Nooks and Corners of Old New York Part 1

Nooks and Corners of Old New York.

by Charles Hemstreet.

_INTRODUCTORY NOTE_

The points of interest referred to in this book are to be found in the lower part of the Island of Manhattan.

Settlements having early been made in widely separated parts of the island, streets were laid out from each settlement as they were needed without regard to the city as a whole; with the result that as the city grew the streets lengthened and those of the various sections met at every conceivable angle. This resulted in a tangle detrimental to the city's interests, and in 1807 a Commission was appointed to devise a City Plan that should protect the interests of the _whole_ community.

A glance at a city map will show the confusion of streets at the lower end of the island and the regularity brought about under the City Plan above Houston Street on the east, and Fourteenth Street on the west side.

The plan adopted by the Commission absolutely disregarded the natural topography of the island, and resulted in a city of straight lines and right angles.

I

[Sidenote: Fort Amsterdam]

On the centre building of the row which faces bowling Green Park on the south there is a tablet bearing the words:

THE SITE OF FORT AMSTERDAM, BUILT IN 1626.

WITHIN THE FORTIFICATIONS WAS ERECTED THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL CHURCH EDIFICE ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN.

IN 1787 THE FORT WAS DEMOLISHED AND THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE BUILT UPON THIS SITE

[Sidenote: Dutch West India Co.]

This was the starting-point of the settlement which gradually became New York. In 1614 a stockade, called Fort Manhattan, was built as a temporary place of shelter for representatives of the United New Netherland Co., which had been formed to trade with the Indians. This company was replaced by the Dutch West India Co., with chartered rights to trade on the American coast, and the first step towards the forming of a permanent settlement was the building of Fort Amsterdam on the site of the stockade.

In 1664 New Amsterdam pa.s.sed into British possession and became New York, while Fort Amsterdam became Fort James. Under Queen Anne it was Fort George, remaining so until demolished in 1787.

On the Fort's site was built the Government House, intended for Was.h.i.+ngton and the Presidents who should follow him. But none ever occupied it as the seat of government was removed to Philadelphia before the house was completed. After 1801 it became an office building, and was demolished in 1815 to make room for the present structures.

[Sidenote: Bowling Green]

The tiny patch of gra.s.s at the starting-point of Broadway, now called Bowling Green Park, was originally the centre of sports for colonists, and has been the scene of many stirring events. The iron railing which now surrounds it was set up in 1771, having been imported from England to enclose a lead equestrian statue of King George III. On the posts of the fence were representations of heads of members of the Royal family.

In 1776, during the Revolution, the statue was dragged down and molded into bullets, and where the iron heads were knocked from the posts the fracture can still be seen.

[Sidenote: The Battery]

When the English took possession of the city, in 1664, the Fort being regarded as useless, it was decided to build a Battery to protect the newly acquired possession. Thus the idea of the Battery was conceived, although the work was not actually carried out until 1684.

Beyond the Fort there was a fringe of land with the water reaching to a point within a line drawn from Water and Whitehall Streets to Greenwich Street. Sixty years after the Battery was built fifty guns were added, it having been lightly armed up to that time.

The Battery was demolished about the same time as the Fort. The land on which it stood became a small park, retaining the name of the Battery, and was gradually added to until it became the Battery Park of to-day.

[Sidenote: Castle Garden]

A small island, two hundred feet off the Battery, to which it was connected by a drawbridge, was fortified in 1811 and called Fort Clinton. The armament was twenty-eight 32-pounders, none of which was ever fired at an enemy. In 1822 the island was ceded back to the city by the Federal Government--when the military headquarters were transferred to Governor's Island--and became a place of amus.e.m.e.nt under the name of Castle Garden. It was the first real home of opera in America. General Lafayette was received there in 1824, and there Samuel F. B. Morse first demonstrated the possibility of controlling an electric current in 1835.

