New York City Hall

“ Today more than ninety-nine per cent. of the population of the immensely populated island of Manhattan lives north of the City Hall. That cheap north wall, hidden under countless coats of white paint, is the one acute reminder of the days that were when the Hall was new—when the gentle square in which it stood was surrounded by the suburban residences of prosperous New Yorkers and when the waters of the Collect Pond—where the New York boys use to skate in the bitterness of old-fashioned winters—lapped its northerly edge. ”

“ In spite of its size, Chambord has little history of which to boast. Nothing of importance or even of special interest took place there.
NEW YORK CITY HALL
We are fortunate indeed as a nation to have had in our earlier days an architecture that could boast of such pleasing monuments as the New York City Hall. Our ancestors in both the North and South were strongly influenced from the point of view of art by that English Renaissance which reached its culmination in the hands of Sir Christopher Wren. ”

“ Gentlemen of society, bankers, stylish young men with vast ideas of personal importance, amateurs and patrons! City Hall is the brain of New York, of the continent, and it is one of the laws of the world that brains will rule. Rebel as muscles merely of the body politic, and ye rebel against inexorable law: that scribbling literati in the fifth story—for newspapers like men have their brains in the upper story—is more potent than you in settling the artistic position of a Lucca or a Rubenstein, a Dickens or a Doré, a Tennyson or a Carlyle. ”

“ Then, amid the ringing of bells, the firing of cannon, a great shout went up, "Long live George Washington, President of the United States."
It was the streets of New York that first resounded to this glorious cry!
Federal Hall was the old City Hall. It stood on the northeast corner of Wall and Nassau streets, on ground now occupied by the United States Sub-Treasury.
New Yorkers have much to be proud of in their city. ”

“ When from the window of a luxurious office thirty stories above the pavement I looked down upon the human current of Broadway, and over the roof-tops of the tongue of Manhattan, and across the bridges to other roof-tops, and upon the traffic of bay and river, I thought of that little room, first door to the left upstairs, in the town hall of Souilly, where more men than all of service age in all the city of New York had been commanded in two of the greatest battles of history. ”

“ Look uptown, catch the faint patch of dark green that is Central Park, the spires of the cathedral, the wonderful campanile at Madison square. Let your glance swing across the gentle Hudson, over into a New Jersey that is bounded by the ridges of the Orange mountains, then slowly south and even the great towers that thrust themselves into almost every buildable foot of Broadway below the City Hall cannot entirely block your view of the wonderful upper harbor of New York—of the great ships that bring to an imperial city the tribute that is rightfully hers. ”

“ The third and present City Hall of New York City was projected in 1802, when a premium was publicly offered for the best design. The award was given to Messrs. Mangin (a Frenchman) and Macomb,—architects concerning whom very little authentic information is obtainable. It was finished in 1812. The corner-stone of the building was laid by Mayor Edward Livingstone.
The building consists of a central structure of two stories and an attic, surmounted by a cupola, and two wings of two stories each. ”

“ We have lately seen how the tradition that Washington Irving used to live in the house on the corner of Irving Place and Seventeenth Street had no foundation in fact, except that he had a nephew who lived next door. And so the story so often repeated in newspapers and guide books that the City Hall was finished in brownstone at the back because the city fathers thought that nobody of any importance would ever live to the north of it might, it seems, be set at rest, although the attempt is not made for the first time. The story reflects on the intelligence of the people of the day. ”

“ The plans of the architect who designed the City Hall, John McComb, were accepted in the year 1803, but the building was not completed until nine years later.
It is not always an agreeable business to devote one’s time to destroying a myth which has become lodged in the affections of the people, but sometimes it rests on so slight a foundation that there is nothing gained in keeping it alive. ”

“ Now let your vision drop into the near foreground—into the tracery of trees about the jewel-box of a City Hall. Let it pause for a moment in the broad-paved [30] street at your feet with the queer little openings through which humans are sweeping like a black stream into a funnel; others from which the human streams come crawling upward like black molasses and you are again reminded that some of the greatest highways of New York are those that are subterranean and unseen. The sidewalks grow a little blacker than before. ”

“ Perhaps it was this feature of quiet repose which suggested the suitability of establishing there the Library, the churches, the Columbia College Law School, and the Church House.
The writer might go on and refer extensively to other ancient streets and the changed aspect of other places throughout the city, but that is not his present purpose.
There are a few old landmarks that are likely to stand, for example the City Hall, in the opinion of some the most successful building, as to architectural design, in the country. ”

“ Between the City Hall and Twenty-third street New York is more thickly populated than any city in America. It is in this section that the “tenement houses,” or buildings containing from five to twenty families, are to be found. The greatest mortality is in these over-crowded districts, which the severest police measures cannot keep clean and free from filth. The southern portion of the city is devoted almost exclusively to trade, comparatively few p. 51persons residing below the City Hall. Below Canal street the streets are narrow, crooked, and irregular. ”

“ Cortlandt Street corner was a famous vantage-ground from which to see the belles go by in pleasant weather, on shopping bent. The City Hall, according to “Salmagundi,” was a resort for young lawyers, not because they had business there, but because they had no business anywhere else.
There was an advanced wing of society which practised the latest arts of42 pleasure imported from the Old World. The great god Style already had its votaries, and then, as now, many were the sacrifices of good taste and refined manners offered at its painted paste-board shrine. ”

“ The walk is just the right length to take before dressing for dinner. A line drawn eastward from the park plaza at Fifty-eighth Street will almost strike an old mile-stone still standing in Third Avenue, which says, "4 miles from City Hall, New York." ”

