ; one of the last existing: mile-stones that marked the dis- tance on the Post Road from the City Hall in Wall Street. Much of the land to the east of this mile- stone was owned by James De Lancey, who in 1733 was Chief Justice of the colony, and twenty years later Lieutenant Governor. His country home was little more than a stone's- 1 52] THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH throw from the mile-stone, at what is now the northwest corner of Delancey and Chrys- tie Streets, and it was there he died in 1760. Now the district is one of tenement-houses, and gives no suggestion of the house of De Lancey, or the lane which traced the line of the present Delancey Street through a green field to the house. The travellers to Greenwich Village by the Inland Road turned toward the west, on the outskirts of the Bouwerie Village, into the section of the road afterward known as Monument Lane. So the walker now turns, when Cooper Union is reached, and, passing into the open space of Astor Place, is in the old lane. Interesting memories cluster about Astor Place. Clinton Hall, the largest building, is the third of that name. It is the home of the Mercantile Library, and it is named in honor of De Witt Clinton, who gave the [55] THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH first volume to the library when it was or- ganized in 1820. On this site once stood the Astor Place Opera House, the scene, in 1849, ^^ ^^^ Macready-Forrest riots, which were the culmination of a quarrel between the two actors. Facing the open space from the north is the building now used as a German theatre, which was erected in 1841 for Dr. Macau- ley's Presbyterian congregation, which had previously worshipped in a church at 37 Murray Street. This building w^as later oc- cupied by Dr. Shroeder, who had been a minister of Trinity Church, and, after his failure to establish a parish, the house was used by St. Ann's Roman Catholic congrega- tion. To the south of the space was the Vaux- hall Garden, a pleasure-ground established in 1799, the last vestige of which disappeared in 1855. Lafayette Place was opened through [56] THE INLAND ROAD TO GRKKNWICH the Garden in 1826, and ten years later the picturesque block on the west side of the street, now called Colonnade Row, was built, and called La Grange Terrace, after General Lafayette's home in France. In houses of this row at one time lived Washington Irv- ing and John Jacob Astor. Monument Lane extended in a direct line from the Bowery to Washington Square. Between that point and Broadway there is now no trace, in the thickly built-up block, of the lane of a hundred years ago. In those days Washington Square was a pauper grave- yard, often complained of as being too near a fashionable drive. The cemetery was re- moved in 1H23 to where Bryant Park now is. Beyond Washington Square the road turned to the northwest and skirted Green- wich Village. The last section of it will be found in Greenwich Avenue, which juts out of Sixth Avenue close by Jefferson Market. [57J THE INLAND ROAD TO GREENWICH The streets on one side of it run away at all sorts of angles, while those on the other side are straight and regular, showing plainly enough how the by-ways of the old village met the streets of the first City Plan, and failed to connect at any point. At the upper edge of Greenwich Village, close by what is now Eighth Avenue and Fifteenth Street, was a monument which commemorated the memory of General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. During the British occupation the monument disap- peared and no trace of it was ever found. At this monument ended Monument Lane, and also the Inland Road to Greenwich. [58] CHRISTMAS IN OLD NEW AMSTERDAM CH!?i6rnA$ /N Old Ne.vv An-i re/?0/\Nj__ CHRISTMAS IN OLD NEW AMSTERDAM JUST before the sun went down, on a Christmas Eve in the days when Peter Stuyvesant governed on the Island ot Manhattan, its rays fell upon the pretty little village of New Amsterdam. Here it nestles at the lowest point ot the island — one hun- dred and twenty as dainty and picturesque houses as artist ever dreamed ot ; tiny struct- ures one story high, some ot stone, some ot brick, some of wood ; all with steep, slanting roofs. This, then, is the village of New Amsterdam, shut in to the north by a wooden wall, with its two gates about to be closed for the night ; gates that are as the eyes of the town, for the citizens go to sleep when the gates are locked. Close by the river is I 6 1 I CHRISTMAS IN OLD the Water Gate, and, near by, two small, fierce- appearing cannon, ready to do mischief to any strolling band of Indians that might ap- The Water Gate at the Foot of Wall Street. pear in the night. And beyond the wall there is a stretch of rugged country, brush land, and forest. Some patches where the trees have been cleared away show the begin- NEW AMSTERDAM nings of a bouwerie. There are solitary houses on high ground, and far away, three miles at least from the wall, are half a dozen buildings that mark the start of Stuyvesant's Bouwerie Village, a tiny infant now, but which is to grow stronger and stronger with each passing year. There is just enough light to show the little town with its enclosing wall; just enough light to see the crooked, narrow streets, that have grown to their present dignity from lanes that led from house to house. These begin in uncertain manner, and wander along in undecided fashion, to end against houses, to disappear into marshy spots, to halt abruptly on the edge of dwarf canals. Here is the fort with its mud walls, and op- posite its sally-port is The Plaine, that is one day to become the Bowling Green. There is the Heere Straat (that will some day be Broadway), extending straight to the Land I 63 I CHRISTMAS IN OLD Gate of the wall ; and there is the business thoroughfare of the village, Pearl Street, with its forty-three shops facing the waters of the Whitehall, Governor Stuyvesant's House. East River. And there, too, is the Beaver's Path, damp and marshy, leading out of The Plaine, through the sheep pasture, and ending at the Heere Gracht — the Grand Canal — [64] NEW AMSTERDAM which in after years will be buried deep beneath a bit of city that shall be called Broad Street. And here is the palace of New Amsterdam, towering at the edge of the water-side — the Governor's new house, called Whitehall, which has just been built, its surrounding gardens covered lightly by the snow which has fallen during the afternoon, and which is still falling. The sun goes down and leaves the little town in darkness ; leaves the houses to be watched over by Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of New Amsterdam. Then the voices of children rise in the night, and their song is the one that every child in New Amster- dam knows best of all : Saint Nicholas, good, holv man, Put your best Tabard on you can, And in it go to Amsterdam; From Amsterdam to Hispanje, Where apples bright of Orange, [65I CHRISTMAS IN OLD And likewise these pomegranates named, Roll through the streets still unreclaimed. Saint Nicholas, my dear, good friend, To serve you ever was my end ; If you me now something will give, Serve you I will as long as I live. The song dies away. Silence mingles with the night. When the sun comes up again, it is Christmas morning ! Its first rays see the city's gates opened, and the little town slowly awaken ; see the smoke curling from chimneys that tell of fires built in wide fireplaces. See colored slaves at front windows, and know that the parlor, that secluded apartment opened only on Sundays and holidays, has been opened, and know, too, that the white sand on the spotless floors has been worked with a broom into all man- ner of fantastic shapes. There can be heard sounds of children's merry voices as they dis- cover the rude toys that have been put in [66] NEW AMSTERDAM their stockings in the name of their good friend, Saint Nicholas. New Amsterdam is now wide awake. Not with the roar and The Canal and Fish Bridge in Broad Street. din of a bustling city, but the peaceful sounds of family life ; a people content in simple surroundings, in a land that they have made their home in spite of struggle and hardship. [67] CHRISTMAS IN OLD And now the sun, looking full upon the little town, sees the small burghers in their homespun coats, their knee-breeches, their rough boots, their low-crowned, broad- brimmed hats over hair that dangles to their shoulders, saluting one another with happy- wishes for this Christmas day. It is too early even yet for the great burghers to be abroad. The Dutch youths are preparing for the turkey-shoot of the forenoon, and the good vrouw is already bustling about arranging for the afternoon dinner. The sun then creeps inquisitively into the Governor's Whitehall house, and finds him, the sturdy Peter Stuyvesant, dressing for the day. It peers into the dwellings of the bur- gomasters and schepens, and notifies them that it is time to be about. Later, as the day grows older, the sun, not strong enough to melt the snow that rests like a white veil upon the ground, smiles upon the young men [68] NEW AMSTERDAM with their guns on their shoulders, and the old men with their pipes, who gather at the trysting-place. The Plaine before the Fort. When all are come, the merry crowd go trooping along the Heere Straat. The hum of voices, which has grown to full strength, is hushed as the joyous company pass the little graveyard above The Plaine. One old man stops as the others pass on, and, with un- covered head, murmurs some words, his eyes fixed upon a wooden cross standing in a heap of earth. Then he, too, goes on and joins the rest as they pass through the Land Gate, and so on to The Common. The sun beams most approvingly upon the turkeys — fine, fat fellows — hung up on a pole, and sees the youthful sportsmen shoot at these turkey targets and carry off their prizes, while the older townsmen stand about, and, between puffs at their pipes, tell of the days when they carried off turkey prizes, and they outdo one L69J CHRISTMAS IN OLD another then and there in stories of the turkey- shoots when they were young, and of how The Water Front on the East River. much better marksmen there were in the good old days. It is afternoon. The sun witnesses the official visit of the burgomasters and the schepens to the Governor at Whitehall. There is the stern Peter Stuyvesant — not so [70j NEW AMSTERDAM stern as usual to-day — standing at the head of the great entry which leads to the stoop, and is wider than an ordinary room, and much longer. He wears his regimental coat, all covered with brass buttons, with the skirts turned up at the corners, bright-colored breeches, a silver buckle on his one low shoe, and his wooden leg, tipped with silver, firmly planted before him. Standing there he sa- lutes, as they advance, the two burgomasters, the five schepens. Dominie Magapolensis, the great burghers, the town clerk, and even the bell-ringer of the church in the Fort. Still later in the afternoon the families sit before the wide fireplaces in the kitchens, with the Christmas dinner ready to be served. There are the turkeys, the immense apple- pies, the saucers of preserved peaches, the balls of sweetened dough fried in hog's fat, and cake and wine and punch — a dinner that has been looked forward to for many a [71] OLD NEW AMSTERDAM month. And then the sun, finding a way into the house with its last faint ray, sees the old burgher in his fav^orite corner of the fire- side tranquilly smoking his pipe, his wife diligently knitting stockings ; the children around the hearth. But what the sun does not see, are the dancing, and the festivities in the Governor's house, ablaze with lighted candles. The hall is thronged with young men and maidens, who dance while the Governor looks long- ingly on. The candles burn very late this night ; at ten o'clock they are still lighted ! But pres- ently the last one is snuffed out by Peter Stuyvesant himself. There is no sign now of any light in the little town. New Am- sterdam sleeps soundly after its merry- maKm ki 'g- [70" ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S _JL J% F-Ulr-roi^ S J L me.£ r- AnN St: AdOi/r 0-0 5r. tiuu'a ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S IN the chapel of St. Paul, and in the graveyard that surrounds it, there are sights enough to keep a thoughtful person busy during more than one long day. To see the people hurrying along Broadway, without even a glance at the dim, old building, you would never think so. Close by the chapel door, which faces the churchyard, there is a bench, which I occupy so often that I have come to feel that it is my personal property. It rests close by the ivy-covered wall, and, although it is but a dozen steps from the street, the intervening church- yard gives it relief and quiet, so that all sight [75] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S and sound of the bustling city seem shut off. Sometimes there are visitors, doubtless at- tracted by my at-home appearance as I sit there, who ask me questions about the church and the churchyard. I always like to be asked these questions, and answer them as best I can. It the questioners are interested, I deliver a sort of lecture, telling how very small the city was in the year 1 764, when the corner-stone of the church was laid, and how the building was opened in the second year after that. Then I wander on, and tell how there were fields all around in those days, and how they sloped from the church door right down to the river. Sometimes, when there is a word of surprise at the many houses that now stand between the church and the river, I explain that a great deal of the land has been filled in during the one hundred and thirty-odd years that have [76] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S passed, and that it has become too valuable to be left as a green field. My last inquirer was an old gentleman, who was so n>uch more in earnest than the Broadway below St. Paul's Chapel, 1834. usual curiosity-seeker, that I asked him if he had lived long in the city. *' I am only here for a time, from the West," said he. " This is my first visit to St. Paul's, although I love every stone in the old building. My father, when he was a [77J ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S child, lived near here, and, although he left the city with his parents in his youth, he often talked to me of this church, and how he had played among the tombstones when he was a boy. But the church seems smaller than I have imagined it." And then I told him that to me, too, the church seemed to grow smaller each year, but this was, doubtless, caused by the tall buildings growing up around it ; and that the church had, in the time when his father knew it, been considered a giant of a building. The old man nodded his head. ** Yes, yes; doubtless so," said he. Then, on my invitation, he gladly followed me into the chapel, and I led the way to the pew, off the north aisle, where George Washington used to sit when he attended service, and which has been preserved as he used it. ** So this is the Washington pew ? " said my companion, as he tenderly tapped the [78] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S wood-work against which he leaned, and looked admiringly at the coat-of-arms of New York on the wall above. " Yes, and you will remember that in 1776, when the invading British force came. Washington's Pew in St. Paul's Chapel, 1789. the city was fired, Trinity Church was burned, with all its records, and the flames swept away a great part of the western side of the city. St. Paul's Chapel was saved, and here, during the British occupation, [79] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S Lord Howe, the English commander, and many soldiers of the King attended service. And when the British left New York, and the American forces came, Washington and his army took their places in the church. And to this church, on the day that he was inaugurated as first President of the United States, came Washington, and sat in this pew in which we now sit. Those who visited the church in Washington's time have left the record that when he was Commander- in-Chief, and in the days when he was Presi- dent, he always attended the church without the slightest display, that he walked in very quietly, and that when he was in his seat he paid not the slightest attention to anything except his prayer-book and the clergyman. During all the time that he was in the city he regularly, each week, made the entry for Sunday in his diary, * Went to St. Paul's Chapel in the forenoon.' [80] ... Md ||^|»Sl BsalT-.' 2!^:'5q?ilil CQ u ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S " And there you see the sounding-board on the pulpit, with the coat-of-arms of the Prince of Wales on the top. During Revo- lutionary days, patriots rushed through the city and destroyed everything that suggested allegiance to England. In some way, this sounding - board escaped destruction, so that now it is the only pre-Revolutionary relic remaining in the place where it originally stood. " There, beside the west wall, is a bust of John Wells, erected by the members of the City Bar. He was a talented lawyer, who died in 1823. Wells was the sole survivor of a large family, all the members of which, except himself, were killed by Indians at the Cherry Valley massacre. That he lived was due to his being at the time away from home attending school. He came to the city, practised law successfully for many years, and died regretted by the entire fraternity." [83] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S These things and others in the chapel I pointed out to my companion, and then he followed me out into the church-yard again. We noted the spot, close by Vesey Street, where lay the remains of George Backer, who killed the son of Alexander Hamilton in a duel, a few years before the great states- man was himself killed in the self-same way. There was another grave, almost in the centre of the yard, of a man who, in his day, had made a name for himself, which is almost forgotten now. It was the grave of Christopher Colles. He first conceived the idea of the Erie Canal, and delivered lectures on the subject, long years before DeWitt Clinton carried the project to a successful conclusion. It was this same Christopher Colles who built a reservoir by the Collect Pond, giving New York her first water- works, and applying steam practically to his pumping - station ten years before Fulton [84] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S applied it to navigation. Colles died in 1 82 1, a poor man. The tall monument to the south of the church, erected to the memory of Thomas Addis Emmet, the jurist, and brother of Robert Emmet, interested my companion more than anything else. He took a deep interest in deciphering the inscription on the west side — a curious inscription for a tomb- stone, for it reads, 40 42' 40" N., 74 03' 21" 5W.L.G., and tells the exact latitude and longitude in which the monument is. When we came to the monument set in the chancel window, facing the street, my companion looked at me inquiringly. It was just after the celebration of Decoration Day, and a wreath of fresh flowers, bound with a trailing ribbon of imperial purple, quite hid the inscription on this tomb. [85] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S Then we talked over the story of the brave hero of Quebec — Major- General Richard Montgomery — whose body lies beneath the chancel ; .spoke of how he had fallen in that fateful battle of 1775 calling on the men of New York to follow where he led ; how the men had followed him, and how many of them had fallen with their general ; of the day, forty-three years later, when the nation for which he had died, remembering his brave deeds, had brought his body home to the city from its first resting - place in Quebec ; how on that day the city had been draped in mourning ; how the streets had resounded to the tread of marching feet, and how the body had been interred beneath the chancel, where the monument was already set up, a memorial to a great and good man, and a reminder to all that the deeds of men live after them. And then we reached the gate which [86] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S opens into the church - yard from Broad- way. For a few moments we stood silently looking at the crowds that hurried past. I do not know what were my companion's thoughts just then, but my own were ot those other men who a hundred years before had hurried along the same thoroughfare, and of whom the only reminders now are the tombstones in the church-yard. My com- panion then left me, mingled with the crowds, and was soon lost to sight. I meant to have told him that to know all the picturesqueness of Old St. Paul's it should be visited on a night in early win- ter; one of those dreary nights when the rain falls, blurring the glare of lights until those from each separate store-window seem to melt together. Then all the noise and bustle settle down into a sullen roar. Wet and dripping horses flounder past ; cable- cars glide along with clanging sound of [87] ABOUT OLD ST. PAUL'S bell ; people knock umbrellas together as they hurry on. The rain, the noise, the confusion, the lights, bewilder the brain. As one passes the Astor House, where the confusion is greatest, the lights most daz- zling, the crowds largest and most in a hurry, you suddenly come upon