Nassau Street

“ Street, and so closed the thoroughfare that a passage-way led around the building to Nassau Street. When the Sub-Treasury was built in 1836, on the site of Federal Hall, Nassau Street was opened to Wall, and the little passage-way was left to form the wide pavement of to-day.
Where Alexander Hamilton Lived
Alexander Hamilton, in 1789, lived in a house on the south side of Wall Street at Broad. His slayer, Aaron Burr, then lived back of Federal Hall in Nassau Street. ”

“ How people doing business here are ever found by those having dealings with them is a mystery. Many, indeed, come here to avoid being found, for Nassau street is the headquarters of those who carry on their business by circulars, and under assumed names. It is a good hiding place, and one in which a culprit might safely defy the far-reaching arm of Justice.
Along the street, and mostly in the cellars, cluster the “Old Book Stores” of New York, of which I shall have more to say hereafter, and they add not a little to the singular character of the street. ”

“ Crossing Regent Street, Argyll Street marks the situation of the old town mansion of the Dukes of Argyll. Marlborough Street, Great Marlborough Street, and Blenheim Street were so called in honour of the Duke of Marlborough, the victor of Blenheim. Wardour Street is in allusion to the family seat of the ground landlord, Lord Arundel of Wardour. Nassau Street was named in compliment to the royal House of Nassau, from which the Prince of Orange claimed his descent. Golden Square is a corruption of Gelding Square, derived from an adjacent inn sign, “The Gelding.” ”

“ There is something imaginative, if not very picturesque, in the manner in which the lawyers of Manhattan occupy the buildings of Nassau street, a thoroughfare which connects Wall street with the Tombs. ”

“ Not so many relatives of the fellows came, because there weren't so many relatives, and because it was such a job to get here, but the people, the country people, gathered from miles around, as well as the fashion from Trenton and Elizabethtown, and even some from New York and Philadelphia. There were horse-races up and down Nassau Street in front of old North; fakirs had tents, strewn here and there; gypsies told fortunes and played the devil ”

“ Ten abreast and every man a gentleman, they marched by. At this time Wall street from half way to William Street to half way to Broadway, Nassau Street half way to Pine, and Broad Street as far as the eye could reach, were densely packed with people from side to side. ”

“ The Middle Dutch Reformed Church was built in Lafayette Place in 1839, at the northwest corner of Fourth Street after its removal from Nassau and Cedar Streets. A new church was built at Seventh Street and Second Avenue in 1844. In the Lafayette Place building was a bell which had been cast in Holland in 1731, and which had first been used when the church was in Nassau Street. It was the gift of Abraham de Peyster, and now hangs in the Reformed Church at Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street. ”

“ Now for my adventure. In 1870, just before the war cloud burst, covering all that part of the world, I was stopping for some weeks at the Hotel Nassau. It stands in the main street, opposite the park gate leading to the Casino. All the world went to Wiesbaden to be amused. However fashionable frivolity and vice may be elsewhere, here it was strictly de rigueur, and to pretend to decency and sobriety would be to stamp one's self a heathen and barbarian, all unversed in the glorious flower-wreathed Primrose Way of our orb. ”

“ It was not until 1846 that the telegraph was extended to New York, and in the meantime the New York papers used such other means as they could for the collection of news. Besides trains, ships, horses, and the fleet foot of the reporter, there were pigeons. Beach went in for pigeons extensively. When the Sun moved from 156 Nassau Street, in the summer of 1842, it took147 a six-story building at the southwest corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets, securing about three times as much room as it had in the two-story building at Spruce Street. ”

“ In front of us, on the shore of the bay, lies the town of Green Turtle, a much more prosperous and civilized place than we had been led to expect, with freshly painted two-story stone and frame houses, set side by side close to the straight, narrow main street, which is used only as a foot-path, as there are no horses or cattle nearer than Nassau. The main street, which is called Broadway, is hardly more than ten feet wide, while the cross-streets are just wide enough for two persons to pass. ”

