II
The Origin of Broadway
From New Amsterdam, which centered about the Fort, the only road which led through the island branched out from Bowling Green. It took the line of what is now Broadway, and during a period of one hundred years was the only road which extended the length of the island.
That Broadway, beyond St. Paul's Chapel, ever became a greatly traveled thoroughfare, was due more to accident than design, for to all appearances the road which turned to the east was to be the main artery for the city's travel, and all calculations were made to that end. Broadway really ended at St. Paul's.
The First Graveyard
Morris Street was called Beaver Lane before the name was changed in 1829. On this street, near Broadway, the first graveyard of the city was situated. It was removed and the ground sold at auction in 1676, when a plot was acquired opposite Wall Street. This last was used in conjunction with Trinity Church until city interment was prohibited.
The First House Built
On the office building at 41 Broadway there is fixed a tablet which bears the inscription:
THIS TABLET MARKS THE SITE OF THE
FIRST HABITATIONS OF WHITE MEN
ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN
ADRIAN BLOCK
COMMANDER OF THE "TIGER"
ERECTED HERE FOUR HOUSES OR HUTS
AFTER HIS VESSEL WAS BURNED
NOVEMBER, 1613
HE BUILT THE RESTLESS, THE FIRST VESSEL
MADE BY EUROPEANS IN THIS COUNTRY
THE RESTLESS WAS LAUNCHED
IN THE SPRING OF 1614
Adrian Block was one of the earliest fur traders to visit the island 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.
Tin Pot Alley
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 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.
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 Trinity Corporation in 1705, that was once the Queen's Farm.
Annetje Jans's Farm
In 1635 there were a number of bouweries or farms above the Fort. The nearest—one extending about to where Warren Street is—was set apart for the Dutch West India Company, and called the Company's Farm. Above this was another, bounded approximately by what are now Warren and Charlton Streets, west of Broadway. This last was given by the company, in 1635, to Roelof Jansz (contraction of Jannsen), a Dutch colonist. He died the following year, and the farm became the property of his wife, Annetje Jans. (In the feminine, the z being omitted, the form became Jans.) The farm was sold to Francis Lovelace, the English Governor, in 1670, and he added it to the company's farm, and it became thereafter the Duke's Farm. In 1674 it became the King's Farm. When Queen Anne began her reign it became the Queen's Farm, and it was she who granted it to Trinity, making it the Church Farm.
In 1731, which was sixty-one years after the Annetje Jans's farm was sold to Governor Lovelace, the descendants of Annetje Jans for the first time decided that they had yet some interest in the farm, and made an unsuccessful protest. From time to time since protests in the form of lawsuits have been made, but no court has sustained the claims.
The city's growth was retarded by church ownership of land, as no one wanted to build on leasehold property. It was not until the greater part of available land on the east side of the island was built upon that the church property was made use of on the only terms it could be had. Not until 1803 were the streets from Warren to Canal laid out.
Trinity Church was built in 1697. For years before, however, there had been a burying-ground beyond the city and the city's wall that became the Trinity graveyard of to-day. The waving grass extended to a bold bluff overlooking Hudson River, which was about where Greenwich Street now is. Through the bluff a street was cut, its passage being still plainly to be seen in the high wall on the Trinity Place side of the graveyard.
Oldest Grave In Trinity Churchyard
The oldest grave of which there is a record is in the northern section of the churchyard, on the left of the first path. It is that of a child, and is marked with a sandstone slab, with a skull, cross-bones and winged hour-glass cut in relief on the back, the inscription on the front reading:
W. C.
HEAR . LYES . THE . BODY
OF . RICHARD . CHVRCH
ER . SON . OF . WILLIA
M . CHVRCHER . WHO .
DIED . THE . 5 OF . APRIL
1681 . OF . AGE 5 YEARS
AND . 5 . MONTHS
The records tell nothing of the Churcher family.
Within a few feet of this stone is another that countless eyes have looked at through the iron fence from Broadway, which says:
HA, SYDNEY, SYDNEY!
LYEST THOU HERE?
I HERE LYE,
'TIL TIME IS FLOWN
TO ITS EXTREMITY.