the church- yard. It is merely to cross narrow Vesey Street — but it is like stepping from day to night. The sight of the dark, old church and the quiet tombs behind the tall iron fence breathe of silence and comfort. In the daytime the tombstones are brown and faded, but on these rainy nights the lights creeping in through the bars make them white as snow. A quaint, curious corner, side by side with the roar and rush of the city. The rusty iron railing is a barrier seeming to shut out noise and life, as though to protect the sleepers in their well-earned rest. [88] GREENWICH VILLAGE AND THE "MOUSE-TRAP" '] GREENWICH VILLAGE AND windows that went out of fashion before most of us were born ; find circular windows jammed in between square ones ; find every- An Old Home in Greenwich Village. thing that is old and quaint, but nothing that is of this day and generation. It is curious to note the different ways in which the streets of the ** Mouse-trap " dis- appear. Sometimes they end abruptly in a court ; sometimes they twist out of sight [92] THE "MOUSE-TRAP" around a row of houses against which they are brought with a sudden halt ; sometimes they slip into another street and become one with it ; sometimes they are cut short by little open spaces which are called parks, and in which there are a few decaying trees. In this " Mouse-trap " you can wander about for hours and lose all sense of where you are. You may feel quite sure that you are walking north, when all at once you hnd that you are walking east and are practically lost ! A man has lately insisted to me that there is no Greenwich Village ; that there had been one eighty years ago, but that there was now no trace of it. As the man had lived in the city all his life, I was quite fran- tic. No Greenwich Village ! I pointed to a map of the city to show the iconoclast the irregular grouping of streets along the Hud- son River, where anyone can see with half an eye that the Greenwich Village streets were [93] GREENWICH VILLAGE AND such a tangled network that, try as they might to connect with the streets of the city, they had not done so and never could. Then I took him to the village itself, to show him how the city streets and the village streets came together, but, like chemicals of oppos- ing natures, refused to join. Thus I proved conclusively that there was a Greenwich Village as separate as though the vacant swamps and sand stretches and the Minetta Brook closed it in as they once had. Then I led him to the " Mouse-trap," to show that Greenwich Village was not much changed from what it had been years ago. The main street of the " Mouse-trap," lined with quiet little shops, is called Bleecker Street now, although it has had several other names. In its early days it was a country- road leading from Minetta Brook to Green- wich. One of the outlets is Grove Street. If you stand in Bleecker Street and count [94] THE "MOUSE-TRAP" four houses east from Grove, you will find a low frame house, with a shop on the first floor, having a door beside it which is the entrance to the rooms above — a door quite worn away with much scrubbing, and neat as any new-made pin. This house stood right here in the year 1809. Examine it while I tell you what the " Mouse-trap " was like in those days. The house stood in the midst of farm lands close by Greenwich Village, and more than a mile from town. On this mile of sandy stretch there were several country- houses with their surrounding grounds. One was the Richmond Hill house, in which Aaron Burr lived at the time he killed Alex- ander Hamilton. Just a little way north of this old place was the house which Admiral Peter Warren built when he married Su- sannah De Lancey, in 1741, and gave the Greenwich district its tone as a fashionable [95] GREENWICH VILLAGE AND environment for country-houses ; and near by, on the water-side, was the State Penitentiary, with a high wall enclosing its stone buildings. All these fine houses have been swept away, but the humble little dwelling on Bleecker Street has endured. It was pointed out as a place of interest even in the year 1809, for there lived in it a man, very old then, whose name was famous. In this house Thomas Paine, the author of the "Age of Reason," passed all but a few of the last days of his life. He lived there, cared for by a Frenchwoman named Madame Bonneville, whose two sons also lived with her. Paine's room was on the ground-floor, where the shop is now, and on any mild day in summer the passer-by could see him sitting at the south window, reading in a book which was open on a small table before him. He was seventy-two years old when, in May, 1809, the household removed to a dwelling [96] THE "MOUSE-TRAP" close by their old home. There Paine be- came ill, and was visited by two clergymen, who sought to convince him of the error of his beliefs. But Paine would not even listen to them, and when they had gone he said to Madame Bonneville : " Don't let them come here again ; they trouble me." But they did come again, nevertheless, and were met at the door by Madame Bonneville, who refused to admit them. '* If God does not change his mind, I am sure no human power can," said she. In a few days Paine died. The house stood for only a few years, and then Grove Street was opened and it was torn down. A row of brick buildings was set up. Several of them still remain, and the one numbered 59 stands on the site of the frame house in which Thomas Paine died. After a time another street was laid out through the open field near by, and was called Reason Street, in Paine's honor. It was not [97] THE "MOUSE-TRAP" long, however, before this was corrupted to Raisin Street, and now it is called Barrow Street. At the time of the small-pox scare, in 1822, when thousands of people hurried to Greenwich Village to escape it, houses there- abouts grew up rapidly. Streets were laid out following the convenience of the house- builders, and there being no fixed plans in their several minds, the labyrinthine " Mouse- trap " came into existence. [98] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS ^ i?BA0ii4i ol Hi^roRic Ukuat :y A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS ON a day in early summer I met a very old man standing where Broadway begins, and there was something so kindly in his manner that I ventured to stop and see why he gazed so long at a slab of bronze fastened to the wall of the house at No. I Broadway. It was a tablet placed there by one of the patriotic societies to mark the place on Bowling Green where the statue of King George III. had stood in Revolutionary days. There must have been something sympa- thetic in my manner, for the old gentleman beamed as I stood beside him and read the inscribed words. [.OI] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS ** You, too, study the tablets, I see," said he. ** It is one of the best ways really to understand history. Books seem dry when we can visit real scenes, and by reminders like this," pointing with his cane, "recall what has happened on the self-same spot." When I hinted that I was interested in all that had an old-time flavor, he told me that he was seeking out the city's tablets, and would be glad to have me accompany him. And so I did. • " Before we start," said he, ** let me tell you how I study. Forgetting the lofty build- ings that rise above me, the modern vehicles, and the rush of busy life, I try to imagine what the town was like at the time of which this tablet tells. I see a village filled with soldiers of the Continental Army and all astir with the news that a new nation has been formed. I hear a far-away shout — it comes from the Common, where George Washing- [102] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS ton is reading the Declaration of Indepen- dence to the soldiers. The shouts grow louder and louder, for the townspeople have reached the City Hall in Wall Street and are tearing to tatters the picture of King George that hangs there. Louder still grow the shouts, for the citizens (quite a mob now) are coming nearer. They are upon us ; they throng the Bowling Green ; they tear down the iron railing around King George's statue ; they batter off the heads of the royal family from the posts. Now one man has climbed up the base that supports the leaden horse and its royal master; others throw him a rope which he puts about the horse's neck. There is a cry that rises above the general din, a straining at the rope, and the horse and rider fall to the ground and are dragged away. Surely," he exclaimed, ** that is a glowing page from history L" " Indeed it is," I answered. [>°3] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS He grasped my arm and we crossed Broad- way, turning into the first side street. "This," said my guide, "is the old Beaver's Lane. Down that narrow way to the right you can see just a suggestion of what was called Petticoat Lane, now almost blurred out of existence by fine houses. It was there that the Hartfordshire and York- shire Tavern stood in which Admiral Peter Warren enlisted his men before he sailed away to capture Louisburg in 1745. The sheep-pasture that was hereabouts is gone. But here we are at Broad Street. You know why it is so broad ? It was once a canal with a walk on each side and a bridge across it where Bridge Street is now, from which the young men of the town used to fish. But the canal became too old-fashioned for the town, so it was filled in. " We turn the corner. What do we see ? Another tablet surely ! A fine large one this [104] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS time, with a bas-relief showing a covered wagon and some British soldiers. See that man grasping the bridle of the officer's horse. That's Marinus Willett. It happened in the year 1775 that the British soldiers were on their way to Boston with large stores of am- munition. But the Sons of Liberty had deter- mined that no ammunition should leave the town. So Marinus Willett stopped the trav- ellers, and those other hgures that you see in the distance are the Sons of Liberty coming to the aid of Willett. Another half- hour and the soldiers would have gotten off, but Willett halted them single-handed, right here on the very spot on which we stand." The old man talked on with a line vein of enthusiasm in his voice. We turned from the Willett Tablet, and my companion, drawing me along Broad Street, said : '* When we pass two streets farther on you will see a landmark that should make [■°5] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS your blood tingle. There it is, that square building on the corner, a little disfigured, with small windows that proclaim it of another decade. That is Fraunces's Tavern, the house that Etienne De Lancey built and Washington's Farewell in Fraunces's Taverno lived in until Sam Fraunces, in 1762, turned it into a tavern, where Washington had his head-quarters and bade his officers farewell when the Revolution was at an end. You can see the tablet near the Pearl Street entrance. What fine tales these old walls could tell ! [,06] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS " The next tablet is only a few steps on," said the old man, with a last longing look at the old tavern, and, when we had taken those few steps and stood at Coenties Slip, he pointed to the second story of a warehouse. " Stadt Huys" at Coenties Slip. There was a tablet, but so high up that the inscription upon it could not be read. But my guide knew every word of it. A stone tavern, he explained, had been built on the spot by Governor Kieft, in 1642, and that [107] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS tavern had afterward become the Stadt Huys — the first City Hall of New Amsterdam — where the burgomasters and schepens con- ducted the business of the town ; where Kieft often proved that he came honestly by his title of *' William the Testy " ; and where Peter Stuyvesant laid down the law to the townspeople. My guide also pointed out the spot close at hand where the whipping-post had stood, and where the gallows had been on which negro slaves were executed, A dozen houses farther along Pearl Street we stopped again, before a record telling that here William Bradford had set up the first printing-press in the colony ; and across the street was still another, calling the attention of each passer-bv to the fact that there was a " great fire " in 1833, when most of the busi- ness section of the town was wiped out. " But," said the old man, pointing to the last, " there was another fire even greater [108J A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS which started in this same locality. It hap- pened on the day that the British marched into New York after Washington's defeat on Long Island. The flames swept over the town, crossed Broadway, destroyed Trinity The Ruins of Trinitv Church after the Great Fire in 1776. Church and all the houses about it, scorched St. Paul's, and was only extinguished when it reached the grounds of King's College, be- yond the Common." My companion talked of this fire in great detail as we walked along, only stopping [109] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS long enough, when we reached Nassau Street, to tell me that this thoroughfare had at first been called the Pie Woman's Lane. He had not yet finished telling about it when we came to Cedar Street, and he called out, '* Another tablet!" This was where the Middle Dutch Church stood. ** But," said he, sadly, " that was a long time ago, when the streets were roads, and when the ripening grain brushed the church-wall. The church stood for a great many years, and was a fine building still, as I remember it, for I went to service there with my father. It was square, with a tower-like steeple, with the pulpit between the two entrances, and the pews fitted with doors, and so high-backed and straight that few persons who sat in them could touch the floor with their feet. The church was turned into a riding-school for the soldiers when the Brit- ish occupied the city, and later into a prison. [no] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS After the British left, it was restored, and services were held there until 1844, when it became the Post-office, and remained so for thirty years." We had now reached another bronze tab- let, at John Street, marking the battle of Golden Hill, which was fought in the early days of the Revolution, after the British sol- diers had torn down the liberty-pole on the Common. " See there," said my guide, pointing with his cane up William Street ; " there stands Golden Hill Inn, about which the battle was fought. It is a factory now, but even mod- ern fixing-up cannot hide the tiny bricks of which it is built, and which were brought from Holland, or the tall chimney stretching toward the roof of surrounding houses, or the many little touches that speak of bygone days." He turned regretfully from the old inn [■■3] A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS and was silent as we continued our way to the Post-office, where, in the corridor, we stood before a tablet which told that the lib- erty-pole had been close by. And then on again, into the City Hall Park, to read, under Lispenard's Meadow. the Mayor's window, that there Washington read the Declaration of Independence to the soldiers. " But it was not a park in those days," said my companion, ** simply a bare bit of ground A READING OF HISTORIC TABLETS that surrounded the Bridewell and the New Jail. To the west was King's College, and still farther on an uninterrupted view of the river. There, to the north, was the deep Collect Pond, and the stream leading through Lispenard's Meadow. To the east, where Park Row is now, was the Post-road, and the Brick Presbyterian Church stood where the Times Building now is. Down that way to the south was all there was of the city, a very little town, indeed, with crooked streets and low houses, now so transformed that scarcely a trace of them remains." Saying this, he wished me good-day, with a courteous bow. I left him looking steadfastly southward, dreaming of the past, and doubtless passing in review a host of shadows that only he could see. r>'5i THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE uie. Sr fifty „Z C%/ Sq, -r */./-, JQoAH^ THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE TO learn all tha.t there is to know of Chatham Square, it will be neces- sary to look back on the history of the city more than 250 years. A very few rudely built houses standing close by the present Bowling Green made up the town of that time, and Chatham Square was a little clearing in the forest. Much of the island was a wilderness, and between the houses of the settlement and the clearing in the forest there was a solitary lane, narrow and lonely. Many changes came to the land about the clearing. Gradually, very gradually, the forest disappeared; the lane became a road, then a street ; the settlement became a town, then a city that, creeping toward the ["9j THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE north, reached the clearing and passed be- yond it. The inclosing fences of the clear- ing gave way to houses. The streets were paved. And, finally, when it would seem that everything had been done to blot out the gap in the forest, the elevated railroad came to put a sort of roof over the space and still further to change its original appearance. But through all the changes there has still remained that same open space. It came into existence in this way : Up to the time that William Kieft (who was called William the Testy) came to be Governor of New Amsterdam, which was New York's name in those days, the town was nothing more than a place where fur-traders lived, who had no very strong intention of making it their home. Kieft came in the year 1637. About this time the Dutch West India Company, which had control of *the Island of Manhattan, with much other land, de- [120] u THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE cided that if the town of New Amsterdam was to be a permanent settlement that would grow into a city, it would be necessary to offer inducements for colonists to make a home on the island. So this company made some very generous offers of land on most fair conditions: The eastern side of the island, as far as to where Fourteenth Street is now, was divided into six farms (called bouweries), and colonists settled upon them. The one road which connected the bou- weries with the settlement at the lower point of the island was afterward called the Bou- werie Lane, and was the beginning of the present Bowery. But there were a great many Indians on the island, and they gave the settlers on the bouweries very little rest or time tor cultivating the land. So these settlements were not of a permanent nature, which fact leads up to the story of the birth of Chatham Square. THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE Some time, quite near to that when Kieft's rule gave place to that of Peter Stuy- vesant, which was in the year 1647, a set- tlement was established on a hill close by where Chatham Square now is. There had been an Indian lookout station there, which had been called Werpoes. On this hill, ten or twelve negroes, with their wives, made their home. All had been slaves, to whom freedom had been given because they were too old to work. The settlement was headed by Emanuel de Groot, who was so tall, and in his younger years had been so strong, that he was still called *' the giant." These settlers were given the land, but in return they were each compelled to pay the town one hog and twenty-two and one-half bushels of grain a year. Although they were free, their children were to remain slaves. One of their earliest tasks was to fence in a space where the cattle could be [124] u THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE kept to prevent their wandering and being lost in the forest, which stretched away on every side. It was this corral which, in after-years, became Chatham Square. The street which stretches south from Chatham Square, and which is now called Park Row, has only borne that name since 1886. Before that time it was Chatham Street. It got its name as the square did, shortly before the Revolution, from William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the people wishing to perpetuate the name of the man who had defended the American colonies in aiding to have the Stamp Act repealed. The people had also, in 1770, erected a statue to the same Earl of Chatham in Wall Street. But in 1776 British soldiers dragged it down and knocked off its head. For twenty-iive years after that, the headless statue lay neglected with the city's cast-off relics, when, all bat- tered as it was, it was given a place beside [127] THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE the door of Riley's Fifth Ward Hotel, at West Broadway and Franklin Street. All that remains of it can be seen now in the rooms of the Historical Society. Walk one block south from Chatham Square, along Park Row, stand where Mul- berry Street has its beginning, and toward the west you will see a patch of green. It is the Mulberry Bend Park. On that same block, until the park was established a few years ago, was the Mulberry Bend slum. At one side of the slum was the celebrated Five Points, a place with an inter- national reputation for vice. That locality has had a place in the history of the city for more than a century and a half. During the year 