Nooks and Corners of Old New York Part 7

[Sidenote: Duane Street Church]

Crowded close between dwellings on the east side of Hudson Street, fifty feet south of Spring, is the Duane M. E. Church, a quaint-looking structure, half church, half business building. This is the successor of the North Church, the North River Church and the Duane Street Church, founded in 1797, which, before it moved to Hudson Street, in 1863, was in Barley (now Duane) Street, between Hudson and Greenwich Streets.

In Spring Street, near Varick, is the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, which was built in 1825. Before its erection the "old" Spring Street Presbyterian Church stood on the site, having been built in 1811.

[Sidenote: Richmond Hill]

Although the leveling vandalism of a great city has removed every trace of Richmond Hill, the block encircled by Macdougal, Charlton, Varick and Vandam Streets, is crowded thick with memories of men and events of a past generation.

Long before there was a thought of the city getting beyond the wall that hemmed in a few scattering houses, and when the Indian settlement, which afterwards became Greenwich Village, kept close to the water's edge, a line of low sand hills called the Zandtberg, stretched their curved way from where now Eighth Street crosses Broadway, ending where Varick Street meets Vandam. At the base of the hill to the north was Manetta Creek.

The final elevation became known as Richmond Hill, and that, with a considerable tract of land, was purchased by Abraham Mortier, commissioner of the forces of George III. of England. In 1760 he built his home on the hill and called it also Richmond Hill.

[Sidenote: Burr's Pond]

The house was occupied by General Was.h.i.+ngton as his headquarters in 1776, and by Vice-President Adams in 1788. Aaron Burr obtained it in 1797, entertained lavishly there, improved the grounds, constructed an artificial lake long known as Burr's Pond, and set up a beautiful entrance gateway at what is now Macdougal and Spring Streets, which he pa.s.sed through in 1804 when he went to fight his duel with Alexander Hamilton.

Burr gave up the house in 1807, and, the hill being cut away in the opening of streets in 1817, the house was lowered and rested on the north side of Charlton Street just east of Varick. It became a theatre later and remained such until it was torn down in 1849. A quiet row of brick houses occupies the site now.

[Sidenote: St. John's Burying Ground]

What is now a pleasant little park enclosed by Hudson, Leroy and Clarkson Streets, was part of a plot set aside for a graveyard when St.

John's Chapel was built. It was called St. John's Burying-Ground. Its early limits extended to Carmine Street on one side and to Morton Street on the other. Under the law burials ceased there about 1850. There were 10,000 burials in the grounds, which, unlike the other Trinity graveyards, came to be neglected. The tombstones crumbled to decay, the weeds grew rank about them and the trees remained untrimmed and neglected.

About 1890 property owners in the vicinity began steps to have the burying-ground made into a park. Conservative Trinity resisted the project until the city won a victory in the courts and the property was bought. Relatives of the dead were notified and some of the bodies were removed. In September, 1897, the actual work of transforming the graveyard into a park was begun. Laborers with crowbars knocked over the tombstones that still remained and putting the fragments in a pit at the eastern end of the grounds covered them with earth to make a play-spot for children.

[Sidenote: Bedford Street Church]

At Morton and Bedford Streets is the Bedford Street M. E. Church. The original structure was built in 1810 in a green pasture. Beside it was a quiet graveyard, reduced somewhat in 1830 when the church was enlarged, and wiped out when the land became valuable and the present structure was set up in 1840. The church was built for the first congregation of Methodists in Greenwich Village, formed in 1808 at the house of Samuel Walgrove at the north side of Morton Street close to Bleecker.

[Sidenote: Where Thomas Paine Lived And Died]

Thomas Paine--famous for his connection with the American and French revolutions, but chiefly for his works, "The Age of Reason," favoring Deism against Atheism and Christianity; and "Common Sense," maintaining the cause of the American colonies--died in Greenwich Village June 8, 1809, having retired there in 1802.

The final years of his life were pa.s.sed in a small house in Herring (now Bleecker) Street. On the site is a double tenement numbered No. 293 Bleecker Street, southeast corner Barrow. This last named street was not opened until shortly after Paine's death. It was first called Reason Street, a compliment to the author of "The Age of Reason." This was corrupted to Raisin Street. In 1828 it was given its present name.

Shortly before his death Paine moved to a frame building set in the centre of a nearby field. Grove Street now pa.s.ses over the site which is between Bleecker and West Fourth Streets, the back of the building having been where No. 59 Grove Street is now.

About the time that Barrow Street was opened Grove Street was cut through. It was called Cozine Street, then Columbia, then Burrows, and finally, in 1829, was changed to Grove. When the street was widened in 1836, the house in which Paine had died, until then left standing, was demolished.

[Sidenote: Admiral Warren and His Family]

The homestead of Admiral Sir Peter Warren occupied the ground now taken up in the solidly built block bounded by Charles, Fourth, Bleecker and Perry Streets. The house was built in 1744, in the midst of green fields, and for more than a century it was the most important dwelling in Greenwich. Admiral Warren of the British Navy was, next to the Governor, the most important person in the Province. His house was the favorite resort of social and influential New York. The Admiral's influence and popularity had a marked effect on the village, which, by his coming, was given an impetus that made it a thriving place.

Of the three daughters of Admiral Warren, Charlotte, the eldest, married Willoughby, Earl of Abingdon; the second, Ann, married Charles Fitzroy, afterwards Baron Southampton, and Susannah, the youngest, married William Skinner, a Colonel of Foot. These marriages had their effect also on Greenwich Village, serving to continue the prosperity of the place. Roads which led through the district, of which the Warren family controlled a great part, were named in honor of the different family branches. The only name now surviving is that of Abingdon Square.