It is the grave of a merchant—once an officer of the British army—Sydney Breese, who wrote his epitaph and directed that it be placed on his tombstone. He died in 1767.
Grave of Charlotte Temple
On the opposite side of the path, nearer to Broadway, is a marble slab lying flat on the ground and each year sinking deeper into the earth. It was placed there by one of the sextons of Trinity more than a century ago, in memory of Charlotte Temple.
Close by the porch of the north entrance to the church is the stone that marks the grave of William Bradford, who set up the first printing-press in the colony and was printer to the Colonial Government for fifty years. He was ninety-two years old when he died in 1752. The original stone was crumbling to decay when, in 1863, the Vestry of Trinity Church replaced it by the present stone, renewing the original inscription (see page [14]).
Martyr's Monument
The tall freestone Gothic shaft, the only monumental pile in the northern section of the churchyard, serves to commemorate the unknown dead of the Revolution. Trinity Church with all its records, together with a large section of the western part of the city, was burned in 1776 when the British army occupied the city. During the next seven years the only burials in the graveyard were the American prisoners from the Provost Jail in The Commons and the other crowded prisons of the city, who were interred at night and without ceremony. No record was kept of who the dead were.
A Churchyard Cryptograph
Close to the Martyrs' Monument is a stone so near the fence that its inscription can be read from Broadway:
HERE LIES
DEPOSITED THE BODY OF
JAMES LEESON,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE ON
THE 28TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1794,
AGED 38 YEARS.
And above the inscription are cut these curious characters:
It is a cryptograph, but a simple one, familiar to school children. In its solution three diagrams are drawn and lettered thus:
The lines which enclose the letters are separated from the design, and each section used instead of the letters. For example, the letters A, B, C, become:
The second series begins with K, because the I sign is also used for J. The letters of the three series are distinguished by dots; one dot being placed with the lines of the first series; two dots with the second, but none with the third. If this be tried, any one can readily decipher the meaning of the cryptograph, and read "REMEMBER DEATH."
Close to the north door of the church are interred the remains of Lady Cornbury, who could call England's Queen Anne cousin. She was the wife of Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who was Governor of New York in 1702. He was a grandson of the Earl of Clarendon, Prime Minister of Charles II; and son of that Earl of Clarendon who was brother-in-law of James II. So Lady Cornbury was first cousin of Queen Anne. She was Baroness of Clifton in her own right, and a gracious lady. She died in 1706.
Alexander Hamilton's Tomb
The tomb of Alexander Hamilton, patriot, soldier and statesman, stands conspicuously in the southern half of the churchyard, about forty feet from Broadway and ten feet from the iron railing on Rector Street.
In the same part of the churchyard are interred the remains of Philip, eldest son of Alexander Hamilton. The son in 1801 fell in a duel with George L. Eacker, a young lawyer, when the two disagreed over a political matter. Three years later Eacker died and was buried in St. Paul's churchyard, and the same year Alexander Hamilton fell before the duelling pistol of Aaron Burr.
Last Friend Of Aaron Burr
Close by Hamilton's tomb, a slab almost buried in the earth bears the inscription "Matthew L. Davis' Sepulchre." Strange that this "last friend that Aaron Burr possessed on earth" should rest in death so close to his friend's great enemy. He went to the Jersey shore in a row-boat with Burr on the day the duel was fought with Hamilton, and stood not far away with Dr. Hosack to await the outcome. He was imprisoned for refusing to testify before the Coroner. Afterwards he wrote a life of Burr. He was a merchant, with a store at 49 Stone Street, and was highly respected.
Tomb of Capt. James Lawrence
Within a few steps of Broadway, at the southern entrance to the church, is the tomb of Captain James Lawrence, U. S. N., who was killed on board the frigate Chesapeake during the engagement with H. B. M. frigate "Shannon." His dying words, "Don't give up the ship!" are now known to every school-boy. The handsome mausoleum close by the church door, and the surrounding eight cannon, first attract the eye. These cannon, selected from arms captured from the English in the War of 1812, are buried deep, according to the directions of the Vestry of Trinity, in order that the national insignia, and the inscription telling of the place and time of capture, might be hidden and no evidence of triumph paraded in that place—where all are equal, where peace reigns and enmity is unknown. The monument was erected August 22, 1844. Before that the remains of Captain Lawrence had been interred in the southwest corner of the churchyard, beneath a shaft of white marble. This first resting-place was selected in September, 1813, when the body was brought to the city and interred, after being carried in funeral procession from the Battery.