1741, when there were only 10,000 in- habitants, and 2,000 of those were negro slaves, the negro insurrection occurred. There were mysterious fires in the town, and the slaves were suspected. Eighteen negroes were [108J THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE hanged and four white persons. Fourteen negroes were burned at the stake in a wood near what afterward became the Five Points. From the northern end of Chatham Square starts the Bowery, and a few steps from its commencement is the building now used as a German theatre, which was once the Old Bowery. Before the Bowery Theatre, and previous to the Revolution, this same site was occupied by a building which has a place in history because Washington slept in it. This was the Bull's Head Tavern. Being close by the city slaughter-houses, all the butchers who came to town stopped at this inn, making it the first commercial inn of its day. During the Revolution, Henry Astor owned the Bull's Head Tavern. He leased it to Rich- ard Varian. But V'arian went privateering, and left the inn to be conducted by his wife. Astor was a butcher, and conducted his business in the Fly Market in Maiden Lane. [129 I THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE He incurred the enmity of all the butchers in the town by conceiving the brilliant idea of riding far out along the Bowery Lane, meet- ing the drovers as they brought their cattle to town, and buying their stock, which he sold to the other butchers at his own price. As the lane was really the only road to the city, Astor in this way formed a trust and prospered for many years. The inn, too, prospered un- til 1826, when it gave place to the Bowery Theatre. The street which juts out of the east side of Chatham Square, and which is called the New Bowery, contains an interesting relic. Half a dozen steps down this thoroughfare is a space between tenements. The ground is high above the street level, and a rusty iron railing is set in a wall which is crumbling and yellow with age. Far above, at all hours of the day, strings of drying clothes flutter in the breeze. Behind the iron railing there [■30J THE STORY OF CHATHAM SQUARE are tombstones in various stages of decay. It is the remnant ot a Jewish graveyard, opened in 1 68 I, and at that time attached to the first Jewish congregation in the city, whose syna- gogue was in Mill (now South William) Street. The yard was cut to its present insig- nificant proportions in 1856, when the street was opened. And since that time the im- provements about Chatham Square have gone steadily on, until now little is left to suggest what the square was in the years long past. [■3>l SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER ^^ East fJn /BR^ SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER WHO has nen heard of prisoners being sent to "The Island"? and who does not know that " The Island " is a place given over to wrong-doers? And who has not a vague idea that there are other islands in the East River which are occupied by city institutions ? But how few appreciate that in all the city limits there are no prettier pictures of green and beautiful country than these same islands ? To learn the truth of this, take a ride on any ot the East River boats. When the boat has fairly started, the wide river has the appearance of a lake. Straight ahead, a long, low building of stone, much like a feudal fortress, seems to extend from l'35i SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER the Manhattan to the Brooklyn side. But as the boat goes on, a thin, silvery line ap- pears on each side of the stone pile, where the river is broken into two channels by a narrow island. As the boat sweeps into the west channel, the turreted pile is seen to be a structure with detached buildings — a hospital and a prison. About it, stretching to the water's edge, are lawns dotted with trees and intersected by winding roads. In strange con- trast to the noisy, bustling city across the nar- row stretch of water, on this island everything is quiet. Not a sound can be heard from the water, not the faintest sign ot life is to be seen, except sometimes on the winding roads a line of men crawling along, one behind the other, with rhythmical step — prisoners. This is John Manning's Island, called Blackwell's Island these two hundred years. John Manning had been captain of a vessel which traded between New York and New [136J SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER Haven. He was made sheriff of New York when it passed into the possession of the British. With the reward of office, he pur- chased an island that had been named by the Indians " Minnahannonck," and at that time was called '* Long Island." What is now Long Island was then Nassau Island. When the Dutch retook New Netherland, in 1673, Manning was in command, Gov- ernor Lovelace being in Boston. For sur- rendering the territory without a struggle he was court-martialled and found guilty. His sword was taken from him publicly as he stood before the Stadt Huys, and was broken. Retiring to his beautiful island, he lived lux- uriously, and at his death bequeathed the property to his stepdaughter. She was the wife of Robert Blackwell, in whose honor the island was renamed. In 1828 the city acquired the property. Opposite the northern end ot Blackwell's SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER Island, on the Manhattan side, there is a beautiful spot and pleasant of memory, for it was close upon this point that Washington Irving spent several of his summers. On the Long Island side is Astoria. At this point the river widens, and, looking upon the placid waters, one can scarcely imagine this to be dangerous Hell Gate, dreaded by early nav- igators as a veritable maelstrom. Its ter- rors are of the long ago, for they vanished after the explosion of tons of dynamite that shattered the hidden rocks, destroyed the homes of game fish and lobsters that had in- habited the Gate time out of mind, and gave an inheritance to craft of every sort. Entering Hell Gate, the boat passes over the dangerous reef to which superstitious sailors gave the name of "Devil's Gridiron." Boiling waters and treacherous tides have sub- sided, and nothing suggestive of danger now remains, except its name. [140] SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER To the west is Leland Island, once called Mill Rock. A strange character, Sandy Gib- son by name, occupied this little island tor years, living in a tiny house, the only inhab- Mill Rock, Hell Gate. itant of the island. He entertained amateur fishermen, and lived a quiet, easy life in his hermitage. Mill Rock was the base of oper- ations when the reefs and rocks of Hell Gate were blown up to deepen the channel. Now [•4'] SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER the island is simply a deserted bit of rough, black rock above the waters. Straight ahead is Ward's Island. Before it is reached the boat must pass between two reefs, remembered as *' Pot Rock " and the " Frying Pan," that were as Scylla and Charybdis to early mariners. These are harm- less now, and more to be feared are the swift currents around the Hog's Back and Negro Point. At first glimpse Ward's Island seems to be the site of Gothic-spired cathedral buildings, and gives no suggestion ot the time when it was one of Walter Van Twiller's farms. For this island, as well as the one now called Randall's Island, was bought by Van Twiller when he was Governor of New Netherland, for ** sundry parcels of goods," and used as his private farm. Both islands were given into the care of a giant Dane named Barent Blom, and after a time came to be known as Great [142] SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER and Little Barent islands. These names were afterward contracted to Great and Little Barn. In Van Twiller's day. Ward's Island was cov- ered with dense woodlands. Though not so dense, the woods are there yet, and if seen from the west- ern side the isl- and shows a solid patch of green, the red brick buildings of the city in- stitutions ap- pearing above Hell Gate, the trees. The eastern side, that, during the Revolution, was the camping - ground for 5,000 English and Hessian troops, is farm- ['43] SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER ing land. At the end which overlooks Hell Gate, the sweeps of pasture land cover pauper graves. There is no evidence now, at the northern end of the island, of a cotton mill 300 feet long that was built there in 1812, and which endured for years after the enter- prise failed ; or of a wooden bridge which extended from the island to the foot of i 14th street, and that was built when the mill was set up. Beyond Ward's Island, and past Little Hell Gate, is Little Barent, now Randall's, Island. Looking at this island over the tiny marsh dignified by the name of the Sunken Meadow, one can see the dense woods of the northern part, and the rugged outlines against the sky of the buildings of the House of Refuge. Since Van Twiller's day this island has been known as Belle Isle and Montressor's Island. The present name, Randall, is derived from the last private owner, Jonathan Randel ; [144] SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER though just how the difference in spelling came about, history does not tell. In 1835 it came into possession of the city. This is the only island of the East River on which a battle of the Revolution was fought. It was little more than a skirmish, and occurred one dark night in September, 1776, when an American company of 250 men attempted to surprise a British post, but were themselves surprised, and being far outnumbered, were defeated. Beyond Randall's Island, and opposite 141st Street on the mainland, there is a bit of land so small and so covered with brightly painted houses that it looks like a splash of blood upon the waters. A touch of contrasting color is the Government lighthouse at the southern edge. This is North Brother Island, and the buildings are various departments of the City Hospital for contagious diseases. Scarcely a stone's throw away is South Brother h45J SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIYER Island, a desolate spot, uninhabited, with four trees sticking out of the sand for sole vegeta- tion. Beyond these trees can be had a glimpse of a low yellow, straggly streak of sand in the distance, bleak but picturesque. The pict- uresqueness is forgotten on discovering that this is Riker's Island, the natural formation of which has been eked out by garbage and ashes from the city. There is an old story that the famous pirate, Captain Kidd, buried part of his ill-gotten gains there, and that years ago people, went there from time to time to dig for it. As no one has ever found any part of the treasure, the tale has grown into a tradi- tion that has never been generally credited. Close to these islands, between South Brother and the mainland, the British frigate Huzzar sank in 1780. For more than 100 years it was believed that this boat had car- ried ^1,000,000 of British gold. Many attempts were made to recover this treasure. [146] SOME ISLANDS OF THE EAST RIVER The first was by a company organized in 1823 for the purpose. Success appeared so certain that cloth bags were made in which the treas- ure was to be packed. The hulk of the rotting ship was found, relics in the shape of British coins, bits of soldiers' trappings and sailors' chests were brought up, but that was all. Other search was made from time to time, but with no greater success. It was not until 1894 that a New York lawyer, search- ing the records of the Admiralty and other British offices, found proof that there had been no treasure on board the ill-fated boat. So, after the lapse of a century or more, it was shown that the $200,000 which had been spent by the various searching parties, was the only real treasure ever connected with the sinking of the Huzzar. [>47] OLD-TIME THEATRES — I /^ r^:^ S Z '- OLD-TIME THEATRES SOMETHING more than sixty years ago the attention of theatre-goers was di- rected to a young actor who appeared at intervals in the Chatham Theatre. He was J. Hudson Kirby. His acting had not much merit, but he persisted in a theory that made him famous. It was his idea that an actor should reserve all his strength for scenes of carnage and death. The earlier acts of a play he passed through carelessly, but when he came to death-scenes he threw himself into them with such force and fury that they came to be the talk of the town. Some of the spectators found the earlier acts so dull and tiresome that they went to sleep, taking the precaution, however, to nudge their neighbor, with the request to wake them up [■5'] OLD-TIME THEATRES for the death-scene. And for long years after Kirby's time, the catch-phrase appHed Chatham Street, near where " Kirh\- used to die." to any supreme effort was **Wake me up when Kirby dies." The recollection of Kirby, the actor, led me one day on a search for the Chatham Theatre, which had been the home of his triumphs. It had stood on the east side of Chatham Street, between James and Roose- velt. But I found no trace of it. Even the name of the thoroughfare had been changed, [■52] OLD-TIME THEATRES and is now called Park Row. There I found a line of small eating-houses and shops so dismal and so time-worn as to look as though they had surely been there before Kirby's day. But there was no sign of the Chatham Theatre. And then I remembered that it had only held its name for a short time after it was opened, in 1839, and was then renamed Purdy's National. It was at this house that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was first produced in the city, in 1852, when it ran for more than a hundred nights — a most unusual record in those days. My effort to locate the theatrical home of Kirby started me off on a trip, which kept me going the greater part of several days, looking up spots where the theatres of the past had been. Passing along Chambers Street, I came upon a building beside the new Hall of Rec- ords, and stopped, for it recalled to me the [>53J OLD-TIME THEATRES story of an unfullilled ambition. More than half a century has passed and gone since Fer- dinand Palmo was the proprietor of the Cafe Niblo's Garden. des Milles Colonnes in Broadway at Duane Street. His was a prosperous business, and he accumulated wealth year by year. But he had a soul above his trade and an ambition to establish the music of Italy in a permanent [>54] OLD-TIME THEATRES home. So he gave up his prosperous cafe and built a pretty Httle theatre at this point in Chambers Street, where Stoppani's baths had been. The theatre was opened in the early part of I 844, with Bellini's opera ** I Puritani," interpreted by Signora Borghese and other singers who had been brought from Italy. Although the house was only moderately pat- ronized at hrst, and although Palmo mort- gaged all his holdings to satisfy his great singers, who were a capricious set, after a few months it looked as though the venture might struggle to success. But Palmo, in his efforts to deal with the premiers, had forgot- ten the chorus-singers and workmen, and they began to grumble. Then, on a gala night, when the house was thronged, the musicians, who had not been paid, suddenly packed up their instru- ments, leaving the Signora Borghese on the [■551 OLD-TIME THEATRES stage at the climax of one of her grand scenes. That was the end of Pahiio and his opera-house. Creditors swooped down upon him and he became a bankrupt. The house Italian Opera House, later the National Theatre, Leonard Street, 1833- was used by several managers after that, until in 1848 W. E. Burton opened it as Burton's Chambers Street Theatre, and it grew to be a successful and a famous house. Palmo watched the fortunes of the house that had OLD-TIME THEATRES been his ruin. He supported himself first as a cook, then as a bartender, and died in pov- erty, his friends said oi^ a broken heart. The ambition of Pahiio to estabhsh a per- manent home for ItaHan opera reminded me of still another attempt. His was the second venture; the first had been quite as disas- trous. It had heen made in the Italian Opera House, built for the purpose, at the southwest corner of Leonard and Church Streets. I went to look for the old opera- house, and found a row of commonplace business buildings. At the corner where the old theatre had been erected in 1833, the proprietor of a shop laughed heartily when I asked him if he had known of it. He had never even heard of such a building, and the idea of a theatre ever having been in a local- ity so entirely given over to business struck him as ludicrous. And yet it had been an elegant theatre, costing more than $100,000. [157J OLD-TIME THEATRES The stock company struggled along for two years, the most notable appearance being that of Julia Wheatley, the first American singer to appear in Italian op^ra in this country. The name was changed to the National Theatre in 1836, and in the next year J. W. Wallack occupied it with a company that made it popular for the first time. It was burned in 1839, and immediately rebuilt, but when in 1841 it was again destroyed by fire that was the last of it. Passing the Temple Court in Beekman Street, I recalled that there had been a theatre on that site in 1761, where "Hamlet" was played for the first time in America. This had been a theatre district in its time, for just around the corner, where the lofty building stands opposite St. Paul's Chapel, P. T. Bar- num had his Museum and Moral Lecture Room ; and half a block farther along I L'58] OLD-TIME THEATRES stood before another giant sky-scraper where the first Park Theatre had been. Walking up Broadway, I turned off at \\ h'^.r '^m^ i^/-r'-"-'Ji^ ^ isj' ,. X^-^'t Barnum's Museum. Canal Street to go to West Broadway. There, close by the corner, on the west side of the way, I stood before St. Alphonsus's OLD-TIME THEATRES Church, and wondered how many of those who passed every day knew that the finest theatre in the America of its day had once Plan of the First Park Theatre, 1796. stood there, with a stage larger than any in England or America at that time. Built in 1826 by General C. W. Sanford, on what was Laurens Street, it was at first called the Lafayette Amphitheatre, a name given in honor of General Lafayette, who was then [160] OLD-TIME THEATRES making a tour of the United States, revisiting in his old age the scenes where he had been such a striking figure in the stirring days of the Revokition. Toward the end of the year in which the theatre was buik, the Erie Canal was opened, and in this house, because On the Bloomingdale Road. it was the largest in the city, the grand cele- bration ball was held. Next year, when the [■6. J OLD-TIME THEATRES house became a regular play-house, it was called the Lafayette Theatre, but in four years it was burned and never rebuilt. When I came to Madison Square and looked at the white front of the Fifth Av- enue Hotel, my thoughts went back to the year 1853, ^hen the hippodrome was intro- Corporal Thompson's Madison Cottage, 1852^ on the Site of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. duced in America. Broadway was the Bloomingdale Road in those days, and for something more than twenty years there had stood here close by the road a queer little yellow house that looked to be all roof and • [16a] OLD-TIME THEATRES veranda. At first the country home of Chris- topher Mildeberger, for many a year now it had been the Inn of Corporal Thompson. In this year that I have mentioned the inn was torn down, and on the ground, extend- ing 200 or more feet along the road, and taking up almost the entire block, Franconi's Hippodrome was built. It had two stories of brick, with turrets surmounted with carved figures of classic design. The auditorium was covered with a roof of tin, and above the arena, 700 feet in circumference, stretched a green and white striped canvas. In this enclosure trapeze performances and spiral globe acts were performed for the first time in America. There were elephants and reindeer, stag hunts and races of every sort. Although the Hippodrome was far out of town, throngs of people filled it at each per- formance, and the younger generation espe- [■65J OLD-TIME THEx^TRES cially thought that the very worst thing that could be imagined happened in 1856, when the Hippodrome was removed to give place to the present Fifth Avenue Hotel. [166] BOUWERIE VILLAGE AND ITS GRAVEYARD The Village Streets (dotted lines) and the City Streets (black lines). I St. Mark's Cemetery ; ^. St. Mark's Church ; 3. Governor Stuyvesant's House; 4. St. Mark's Parsonage ; 5. Stuyvesant's Pear-Tree. BOUWERIE VILLAGE AND ITS GRAVEYARD THERE is a bare and neglected bit of land on the east side of the city, used as a place to store broken-down wag- ons, worn-out chairs, and such other things as no longer have a use. It is called " The Lot," and a sad, dreary, useless lot it is. And yet around that neglected spot hover memories of bygone times — of a day when the city was very young, indeed — memories of a stern, kindly Dutch governor, quiet and peaceful memories of a village long blotted out. If you should wish to see The Lot, so as to know what it is, as well as what it has been, there is a most difficult task before you. The city block which extends east from [169] BOUWERIE VILLAGE Second Avenue, between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, is at this