Charles Hemstreet

“ Cooper Union, at the upper end of the Bowery, was built in 1854. Peter Cooper, merchant and philanthropist, made the object of his life the establishment of an institution designed especially to give the working [Pg 165] classes opportunity for self-education better than the existing institutions afforded. His store was on the site of the present building, which he founded. By a deed executed in 1859 the institution, with its incomes, he devoted to the instruction and improvement of the people of the United States forever. ”

“ What is now Park Row, from City Hall Park to Chatham Square, was for many years called Chatham Street, in honor of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. In 1886 the aldermen of the city changed the name to Park Row, and in so doing seemed to stamp approval of an event just one hundred years before which had stirred American manhood to acts of valor. This [Pg 48] was the dragging down by British soldiers in 1776 of a statue of the Earl of Chatham which had stood in Wall Street. ”

“ The street carried away a part of a Jewish burying-ground, a portion of which, crowded between tenement-houses and shut off from the street by a wall and iron fence, is still to be seen a few steps from Chatham Square. The first synagogue of the Jews was in Mill Street (now South William) . The graveyard mentioned was the first one used by this congregation, and was opened in 1681, so far from the city that it did not seem probable that the latter could ever reach it. Early in the nineteenth century the graveyard was moved to a site which is now Sixth Avenue and Eleventh Street. ”

“ There is a rift in the walls between the tall buildings at No. 55 Broadway, near Rector Street, a cemented way that is neither alley nor street. It was a green lane before New Amsterdam became New York, and for a hundred years has been called Tin Pot Alley. With the growth of [Pg 58] the city the little lane came near being crowded out, and the name, not being of proper dignity, would be forgotten but for a terra cotta tablet fixed in a building at its entrance. This was placed there by Rev. Morgan Dix, the pastor of Trinity Church. ”

“ By 1850 there had begun a gradual decline, for persons of wealth were moving up-town, and it degenerated to a tenement-house level after 1869, when the park disappeared beneath the foundations of the big freight depot which now occupies the site.
Around the corner from the church, a block away in Beach Street, is a tiny park, one of the last remnants of the Annetje Jans Farm. The bit of farm is carefully guarded now, much more so than was the entire [Pg 92] beautiful tract. It forms a triangle and is fenced in by an iron railing, with one gate, that is fast barred and never opened. ”

“ It became a centre of importance in 1826, when the old Bull's Head Tavern was moved from its early home on the Bowery, near Bayard Street, to the point which is now marked by Twenty-sixth Street and Third Avenue. It continued to be the headquarters of drovers and stockmen. As at that time there was no bank north of the City Hall Park, the Bull's Head Tavern served as inn, bank and general business emporium for the locality. For more than twenty years this district was the great cattle market of the city. ”

“ Where Vesey and Greenwich Streets and West Broadway come together is a low, rough-hewn rock house. It has been used as a shoe store since the early part of the century. On its roof is a monster boot bearing the [Pg 80] date of 1832, which took part in the Croton water parade and a dozen other celebrations. In pre-revolutionary days, when the ground where the building stands was all Hudson River, and the water extended as far as the present Greenwich Street, according to tradition, this was a lighthouse. ”

“ Astor Place, as far as Fifth Avenue, was called Art Street when it was changed from a road to a street. The continuation of Astor Place to the east, now Stuyvesant Street, was originally Stuyvesant Road, and extended to the river at about Fifteenth Street. It was also called Art when it became a street. On the south side of this thoroughfare, just west of Fourth Avenue, Charlotte Temple lived in a small stone house.
At the head of Lafayette Place, fronting on Astor Place, is a building used at this time as a German Theatre. ”

“ In Twenty-first Street, a little west of Sixth Avenue, is the unused though not uncared-for graveyard of the Shearith Israel Synagogue. The graveyard cannot be seen from the street, but from the rear windows of a nearby dry-goods store a glimpse can be had of the ivy-covered receiving-vault and the time-grayed tombstones. ”

“ This was a congested, tenement-house vicinity, where misery and poverty pervaded most of the dingy dwellings. In wiping out the two solidly built-up blocks, Bone Alley, well known in police history for a generation, was effaced. On the west side of Willett Street, midway of the block, Bone Alley had its start and extended sixty feet into the block—a twenty-five-foot space between tall tenements, running plump into a row of houses extending horizontal with it. ”

“ Greenwich Street follows the line of a road which led from the city to Greenwich Village. This road was on the waterside. It was called Greenwich Road. South of Canal Street, west of Broadway, was a marshy tract known as Lispenard's Meadows. Over this swamp Greenwich Road crossed on a raised causeway. When the weather was bad for any length of time, the road became heavy and in places was covered by the strong [Pg 81] tide from the river. At such times travel took an inland route, along the Post Road (now the Bowery) and by Obelisk Lane (now Astor Place and Greenwich Avenue) . ”

“ A large column on the other side of the church preserves the memory of another man whose body does not lie in the churchyard, for William James Macneven was interred in the burying-ground of the Riker family at Bowery Bay, L. I.
In Second Street, between Avenue A and First Avenue, stood a Methodist church, and beside it a graveyard, until 1840; when the building was turned into a public school. There were fifteen hundred bodies in the yard, but they were not removed to Evergreen Cemetery until 1860. Only [Pg 156] fifteen bodies were claimed by relatives. ”

“ There is another Marble Cemetery which historians sometimes confuse with this hidden graveyard, namely, one on Second Street, between First and Second Avenues. Some of the larger merchants of the city bought the ground in 1832, and created the New York City Marble Cemetery. Among the original owners was Robert Lenox. When he died, in 1839, his body was placed in a vault of the First Presbyterian Church at 16 Wall Street. When that church was removed to Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street the remains of Lenox with others were removed to this Marble Cemetery. ”