"D. Contant" is the inscription on the first vault at the south entrance, one of the first victims of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to be buried in the city. There are many Huguenot memorials in the churchyard, the oddest being a tombstone with a Latin inscription telling that Withamus de Marisco, who died in 1765, was "most noble on the side of his father's mother."
Cresap, the Indian Fighter
At the rear of the church, to the north, is a small headstone:
IN MEMORY OF
MICHAEL CRESAP
FIRST CAPTAIN OF THE
RIFLE BATTALIONS
AND SON OF COLONEL THOMAS CRESAP
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
OCT. 18, A. D. 1775.
His father had been a friend and neighbor of Washington in Virginia, and he himself was a brilliant Indian fighter on the frontier of his native State. It was the men under his command who, unordered, exterminated the family of Logan, the Indian chief, "the friend of the white man." Many a boy, who in school declaimed, unthinkingly, "Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one!" grown to manhood, cannot but look with interest on the grave of Logan's foe. Tradition has been kind to Cresap's memory, insisting that his heart broke over the accusation of responsibility for the death of Logan's family.
There is another slab, close by the grave of Captain Cresap, which tells:
"HERE LIETH YE BODY OF SUSANNAH
NEAN, WIFE OF ELIAS NEAN, BORN
IN YE CITY OF ROCHELLE, IN FRANCE,
IN YE YEAR 1660, WHO DEPARTED
THIS LIFE 25 DAY OF DECEMBER,
1720, AGE 60 YEARS." "HERE LIETH
ENTERRED YE BODY OF ELIAS NEAN,
CATECHIST IN NEW YORK, BORN IN
SOUBISE, IN YE PROVINCE OF CAENTONGE
IN FRANCE IN YE YEAR 1662,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 8 DAY OF
SEPTEMBER 1722 AGED 60 YEARS."
"THIS INSCRIPTION WAS RESTORED BY
ORDER OF THEIR DESCENDANT OF THE
6TH GENERATION, ELIZABETH CHAMPLIN
PERRY, WIDOW OF THE LATE
COM'R O. H. PERRY, OF THE U. S.
NAVY, MAY, ANNO DOMINI, 1846."
But the stone does not tell that the Huguenot refugee was for many years a vestryman of Trinity Church, and that among his descendants are the Belmonts and a dozen distinguished families. Before coming to America, Elias Nean was condemned to the galleys in France because he refused to renounce the reformed religion.
Where Gov De Lancy Was buried
Beneath the middle aisle in the church lie the bones of the eldest son of Stephen (Etienne) De Lancey—James De Lancey. He was Chief Justice of the Colony of New York in 1733, and Lieutenant-Governor in 1753. He died suddenly in 1760 at his country house which was at the present northwest corner of Delancey and Chrystie Streets. A lane led from the house to the Bowery.
Home of The De Lanceys
Thames Street is as narrow now as it was one hundred and fifty years ago, when it was a carriageway that led to the stables of Etienne De Lancey. The Huguenot nobleman left his Broad Street house for the new home he had built at Broadway and Cedar Street in 1730. In 1741, at his death, it became the property of his son, James, the Lieutenant-Governor. It was the most imposing house in the town, elegantly decorated, encircled by broad balconies, with an uninterrupted garden extending to the river at the back.
After the death of Lieutenant-Governor De Lancey in 1760, the house became a hotel, and was known under many names. It was a favorite place for British officers during the Revolution, and in 1789 was the scene of the first "inauguration ball" in honor of President Washington.
The house was torn down in 1793. In 1806 the City Hotel was erected on its site and became the most fashionable in town. It was removed in 1850 and a line of shops set up. In 1889 the present buildings were erected.