day solidly built upon. Here and there are survivals which show quite plainly that the wealth and 'fash- ion of the city once rested there before being swept farther up the island by the tide ot ad- vancing business interests. Everywhere are houses, piled so thick that they seem liter- ally to be squeezing, one another out of ex- istence in an effort to keep from encroaching on the pavements. Sealed in the very centre of the block, walled in by houses, with no glimpse of it to be had from the highway, and to be seen only from rear windows and roofs of houses, is The Lot. No one seems to know why it has been left there where the space could well be utilized for the yards of the houses. No one seems to care. There is certainly nothing to show that this neglected spot was once a graveyard filled with white tombstones. But that was [170] AND ITS GRAVEYARD before the buildings had closed in upon it, and is a story that had its beginning long ago. When Peter Stuyvesant was Governor of New Netherland, and lived in New York, which was then called New Amsterdam, he owned a farm far from the city. On his farm he built a country house, where he could find relief from the cares of office. This house of his was close by where St. Mark's Church now stands, at Second Avenue and Tenth Street. Those were unquiet times. The Indians were not always friendly. The workers on Stuyvesant's farm and on the farms thereabout built houses close by the Governor's house. A blacksmith soon set up his forge to do all sorts of repairs. A little tavern was opened, and Stuyvesant built a church at his own expense. Gradually, in this way, a village grew into life, and as it was on Stuyvesant's farm (or as it was called [17'] BOUWERIE VILLAGE then, Stuyvesant's bouvverie), the settlement was called the Bouwerie Village. After the English had captured the city of New Amsterdam and changed its name to New York, and after Stuyvesant had returned from Holland, where he had gone to explain why the city had been given up without the striking of a blow or the firing of a cannon, he went to live with his family in the house in Bouwerie Village. From Holland he brought many things ; among others was a twig of a pear-tree, which he planted in a favorite spot on the farm. This tree grew strong and bore fruit for more than 200 years, and came to be a living landmark. When it was knocked over by a careless truckman, in November, 1867, there were those who re- membered how it had been connected with the city's history, and they set up a tablet of brass, to preserve its memory, on the house wall where Thirteenth Street touches Third [172] AND ITS GRAVEYARD Avenue, close by where the pear-tree had stood. Stuyvesant lived for twenty-seven years in The old Pear Tree planted by Governor Stuyvesant, corner of Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street. [W3j BOUWERIE VILLAGE Bouwerie Village after he ceased to be gov- ernor, and when he died was buried in a vault of the church he had built. And after him, many of his descendants were buried be- side that little church. A hundred years after the old Governor's death, the church he built was tottering in decay. Then on its site the present St. Mark's Church was erected. The remains of Stuyvesant were not disturbed, and on the church's side now there is a marble slab, marred by the suns of many summers and the storms of long win- ters, which marks the final resting-place of the last of the Dutch governors. With the new church there came into ex- istence a new burying-ground for the village, in the fields just beyond the shadow of the church to the east. It is this graveyard which, after the lapse of almost a century, has come to be the neglected lot in the midst of the thickly settled block. In the course [■74] AND ITS GRAVEYARD of years, as the village grew, streets were laid out through it, and many of these were named for the members of Stuyvesant's fam- ily. But when the city plan was arranged in 1807, the lines of the new streets were laid St. Mark's Church in 1799. down without the slightest regard for the streets of Bouwerie Village. And so it came about that when the city grew up on the lines of the city plan, the village was swallowed up. Only one trace remains — where Stuyvesant Street touches St. Mark's Church, and runs so contrary to the other thoroughfares that it h75J BOUWERIE VILLAGE looks to be entirely out ot place. It is one of the oldest of the Bouwerie Village lanes, and sentimental persons like to think that it has been preserved out of respect to the mem- ory of Peter Stuyvesant, after whom it was named. The new streets fell in such a way that the little graveyard was left in the centre of a block. In time houses were built, until the burying-ground was walled up. But be- fore that time came, burials in the grounds had been forbidden, and the place was left uncared for and forgotten. And so the time came when those who looked from windows upon the crumbling stones speculated as to what graveyard that had been ; and when little children, playing in rear gardens, looked through chinks in the fences and saw the neglected ground over- grown with rank weeds, in childish wonder they asked what place that was. The years [■76] AND ITS GRAVEYARD passed. Wealth and fashion gave way to working-people. Stately, roomy dwellings were replaced hy dark and narrow tenements. Through the changes the graveyard lingered, each year growing more wild and forlorn in appearance. The tombstones tottered with age, until, finally, what remained ot them was carted away. So this resting-place of the dead passed out of existence by almost imperceptible stages, and there was left in its place The Lot, which gives no hint of the Bouwerie Village graveyard. [•77] THE BATTERY AND THE FORT "1/ |Mj The Battery, Old and New. THE BATTERY AND THE FORT THE population of the Island of Man- hattan in the year 1614 consisted of a few traders who had been sent here by the Dutch East India Company. They were to collect the furs of animals, and return with them to Holland. Besides the traders, there were on the island many Ind- ians. As a storehouse for furs, and as a pro- tection against Indians and wild beasts, the traders built a wooden house just to the south of where Bowling Green Park is now. They called it " Fort Manhattan." Very soon the Dutch West India Company came into existence. Then it was deter- mined that New Amsterdam was to be a city instead of a trading-station. A new fort was [18, J THE BATTERY AND THE FORT built on the site of the earlier one, and was called *' Fort Amsterdam." This was in the year 1626, when Peter Minuit governed. The second fort had walls of earth ten feet high, which enclosed several houses that were built of plank, rough hewn from trees: There was a house of medium size for the Governor, and houses of smaller size for the other officers, and an open space which the colonists might occupy in case of an Indian outbreak. This open space was not large, for there were not many persons in the col- ony, which occupied not nearly so much land as the present Battery Park. When Van Twiller arrived as Governor, in 1633, he built for himself, inside the fort, what was then called the *' Big House " — a building of brick and quite substantial. For a company of soldiers he had brought with him he set up a guard-house, and close by it, at the southern end of the fort wall, a wind- [182] THE BATTERY AND THE FORT mill to grind grain. Soon, too, he had the northwest bastion faced with stone, tor the wall was already showing signs of weakness. But this little stone trimming did not prevent the fort from falling into decay, and the goats and other domestic animals that ran loose in the settlement rooted their way along the walls, so that by the time Governor Kieft came, in 1638, there were open spaces in the earthworks on every side. The new Gov- ernor partially repaired the walls, but they were in no perfect state when an Indian war broke out in 1641, and settlers from the farms hurried to the protection of the little village of New Amsterdam. Some of them built houses outside the walls, close to the fort ; and these houses, at a later time, caused no end of trouble. The year after this a fine stone church was built in the fort, the build- ing previously used having been a rude struct- ure close by the water-side. [-83] THE BATTERY AND THE FORT At this time the colonists asked the West India Company to replace the earthworks of the fort by walls of stone. But the company objected to the expense, and suggested that if Interior of Fort, from Bowling Green, showing Governor's House and Church. the colonists wanted a wall very much they might build it. But the colonists refused to give their time and their money for doing what the company should have done. So it [184J - . THE BATTERY AND THE FORT was not until some years later — about 1658, when Peter Stuyvesant had become Governor — that stone in great part took the place of the earthwork. The work was done by ne- gro slaves, who were in the employ of the company. Even this stone wall did not give much security, for the English captured the city in 1664, and occupied the fort without the striking of a blow. And Governor Stuy- vesant explained to the Dutch West India Company that the English had been vastly superior in numbers, and that he had not at- tempted to hold the fort, because it was not strong enough to resist the slightest shock. Among other things, Stuyvesant explained that the houses outside the fort were so close to the wall that anyone climbing on them could step directly into the enclosure. In honor of James, Duke of York, the brother of Charles II., the English rechris- tened the fort, calling it Fort James. The 1^851 THE BATTERY AND THE FORT Duke of York had been granted the territory of New Netherland by his brother, the King, and now, having taken possession, he called it New York. This same Duke of York af- terward became King James H. When the English saw how weak the defences were, it was proposed to build the walls higher and stronger. But their engineer decided against that, as the ground to the north and east was much higher than the walls could be raised. He suggested that the only wise thing to do was to set up a battery of guns under the walls at the water-side. So a battery was de- cided upon, although it was not built until 1684. It was from this battery that the point now called " The Battery " got its name, which it retains years after all signs of a battery have disappeared. The Dutch recaptured the city in 1673. Remembering how the houses outside the fort had been complained of. Captain An- [186J THE BATTERY AND THE FORT thony Colve, the new Dutch Governor, had them all removed, and left an open space out- side Fort William Hendrick, as it was now called. It was only to hold this name for a few months, when it was again called Fort James, and the province was restored to the English on the declaration of peace in 1 674. The English did not keep the fort in any hetter repair than had the Dutch, and by the year 1689 it was in a ruinous condition. By that time King James H. had been deposed, William and Mary had become King and Queen of England, and Jacob Leisler had assumed command of the forces in New York, and had constituted himself Governor of the province. This Leisler had the walls strengthened and the houses within propped up. It was at that time called Fort William, to suit the new King. The battery, which had been set up only five years before, was already showing strong signs of neglect. So [187J THE BATTERY AND THE FORT Leisler had it removed, and put up in its place a '* half-moon " fortification with seven guns. Leisler had scarcely more than com- pleted these improvements when he was locked up in the fort prison which he had just put in good condition, and very soon after was hanged as a traitor. The church which Kieft had built was in a bad way in 1694, when it was removed, and a new one built. The ** half-moon " battery, after four years of existence, came to be considered worthless, and it was decided to erect a '* great battery " of fifty guns, that should command both rivers and the bay. The work on this " great battery " went along very slowly — sometimes not being touched for years at a time — and it was not completed until 1735. Even then another twenty years or more passed before the can- non were added. The " great battery " extended from the [188] THE BATTERY AND THE FORT present Greenwich Street and Battery Place to where Whitehall Street touches Front Street, and this formed the water-line at that time. The southern end of this battery was built on rocks, which were beyond the shore when the first battery was constructed. In The Fort and Battery in 1740. the years between that time and this, the land has been gradually filled in, forming the present Battery Park. When Queen Anne ascended the throne of England in 1702, the fort became Fort Anne, and with the beginning of the reigns of the Georges in 1714 it became Fort [.89] THE BATTERY AND THE FORT George, continuing so until it was disman- tled. During the years which followed, changes were made from time to time, some- times through necessity, as was the case when the governor's house burned in 1741, when a new and more elegant structure was built ; this last was burned in 1773, and after that the fort ceased to be the residence of the officers of the State, and was occupied by the military force alone. After the Revolution, about the year 1787, the fort was regarded as useless, and was de- molished. The battery was removed at about the same time. On the site of the fort was erected a mansion designed to be used by the presidents of the United States. But before it was completed, in 1791, the seat of govern- ment was removed to Philadelphia. For a time it was used for a custom-house before it was torn down, in i 815. It is upon the same site that the new Custom-house is being built. [190] AROUND THE COLLECT POND ] ] 13 f^ O A\ D vv /\ 1 I H ;« ElLh STREET c ^ r ;i.' ? f o )'l i> H Z 0) -• r X o 2 -ill 2 r^ tn rc»,-r AROUND THE COLLECT POND BETWEEN Broadway and the Five Points is a most interesting locality. Visiting quite recently the dozen or more streets, where once I had been wont to stop at almost every step to examine some relic, I was sorely disappointed, for I found lilt.- Ii\(.- Tcjiiiis, riitx ^ car> .AL't [193 I AROUND THE COLLECT POND that the new city had engulfed the old. The picturesque had given way to the useful. I walked on, fully believing that the Five Points, at least, had not been regenerated. But, turning the corner where the old brew- ery had been, I found a lofty mission-house, and neatly dressed children romping on the sidewalk in front of it. The squalor and misery and wretchedness of former times had vanished with the old-time buildings. The Mulberry Bend slum, where I had often stumbled along dark entries and up creaking stairs to study criminal haunts, where there were dismal cellars and winding passages lead- ing to holes where criminals burrowed safe from the hands of the police — for few police- men were bold enough to venture there — where was that old slum block ? Gone ! And in its place a park, whose well-kept lawns and paths gave no suggestion of the plague-spot of old. [194] AROUND THE COLLECT POND And so, finding scarcely a vestige of what I had set forth to see, I retraced my way and, being quite tired out with the walk and coming upon the steps of the City Prison, a calm and quiet spot on this late afternoon, I sat down to rest. As I sat there thinking of the changes time had wrought, I called to mind what the locality had been more than two centuries ago, and sketched, in rough, a diagram of the streets over which I had walked. For more than 200 years after the first Dutch traders landed on the Island of Man- hattan, the ground occupied by the streets mapped out was a lake of clear water. It was so deep that in the days when New York was called New Amsterdam it was supposed to be bottomless. To the west, over in the direction of Broadway, there was a high hill, and still farther to the west a dismal swamp. All around the lake were trees that showed, I '95 I AROUND THE COLLECT POND in their great girth and gnarled branches, that they had grown for hundreds and hun- dreds of years. In this ideal and primitive spot on the slope of the western hill by the edge of the water was an Indian village. On the shores of the East River the men of this little tribe collected huge oysters, which they brought in canoes to the village through a little out- let of the lake that stretched away on the line of the present Roosevelt Street. The women of the tribe opened the oysters and strung the morsels for winter food, throwing the white shells on the hillside. So, by the time the Dutch traders came, the hill looked like a shining mountain of shells. Then these traders called the hill Kalch Hook, which means Shell Point, and gave the name Kalch to the lake, as well as to the hill. In time this Kalch was corrupted to Collect, and so came the name Collect Lake or Collect [,96J AROUND THE COLLECT FOND Pond. Still later on, because of its being clear and fresh, it was called the Fresh-Water Pond, and the outlet to the East River came to be called the Fresh Water, and was used to designate the boundary of the town long, long before there was a thought that the town would ever reach so distant a point. Still later it was called the Old Wreck Brook, from the fact of a wreck lying in the river near its outlet. Now there were fish of very many varie- ties in this Collect Lake, and the Dutch burghers of New Amsterdam often journeyed from their town far out here into the country and fished all the day, long. And when the town became New York, the Collect con- tinued to be a grand fishing-ground until a third of the eighteenth century had gone by, when the fishermen, becoming more pro- gressive, began to use nets and all sorts of contrivances to snare the fish in large num- [197] . AROUND THE COLLECT POND bers. Then the officials of the town inter- fered and passed an ordinance which was to preserve the sport. This ordinance read : " It is ordained that if any person hereafter pre- sume to put, place, or cast into the pond, com- monly called Fresh-Water Pond, belonging to this corporation, any hoop-net, draw-net, purse-net, casting-net, cod-net, bley-net, or any other net or nets whatsoever, and shall take and catch any of the fish within the said pond therein, or by any other engine, machine, arts, ways, or means whatso- ever, other than by angling with angle-rod, hook and line only, he shall pay a fine of forty shillings." So that put an end to any newfangled and wholesale way of catching fish in the Collect Pond. The swamp mentioned as being to the west of the Collect stretched away to the Hudson River. It was a miry morass, perme- ated with the waters of the Collect, covered with a thick growth of brush and such vege- [198] AROUND THK COLLKCT POND tation as is usual in wet and marshy soil. It was a patch of ground useless and dangerous alike to man and beast. There was a certain Anthony Rutgers, who held a lease on the greater part of this swamp, and about 1730 he suggested that he could make this land profitable if he were permitted to irrigate it according to his ideas. This was considered a wild scheme, but the city officials agreed to give him the tract if he could restore it to good ground. So he had a ditch cut from the Collect Pond to the Hudson River, drained the swamp, made it firm land (it is now crowded with great business buildings), and this ditch, being widened, after a while became a canal, and so gave a name to the present Canal Street. Quite close to the swamp in Rutgers's time lived Leonard Lispenard. He married An- thony Rutgers's daughter, and the improved [20,] AROUND THE COLLECT POND swamp, becoming his when Rutgers died, was then called Lispenard's Meadow. But the cutting of the drain did more than redeem the swamp. It caused the water to flow to the Hudson River, and so lowered the surface of the Collect Pond. Then the natural outlet of the pond through the Old Wreck Brook dried up, and there was no longer a water-way from the pond to the East River. It was nearing the close of the eighteenth century when the city, creeping northward by natural stages, approached the Collect, and people wondered what was to become of their pond. There were some who thought that it should be preserved and a park laid out about it, for the townspeople still were much attached to their inland lake. In the summer of 1796 John Fitch built a steam- boat on the shores of the pond, and when it was finished launched it, and the people [aoi] AROUND THE COLLECT POND gathered and watched it steam around. That was eleven years before Fulton's Hrst boat steamed up the Hudson River. While plans, which came to nothing, were being constantly proposed, the city grew nearer and nearer the Collect Pond. The Kalch Hook was cut away, and part of it dumped into the Collect. Little by little the trees upon the shores were cut down and tossed into the water. The streets crept on until they reached the pond, which was gradually lilled in until, by the year 1810, it had disappeared. Streets passed over where it had been, and even the canal leading from it vanished. Building after building arose until, in the year 1838, a grim and massive structure of stone, designed in perfect Egyptian style, called *' The Tombs," because it was a tomb in appearance and in very truth a tomb for wrongdoers, rose over the spot where the AROUND THE COLLECT POND pleasant Collect Pond had been. And there it stood until it, too, in time, was swept away, and the new City Prison took its place, the relentle'ss spirit of improvement no more respecting that unique bit of architecture than it had spared the beautiful Collect Pond of old. [204] THE PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL ^y^ky *)«£. I1.