Jenny Lind, under the management of P. T. Barnum, appeared there in 1850. In 1855 it became a depot for the reception of immigrants; in 1890 the offices were removed to Ellis Island, and in 1896, after many postponements, Castle Garden was opened as a public aquarium.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 7 State Street]

[Sidenote: State Street]

State Street, facing the Battery, during the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, was the fas.h.i.+onable quarter of the city, and on it were the homes of the wealthy. Several of the old houses still survive. No. 7, now a home for immigrant Irish girls, was the most conspicuous on the street, and is in about its original state. At No. 9 lived John Morton, called the "rebel banker" by the British, because he loaned large sums to the Continental Congress. His son, General Jacob Morton, occupied the mansion after his marriage in 1791, and commanded the militia. Long after he became too infirm to actually command, from the balcony of his home he reviewed on the Battery parade grounds the Tompkins Blues and the Light Guards. The veterans of these commands, by legislative enactment in 1868, were incorporated as the "Old Guard."

[Sidenote: The "Stadhuis"]

On the building at 4 and 6 Pearl Street, corner State Street, is a tablet which reads:

1636 1897 ON THIS SITE STOOD THE "STADHUIS"

OF NEW AMSTERDAM----ERECTED 1636 THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE IN LOVING MEMORY OF THE FIRST DUTCH SETTLERS BY THE HOLLAND DAMES OF THE NEW NETHERLANDS AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE LEGION OF THE CROWN LAVINIA KONIGIN

It was set up October 7, 1897, and marks the supposed site of the first City Hall. What is claimed by most authorities to be the real site is at Pearl Street, opposite Coenties Slip.

Whitehall Street was one of the earliest thoroughfares of the city, and was originally the open s.p.a.ce left on the land side of the Fort.

[Sidenote: The Beaver's Path]

Beaver Street was first called the Beaver's Path. It was a ditch, on either side of which was a path. When houses were built along these paths they were improved by a rough pavement. At the end of the Beaver's Path, close to where Broad Street is now, was a swamp, which, before the pavements were made, had been reclaimed and was known as the Sheep Pasture.

[Sidenote: Petticoat Lane]

Marketfield Street, whose length is less than a block, opens into Broad Street at No. 72, a few feet from Beaver Street. This is one of the lost thoroughfares of the city. Almost as old as the city itself, it once extended past the Fort and continued to the river in what is now Battery Place. It was then called Petticoat Lane. The first French Huguenot church was built on it in 1688. Now the Produce Exchange cuts the street off short and covers the site of the church.

[Sidenote: Broad Street]

Through Broad Street, when the town was New Amsterdam, a narrow, ill-smelling inlet extended to about the present Beaver Street, then narrowed to a ditch close to Wall Street. The water-front was then at Pearl Street. Several bridges crossed the inlet, the largest at the point where Stone Street is. Another gave Bridge Street its name. In 1660 the ways on either side were paved, and soon became a market-place for citizens who traded with farmers for their products, and with the Indians who navigated the inlet in their canoes. The locality has ever since been a centre of exchange. When the inlet was finally filled in it left the present "Broad" Street.

Where Beaver Street crosses this thoroughfare, on the northwest corner, is a tablet:

TO COMMEMORATE THE GALLANT AND PATRIOTIC ACT OF MARINUS WILLETT IN HERE SEIZING JUNE 6, 1775, FROM THE BRITISH FORCES THE MUSKETS WITH WHICH HE ARMED HIS TROOPS. THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY THE SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE REVOLUTION, NEW YORK, NOV. 12, 1892

On one side of the tablet is a bas-relief of the scene showing the patriots stopping the ammunition wagons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fraunces' Tavern]

[Sidenote: Fraunces' Tavern]

Fraunces' Tavern, standing at the southeast corner of Broad and Pearl Streets, is much the same outwardly as it was when built in 1700, except that it has two added stories. Etienne De Lancey, a Huguenot n.o.bleman, built it as his homestead and occupied it for a quarter of a century. It became a tavern under the direction of Samuel Fraunces in 1762. It was Was.h.i.+ngton's headquarters in 1776, and in 1783 he delivered there his farewell address to his generals.

[Sidenote: Pearl Street]