A tablet on the building at 113 Broadway, corner of Cedar Street, marks the site, reading:
THE SITE OF
LIEUT. GOVE. DE LANCEY'S HOUSE,
LATER THE CITY HOTEL.
IT WAS HERE THAT THE NON-IMPORTATION
AGREEMENT, IN OPPOSITION TO THE STAMP
ACT, WAS SIGNED, OCT. 15TH, 1766. THE
TAVERN HAD MANY PROPRIETORS BY WHOSE
NAMES IT WAS SUCCESSIVELY CALLED. IT
WAS ALSO KNOWN AS THE PROVINCE ARMS, THE
CITY ARMS AND BURNS COFFEE HOUSE OR TAVERN.
Opposite Liberty (then Crown) Street, in the centre of Broadway, there stood in 1789 a detached building 42 x 25 feet. It was the "up-town market," patronized by the wealthy, who did their own marketing in those days, their black slaves carrying the purchases home.
Washington Market
Washington Market, at the foot of Fulton Street, was built in 1833. The water washed the western side of it then, and ships sailed to it to deliver their freight. Since then the water has been crowded back year by year with the growing demand for land. In its early days it was variously called Country Market, Fish Market and Exterior Market.
St. Paul's Chapel
At the outskirts of the city, in a field that the same year had been sown with wheat, the cornerstone of St. Paul's Chapel was laid on May 14, 1764. The church was opened two years later, and the steeple added in 1794. It fronted the river which came up then as far as to where Greenwich Street is now, and a grassy lawn sloped down to a beach of pebbles. During the days of English occupancy, Major André, Lord Howe and Sir Guy Carleton worshipped there. Another who attended services there was the English midshipman who afterwards became William IV.
The Washington Pew in St. Paul's
President Washington, on the day of his inauguration, marched at the head of the representative men of the new nation to attend service in St. Paul's, and thereafter attended regularly. The pew he occupied has been preserved and is still to be seen next the north wall, midway between the chancel and the vestry room. Directly opposite is the pew occupied at the same period by Governor George Clinton.
Back of the chancel is the monument to Major-General Richard Montgomery, who fell before Quebec in 1775, crying, "Men of New York, you will not fail to follow where your general leads!" Congress decided on the monument, and Benjamin Franklin bought it in France for 300 guineas. A privateer bringing it to this country was captured by a British gunboat, which in turn was taken, and the monument, arriving safe here, was set in place. The body was removed from its first resting-place in Quebec, and interred close beside the monument in 1818.
In the burying-ground, which has been beside the church since it was built, are the monuments of men whose names are associated with the city's history: Dr. William James Macneven, who raised chemistry to a science; Thomas Addis Emmet, an eminent jurist and brother of Robert Emmet; Christopher Collis, who established the first water works in the city, and who first conceived the idea of constructing the Erie Canal; and a host of others.
The Actor Cooke's Grave
The tomb of George Frederick Cooke, the tragedian, is conspicuous in the centre of the yard, facing the main door of the church. Cooke was born in England in 1756, and died in New York in 1812. Early in life he was a printer's apprentice. By 1800 he had taken high rank among tragic actors.
The grave of George L. Eacker, who killed the eldest son of Alexander Hamilton in a duel, is near the Vesey Street railing.
Astor House
The Astor House, occupying the Broadway block between Vesey and Barclay Streets, was opened in 1836 by Boyden, a hotel keeper of Boston. This site had been part of the Church Farm, and as early as 1729, when there were only a few scattered farm houses on the island above what is now Liberty Street, there was a farm house on the Astor House site; and from there extended, on the Broadway line, a rope-walk. Prior to the erection of the hotel in 1830, the site for the most part had been occupied by the homes of John Jacob Astor, John G. Coster and David Lydig. On a part of the site, at 221 Broadway, in 1817, M. Paff, popularly known as "Old Paff," kept a bric-à-brac store. He dealt especially in paintings, having the reputation of buying worthless and old ones and "restoring" them into masterpieces. His was the noted curiosity-shop of the period.
A House of Other Days
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 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. There have been many changes in the outward appearance, but the foundation of solid rock is the same as when the waters swept around it.