£A5ANT O^AV* r 4^Ay« Hiu^ THE PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL THERE is not a week that passes but someone who is interested in days gone by asks leave to accompany me on my rambles through the city. It is not always that I grant these requests, for I have such a habit of conjuring up the old where there is nothing but the new ; of seeing in imagination low-roofed Dutch houses where in reality are the brobdingnagian structures of modern business, that unless I am certain of my companion I am timid lest he think me bereft of all sense. I was quite sure of my last friend, though, who had asked that I tell him something of Cherry Hill. " If there is anything to tell," he had hastened to add, *' for I must confess that, l>07j PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL though its name has an interesting sound, I cannot imagine, from its appearance, that it has a history worth listening to." It did not surprise me to hear this, for the present Cherry Hill district is not picturesque. Here are the houses where dwelt wealth and fashion when the city was younger, but in their old age they shelter poverty in its ex- tremest form, and show in every brick the silent dilapidation of time, and in every bit of woodwork the vandalism of neglect and wilful destruction. This district, fallen from a high estate to one of begrimed disorder, is but an unwholesome fruit to be the prod- uct of so pleasant a beginning. But though not a cheerful quarter, it has a reward for the antiquarian stroller. And so I told my questioner that on some bright afternoon I would walk with him up Cherry Hill, tell its story, in so far as I was able, and let him judge for himself whether it was worth the [208] PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL telling and worth the knowing. On such an afternoon we started out, and I told him, as Washington's House. (From a picture made in 1856.) we went along, the story of the beginning of Cherry Hill. When the seventeenth century was grow- ing old, in the time when the town ot New York was just beginning to spread beyond the clumsy wall whose only use had been to retard the growth of the town tt)ward the [209 I PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL north, an Englishman, one Richard Sacket, set up as a maltster by the East River shore. He built a large house, and on the grounds about it, which extended for more than 400 feet along the river, he set out row upon row of cherry-trees. It was one of the earliest cherry plantations in this country, and for a time there was strong question whether these trees would thrive. But they did, and when the strangeness of their appearance drew so many sightseers, Sacket gave up his business and turned his house and orchard into a place of entertainment. He called it the Cherry Gardens. There were tables un- der the trees ; there was a bowling green ; and there was a summer-house for dancing. All of which the people of the town took most kindly to and enjoyed to the height ot their bent, for a score of years, when the garden was sold to provide building-places for the rapidly growing town. [aio] PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL By the time this much ot the story had been told we were come to Franklin Square, which is at the top of Cherry Hill. We stood for a time to examine the tablet, set in a wall here at the hill-top, which gives notice to all passers-by that here, when he was Presi- dent, George Washington lived. The cherry- trees were gone in Washington's time, and houses, each with a bit of the old cherry orchard as garden of its own, had taken their place. The road along the hill was Queen Street, the main highway from the city, and little Cherry Street branched out from it and went down the hillside just as it does now, just as it did when it was a lane that ran be- side Richard Sacket's garden. This first Presidential mansion of which the tablet tells was built by Walter Franklin, a merchant of the city. It was three stories, of brick, with small-paned windows ; its main entrance led to by half a dozen stairs [•213] PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL on either side of a small porch ; its doorway fitted with a heavy knocker of brass. By no means the least important personage of the President's household when he lived here was Sam Fraunces, the steward, the same ** Black Sam" who had been host of the Queen's Head Tavern in Broad Street. One day, soon after Washington came to live in the Franklin House, Fraunces placed upon his table the first shad of the season. The President was a lover of goo^i fish, but he stared at this one in dismay. Then he asked " Black Sam " what had been its cost. "Three dollars, sir." " Take it away, sir," said Washington, sternly. " Let it never be said that my table has set such an example of extravagance and luxury." In after years the Franklin House became a bank, and in its old age a tenement, and was so still when it was torn down in 1856. [214] PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL The only relic of it now is a chair made from the wood of the old house, to be seen in the rooms of the Historical Society. Older by eighteen years was another struct- The Old Walton House. ure of line proportions, which stood close by in Queen Street, where the house numbered 326 Pearl Street is now. In the -lays before the Revolution the fame oi this house ex- tended through the country and spread to PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL England. It was built by William Walton, one of the wealthy merchants of the city. Just before the War of the Revolution, when the people of the colonies sent a petition of grievances to Parliament, there was one mem- ber who said that cause for such complaints existed only in the imagination, and that in the Walton House he had seen a display of plate and a style of life that would have well suited an English nobleman. This might well have been, for the main rooms were fur- nished with silk damask and green worsted curtains, mahogany card-tables and dining- tables, and chairs with damask seats ; walnut gilt-framed looking-glasses and a large num- ber of framed prints. Although the house had been a tenement for years, it still showed signs of its former grandeur when, in 1881, it was torn down. As the years rolled by and the city of a new century swept on. Cherry Hill was [0,6] ill ii^F ^ii£ FFf No. 7 Cherry Street in 1825. The First House in New York Lighted by Gas. PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL honored once more, this time in having one of its houses, No. 7, not more than a dozen steps from where the FrankUn House stood, the first to he Hghted by gas in the city. This was in the year 1825. There was great fear of gas in those days, and the people fek while the pipes were being put down in the streets, that the city would be blown up. So the president of the company, to prove there was no cause for fear, had the pipes led into his house first, and here the people came from every part of the town and from neighboring towns as well, until they quite blocked up the street, to see the wonderful powers of the new light. But I came near forgetting that once again had Cherry Hill been ** first " before all others, and that there, just down the Hill, at No. 27, the first American flag of the present style was made. In the spring of 181 8 atten- tion was directed to the fact that the flag of [219] PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL the United States was growing unsymmetri- cal. When the flag first came into use, it bore thirteen stars and thirteen stripes, and for each new State it was designed to add an- other stripe and star. As the stripes were added, they were gradually narrowed to ad- mit them all to the regulated space, and so the flag was losing the proportions of its early beauty. In this year, 1818, Captain Samuel C. Reid, the hero of Fayal, suggested a change which should link the past with all time. He would retain the thirteen stripes to typify the beginning of the Union, while in the field of blue he would add a white star for each new State. His design was ac- cepted, and Mrs. Reid made the first flag of the new design in her dining-room at 27 Cherry Street, assisted by several of her friends ; and when the flag was finished and the names of the makers embroidered upon its folds, it was forwarded to Washington, [220] PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HFLL and soon boated over the Capitol. In ac- knowledging it, Hon. Peter H. Wendover, New York's Representative, wrote to Captain Reid in I 8 I 8 : " The new flag arrived here per mail this day, and was hoisted to replace the old one at two o'clock, and has given much satisfac- tion to all who have seen it, as far as I have heard. I am pleased with its form and pro- portions, and have no doubt it will satisfy the public mind," Standing by this house where the flag was made, I recall the story of the building next door, where had lived the president ot a com- pany organized to seek for sunken treasure. It was a tale that went far back to the year 1780. The British frigate Huzzar, passing through the treacherous waters of Hell (Jate, struck a rock, and, drifting off for some dis- tance, finally sank close by South Brother Island. It was thought at the time that she I 221] PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL carried ^'1,000,000 of British gold. In the year 1823 a company was formed to seek the gold and bring it up from the bottom of the river. Here in this house the company's president lived, and so sure was he that the gold would be recovered that he set his house- hold to making bags of cotton cloth in which it was to be stored. But they might have been spared the labor of making treasure- bags, for divers could never find a trace ot it. My companion seemed satisfied thus far with the story of Cherry Hill, and asked me as a last question whether Franklin Square had been so called from the Franklin House, in which Washington lived. In answer I told him that there has long been a contention as to where the name came from. In Washing- ton's time it was St. George's Square. There are those who believe that its later name was in honor of the merchant, Walter Franklin. But the records are so clear that there should [222] Pearl Street, Near F"ranklin Square, in 1835. PLEASANT DAYS OF CHERRY HILL be no room to doubt that this is not the fact. A resolution of the Board of Aldermen, which bears date of March 17, 18 17, recites that the change is made " as a testimony of the high respect entertained by the Board for the literary and philosophical character of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin." It is of the bright days of Cherry Hill that I have told. Since then buildings have sprung up like rank weeds over the green lawns. The pleasant locality has become a "slum district." It is even fast losing its name, for now it is generally termed simply "The Hill." [22s^ SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS ^one, hofK-^oTTai^ fjVsrvA^^ SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS ONE might look for days over a map of the Island of Manhattan without finding a record of Petticoat Lane. This is a byway that extended through green fields when New York was New Amsterdam. Under its modern name of Marketfield Street, the lane is a series of houses, with one large building set squarely across it, concealing its existence and marking it no thoroughfare. When the town was young, a fort stood close by the little Bowling Green Park, with a road leading past it from the Hudson River to a sluggish canal that has long since been buried deep beneath Broad Street. This road was Petticoat Lane, and on exploring the bit of it which yet remains, it is seen to open into Broad Street, a few steps from [229] SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS Beaver. On either side are high, irregular walls, which look to be all windows and doors. These walls crowd over so far into the street that the sidewalks left are of the tiniest sort. On one side is a squat and an- gular structure, which it needs but little imag- ination to transform into a good old Dutch tavern, Marketiieid Street hardly extends the length of a block before it comes to an abrupt end against the wall of the Produce Exchange. In 1688 there was a more interesting wall within a few steps of this one. In that year was built, on the south side of the lane, the first French Huguenot church, and close to it was the customary graveyard of those days, whose harvest of white stones grew year by year until they and the church and all that pertained to it were moved away in 1704. On land that the Produce Exchange now covers was the Hertfordshire and Yorkshire [230] SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS Tavern, one of the famous hostelries of the city, where the men were enUsted who ac- companied Admiral Warren on the Louis- burg expedition. When a temporary market was established on the " Plaine " — now Bowl- ing Green — about 1740, the name of the lane was changed to the *' Market-field." Two blocks farther on, toward the water- side, at the head of what is still called Coen- ties Slip, is another forgotten byway. Where the elevated railway turns into Pearl Street there is a deep cut between two houses, ex- tending half a hundred feet through the block. It is so insignificant as not to be no- ticed on any modern map of the city, yet has existed for 260 years. It was the lane on one side of the first city hall — the Stadt Huys — which was built in 1642 by Governor William Kieft. It led to a thoroughfare then called Hoegh Street, but which after- ward, when it was paved with cobblestones — [^3 1 J SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS the first street to be so treated — became Stone Street, and is so still. The only reminder of the Stadt Huys is a tablet to its memory, riv- eted to the wall of a business-house which stands on the site. Coenties Slip, a small arm of water, is buried beneath the one green spot in that noisy locality, and the river has been crowded away to make room for the land that has been added to form two addi- tional streets. Stone Street, after it passed Coenties Lane, led straight to the ferry at Peck Slip, half a mile farther on. A short walk up this winding way leads to Ellet's Alley — another street that has outlived its name. Extending the length of two ordinary houses, it con- nects two thoroughfares, but to no purpose ; for the same streets join a few yards farther on in Hanover Square. Some time previous to 1691 the first Jew- ish synagogue had been built on the north [232] SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS side of Mill Street, almost facing Ellet's Alley. But although the maps of the period give this name, there is no record as to who Ellet was. The synagogue existed for more than 1 50 years, and this lane was used as a short cut to it. The city grew up around it and the locality was converted from one of quaint cottages and refreshing gardens to a collec- tion of high walls and hard pavements before the synagogue was moved far uptown. Mill Street was cut through, Ellet's Alley lost its usefulness and its name, and now, in its old age, it has fallen into the ranks of forgotten byways. After passing Hanover Square, walk toward the water-side past two streets, turn to the right into the third, and midway of the block will be found another of the forgotten city lanes. Cuyler's Alley is 100 years old, and it might have remained unnoticed for a thou- sand years, had it not been for its connection SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS with a famous murder which occurred in the early part of the nineteenth century. Stand- ing at one end of this alley, one can hear the constant buzz from the business-houses pre- paring freight for foreign ports. The other end of the lane can be seen, and still farther on the picturesque tangle of ships' masts and rigging. In the midst of the sounds and sights of busy life, Cuyler's Alley is always quiet and deserted. At night it resembles a tunnel, black and desolate. Walking up Broadway from the Bowling Green, in the block next to Trinity Church- yard, one can discern, by looking closely, an asphalted court between two houses. At the entrance to this court is a narrow tablet bear- ing the words " Tinpot Alley." This space is all that remains of a pretty green lane which was there in the eighteenth century, and which has gradually changed in conform- ity with its surroundings. It has been called [234] SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS Tinpot Alley the greater part of its existence. A city official, in 1886, wished to change the name to Exchange Alley, Many citizens Broadway at Bowling Green in 1825. objected, including Rev. Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity Church, and before the Board of Aldermen pleaded for the memories that hover about the old lane. They were suc- L235] SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS cessful, and soon after the tablet was set up at the entrance of Tinpot Alley by Dr. Dix. But the spirit of vandalism was strong, and finally another city official, without waiting for official action, had the name Exchange Alley placed upon a near-by lamp-post. There is at all times an atmosphere of quiet serenity about Thames Street. Although it branches out from Broadway at a point which thunders with the roar of traffic, and at the Broadway edge almost touches Wall Street, it is the personification of all that is slow and easy-going. When Etienne De Lancey, a Huguenot nobleman and merchant prince, built a man- sion beside Trinity Churchyard in 1730, the present Thames Street was the carriageway. It grew to the dignity of a street more than a hundred years ago. Changes have occurred, and Thames Street has noted many of them. It saw the mansion silent and deserted after [236] SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS the death of Etienne De Lancey ; then filled with noted men when it became the home of James De Lancey, eldest son of the Hu- The City Hotel. guenot noble, and Lieutenant-Governor of the province. It saw the house enveloped in mourning when the Lieutenant-Governor died, in 1760; saw it become a hotel occupied by [237I SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS soldiers of a new-born nation, and saw Wash- ington attend the first inauguration ball there. It saw the mansion of De Lancey crumbling to decay, carried away bit by bit, and saw Old Park Theatre, which gave a name to Theatre Alley. rise in its place, first a new hotel, then a row of shops, then a modern office-building. When the city was younger by a hundred years. Theatre Alley was a busy little thor- [238] o SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS oughfare resounding by day and by night with the tread of many feet. Nowadays it is a deserted byway. The first Park Theatre, built in I 796, faced that portion of City Hall Park on which the post office now stands. Far back in the building was the stage, and in a wing beside it was the green-room, its windows looking out upon the narrow street which began life with the theatre, and took name from it. Many actors used the little street, and through it have passed Edmund Kean, Charles Mathews, George Frederick Cooke, and a host of others, whose voices once thrilled many hearts, but the memory of whose lives is as dim as are the early glories of Theatre Alley. St. John's Lane is so completely forgotten that in years its name has not even crept into the police records. The lane is directly back of St. John's Church in Varick Street, and extends the length of one block. The [HI] SOME FORGOTTEN BYWAYS church was built in 1807, on what was then the edge of the city, and the lane has been there since that time. Walking suddenly into it from the noisy business district close at hand, the eye is delighted with the charming picture it presents of quiet life, and one can hardly believe in the reality of the pic- turesque and peaceful scene. [242] WHERE SILENCE REIGNS ^' ^ '5? « -tj i •» ;o m 1 n 1 r a Shco/vd Ave, 1 r *A/rte/?s 5/c^A/cs /?