“ If the lawmakers had been derelict, the people of New York had not. They at least appreciated the possibilities of a capital. The task of designing Federal Hall in which Congress was to meet had been entrusted to L’Enfant—who was to win undying fame by planning the city of Washington—and he had done his work well—some thought too well. ”

“ Besides its welcoming houses set among spreading trees, New York possessed public buildings of dignity and distinction. There was Trinity Church, whose tall steeple was one of the first landmarks to catch the traveler's eye as he journeyed down the river from Albany. The new City Hall, dating from Bellomont's time and standing on a site at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, given by Colonel Abraham de Peyster, was also a source of pride. With its substantial wings and arched colonnade in the center it was quite imposing. Here the Assembly, Council, and Court sat. ”

“ The day was spent with the utmost hilarity and good humor, enlivened by appropriate toasts and songs. The mayor of the city was a guest of the society. Mechanics’ Hall is described as a building eighty by twenty-seven and a half feet. In the basement was a spacious kitchen, etc.; on the first floor a large coffee room, bar, dining room and landlady’s room; on the second floor, ceiling sixteen feel high, a large hall fifty-two by twenty-five feet, with a handsome orchestra and a drawing room twenty feet square. ”

“ Handsome mansions, tasteful cottages and plain but neat rows of dwellings are found everywhere, and the streets are beautifully shaded by avenues of trees.
The public buildings of Brooklyn worthy of notice are few, compared to those of New York. Fulton street is its principal thoroughfare, and contains occasional handsome edifices. The City Hall, on an open square at the junction of Fulton court and Joraleman street, is a fine, white marble building, in Ionic style, with six columns supporting the roof of the portico. It is surmounted by a tower one hundred and fifty-three feet in height. ”

“ The seats of fashion were to be found on the Battery, which would have remained the most delightful locality for residence in New York if the people of the metropolis had not conceived a repugnance to living in near proximity to business quarters. Lower Broadway, Upper Pearl and Nassau Streets were of high respectability; and Broadway had been paved as far as the City Hall. Beyond lay charming country roads, occasional country houses to which the leading families retreated from the summer heat, and thrifty farms whose owners were happily ignorant of the enormous future values of their fields. ”

“ The business center of New York refused to spread. Wall Street, the financial heart of the metropolis, is only four blocks from the Battery, the City Hall three quarters of a mile. Two miles north, at Union Square and Broadway, is the center of the publishing business. A half mile farther, at Broadway and 23d, the famous "flat-iron" building and the tower of Madison Square Garden dominate the region of hotels and theaters. ”

“ The want of a tavern truly English, that would satisfy the officers of the government, may have been the cause which led Governor Lovelace to build, in 1672, on his own account, an inn or ordinary right next to the City Hall, and to ask the magistrates for permission to connect the upper story of the house with the City Hall by a door opening into the [Pg 41] Court’s Chambers. ”

“ In her childhood, the future poetess had a favorite walk over the bit of rolling ground to the south of Frankfort Street, the spot called Golden Hill, which a few years later was to be trampled by many soldiers, where the tall grass was to be reddened by the blood of patriots—the first blood shed in the Revolution. She strolled hand in hand with her father over the green Common, which was to become the City Hall Park. ”

“ One of the delegates said he thought his life was in danger as he saw a man with an axe under his arm. But in their hall of refuge no one appeared to molest them; and by six o'clock the convention had completed its work and adjourned. Among those nominated for office appeared the names of George W. Clinton of Buffalo, the distinguished son of DeWitt Clinton, for secretary of state, and James T. Brady, the brilliant lawyer of New York City, for attorney-general. ”

“ The district in which he lived was the roughest in the city. Being a man of aggressive ways and popular enough to control the turbulent elements, the politicians in 1858 had him elected an Alderman, a post which he retained during 1854 and 1855. In this body he was known as a “bench-warmer”—that is, a member who kept his seat and followed the orders of his political masters without question. Giving satisfaction, he was selected to run for Congress in the district then represented by “Mike” Walsh—who was regarded in Washington as the leader of the rowdy element of New York City. ”

“ The Poet of the Revolution IN the far down-town business section of New York, there is a street so short that you can walk its entire length in ten minutes or less time. It leads from the park where the City Hall is, straight to the river. Beginning at the tall buildings where the newspapers have their homes, it continues along between the warehouses of leather merchants and the solid stonework of the bridge that crosses from the Manhattan to the Brooklyn shore ”

“ Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes’ walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. ”

“ With the occupation of New York by the British, Wall Street residences were many of them vacated by their owners and inhabited by the red-coated officers. Judge Jones tells us that the British soldiers "broke open the City Hall, and plundered it of the college library, its mathematical and philosophical apparatus, and a number of valuable pictures, all of which had been removed there by way of safety when the rebels converted the college into a hospital. ”

“ Here met Colonial Courts and Legislators, town and city governments and the General Court of the Commonwealth. It was used as a City Hall from 1830 to 1840. It is open to the public from 9 a. m. to 4 p. m., daily. From the windows, one may look out on the Washington Street side and see the site of Paul Revere’s Silver Shop.
Leaving the old State House, pause for a moment at Number 28 9 State Street. Here is another historic site where stood the Royal Exchange Tavern, from which the first stage coach started to New York on September 7, 1772, “to go once every fourteen days.” ”

“ 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 [Pg 8] at Pearl Street, opposite Coenties Slip. ”