The Road To Greenwich
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 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).
St. Peter's Church
St. Peter's Church, at the southeast corner of Barclay and Church Streets, the home of the oldest Roman Catholic congregation in the city, was built in 1786, and rebuilt in 1838. The congregation was formed in 1783, although mass was celebrated in private houses before that for the few scattered Catholic families.
Columbia College
The two blocks included between Barclay and Murray Streets, West Broadway and Church Street, were occupied until 1857 by the buildings and grounds of Columbia College. That part of the Queen's Farm lying west of Broadway between the present Barclay and Murray Streets—a strip of land then in the outskirts of the city—in 1754 was given to the governors of King's College. During the Revolution the college suspended exercises, resuming in 1784 as Columbia College under an act passed by the Legislature of the State. In 1814, in consideration of lands before granted to the college which had been ceded to New Hampshire in settlement of the boundary, the college was granted by the State a tract of farming land known as the Hosack Botanical Garden. This is the twenty acres lying between Forty-seventh and Forty-ninth Streets, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. At that time the city extended but little above the City Hall Park, and this land was unprofitable and for many years of considerable expense to the college. By 1839 the city had crept past the college and the locality being built up the college grounds were cramped between the limits of two blocks. In 1854, Park Place was opened through the grounds of the college from Church Street to West Broadway (then called College Place). Until about 1816 the section of Park Place west of the college grounds was called Robinson Street. In 1857 the college was moved to Madison Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets, and in 1890 it was re-organized on a university basis.
Chapel Place
West Broadway was originally a lane which wound from far away Canal Street to the Chapel of Columbia College, and was called Chapel Place. Later it became College Place. In 1892 the street was widened south of Chambers Street, in order to relieve the great traffic from the north, and extended through the block from Barclay to Greenwich Street. Evidence of the former existence of the old street can be seen in the pillars of the elevated road on the west side of West Broadway at Murray Street, for these pillars, once on the sidewalk, are now several feet from it in the street.
Bowling Green Garden And First Vauxhall
In the vicinity of what is now Greenwich and Warren Streets, the Bowling Green Garden was established in the early part of the eighteenth century. It was a primitive forest, for there were no streets above Crown (now Liberty) Street on the west side, and none above Frankfort on the east. The land on which the Garden stood was a leasehold on the Church Farm. The place was given the name of the Vauxhall Garden before the middle of the same century, and for forty years thereafter was a fashionable resort and sought to be a copy of the Vauxhall in London. There was dancing and music, and groves dimly lighted where visitors could stroll, and where they might sit at tables and eat. 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 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. It was a hotel of the first class, and contained the fashionable ball room and banqueting-hall of the city. The building was destroyed by fire July 5, 1844. The next year Stewart, having purchased the site from the heirs of John G. Coster, began the construction of his store. Stewart came from Ireland in 1823, at the age of twenty. For a time after his arrival he was an assistant teacher in a public school. He opened a small dry goods store, and was successful. The Broadway store was opened in 1846. Four years later Stewart extended his building so that it reached Reade Street. All along Broadway by this year business houses were taking the place of residences. The Stewart residence at the northwest corner of Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, was, at the time it was built, considered the finest house in America. Mr. Stewart died in 1876, leaving a fortune of fifty millions. His body was afterwards stolen from St. Mark's Churchyard at Tenth Street and Second Avenue.
At Broadway and Duane Street, roasted chestnuts were first sold in the street. A Frenchman stationed himself at this corner in 1828, and sold chestnuts there for so many years that he came to be reckoned as a living landmark.
At the same corner was the popular Café des Mille Colonnes, the proprietor of which, F. Palmo, afterwards built and conducted Palmo's Opera House in Chambers Street.
First Sewing Machine
In a store window on Broadway, close to Duane Street, the first sewing-machine was exhibited. A young woman sat in the window to exhibit the working of the invention to passers-by. It was regarded as an impracticable toy, and was looked at daily by many persons who considered it a curiosity unworthy of serious attention.