^/f/v, WHERE SILENCE REIGNS MANY a time in walking through the higiiway which is next to the Bowery on the east, a thorough- fare which attracts by reason of an air of res- idential quiet hanging over it in these days of its decadence, I had noticed an iron gate- way set in between two houses. It is a score of steps or more beyond Second Street, and my eyes often turned toward it in wonder- ment, attracted by the size of its iron bars and the intricacy of its scroll-work. I had even, from time to time, made mental calcu- lations in an effort to satisfy myself as to the period when the gate had been new ; so cus- tomary has it become for me to reckon in- stinctively on the age of objects. But, for one reason or another, although of an inquisitive [245] WHERE SILENCE REIGNS nature, I never made the slightest effort to learn whether or not that gate had a history. For all that, it made an impression on my mind, and one afternoon, although I had not been in the street where it is for close upon a year, the idea came upon me that there was much to be learned from the old gate. So, with no more ado, deciding that the query in my mind must be settled, I started out to make inquiries, little dreaming that I had a fortnight's work before me. I examined the gateway closely for the first time. Cramped between tenements, it seems to hold its place mainly by the tenacity of the ironwork of which it is made. It is a gate- way of a bygone day, tall, with rusty bars of ancient pattern, and over it a narrow twisted half-circle of fretted ironwork. Where the two sides of the gate come together is a dilap- idated lock, which serves no purpose now, [246] WHERE SILENCE REIGNS save to sustain a chain and a padlock. On this day the gate was shut, just as I had always seen it, and fastened by the rusty chain. Standing beside the closed gate I could look through its bars and see a stretch of fifty feet along a paved way, lined by the sides of ten- ement-houses, that came to an abrupt end in a second gateway ; this last one of boards, but with never a chink or a broken space through which to peep at what was beyond. Still, far over this second gate can be seen the tips of waving trees which in itself is enough to excite curiosity. For in this part of the city the houses are so thickly bunched that not a foot is spared for even a bit of green, and if a few blades of grass struggle out from between brick-paved courts, they are ruthlessly ground out of existence by heavy shoes, as if they were some poisonous and hurtful thing. In such a quarter as this, trees are more than unusual, they are won- [247] WHERE SILENCE REIGNS derful, sights. So, being curious to know how these trees came to be in such a place, and seeing it quite useless to attempt to pass through two barred gates, I travelled around the block, confidently believing that there must be some passageway that would lead to them. But search as I would, there was not a sign of any inlet. The houses were closely set side by side on every street, making the block a solid mass of brick and mortar. However, one who makes a practice of delv- ing into the mysteries of the city's past must not be discouraged by such an ordinary obsta- cle as a building, more especially if this be a tenement where the door is always open. So, resolved upon solving the mystery of those waving tree-tops, I walked through the first open door, mounted five flights of stairs, and, without interference, arrived at the roof. Having gone so far I made a discovery — for now it was easy enough to see that the walls [248J WHERE SILENCE REIGNS of the tenements hid a long-forgotten cem- etery. There, far below me, like a miniature picture, was a graveyard, so shut in by dwell- ings that to one who walks the near-by streets, unconscious of its existence, it is as completely lost as though it had never been. There it lies within a stone's throw of four busy thoroughfares, where the rush of ele- vated trains and the rumble of wagons fill every moment of the day with noise and tur- moil — a quiet city of the dead, with gravel paths and wild, luxurious growth of weeds, and nothing but a rusty gate and a few tree- tops to give hint of its existence to the thou- sands of people who hourly pass it by. But, while this house-top view was satisfy- ing to the eye, the hidden graveyard must have a history, and this could never be learned by viewing it from afar. There is a guardian of this old graveyard — a man who has held the post so long that in a general WHERE SILENCE REIGNS way he has grown to resemble somewhat the wrought-iron gate. He is so rusty and bent with age that one has to imagine what a fine, straight man he was in his youth. Having found this ancient guardian, I induced him, after much persuasion, to unlock the iron gate, and then the second one of wood at the end of the paved way, and so was trans- ferred from bustling city to old-time silence. Nearly a hundred years ago this had been a quiet little spot far from the active life of the city, but gradually, as the town stretched northward, it had been sealed up amid ac- cumulated houses. My guide seemed jealous of the antiquity of the place, for he assured me more than once, as soon as the wooden gate was locked behind us, that I must remember that this was the old Marble Cemetery, and not at all to be confounded with the new Marble Cem- etery, which is only a block away. I knew [252] WHERE SILENCE REIGNS of the other cemetery, but had certainly never thought of calling it " new," since it was considered old long before I was born. Once within the gate I looked around. It was easy to see now that the place has an enclosing wall of its own quite seventeen feet high, the original wall that marked the limits before the tenements were allowed to over- shadow it. It was also plain to see that the graveyard still retains much of what must have been great beauty. Extending the length of it are three paths of hard, white sand, joined at either end by similar walks. There are no tombstones, but the resting- places of the dead are marked by slabs of marble fixed in the enclosing wall a few feet above the ground. Though the marble slabs are stained and the inscriptions blurred by the ravages of cold winters and the blistering heat of many summers, thev are still distinct enough to permit the names to be read, 1.^53 J WHERE SILENCE REIGNS names that in the past belonged to men as- sociated with the growth and progress of the city; such names as Judson, Holland, Gros- venor, Oates, Lorillard, Wyckoff, and Blood- good. Far above the paths the tops of the ailantus-trees meet, wild vines trail at the foot of the wall, grass and weeds grow rank along the paths, and patches of wild plants bloom generously in summer. In a corner of the yard is the receiving-vault, low, and of rough-hewn stone, crumbling in pict- uresque decay now, for it has been many a long year out of use. While I looked at these things, the guar- dian of the place explained to me that when the graveyard was laid out it belonged to a single family, but after a quarter of a century an association was incorporated to control it. Later, when the opportunity afforded, I looked over the specifications of that associa- tion, and found them curious reading ; for [254] WHERE SILENCE REIGNS they tell that the ground is intended as " a place of interment for gentlemen," and is to be most " exclusive." It always remained so, and, as the term ** gentlemen " seemed to be synonymous with riches, the ground was used almost entirely by the wealthiest persons of The Dead-House in the Corner. the town. When the region about the graveyard began to lose its sylvan character, and bosky lanes gave way to brick-paved streets, year by year fewer bodies were laid to rest there, and after a time they were re- [^55] WHERE SILENCE REIGNS moved from the vaults and taken to resting- places remote from the noise and travail of the city. I wondered why it was that this place had been allowed to remain undisturbed in this congested district, and my communicative guide told me that indeed there had been made efforts from time to time to have the lonely, hidden spot converted into yards for the near-by houses, and that some philan- thropic souls had spent time and money seeking to have it made info a playground for children. '* But, bless you," said he, ** that will never be done, for they never could get the stock- holders to meet ; for the first stockholders are buried here, and the deeds have changed hands time and time again, and no one knows where to find them or their owners." It was as the old man said. I found that many attempts had been made to collect [C156J WHERE SILENCE REIGNS these deeds, all unavailing. And so the walled-up cemetery remains, jealously cared for by its rusty old guardian, who will doubt- The Forgotten Graveyard. less look after it until his day shall come to be relieved of his trust by the Guardian who watches over us all. [257] TOWN MARKETS FROM THEIR EARLIEST DAYS J J iy»3cj Tp^'^ nA«?K*=-^* '*'''"*» -r>£//=? e/^«*- /&sr DaVS TOWN MARKETS FROM THEIR EARLIEST DAYS THE town market is an institution brought by the Dutch from Holhind. In the open space before the Fort, the green spot which in later years became Bowling Green, the first official town market of New Amsterdam was set up in the year i 659. Here the farmers and butchers gathered one day in each week. In the fall of the year, too, on this same green, there was a cattle market where cows and goats and hogs and sheep were brought in from the surrounding country to be sold. Every possible induce- ment was put forth to draw the farm-people to this cattle market, and among other meas- ures a law was passed by which no stranger at this time could be arrested for debt ; for [261] TOWN MARKETS the towns-people had a great habit of lock- ing up poor-paying farmers whenever they caught them in the town. The first markets of New Amsterdam were very simple affairs — open spaces, with a sham- ble at one side, where the butcher stood pro- tected from the vicissitudes of the weather. But when the Dutch rule ended and New Amsterdam became New York, there were improvements in many directions, and the markets came in for their share. The sham- bles disappeared, and substantial buildings took their place. Just as the seventeenth century closed, one .of these improved buildings was erected on the East River shore, pleasantly situated in a valley, with a little stream bub- bling beside it to the river. The Dutch word for valley being " v'lei," it was called the " V'lei Market." But the English, finding this a hard name to pronounce, quickly cor- rected it to an easier one, and called it the [262J TOWN MARKETS ** Fly Market." The valley through which the little stream ran has become Maiden Lane. For more than a hundred years the Fly Market endured. It was still standing in 1820, when the Agricultural Society offered three prizes of silver to the farmers who should produce the best butter. There was one farmer with a stand in the Fly Market who made a superior quality of butter, but whose pound rolls were often suspected of being short of weight. One morning when the weighmaster came suddenly into the market, this farmer, knowing that his rolls of that day were scant weight, slipped a guinea piece into the top roll. It was weighed and found to be satisfactory. But close by stood a Quaker who had w^atched the proceeding. He picked up the roll with the guinea piece in it, and said : " I take this roll." TOWN MARKETS " Not so," said the farmer, quickly; *' that is sold to a friend." " If they all weigh alike, thee can give thy friend another roll," said the Quaker, who then appealed to the weighmaster. *' Of a certainty," said he; *' a customer to whom a pound roll is priced has a right to take what roll he will." So the Quaker quietly put the guinea roll into his basket, and, paying the three shil- lings for it, turned away with the parting re- mark : ** Thee will not find cheating to be always profitable." There was a time when Broadway, at Maiden Lane, wore a far different air from that of the present time ; for the greater part of its width was taken up by a long, low, rambling market building, stocked with green-grocers' products, with row upon row of quarters of beef, and table after table of [266] TOWN MARKETS large, wet, shining fish. It was a long ago day that the market stood there, for it was built in the year 1738. The towns-people who lived in the sparsely settled section along the Hudson River, a region that was all countryside, had complained that the markets in the lower parts of the town were ill situ- ated for their use, and made claim for one of their own. The distance between what was then the town and the outlying districts would seem ot little account now, for it was scarcely a dozen city blocks ; but the muddy roads that led to the unpaved streets in those days made it a long way. So the people re- joiced greatly when the Oswego Market was built in the middle of Broadway. Within a few years thereafter the character of Broadway, in the vicinity of the new mar- ket, changed greatly. So many buvers were attracted that merchants of every sort set up their stores nearby ; and the neighboring [267] TOWN MARKETS streets, which had until now been sunny Httle byroads, leading away to the river, took on the character of a market-place also, and the vicinity became the chief buying and sell- ing mart of the city. So, when the Oswego Market had stood for thirty years, there arose as loud a clamor to have it removed as there had been to have it erected, for the market and the stores quite interfered with all traffic on this main thoroughfare of the city. Now the butchers and storekeepers had no wish to see their flourishing business location taken from them, and they fought bitterly any attempt at a change. The talk in favor, and the argument in disfavor, of removing the market went on for a long time, until, in 1 77 1, the city authorities decided to clear Broadway. Then came up the question of- whither the market was to be taken. Many sites were proposed. Some suggested the City Common, which is now the City Hall Park. [268] TOWN MARKETS Finally a site was thought of that everybody seemed satisfied with. The market in Broad- way was torn down, and a new one set up at Meiser's Dock, on the Hudson River shore, just where the Washington Market is now. And the hrst meat sold in this new market was the tiesh of a hear that had been killed close by as it clambered up the river-bank after swimming from the Jersey shore. From this incident the new market was by popular consent given the name of the Bear Market, and was so called until the year 1814. Then it was demolished, and another building set up that took its name from the near-by street, and was called, and is still called, Washing- ton Market. At the foot of Wall Street, then quite a new thoroughfare, the first public slave mar- ket was established, in the year 1709, occu- pying the spot that had been taken up in Dutch times by a block-house and a halt- 1^7 -J TOWN MARKETS moon battery. This was the place to which in after years all the meal publicly sold was taken. From this circumstance it came to be called the Meal Market ; but, even as such, it still continued the place where slaves stood to be hired or sold. This Meal Market came to be looked upon as a public nuisance, as is shown by a petition to the authorities, dated 1762, which reads: *' It greatly obstructs the agreeable prospect of the East River, which those that live in Wall Street would otherwise enjoy ; and, fur- thermore, occasions a dirty street, offensive to the inhabitants on each side and disagree- able to those who pass to and from the coffee- house, a place of great resort." This was too serious an objection to be over- looked, so it was pulled down. Another mar- ket of great note was established about the year 1735, in the Burgher's Path, at the foot of William Street. It was rebuilt once or twice, [272] TOWN MARKETS and during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, in the last years of its existence, it was called Franklin Market, for then there was a tendency to call all manner of things after the noted Benjamin Franklin. From the time that the very first market was established, there were laws which com- pelled those who dealt in meats and vege- tables to sell in the public markets and no- where else. As the town grew larger and larger, there was determined opposition to this state of affairs, and the climax came in 1841, when an ordinance was passed permit- ting the sale of meat and vegetables anywhere in the city, in shops as well as in the markets. Of course, the market people fought the passage of the ordinance, but it was passed for all that, and very soon a new institution, in the form of the corner green-grocer's stand and meat shop, came into existence. But [275J TOWN MARKETS although there had seemed to be a general demand for the doing-away with the markets as exclusive places for meat-selling, they were too firmly established to be suddenly abol- ished. So the corner shopkeepers had a hard time of it for a while, and, in order to make business pay, they combined with the regular trade rear bar-rooms for the sale of spirit- uous and malt liquors. Later, when the cor- ner storekeepers decided that they could carry on trade in the middle of a block as well as on the corners, they removed when they saw fit, but they left the corner bar- rooms to look out for themselves. These, in due time, became full-fledged saloons, and there they are to this day, one on every corner. [a76J OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE- GARDENS JL L LCofJAa ^ '■■^ "1 r^?"^'"^'^ r fi'fJAAlK'.l*^ S' VI/08TH 5 r- ][z:d I _ THtse^M^ s' _-i\-A THH -\v OtD r/\'SHION£0 OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE- GARDENS THE pleasure-gardens in the New York of old were delightful places in which to spend an afternoon or evening, made so by their invariable quietness and simplicity ; qualities not much in demand amid the throb Broadway, between Duane and Pearl Streets, 1807. [■^79j OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS and whirl and glamour of the roof-gardens of to-day. It is pleasant to walk along glittering Broadway, and conjure up the time when this highway was but a dim lane. And surely no one can pass along near Leonard Street with- out looking about, half unconsciously, for some sign of Contoit's Garden. But where it stood there is nothing now but a row of conven- tional houses teeming with business life, and, though there may be hundreds of people about, one searches in vain among them to find a face that will light up with reminiscent pleasure at the sound of the name of Contoit. But that name carries my own thoughts back a long time ; let me see, a hundred years? Yes, more than that, to the eve of the Revo- lution. I see a city filled with British soldiers whose presence are a menace to those who sympathize ever so little with the new-born nation. And in that little city, torn with anxiety, standing opposite the Common I see [280] OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS the inn of Mr. Montagnie, which had been a favorite meeting-place of the Sons of Liberty, and know that it has been given over to the Broadway at Murrav Street, 1820. soldiers of England. In the sweep ot time the Revolution passed, and left a free country where once had been a British province ; and a city slowly recovering from the effects [281] OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS of the clash of arms. When quiet came with the birth of a new century, the inn that had been Montagnie's had John H. Contoit for its owner. A tiny green yard beside the house, and a few trees, had acquired the narne of Contoit's Garden. Large enough for a modest inn, the garden was much too small for the thriving business that Contoit built up. So when he found — farther along Broad- way, close by what is now Park Place — a space larger by a few feet, he transferred his business thither, and in agreement with the increased dimensions called the new place the New York Garden. Still the business thrived, for he was a progressive man, and in another four years, when it had come to be 1806, these quar- ters also were crammed, and he once more moved along Broadway ; this time near Leon- ard Street. This last was the most successful ot all the ventures of Contoit, and the one that the old New Yorker best remembers [282] OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURP:-GARDENS when his thoughts drift back to youthful days. The garden itself was a narrow space be- tween houses, where the trees grew so close that even on the brightest days the sunlight could scarcely penetrate the branches. Along the sides were whitewashed booths, and in each one of these a wooden table, at which four persons could sit, facing each other, on wooden benches, in fairly comfortable fashion. After dark, small glass globes, each with a glowing taper floated in sperm-oil, gave an excuse for advertising the illumination ; but the faint rays they gave out scarcely lightened the darkness. But neither the crowded quar- ters nor rude simplicity detracted from the excellence of the ice-cream, the strength of the lemonade, or the tastiness of the cake — for these were all that were sold, and at most reasonable prices — and all in all, there was an air of romance and repose about the place that OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS made it a famous meeting - ground during close upon forty years. There was another garden on Broadway, Contoit's "New York Garden," 1828. and, although it existed long before my time, I have often heard it spoken of. At the southern edge of what had been a dismal swamp, until he diverted the waters of the [284] OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS Collect Pond and reclaimed it, Anthony Rut- gers lived for twenty years or more, in a line old mansion. When he died, in the year 1750, he willed his house as well as the land that he had made fertile to his son-in-law. It was the son-in-law who gave his name to the old-time swamp, and left it a pasture of ex- ceeding beauty for future generations to call Lispenard's Meadow. Old Rutgers had not been dead long when his house and the