“ It is of Dutch architecture, with sloping roof and a wide porch. The cutting through and grading of Fifty-third Street have forced it higher above the ground than its builders intended it to be. The outer walls, in part, have been boarded over, and some "modern improvements" have made it somewhat unsightly; [Pg 207] but inside, no vandal's art has been sufficient to hide its solid oak beams and its stone foundations that have withstood the shocks of time successfully. It was a farm-house, and its site was the Spring Valley Farm of the Revolution. ”

“ Early in the eighteenth century, Anthony Rutgers held under lease from Trinity a section of the Church Farm which took in the Dominie's [Pg 93] Bouwerie, a property lying between where Broadway is and the Hudson River. The southern and northern lines were approximately the present Reade and Canal Streets. It was a wild spot, remaining in a primitive condition—part marsh, part swamp—covered with dwarf trees and tangled underbrush. Cattle wandered into this region and were lost. It was a dangerous place, too, for men who wandered into it. ”

“ The Madison Avenue building was sold to the South (Reformed) Dutch Church.
Chatham Square
Chatham Square has been the open space it is now ever since the time when a few houses clustered about Fort Amsterdam. The road that stretched the length of the island in 1647 formed the only connecting link between the fort and six large bouweries or farms on the east side.
The bouwerie settlers in the early days were harassed by Indians, and [Pg 46] spent as much time defending themselves and skurrying off to the protection of the Fort as they did in improving the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Adrian Block was one of the earliest fur traders to visit the island [Pg 57] after Henry Hudson returned to Holland with the news of his discovery. The "Tiger" took fire in the night while anchored in the bay, and Block and his crew reached the shore with difficulty. They were the only white men on the island. Immediately they set about building a new vessel, which was named the "Restless."
Next door, at No. 39, President Washington lived in the Macomb's Mansion, moving there from the Franklin House in 1790. Subsequently the house became a hotel. ”

“ Arsenal in Madison Square
In 1797 was built, where the burying-ground had been, an arsenal which extended from Twenty-fourth Street and over the site of the Worth Monument.
In the City Plan, completed in 1811, provision was made for a parade-ground to extend from Twenty-third to Thirty-fourth Streets, and Seventh to Third Avenue. The Commissioners decided that such a space was needed for military exercises, and where, in case of necessity, there [Pg 182] could be assembled a force to defend the city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the Revolutionary War the books became spoil for British soldiers. Many were destroyed and many sold. After the war the remains of the library were gathered from various parts of the city and again collected in the City Hall. In 1784 the members of the Federal Congress deliberated in the library rooms. In 1795 the library was moved to Nassau Street, opposite the Middle Dutch Church; in 1836 to Chambers Street; in 1841 to Broadway and Leonard Street; in 1853 to the Bible House, and in 1856 to the present building. ”

“ 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 [Pg 113] hundred other houses sprang up, as if by magic, on all sides. ”

“ In the churchyard were buried the remains of Mayor Philip Hone and of Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. It was here that the body of Alexander T. Stewart rested until stolen. Close by the church was the mansion of Governor Stuyvesant. It was an imposing structure for those days, built of tiny bricks brought from Holland. A fire destroyed the house at the time of the Revolution.
[Pg 160]
When Peter Stuyvesant returned from Holland he brought with him a pear tree, which he planted in a garden near his Bouwerie Village house. This tree flourished for more than two hundred years. ”

“ A project, widely and favorably considered in 1825, but which came to nothing, advocated the extension of Canal Street, as a canal, from river to river. The street took its name naturally from the little stream which was called a canal. When the street was filled in and improved, the stream was continued through a sewer leading from Centre Street. The locality at the foot of the street has received the local title of "Suicide Slip" because of the number of persons in recent years who have ended their lives by jumping into Hudson River at that point. ”

“ 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 [Pg 10] since been a centre of exchange. ”

“ The tiny patch of grass 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. ”

“ By the time the city stretched past the locality, all that was left of the resort was what would now be called a low saloon, and its pretty garden had [Pg 85] been sold for building lots. The second Vauxhall was off the Bowery, south of Astor Place.
A. T. Stewart's Store
The Stewart Building, on the east side of Broadway, between Chambers and Reade Streets, has undergone few external changes since it was the dry goods store of Alexander T. Stewart. On this site stood Washington Hall, which was erected in 1809. ”

“ At the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector Street, where a sky-scraper is now, Grace Church once stood with a graveyard about it. The church was completed in 1808, and was there until 1846, when the present structure was erected at Broadway and Tenth Street. Upon the Rector Street site, the Trinity Lutheran Church, a log structure, was built in 1671. It was rebuilt in 1741, and was burned in the great fire of 1776.
Trinity Churchyard
Trinity churchyard is part of a large tract of land, granted to the [Pg 59] Trinity Corporation in 1705, that was once the Queen's Farm. ”

“ At present the income is about $400,000 a year. It is conceded that the property would have increased more rapidly in value had it been sold outright, instead of becoming leasehold property in perpetuity.
Many efforts have been made to cut through Eleventh Street from Fourth Avenue to Broadway. The first was in 1830, when the street was open on the lines of the City Plan. Hendrick Brevoort, whose farm adjoined the Sailors' Snug Harbor property, had a homestead directly in the line of the proposed street, between Fourth Avenue and Broadway. ”

“ The two blocks now enclosed by Duane, Worth, Broadway and Church Streets, were occupied by the buildings and grounds of the New York Hospital. Thomas Street was afterwards cut through the grounds. As the City Hospital, the institution had been projected before the War of the Revolution. The building was completed about 1775. During the war it [Pg 89] was used as a barrack. In 1791 it was opened for the admission of patients. On the lawn, which extended to Broadway, various societies gathered on occasions of annual parades and celebrations. ”