In the later years of his life, Sir Peter Warren represented the City of Westminster in Parliament. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

[Sidenote: State Prison]

In 1796 the State Prison was built on about four acres of ground, surrounded by high walls, and taking in the territory now enclosed by Was.h.i.+ngton, West, Christopher and Perry Streets. The site is now, for the most part, occupied by a brewery, but traces of the prison walls are yet to be seen in those of the brewery. There was a wharf at the foot of Christopher Street. In 1826 the prison was purchased by the Corporation of the State. The construction of a new State Prison had begun at Sing Sing in 1825. In 1828 the male prisoners were transferred to Sing Sing, and the female prisoners the next year.

[Sidenote: Convict Labor]

The yard of the early prison extended down to the river, there were fields about and a wide stretch of beach. It was here that the first system of prison manufactures was organized. A convict named Noah Gardner, who was a shoemaker, induced the prison officials to permit him the use of his tools. In a short time he had trained most of the convicts into a skilled body of shoemakers.

The gathering together of a number of convicts in a workroom was at first productive of some disorder, owing to the difficulty of keeping them under proper discipline under the new conditions. In 1799 came the first riot. The keepers fired upon and killed several convicts. There was another revolt in 1803.

Gardner had been found guilty of forgery, but was reprieved on the gallows through the influence of the Society of Friends, of which he was a member, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Because of his services in organizing the prison work, he was liberated after serving seven years.

Becoming then a shoe manufacturer, he was successful for several years, when he absconded, taking with him a pretty Quakeress, and was never heard of again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Houses Wiehawken St.]

[Sidenote: Quaint Houses in Wiehawken Street]

Although the prison has been swept away, an idea of its locality can be had from the low buildings at the west side of nearby Wiehawken Street.

These buildings have stood for more than a hundred years, having been erected before the prison.

That part of Greenwich Village that was transformed from fields into a town in a few days, during the yellow fever scare of 1822, centered at the point where West Eleventh Street crosses West Fourth Street. At this juncture was a cornfield on which, in two days, a hotel capable of accommodating three hundred guests was built. At the same time a hundred other houses sprang up, as if by magic, on all sides.

[Sidenote: Bank Street]

Bank Street was named in 1799. The year previous a clerk in the Bank of New York on Wall Street was one of the earliest victims of yellow fever, and the officials decided to take precautions in case of the bank being quarantined at a future time. Eight lots were purchased on a then nameless lane in Greenwich Village. The bank was erected there, and gave the lane the name of Bank Street.

[Sidenote: Was.h.i.+ngton Square]

Was.h.i.+ngton Square was once a Potter's Field. A meadow was purchased by the city for this purpose in 1789, and the pauper graveyard was established about where the Was.h.i.+ngton Arch is now.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Looking South from Minetta Lane]

Manetta Creek, coming from the north, flowed to the west of the arch site, crossed to what is now the western portion of the Square, ran through the present Minetta Street and on to the river. In 1795, during a yellow fever epidemic, the field was used as a common graveyard. In 1797 the pauper graveyard which had been in the present Madison Square, was abandoned in favor of this one. There was a gallows on the ground and criminals were executed and interred on the spot as late as 1822.

In 1823 the Potter's Field was abandoned and removed to the present Bryant Park at Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue. In 1827, three and one half acres of ground were added to the plot and the present Was.h.i.+ngton Square was opened.

[Sidenote: Obelisk Lane]

Past the pauper graveyard ran an inland road to Greenwich Village. This extended from the Post Road (now the Bowery) at the present Astor Place near Cooper Union, continued in a direct line to about the position of the Was.h.i.+ngton Arch, and from that point to the present Eighth Avenue just above Fifteenth Street. This road, established through the fields in 1768, was called Greenwich Lane. It was also known as Monument Lane and Obelisk Lane. A small section of it still exists in Astor Place from Bowery to Broadway. A larger section is Greenwich Avenue from Eighth to Fourteenth Streets. Monument Lane took its name from a monument at Fifteenth Street where the road ended, which had been erected to the memory of General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. The monument disappeared in a mysterious way during the British occupation. It is thought to have been destroyed by soldiers.

[Sidenote: Graveyard In a Side Street]

A few feet east of Sixth Avenue, on the south side of Eleventh Street, is a brick wall and railing, behind which can be seen several battered tombstones in a triangular plot of ground. This is all that is left of a Jewish graveyard established almost a century ago.

Milligan's Lane was the continuation of Amos (now West Tenth) Street, from Greenwich Avenue to Twelfth Street where it joined the Union Road.

This lane struck the line of Sixth Avenue where Eleventh Street is now.

At the southwest corner of this junction the course of the lane can be seen yet in the peculiar angle of the side wall of a building there, and in a similar angle of other houses near by. Close by this corner the second graveyard of Shearith Israel Synagogue was established early in this century. It took the place of the Beth Haim, or Place of Rest, down town, a remnant of which is to be seen in New Bowery off Chatham Square.

[Sidenote: Milligan's Lane]

The Eleventh Street graveyard, established in the midst of green fields, fronted on Milligan's Lane and extended back 110 feet. When Eleventh Street was cut through under the conditions of the City Plan, in 1830, it pa.s.sed directly through the graveyard, cutting it away so that only the tiny portion now there was left. At that time a new place of burial was opened in Twenty-first Street west of Sixth Avenue.