Masonic Hall
At Nos. 314 and 316 Broadway, on the east side of the street just south of Pearl Street, stood Masonic Hall, the cornerstone of which was laid June 24, 1826. It looked imposing among the structures of the street, over which it towered, and was of the Gothic style of architecture. While it was in course of erection, William Morgan published his book which claimed to reveal the secrets of masonry. His mysterious disappearance followed, and shortly after, the rise of the anti-Masonic party and popular excitement put masonry under such a ban that the house was sold by the Order, and the name of the building was changed to Gothic Hall. On the second floor was a room looked upon as the most elegant in the United States: an imitation of the Chapel of Henry VIII, it was of Gothic architecture, furnished in richness of detail and appropriateness of design, and was one hundred feet long, fifty wide and twenty-five high. In it were held public gatherings of social and political nature.
New York Hospital
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 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. The hospital buildings were in the centre of the big enclosure. At the northern end of the lawn, the present corner of Broadway and Worth Street, was the New Jerusalem Church.
Riley's Fifth Ward Hotel
On the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street was Riley's Fifth Ward Hotel, which was a celebrated place in its day. It was the prototype of the modern elaborately fitted saloon, but was then a place of instruction and a moral resort. In a large room, reached by wide stairs from the street, were objects of interest and art in glass cases—pictures of statesmen, uniforms of the soldiers of all nations, Indian war implements, famous belongings of celebrated men, as well as such simple curiosities as a two-headed calf. On Franklin Street, before Riley's door, was a marble statue minus a head, one arm and sundry other parts. It was all that remained of the statue of the Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, which had stood in Wall Street until dragged down by British soldiers. For twenty-five years the battered wreck had lain in the corporation yard, until found and honored with a place before his door by Riley. At the latter's death the Historical Society took the remains of the statue, and it is in its rooms yet.
The passage of Washington through the island is commemorated by a tablet on a warehouse at 255 West Street, near Laight, which is inscribed:
TO MARK THE LANDING PLACE OF
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON,
JUNE 25, 1775,
ON HIS WAY TO CAMBRIDGE
TO COMMAND
THE AMERICAN ARMY.
St. John's Church
St. John's Church of Trinity Parish, in Varick Street close to Beach, was built in 1807. When the church was finished St. John's Park, occupying the entire block opposite—between Varick and Hudson, Laight and Beach Streets—was established for the exclusive use of residents whose houses faced it. Before it was established, the place had been a sandy beach that stretched to the river. The locality became the most fashionable of the city in 1825. 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 beautiful tract. It forms a triangle and is fenced in by an iron railing, with one gate, that is fast barred and never opened. There is one struggling tree, wrapped close in winter with burlap, but it seems to feel its loneliness and does not thrive.
The Red Fort
From the centre of St. John's Park on the west, Hubert Street extends to the river. This street, now given over to manufacturers, was, in 1824, the chief promenade of the city next to the Battery Walk. It led directly to the Red Fort at the river. The fort was some distance from the shore. It was built early in the century, was round and of brick, and a bridge led to it. It was never of any practical use, but, like Castle Garden, was used as a pleasure resort.
Lispenard's Meadows
Cows on Broadway
Early in the eighteenth century, Anthony Rutgers held under lease from Trinity a section of the Church Farm which took in the Dominie's 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. To live near it was unhealthy, because of the foul gases which abounded. It seemed to be a worthless tract. About the year 1730, Anthony Rutgers suggested to the King in Council that he would have this land drained and made wholesome and useful provided it was given to him. His argument was so strong and sensible that the land—seventy acres, now in the business section of the city—was given him and he improved it. At the northern edge of the improved waste lived Leonard Lispenard, in a farm house which was then in a northern suburb of the city, bounded by what is Hudson, Canal and Vestry Streets. Lispenard married the daughter of Rutgers, and the land falling to him it became Lispenard's Meadows. In Lispenard's time Broadway ended where White Street is now and a set of bars closed the thoroughfare against cows that wandered along it. The one bit of the meadows that remains is the tiny park at the foot of Canal Street on the west side. Anthony Rutgers' homestead was close by what is Broadway and Thomas Street. After his death in 1750 it became a public house, and, with the surrounding grounds, was called Ranelagh Garden, a popular place in its time.