grounds about it, all laid out with flowers and shrubs, and boxwood- bordered paths that were the delight of his old age, were bought by one John Jones, who turned the house into a tavern and the grounds into a public garden, and called them by the name of Ranelagh. A hall for dancing was set up in the centre of the lawn, and there on each Monday and Thursday a band discoursed sweet music, and there was, as set forth at great length in Mr. Jones's prospectus at his [285J X OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS opening, " good entertainment for ladies and gentlemen." The fashion of the town went as customers to the old house where many New York Ho>pual in Broadway. [286] OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS of them had visited as guests in Rutgers's day. All gardens have their day, and the days of Ranelagh numbered twenty years. Then the houses were destroyed, the grounds levelled, and in their place arose the buildings of the New York Hospital, set in the midst of the trim-kept lawns. The last remnant of it was done away with when the green paths of the New York Hospital, at Duane Street, unable to withstand the invading houses of the city's growth, disappeared forever in favor of com- mercial interests ; iconoclastic interests that are no respecters of green and historic lawns. Before the days when Rutgers reclaimed the wild morass, of which the hospital grounds were to become the last reminder, in fact, quite early in the eighteenth century, midway between the city and the point where Rutgers was to build his homestead, a pretty little house was set up. It was on a grassy hillside [287] OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS on the outskirts of the town. Not such a one as may be seen in the suburbs of this day, but a structure picturesque in its ruggedness, quite low, with enough great rough beams to hold up a mountain, it would seem. The house built, and part of the grassy slope laid out into a garden with plants and flowers, and fenced in, the whole was called the Bowling Green Garden. It was the last stopping-place on the road from Greenwich Village to the city, and as such it thrived with only one great incident to mark its career. This was when, in 1750, its name was changed to Vauxhall Garden, in imitation of the celebrated London resort of that name. But little by little the city crept nearer, slowly, if surely, for it took quite a hundred years for it to grow much less than a mile. It reached the Vauxhall, overgrew the garden, and then, like a rising tide, crept about the little house and left it shorn of its flower-pots and grassy walks, [288] OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS a tottering wreck amid a host of strong young neighbors. Nowadays Greenwich and War- ren Streets cross over the old-time slope, and a near-by seed-store gives the only breath of country scent that can be met with in that dark and crowded neighborhood. Once it was enough to say that a house was close by Bayard's Mount, or Bunker Hill, as it was sometimes called, for any citizen to know just where it was. But now no one would know the place, for Mulberry Street where it touches Grand has cut through the elevation which was once the highest point on the Island of Manhattan, overlooking both the city and country beyond, and there is no sign of it. Yet in the year 1798, Joseph Delacroix set up a garden close by Bayard's Mount and called it Vauxhall. This new Vauxhall occupied the Bayard homestead, which was near the Mount, and had been the home 'of the Bayard family for fifty years. A I289] OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS little lane (now Broome Street) led to it from the Bowery Road, where there was a stout wooden gate to close its entrance. During the Revolution fortifications had been thrown across the farm, and the principal one was at Bayard's Mount, and was called Bunker Hill. The second Vauxhall thrived well enough, but Delacroix, seeing the city spread north- ward year by year, and desiring that his garden should be a truly suburban resort, gave up the Bayard homestead and carried the name Vaux- hall to a new section far away up the Bowery Road, just south of where Astor Place now is, between Fourth Avenue and Broadway. On this spot for some years a Swiss named Jacob Sperry had raised vegetables for the city markets, and cultivated flowers for his own delight until 1803, when he sold his patch of ground to John Jacob Astor. It was Astor who leased it to Delacroix, by whom it was made into the third Vauxhall. Delacroix [290] o OLD-FASHIONED PLEASURE-GARDENS sought to add art to nature. The vegetables were banished, but the flower-beds were spared, and between them were fashioned sanded walks, and in the midst were erected a dancing-pavilion and a stage for theatrical performances. As this garden was on the Bowery Road, and that was then the chief driveway of the city, it became exceedingly popular, and con- tinued so for many years. Even in 1827, when Lafayette Place was opened and cut the garden in two, it was still kept up. But little by little the grounds were crowded out. In 1853 ^^^ Astor Library was erected quite in the centre of the third Vauxhall, and two years later the last of the old garden buildings disappeared, and its days were ended. [293] SPRING VALLEY FARM SPRING VALLEY FARM WHERE the East River touches the Manhattan shore just opposite the south end of what was Captain Manning's Island, and is now Blackwell's Island ; where, in quiet weather, the waters curl around the piles, and where, on stormy nights, the waves rush at the piers as though they longed to beat them downi — right along this part of the Manhattan shore, in the days before the Revolution, stretched the Spring Valley Farm. In the thirteenth year after the Dutch town of New Amsterdam had become the English town of New York, Sir Edmund Andros, who was Governor then, granted this tract of sixty acres along the river, four miles from the settlement, to one David Duf- [297J SPRING VALLEY FARM fore. And in the next hundred years, as the land passed from one member of the family to another, the recorded deeds show the fam- ily name changed successively from Duffore to Deffore, to Devore, to Devoore, and finally to De Voor. Now, although the De Voor Spring Valley land has become a city farm where the prod- uct of its soil is grim houses and paved streets — a crop growing more abundant with each passing season — the great magician Fancy has power to conjure up the thronging ghosts of the past that wander over it, and to find more than one forgotten relic of olden days to dwell upon. Surely the wraiths of a long- gone day could find no safer resting-place than the Spring Valley Farm-house, built al- most at the water's edge by one of the old De Voors. The dilapidation which comes with the long lapse of time seems to have passed lightly over it, leaving it much as it [298] SPRING VALLEY FARM was in the beginning. Facing the wrong way for modern Fifty-third Street, it seems to be tarrying away an endless existence in a straggling lumber-yard, amid a mass of cast- away building material. But for all its age (and it stood there long years before there was another anywhere about) it is stanch and solid, and for the re- searcher has charms enough to quite fill a good-sized catalogue. It stands higher above the ground than its builder could ever have intended that it should, for the street is low at this point ; so that the basement of the house is above ground rather than under it as it should be, and its foundation-stones are bare, thus giving it a most peculiar appear- ance, as though they must be growing and forcing the house upward. Above are the one story and attic, with the stanchest of broad, solid porches, and a sloping roof, with three dormty windows. Once inside the door, it ■ [301] SPRING VALLEY FARM is easy to understand why the old farm-house has withstood so bravely the shocks of time, for it is supported by a forest of great beams, hewn evidently from solid trees. Some of these have taken on a high polish, some are battered and scarred from hard usage, but all are as sturdily upright as ever, and seem to assert that they will so continue for many a year yet, if left to themselves. Nobody knows just when this house came into being, but those who have searched through very many old records have agreed that it is the oldest house now in the city. This may well be, but, whether it is so or not, it is beyond all question the oldest sur- vival of the Spring Valley Farm. Just across from the lumber-yard, in the next street, there is another house marking a somewhat later period. The wide-spreading ramifications of a brewery close around it, threatening it with extinction, and more than [302] • SPRING VALLEY FARM threaten, since they have shorn it of an ample porch that once spread around three of its sides. But its peaked roof and clap- boarded sides are still firm, and all the more picturesque in the midst of the rigid brick walls, great chimneys pouring out volumes of black smoke, and small pipes incessantly puffing out steam, like a battery spitefully aiming at this survival. This second house was built early in the last century, when the farm was divided and sold, and for many a year was called the Brevoort house, being a country residence on the estate of the family of that name. These two buildings, so reminiscent of early days of the farm, so at war with their surroundings, so fruitful of old-time memo- ries, are not the only things that seem inhar- monious in that locality. In the days of the Revolution, when at manv points along the river were fortifications, right here was a [305] SPRING VALLEY FARM breastwork. And in this very lumber-yard there is a battered shot-tower which has been there quite as long as the Brevoort house. The tower, when put up in 1821, was in the then open country, and seemed of wondrous height. But now, having for a quarter of a century outlived its usefulness, and though as tall as it ever was, the neighborhood is so changed and so closely built upon that it seems to have lost at least half of its height. Before the grim tower was there, before the breastworks were set up, before the old farm-house was built, even in the days of David Duffore, first of the family, a little stream of water bubbled through this Spring Valley. It rose on the high and rocky ground around which Central Park was spread out at a later day, and from there it coursed in a diverse and deviating direction to the south, and in a circuitous way to the east, until it came to the old farm, which it crossed where [306] SPRING VALLEY FARM Second Avenue was one day to stretch smoothly along. And, finally, it lost itself in the East River, almost at the exact point where the river now touches the starting- point of Forty-seventh Street. One of the owners of the farm — he of whom the musty recorded deeds speak of as De Voor — built a saw-mill at the mouth of the little brook, and from this the watery way took the name of De Voor's Mill-stream, some- times alluded to as the Sawkill and sometimes as the Saw-mill Creek. In De Voor's time, too, there was a road that crossed the farm, leading from the city and passing on to other farms beyond. This came to be a much-travelled way and was called the Eastern Post-road. As the brook crossed the farm in one direction and the road in another, it was inevitable that the road should also cross the brook. It did this, and road and brook together appeared on the [307J SPRING VALLEY FARM surface of the farm like a gigantic, but poorly formed, letter X. And at the cross- ing of the waterway and the roadway (which spot in these days is at the point where Sec- ond Avenue crosses Fifty-second Street), there was a bridge over which the road led and under which the stream flowed. This was called the Kissing Bridge, and it was not the first bridge of the kind on the island, nor was it the last. Twice more in other places a road crossed a stream ; and there, too, was a Kissing Bridge. The name was gotten from an old Danish custom, giving to any gentle- man crossing such a bridge not only the privilege, but the right, of kissing the lady who chanced to be by his side. Just about the time that this especial Kiss- ing Bridge in the Spring Valley had its great- est vogue, toward the close of the year 1763, a bit of the farm that bordered on De Voor's Mill-stream was owned by a family named [308] f M Tne Kissing Bridge, becona Avenue and Fifty-second Street. SPRING VALLEY FARM Beekman. It was quite right and proper that a brook should pass through the estate of a Beekman, since the name Beekman means " Man of the Brook," a fact that was so un- derstood and recognized by King James I. of England that he granted to an early Beek- man a certain coat-of-arms, which is still re- tained by the family, and which represents a rivulet running between roses. This Beek- man was a grandfather of William Beekman, the first of the name in America, who came over with Peter Stuyvesant, in the year 1647. The particular Beekman who owned the land in the Spring Valley was James, and his house was built on ground so high that he called it Beekman's Hill, midway between the Kissing Bridge and the river. It was a large, roomy house, patterned after the colo- nial houses of the period, arid in time it was to harbor many a tenant that its owner had never dreamed would enter its doors. This L3"] SPRING VALLEY FARM James Beekman had married Jane Keteltas, an heiress of the city, and they were Uving a quiet country Hfe when came the Revolution, and, desirous of sharing the fortunes of the Americans, they fled from their home. Close upon their going, the British army took pos- session of the city and all of the outlying country, and the Beekman house became the head-quarters of the British general. Sir Will- iam Howe. It was here that Nathan Hale was taken, after he had been captured as a spy of Washington ; it was in one of these rooms that he was given such show of trial as he had ; it was in one of the green-houses, so near the De Voor Mill-stream that he could hear it plashing beneath the Kissing Bridge, that the martyr spy passed his last night on earth. It was in this same house, too — some say in the room where Nathan Hale was tried — that Major John Andre re- ceived his last instructions before he went to [312J « M CQ SPRING VALLEY FARM meet the traitor Benedict Arnold, and he doubtless passed over the little Kissing Bridge as he started toward West Point. When the Revolution was at an end, James Beekman and his family once more occupied the house on the hill. In those days Washington lived in the city as the first President of the new nation. More than once the President stopped at the Beekman house in his favorite ride over the "Fourteen Miles Round," and, sometimes being accompanied by Mrs. Washington, beyond all doubt he took dignified advantage of every privilege accorded by the ancient Danish custom of the Kissing Bridge. But the Spring Valley Farm has had its day, and has become" little more than a memory, together with the Kissing Bridge. The Beekman house remained standing until some thirty years ago ; but a public school is on the site now, and around about it the SPRING VALLEY FARM streets still show suggestion of the high ground of Beekman's Hill. It is good to think that the name has not died out, how- ever, for there is a Beekman Hill Church within a stone's throw from the school-house, and not far off a short and narrow thorough- fare, bearing the name of Beekman Place. [3 '6] OLD CHURCHES Fi^^-roisi 5-^ Oi-0 Z h uRChi= y OLD CHURCHES AN old building is a most interesting study, being part and parcel of his- tory — standing year after year, grow- ing older and older with each day, treated for the ills that are destroying it much as though it were human, and finally dropping from age and passing out of sight. There is a church that I never pass without thinking of it as the symbol of a quiet and peaceful life, and feeling all the better for having passed it. It stands near the commencement of Fifth Avenue, and is in architectural style an almost perfect example of perpendicular Gothic. It is a replica, so far as its main portion is con- cerned, of St. Saviour's, at Bath, England ; while in its tower is reproduced that ot the Magdalen Chapel at Oxford. The chapel and I 3 '9 I OLD CHURCHES the cloister are of a much later date than the main building, but in them, too, the style and feeling have been faithfully preserved. For more than half a century this ** Old First " Presbyterian Church has stood here where Fifth Avenue starts, but to know its history you must look back over a space of 200 years. The glancing over of this history lends an added charm to the building. Founded in 1 716, the *' Old First" is the parent of New York Presbyterianism. For close upon fifty years it was the only church of this order on the Island of Manhattan, and from it there branched out, as colonies, the Brick Church, the Scotch Church, the Rutgers Riverside Church, and the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian. It was in Wall Street, not more than two- score steps from Broadway, that the very first house for this congregation was built, in the year 171 9. Before that they had worshipped in the City Hall, which was then nearby in [320] OLD CHURCHES Wall Street. By the year 1766 the attend- ance had grown so large that the church in Wall Street was no longer large enough, nor could there be found in the burial-ground beside it room enough for the dead. So the City Corporation was petitioned for a plot on which a branch church might be built. There was a bit of land just beside the road that led to the Fresh Water, land which in these days would be to the east of Park Row near Duane Street ; and the city officials pointed to that as a suitable locality. But after a discussion so long drawn out that it seemed never com- ing to an end, the site by the Fresh Water road was given up, and in its place was selected a triangular space which had once been part of the City Common — and which now exists vyithin the bounds of Park Row, Beekman and Nassau Streets. And here the new church was built, in 1 767, and as it was made of brick it was called the Brick Presbyterian Church. OLD CHURCHES For ninety years its congregation worshipped here, and then another church was built to take its place. This new brick church (now grown old) is still to be seen in Fifth Avenue at Thirty-seventh Street. To anyone who has ever strolled through narrow Exchange Place, flanked by lofty buildings, it is difficult to imagine that it was once a lane leading through a meadow. That is what it was, however, and quite some way from the city in the year 1 69 1 . The meadow belonged to Mrs. Dominie Drisius, and for many a year there had been talk of building a Dutch church there. For the church in the Fort, built by Governor Kieft in 1642, was old, and too small for the number of worshippers, so fast was the little town grow- ing year by year. In due course the plans for a new church were made, and it was settled to build it in Mrs. Dominie Drisius's meadow and have it front on the little lane. Work [322] Garden Street Church. OLD CHURCHES upon it was completed in 1693, and in honor of the church the lane, which up to that time had been called Garden Alley, was renamed Garden Street. It was a quaint little square building, with a brick steeple in front that rested on a square foundation. The windows were deep-set and made of small panes held together with lead. On many of them the coats-of-arms of the chief members of the congregation were burnt in. In the steeple was a shrill, silver- toned bell ; not a new bell, for it was the first one that had ever been brought to the island, and had long hung in the steeple of the church in the Fort. In 1807, when the Garden-street Church was replaced by a new one, there were many who thought that a new bell should be made tor it ; but others loved the old bell, which had been the first to call a Dutch congregation to worship, and it was hung in the new church and continued [3^5 J OLD CHURCHES in use until it and the church and all about it fell in a heap of unrecognizable ruins in the great lire of 1835. Many relics were destroyed at this time. One was a tablet which had been fixed to the face of the church in the Fort when Kieft built it, bearing an inscription in Dutch, which translated would read : An. Dom. 1642. When William Kieft was Director-General the Con- gregation Built This Temple. This tablet was found buried deep in the earth when the Fort was demolished in 1787, and after that had been in the Garden-street Church. Another Dutch church, the fourth in suc- cession, was built in the year 1769, in what was then Fair Street, and is now Fulton, close by William Street. It was to the north of the town, and was called the North Dutch Church. This was a far more imposing [326J North Dutch Church. OLD CHURCHES building than most of the churches of the city, and had for its only architectural rival St. Paul's Chapel. In 1842 it was remodelled and in 1875 was finally torn down. There is great picturesqueness about St. Patrick's Church at Mott and Prince Streets, with its graveyard and high wall fencing it in. It is in a region of tenements and forlorn-appearing buildings that in their slop- ing roofs and round windows show the architecture of another decade. The faded buildings have grown up since the wall was built; for