“ Of this class (now about extinct) a few built up large concerns, while others, after hopelessly contending year after year with adverse fortune, sunk eventually into bankruptcy, and may in some instances now be found in the ranks of clerkship. From Cedar street, trade moved to Liberty, Nassau, and John streets, while as these new emporiums prospered, Pearl street gradually lost its prestige, until the general hegira of trade in 1848, which left that ancient mart deserted. ”

“ Fine weather is useful, and is limited in supply, but it is not wealth, since it cannot be appropriated. Some things are capable of appropriation only under peculiar circumstances. In an extensive, thinly inhabited plain, light and air are incapable of appropriation, every inhabitant may enjoy them equally; but in a town, one house intercepts them from another. A town house, surrounded by an open space, has more of them than one in a street. The possessor of such a house, and of the ground which surrounds it, has practically appropriated its peculiar advantages of light and air ”

“ The bulk of the Frenchmen have served, many of them are veterans in civil war, and they have commanders skilled in street-fighting. The English workmen have been gradually attracted to London by a real and permanent demand for their labour. ”

“ On the spur of the moment, therefore, I ordered a carriage; and, with my wallet lying by my side, having bidden adieu to a simple-hearted village, which, for the short remainder of my days, I believe, I shall remember with regard, I continued for some time gradually to ascend its eastern boundary, until I arrived nearly at the summit or pinnacle of the Taunus hills. The view from this point was very extensive indeed, and the park-like appearance of the whole of the lofty region or upper story of Nassau formed a prospect at once noble and pleasing. ”

“ How often those quiet moonlit streets must have roared with brutal revelry, and the fierce clamour of pistol-belted scoundrels round the wine-casks have gone up into the still, tropic night.
But those heroic days are gone, and Nassau is given up to a sleepy trade in sponges and tortoise-shell, and peace is no name for the drowsy tenor of the days under the palm trees and the scarlet poincianas. ”

“ It was a night of fitful moonlight, and Nassau, with its white houses and white streets, seemed very hushed and spectral as I made my way down to the wharf, vivid in black and silver.
There is always something mysterious about starting a journey at night, even though it be nothing more out-of-the-way than catching a midnight train out of the city ”

“ Very few of the gardens belonging to private houses are of great size, and even Government House is a modest-looking dwelling, erected on the highest of the surrounding hills, and commanding a fine view of the town and harbour.
The chief monument of Nassau is not one built by hand, but a silk-cotton-tree, planted, some two hundred years ago, by one John Miller, Esq., opposite the present "public buildings." It is a stupendous tree of Titanic proportions. ”

“ At Coblentz we pass the river on a pendulum boat, and the road to Nassau is over tremendous hills, on which is here and there a little corn, more vines, but mostly barren. In some of these barrens are forests of beach and oak, tolerably large, but crooked and knotty; the undergrowth beach brush, broom, and moss. The soil of the plains, and of the hills where they are cultivable, is reddish. Nassau is a village the whole rents of which should not amount to more than a hundred or two guineas. Yet it gives the title of Prince to the house of Orange to which it belongs. ”

“ View him as you will, his stock in trade is small;—he has but the tangible instincts of all creatures,—love of life, of ease, and of offspring. For all else, he must go to school to the white race, and his discipline must be long and laborious. Nassau, and all that we saw of it, suggested to us the unwelcome question, whether compulsory labor be not better than none. But as a question I gladly leave it, and return to the simple narration of what befell. ”

“ As my young readers may know, Nassau is located on New Providence Island, about two hundred miles east of the lower coast of Florida. It is under British rule and contains about fifteen thousand inhabitants. It is more or less of a health resort and is visited by many tourists, consequently there are several good hotels and many means of spending a few days there profitably.
The run to Nassau was made without further mishaps, and immediately on arriving the steam yacht was placed in the hands of some builders who promised to make the needed repairs without delay. ”