Canal Street
On a line with the present Canal Street, a stream ran from the Fresh Water Pond to the Hudson River, at the upper edge of Lispenard's Meadows. 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.
In Broadway, between Grand and Howard Streets, in 1819, West's circus was opened. In 1827 this was converted into a theatre called the Broadway. Later it was occupied by Tattersall's horse market.
Original Olympic Theatre
Next door to Tattersall's, at No. 444 Broadway, the original Olympic Theatre was built in 1837. W. R. Blake and Henry E. Willard built and managed the house. It was quite small and their aim had been to present plays of a high order of merit by an exceptionally good company. The latter included besides Blake, Mrs. Maeder and George Barrett. After a few months of struggle against unprofitable business, prices were lowered. Little success was met with, the performances being of too artistic a nature to be popular, and Blake gave up the effort and the house. In December, 1839, Wm. Mitchell leased the house and gave performances at low prices.
At No. 453 Broadway, between Grand and Howard Streets, in 1844 John Littlefield, a corn doctor, set up a place, designating himself as a chiropodist—an occupation before unknown under that title.
At No. 485 Broadway, near Broome Street, Brougham's Lyceum was built in 1850, and opened in December with an "occasional rigmarole" and a farce. In 1852 the house was opened, September 8, as Wallack's Lyceum, having been acquired by James W. Wallack. Wallack ended his career as an actor in this house. In 1861 he removed to his new theatre, corner Thirteenth Street and Broadway. Still later the Lyceum was called the Broadway Theatre.
"Murderers' Row" has its start where Watts Street ends at Sullivan, midway of the block between Grand and Broome Streets. It could not be identified by its name, for it is not a "row" at all, merely an ill-smelling alley, an arcade extending through a block of battered tenements. After running half its course through the block, the alley is broken by an intersecting space between houses—a space that is taken up by push carts, barrels, tumbledown wooden balconies and lines of drying clothes. "Murderers' Row" is celebrated in police annals as a crime centre. But the evil doers were driven out long years ago and the houses given over to Italians. These people are excessively poor, and have such a hard struggle for life as to have no desire to regard the laws of the Health Board. Constant complaints are made that the houses are hovels and the alley a breeding-place for disease.
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village sprang from the oldest known settlement on the Island of Manhattan. It was an Indian village, clustering about the site of the present West Washington Market, at the foot of Gansevoort Street, when Hendrick Hudson reached the island, in 1609.
The region was a fertile one, and its natural drainage afforded it sanitary advantages which even to this day make it a desirable place of residence. There was abundance of wild fowl and the waters were alive with half a hundred varieties of fish. There were sand hills, sometimes rising to a height of a hundred feet, while to the south was a marsh tenanted by wild fowl and crossed by a brook flowing from the north. It was this Manetta brook which was to mark the boundary of Greenwich Village when Governor Kieft set aside the land as a bouwerie for the Dutch West India Company. The brook arose about where Twenty-first Street now crosses Fifth Avenue, flowed to the southwest edge of Union Square, thence to Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, across where Washington Square is, along the line of Minetta Street, and then to Hudson River, between Houston and Charlton Streets.
Sir Peter Warren
The interests of the little settlement were greatly advanced in 1744, when Sir Peter Warren, later the hero of Louisburg, married Susannah De Lancey and went to live there, purchasing three hundred acres of land.
Epidemics in the city from time to time drove many persons to Greenwich as a place of refuge. But it remained for the fatal yellow-fever epidemic of 1822, when 384 persons died in the city, to make Greenwich a thriving suburb instead of a struggling village. Twenty thousand persons fled the city, the greater number settling in Greenwich. Banks, public offices, stores of every sort were hurriedly opened, and whole blocks of buildings sprang up in a few days. Streets were left where lanes had been, and corn-fields were transformed into business and dwelling blocks.
Evolution of Greenwich Streets
The sudden influx of people and consequent trade into the village brought about the immediate need for street improvements. Existing streets were lengthened, footpaths and alleys were widened, but all was done without any regard to regularity. The result was the jumble of streets still to be met with in that region, where the thoroughfares are often short and often end in a cul-de-sac.