when the church was set up, in 181 5, there were but few frame farm-houses near it. The country about was a wild bit, and the historians of the city delight to tell how foxes and other wild-animals were cap- tured in the very churchyard. The interior of the church was destroyed by fire in 1S66, but it was soon repaired, and may now be seen in its original form. CHELSEA VILLAGE J 4 J J U «> J 1^1 r ^ Csi - CHELSEA VILLAGE LIKE the scientist who unearths the crumbling bones of some animal of a prehistoric age, and from them re- constructs the whole framework, the dreamer of a by-gone day can evolve the Village of Chelsea from the survivals that may yet be seen. These survivals are tucked away beside towering warehouses, hidden behind teeming tenements, and 'tis no easy task to conjure up a country village in the midst of a noisy, bustling city. In doing so, there are com- monplace things to be thrust aside, and sordid things to be forgotten. He who attempts it must be a dreamer content to forego the practical present, and able to supply, often by the aid of imagination alone, missing links at every turn. Still there is something left, \.U3i CHELSEA VILLAGE something to work upon, a good beginning, an important bone, as it were — and that is a good deal, 'Twere best to make a start on a day in early fall ; in the morning, when the fog hangs heavy, or when a drizzling rain sets a blur on all things, makes brilliant show win- dows seem dingy, deadens the very sound of rumbling trains and clanging bells — such a day when there is no light of sun to flash on marble walls, or to show the hideousness of accumulated dirt, a day when few people are out of doors. I doubt if in all the city there is another such perfect bit of Old New York as may be come upon in Twenty-fourth Street, after passing Ninth Avenue, going westward toward the river. All the iconoclastic changes re- ferred to as '* modern improvements " have not been able to eflface the antiquarian beauty of this trace of old Chelsea Village. There [334] CHELSEA VILLAGE they are, just after you turn the corner, wee, beautiful little houses, still known as the Chelsea Cottages, looking as though they had been quietly asleep ever since the grim town crept up to and overwhelmed the village. Tiny structures, the oddest of all having green-painted, wooden shutters long out of fashion. All with most un-city-like little gardens in front, with grass and flowers en- closed by a wrought-iron fence of curious design, such a fence as you may have read of, but have never seen. In this quiet, peaceful village street, that has in some way hidden itself so that it has not been crushed out of existence, one may find many things that have so outlived their day as to be attractive now as curios ; such things as carved doorways and brass knockers, and latticed iron porches ; and there is even one house which has a peaked roof that is quite as high as the rest of the building. L335] CHELSEA VILLAGE Around the corner in Twenty-third Street is a long row of houses planned when the village was young, but the changes of the passing years have encroached heavily upon the London Terrace, have transformed houses into *' flats," and have done all manner of in- ternal damage. Nevertheless, time has dealt lightly with the exteriors, and, although the pretty gardens have deteriorated into ** front yards," there are still great weather-beaten trees, whose whispering branches tell tales of their beginning. But now let imagination wield the brush. Blot out the long row of houses across the way from London Terrace, for there is where Chelsea Village really had its start. A century and a half ago, when here was country-side, when as far as the eye could reach in all directions, save to the south, there was no sign of human habitation, and when the Fitzroy Road led this way from Greenwich Village, a mile away there to the [336] CHELSEA VILLAGE south, and quite midway between this spot and the city, where the row now stands was a hill that swept its green way gently to the river. And there on the hill. Captain Thomas Clarke, an old-time gentleman and veteran of the French and Indian wars, built a house, intending to spend there the final years of his life. He called it Chelsea, re- membering the retreat of that name in Eng- land, where many brave fighters spent the twilight of their lives, and where they sur- rendered to the Great Commander in their last battle, the battle of life. But 'twas the irony of fate that Captain Clarke, when he had built his house and was living quietly in it, should fall ill, that the building should be burned, and he, being carried to a friend's, very soon died there. Mistress Mollie Clarke rebuilt the home and lived there with her two daughters, and was living there a quiet and peaceful life [337 J CHELSEA VILLAGE when came the War of the Revolution. As she was a strong RoyaHst, together with many of her friends in the city, she might have fled. But she said she could not see who would molest her in her quiet retreat. For all that, she was molested, for one day a squad of Continental soldiers, having been billeted upon the widow, rode up to her door, and, notwithstanding that she protested vig- orously, took up their abode there. But the Widow Clarke would not give in without making a strong effort, and so had quick word sent to General Washington, who was then in the city, asking him by what right he sent his soldiers there. On the very next day Washington, with his escort, rode out from the city along the Bloomingdale Road, to where Madison Square is now, turning into a by-way called Love Lane (which was about within the limits of the present Twen- ty-first Street), that led beneath spreading CHELSEA VILLAGE trees to the door of Mistress Mollie Clarke. She received the great man coolly, but he ad- dressed her with such kindly dignity that she soon softened and invited him into her best room. And there she had from him his promise that he would see to it that the sol- diers should be of no annoyance to her. When he arose she courtesied, and he bowed •and was gone from Chelsea. But although Washington could control his own men ever so well, he certainly could not (up to that time, at least) control the British ships that were in the bay ; and not many days after, one of them went sailing defiantly up the Hudson River and sent a few shots crashing into the little town, aim- ing a few more at the scattered houses along the river-shore ; and, as cannon-shot are not discriminating things and care no more for the houses of friends than the dwellings of foes, one of these shots struck the house of [339] CHELSEA VILLAGE Mistress Mollie Clarke and went tearing through it. Mistress Clarke was away at the time, and one of the billeted soldiers, meet- ing her upon the road soon, called out, '* Your friends have rent your house in twain." And she, when she understood, cried out, with a vigorous shake of her head, " I can thank you for that." The shot did no more damage than to cut a great hole in one side, which was quickly repaired ; but this left a scar that Mistress Clarke used to point out, as an injury caused by her enemies, until the day of her death, in 1802. By that time some few houses had begun to cluster about the Chelsea house, and the village seemed naturally to take its name from it. It was now occupied by the learned and benevolent man Benjamin Moore, who was respected as the husband of Charity Clarke and honored as the Episcopal Bishop of New York. This illustrious man was held in high [340] CHELSEA VILLAGE affection and esteem, and his friends were many. During the thirty-seven years he was connected with Trinity Church, the parish register shows that he celebrated 3,500 marriages and baptized 3,000 persons. He was President of Columbia College from 1 80 1 to 181 I ; he was the tirst \'ice- President of the Historical Society when it was formed, in 1805. It was he who administered the last sacrament to Alexander Hamilton after the duel with Aaron Burr, and who remained by his bedside when he drew his last breath. Here the good bishop lived and here he died, and then the old house and its grounds passed on, in the vear 1S16, to his son, Clement C. Moore, who added still further to the estate by purchasing much of the neighboring property ; and thus the struggling little village grew stronger under his fostering care. Clement C. Moore was a learned man and [34.] CHELSEA VILLAGE a kindly scholar. He was a professor of He- brew and Greek literature in Columbia Col- lege and wrote valuable books. But these works are for the most part forgotten now, except by a few learned men, and his memory lives best through a little poem composed for his children in this Chelsea house, a poem that has brightened the holiday of many a child. It begins with the line — " 'Twas the night before Christmas." Part of this land, owned by Clement C. Moore, was a field with an orchard, enclosed by post and rail fences; and the village of Chelsea, still only a score of houses, awoke one morninp; to find itself linked with the city for all time. For this field had been given away by the owner, and the Gener- al Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church was to be built upon it, the old field taking the name of Chelsea Square. And [342] CHELSEA VILLAGE there, in 1825, came into existence the first of the seminary buildings, called the East Building. Ten years later the West Building was erected, made of rough-hewn stone, and its ivy-covered walls are still standing. From that time on, the village grew up in earnest around Chelsea Square, with quaint little houses on tree-lined roads, each with its own pretty garden. It never really had any streets of its own, for even these lanes followed the lines of the City Plan mapped out in 1807, which provided streets for the entire Isl- and of Manhattan. So that when the town stretched as far as Chelsea, the city streets and the village lanes, although starting from widely different points, were, in truth, but two divisions of a system, and melted into one another, leaving no trace of where one ended and the other began. And this was the disappearance of Chelsea Village to the minds of all the hurrying, L343J CHELSEA VILLAGE rushing business folk who have no time or inclination to read the romance of a buried past. But, for all that, much of the old village still exists, hidden behind the houses that have smothered it, its old frameworks rot- ting away in the midst of the built-up blocks. To the casual passer-by, the streets of Chelsea district are so alike that they seem to lack in- dividuality, yet there is scarce one of them but has some unique feature. Sometimes they are so buried that only a view from a house-top will disclose them. Walk through Twentieth Street, toward the west, and before you come to Eighth Avenue you cannot fail to see, in half a dozen places, little passages through the houses from the street ; not halls, not even alleys, just narrow, black, gloomy tun- nels, that present doorless openings. Go into any of these, stumble through the dark- ness, and, in a few steps, you come into the light at the other end ! It is like explor- [344] CHELSEA VILLAGE ing an unknown country, a little American Pompeii of our own. Here is a paved way, so narrow that 3 ou can easily span it with outstretched arms. It is a hidden street, and along it are low, wooden houses, in a totter- ing old age. These, in their early days, faced on one of the Chelsea lanes. Back through the tunnel-way again, walk on toward the river, and come to the church of St. Peter, too low built, too lacking in pretentiousness, to be a product of this day. This was the church of the old village. On its walls you may read a memorial to Clem- ent C. Moore, the simple record of a long life. It was by his generous gifts that this church was raised, and here he attended ser- vice, where his life and his good works were known to every man. \'et now his very name is heard with strangeness by the dwell- ers in this historic district, thus once more proving that a prophet is sometimes unre- membered in his own village. L345J CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF IMPORTANT DATES 1614. 1626. 1633- 1637- 1638. 1641 . 181 182 ,182 120 183 183 1642 107, 230, 324 1647 49> 124. 313 165 1 50 1654 38 1658 185 1659 263 1 660 61 1664 185 1673 139. 189 1674 187 1681 131 1684 186 1688 230 1689 187 1691 232, 324 1693 327 1694 188 1695 28 1702 28, 189 1704 230 1714 189 1716 323 1725 28 DATE PAGE 1730 201, 236 1733 I. 9, 52 1735 IS8, 274 1738 269 1740 189, 231 1741 95, 128, 190 1745 104 1 750 287, 290 1760 52, 55, 237 1761 158 1 762 106, 274 1763 - 310 1764 76 1765 20, 28 1 766 20, 323 1768 22, 47 1770 10,20, 127 1771 270 1773 190 1775 86, 105 1776 42, 79, 109, 127, 145 1780 146, 221 1787 190, 328 1789 79 1 791 190 1796 160, 202, 241 1798 .291 1 799 56 1801 343 [347J CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE DATE PAGE 1803 292 1805 343 I 806 284 1807.... 175, 2J2, 345 1809 95, 96 1 8 10 203 1811 343 181 2 144 1814 273 1815 190, 331 1816 343 1817 225 1818 219, 220, 221 1820 56, 267 1821 85, 308 1822 98 1823 57, 83, 147, 222 1825 217, 219, 235. 345 1826 57, 130 1827 295 1828 139 DATE PAGE 1833 108, 155, 157 1834 22, 77 1835 145. 223, 328 1836 158 1838 203 1839 49. 153- 158 I84I 56, 158, 277 1842 331 1844 113. 155 1848 156 1851 41 1852 153. 162 1853 162, 163, 295 1855 56 1856 131, 166, 209, 214 1866 331 1867 172 1875 331 1886 48, 127, 235 1894 147 [348] INDEX Andre, Major Johx, 312 Astor Place, 55, 290 Astor Place Opera House, 56 Barent Islands, 142, 144 Barnum's Museum, 158, 159 Battery, The, 181, 186-190 Battery Park, 189 IJattle of Long Island, 42 Baxter Street, 48 Bayard's Mount, 289 Bear Market, 271 Beaver's Lane, 104 Beaver's Path, 64 Beekman Hill, 311 Beekman House, 311 Beekman Street, 158 Belle Isle, 144 Blackwell, Robert, 139 Bhickwell's Island, 136, 139, 297 Bleecker Street, 94 Blon, Barent, 142 Bloomingdale Road, 161, 162 Bonneville, Madame, 96 Bouwerie Lane, 50, 123 Bouwerie Village, 55, 63, 169-177 Bouwerie Village Graveyard, 169- 177 Bouvveries, 123 Bowery, The, 50, 123, 129 Bowery Road, 50, 290 Bowery Theatre. 51, 130 Bowling Green, 3-15, 37. 63, loi, 119, 181, 228, 261 Bowling Green Garden, 288 Breevoort House, 305 Brick Presbyterian Church, 115, 321 Bridewell, 115 British ammunition wagons capt- ured, 1775, 105 Broad Street, 65, 104, 229 Broadway, 10, 63, 87, loi, 266, 267 Bull's Head Tavern, 51 Bunker Hill, 289 Burgher's Path, 272 Burr, Aaron, 95 Burton's Chambers Street Theatre, 156 Cafe Des Milles Colonnes, 154 Canal Street, 201 Chambers Street, 153 Chatham, Earl of, 48 Chatham Square, 49, II9-131 Chatham Street, 47, 127, 152 Chatham Theatre, 49, 151 Chelsea Cottages, 335 Chelsea Village, 333-345 Cherry Gardens, 210 [349] INDEX Cherry Hill, 207-225 Cherry Street, 213, 220 Christmas in New Amsterdam, 61- 72 Chrystie Street, 55 Church Street, 157 City Hall, 238 City Hall in Wall Street, 103 City Hall of New Amsterdam, 108 City Hall Park, 114, 241 City Plan, 58 City Prison, 204 Clarke, Captain Thomas, 337 Clarke, Mistress MoUie, 337 Clinton, De Witt, 55, 84 Clinton Hall, 55 Coenties Slip, 231, 232 Collect Pond, 84, 115, 193-204 Colles, Christopher, 84 Colonnade Row, 57 Common, The, 69, 268 Contoit's Garden, 282 Corner grocery, 276 Corner saloon, 276 Cushman, Charlotte, 51 Custom-house, 190 Cuyler's Alley, 233, 234 Declaration ofIxdepexdexce, 104, 114 De Groot, Emanuel, 124 De Lancey, Etienne, 106, 237 De Lancey, James, 52, 237 De Lancey, Susannah, 95 Delancey Street, 55 De VoQr Farm-house, 298-300 De Voor's Mill-stream, 307 East India Company, Dutch, 181 East River, 42, 64 East River islands, 135-147 Ellet's Alley, 232 Emmet, Thomas Addis, 85 Erie Canal, 84 Erie Canal Celebration, 161 Exchange Alley, 236 First Jewish Synagogue, 232, 233 First Presbyterian Church, 319-321 First printing press, 108 First town market, 261 First water works, 84 Five Points, 128, 193, 194 Fly Market, 27, 129, 265 Fort Amsterdam, 5, 182, 184 Fort Anne, 189 Fort George, 190 Fort James, 185 Fort Manhattan, 181 Fort William, 187 Fort William Hendrick, 187 Franconi's Hippodrome, 163-166 Franklin House, 213, 214 Franklin Market, 275 Franklin Square, 28, 213, 222 Franklin, Walter, 213, 222 Fraunces's " Black Sam," 106, 214 Fraunces's Tavern, 106 Fresh Water Pond, 197 " Frying Pan," The, 142 Garden Street Church, 325 Gas, first dwelling lighted by, 219 l3so^ INDEX Gas, first theatre lighted by, 51 General Theological Seminary, 342 George III., loi Gibson, Sandy, 141 Gold Street, 21 Golden Hill, 19, 113 Golden Hill, Battle of, 20 Golden Hill Inn, 20, 113 Government House, 14, 15, 190 Great Barent Island, 142 Great fire of 1833, loS Great Queen Street, 28 Greenwich Avenue, 57 Greenwich Village, 47, 58, 9I-98, 288 Grove Street, 94, 97 Hale, Nathan, 312 Hanover Square, 231 Hartfordshire and Yorkshire Tav em, 104, 229 Heere Gracht, 64 Heere Straat, 63, 69 Hell Gate, 140 Hidden graveyard, 245-257 Hoegh Street, 231 " Hog's Back," 142 Huguenot church, 230 Huzzar, British frigate, 146, 221, 222 Indian Village, 196 Indian War, 183 Inland Road to Greenwich, 47-58 Irving, Washington, 57, 140 Italian Opera House, 157 " Jack Knife," 21 James II., 186, 187 James, Duke of York, 185, 186 Jefferson Market, 57 Jewish graveyard, 131 John Street, 22 John Street Methodist Episcopa Church, 22 John Street Theatre, 22 Kalch Hook, 196 Kieft, Governor William, 6, 50, 107, 120, 183, 231 King's College, 109, 115 King's Head Tavern, 27 Kip, Ilendrick, 38 Kip, Jacob, 35 Kip's Bay, 35-44 Kirby, J. Hudson, 151 Kirby used to die, Where, 49 Kissing Bridge, 49, 308 Lafayette Amphitheatre, 160 Lafayette Place, 56, 293 Lafayette Theatre, 162 La Grange Terrace, 57 La Montagne, Dr., 41 La Montagne, Marie, 38 • Land Gate, 63, 69 Laurens Street, 160 Leland Island, 147 Leisler, Jacob, 9, 187 Leonard Street, 157 Liberty Pole, 20, 114 Lispenard, Leonard, 201 Lispenard's Meadow, 1 15, 202, 285 l35'j INDEX Little Barent Island, 143 Little Hell Gate, 144 London Terrace, 336 Lovelace, Governor, 139 Macready-Forrest Riots, 56 Madison Square, 162 Magapolensis, Dominie, 71 Maiden Lane, 23, 266 Manning, John, 136, 139 Manning's Island, 136, 139 Marble Cemetery, 245-257 Market-field, 231 Meal Market, 272 Meiser's Dock, 271 Middle Dutch Church, no Mile Stone, 52 Mill Rock, 141 Mill Street, 131, 233 Minetta Brook, 94 Minnahannonck, 139 Minuit, Governor Peter, 182 Montagnie's Inn, 281 Montgomery, Richard, 86 Montressor's Island, 144 Monument Lane, 57, 58 Moore, Benjamin, 340 Moore, Clement C. , 341, 342, 345 "Mouse-trap," The, 91-98 Mulberry Bend, 128, 194 Mulberry Street, 128, 289 Murray Hill, 44 "Negro" Point, 142 New Amsterdam in 1660, 61- 72 New Bowery, 130 New York Garden, 282 New York Hospital, 287 Niblo's Garden, 154 North Brother Island, 145 North Dutch Church, 326 Oswego Market, 267 Paine, Thomas, 96, 97 Palmo, Ferdinand, 154-157 Park Row, 47, 115, 127, 153 Park Theatre, 159, 160, 238, 241 Pauper graveyard, 57 Pearl Street, 28, 64, 108, 215, 223 Peck Slip, 231 Pell Street, 49 Penitentiary, 96 Petticoat Lane, 104, 229 Pie Woman's Lane, 24, no Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 48, 127 Plaine, The, 5, 63, 69, 230 Piatt Street, 21 Pleasure Gardens, 279-293 Post Office, 114 Post Road, 50, 115 " Pot Rock," 142 Purdy's National Theatre, 153 Nassau Street, 24 National Theatre, 158 Negro Insurrection, 128 Queen's Head Tavern, 214 Queen Street, 28, 213, 215 [J 5^-] INDEX Raisin Street, 98 Randall's Island, 145 Ranelagh, 285 Reason Street, 97 Richmond Hill House, Greenwich Village, 95 Riker's Island, 146 Riley's Fifth Ward Hotel, 128 Rivington Street, 52 Roosevelt Street, I96 Rutgers, Anthony, 201, 285 Sacket, Richard, 210 St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church, 56 St. George's Square, 222 St. John's Church, 239-241 St. John's Lane, 241 St. Mark's Church. 171-175 St. Nicholas, Patron Saint of New Amsterdam, 65 St. Patrick's Church, 329 St. Paul's Chapel, 75-88 St. Paul's Churchyard, 75-88 St. Peter's Church, 345 Second Avenue, 44 Shell Point, 196 Shot Tower, 306 Slave Market, 272 Smith's V'lei, 27 South Brother Island, 145 South William Street, 131 Sports in New Amsterdam, 69 Spring Valley Farm, 297-316 Stadt Huys, 108, 230 Stone Street, 231 Stoppani's baths, 155 Stuyvesant, Governor Peter, 6, 58, 70, 108, 124, 171-176. 185 Sunken Meadow, 144 Tea- Water Pump, 49 Temple, Charlotte, 49 Temple Court, 158 Thalia Theatre, 51 Thames Street, 236 Theatre Alley, 238, 239 Thompson, Corporal, 162, 165 Times Building, 115 Tinpot Alley, 235 Tombs Prison, 203 Trinity Church, 79 Unxle Tom's Cabin, 46, 153 Van Twiller, Governor, 142, 144, 182 Van Twiller's farms, 142 Van Twiller's Island, 142 Vauxhall Garden (first), 288 Vau.\hall Garden (second), 289 Vauxhall Garden (third), 56, 290 Virgin's Path, 24 Vlei Market, 262 Wall Street, 271 , Wallack, J. W., 158 Wallack, Lester, 51 Walton House, 216 Ward's Island, 142, 143 Warren, Admiral Peter, 95, 104, 2U [353] INDEX Washington, George, 22, 28, 31, Whitehall, 65, 72 44, 52, 78, 79, 80, 102, 106, J 29, Willett, iNIarinus, 105 213, 338 William III., 28 Washington's Home, 213, 215 William and Mary, 187 Washington Market, 271 William Street, 24 Washington Square, 57 William the Testy, 6, 108 Water Gate, 62 Wolfe, General, 58 Water Works (first), 84 Wreck Brook, 197, 202 West India Company, 181, 184, 185 Wheatley, Julia, 158 York, James, Duke of, 185, 186 [354] UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY EACILITY AA 000 910 500 8