“ Nassau is situated upon the island of New Providence, one of the Bahamas, and is the chief town and capital of the group. All of the islands are surrounded by coral reefs and shoals, through which are channels more or less intricate. That wonderful "River in the Sea"—the Gulf Stream—which flows between the Florida coast and the Bahama Banks is only forty miles broad between the nearest opposite points; but there is no harbor on that part of the Florida coast. The distance from [Pg 123] Charleston to Nassau is about five hundred miles, and from Wilmington about five hundred and fifty. ”

“ BAY OF NAPLES.
The streets are generally about wide enough for one wagon, and how they do swarm with people! It is Broadway repeated in every street, in every court, in every alley! Such masses, such throngs, such multitudes of hurrying, bustling, struggling humanity! ”

“ Gilfleur, as he ran the boat into a tangle of mangroves and other plants.
"This bay appears to be about five miles from the town of Nassau, and I should say that no 192 person is likely to see the boat if it should stay here for a month," replied Christy, as he measured the distance across the island with the scale his companion had prepared.
"It will not take us long to walk that distance. There are all sorts of people in Nassau at the present time, as there were in St. George's and Hamilton; and we shall pass without exciting any particular attention." ”

“ Old Nassau will never be what she was before the fire of '55. Those precious heirlooms of our day are sunk from sight forever, dear and mossy as they were,—swept down, like cobwebs, before the flame-besom. ”

“ To those who really understand them, every one of the great, vital streets of the world has a soul as well as a body. The social invader from the West, the merchant whose establishment still found profit in Grand Street, the banker from Broad Street, or the ship's chandler from South, the club awakening to the fact that its quarters on Broadway or in one of the side streets near Irving Place was too far downtown, or in size inadequate to its growing membership—those were the agencies that wrought the Avenue's material development. ”

“ The rattling of the carriages, the brilliance of the shops, and the continual hum of the passengers, contributed to heighten the scene.
“Bond Street,” said Dashall, “is not one of the most elegant streets in the vicinity of London, but is the resort of the most fashionable people, and from about two o'clock till five, it is all bustle—all life—every species of fashionable vehicle is to be seen dashing along in gay and gallant pride. ”

“ The people are intensely patriotic and political, hence the streets are named after celebrated statesmen; the principal thoroughfare, which, by the way, is over a mile in length, being called Palmerston Street, the rest bearing such honoured cognomens as Cobden, Bright, Brougham, Russell, Peel, and so on. ”

“ Fifth Avenue, with its proud, self-conscious sweep of asphalt picked out in a gentle curve of lights, with its immaculate, slightly snobbish flanking of shops, its human throng, leisurely and restless at the same breath, its well-fleshed, muscular police that stemmed the tide with a gesture of white-gloved hands, he dismissed at once as dangerous, and therefore unpracticable. ”

“ Immense antlers, one above another, are ranged in the hall, as well as on the walls of the great staircase; and certainly when a sportsman comes to the Platte on a visit to the Duke of Nassau, everything his eyes can rest on, not only reminds him of his favourite pursuit, but seems also to promise him as much of it as the keenest hunter can desire: in short, without the slightest pretension, the Platte is nobly adapted to its purpose, and with great liberality it is open at almost all times to the inspection of “gentlemen sportsmen” and travellers from all quarters of the globe. ”

“ The following afternoon we put in at Flying Fish Cove, a neat little settlement, with a pretty show of sponging craft at anchor, a few prosperous-looking houses on the hill-side, and a sprinkling of white, or half-white, people in the streets. I instructed Tom and the Captain to stock in whatever we needed. We would lie there that night, and in the morning we would make a start, homeward-bound, for Nassau. ”

“ The moonlight nights at Nassau, although marvellously beautiful, are not a little dangerous to fresh arrivals, on account of the heavy dews. I remember one evening we all went out to see the ruins of the fort built in 1788 by the Earl of Dunmore, memorably connected with the American Revolution. It certainly was a lovely sight, and the old grey walls and tower looked as well as any ruin on Rhine or Nile by that argentine radiance, approaching sunlight in its tropical brilliance, which renders things more or less romantic, be they ever so commonplace. ”