In time the streets of the City Plan crept up to those of Greenwich Village, and the village was swallowed up by the city. But it was not swallowed up so completely but that the irregular lines of the village streets are plainly to be seen on any city map.
Near where Spring Street crosses Hudson there was established, about 1765, Brannan's Garden, on the northern edge of Lispenard's Meadows. It was like the modern road-house. Greenwich Road was close to it, and pleasure-seekers, who thronged the road on the way from the city to Greenwich Village, were the chief guests of the house.
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.
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.
Burr's Pond
The house was occupied by General Washington 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 passed 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.
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.
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.
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 passed 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 passes 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.
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.
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 Washington, 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.
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.
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.
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.
Washington Square
Washington 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 Washington Arch is now.
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 Washington Square was opened.
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 Washington 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.
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.
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 passed 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.
Union Road
At a point just behind the house numbered 23 Eleventh Street, midway of the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Union Road had its starting-point. It was a short road, forming a direct communicating line between Skinner and Southampton Roads. Skinner Road, running from Hudson River along the line of the present Christopher Street, ended where Union Road began; and Union Road met Southampton at what is now the corner of Fifteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. This point was also the junction of Southampton and Great Kiln Roads.
Evidences of the Union Road are still to be seen in Twelfth Street, at the projecting angle of the houses numbered 43 and 45. It was just at this point that Milligan's Lane ended. On Thirteenth Street, the course of Union Road is shown by the slanting wall of a big business building, numbered 36.
First Presbyterian Church
In Twelfth Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, is the First Reformed Presbyterian Church. The congregation was started as a praying society in 1790 at the house of John Agnew at No. 9 Peck Slip. In 1798 the congregation worshipped in a school house in Cedar Street. They soon after built their first church at Nos. 39 and 41 Chambers Street, where the American News Company building is now. It was a frame building, and was succeeded in 1818 by a brick building on the same site. In 1834 a new church was erected at Prince and Marion Streets. The foundation for the present church was laid in 1848, and the church occupied it in the following year.
Society Library
The New York Society Library, at 107 University Place, near Fourteenth Street, claims to be the oldest institution of its kind in America. It is certainly the most interesting in historical associations, richness of old literature and art works. It is the direct outcome of the library established in 1700, with quarters in the City Hall, in Wall Street, by Richard, Earl of Bellomont, the Governor of New York.
In 1754 an association was incorporated for carrying on a library, and their collection, added to the library already in existence, was called the City Library. The Board of Trustees consisted of the most prominent men in the city. In 1772 a charter was granted by George III, under the name of the New York Society Library.
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.
Great Kiln Road
At the point that is now Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street, then intersected by the Union Road, the Great Kiln Road ended. Its continuation was called Southampton Road. From that point it continued to Nineteenth Street, east of Sixth Avenue, and then parallel with Sixth Avenue to Love Lane, the present Twenty-first Street.
The line of this road, where it joined the Great Kiln Road, is still clearly shown in the oblique side wall of the house at the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street. Here, also, it has a marked effect on the east wall of St. Joseph's Home for the Aged. The first-mentioned house, with the cutting through of the streets, has been left one of those queer triangular buildings, with full front and running to a point in the rear.
Weavers' Row
When the road reached what is now Sixteenth Street, a third of a block east of Seventh Avenue, it passed through the block in a sweeping curve to the present corner of Seventeenth Street and Sixth Avenue. The evidence of its passage is still to be seen in the tiny wooden houses buried in the centre of the block, which are remnants of a row called Paisley Place, or Weavers' Row. This row was built during the yellow-fever agitation of 1822, and was occupied by Scotch weavers who operated their hand machines there.
The road took its name from Sir Peter Warren's second daughter, who married Charles Fitzroy, who later became the Baron Southampton.
Graveyard Behind a Store
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.
When this "Place of Rest" was established the locality was all green fields. The graveyard had been forced from further down town by the cutting through of Eleventh Street in 1830. Interments were made in this spot until 1852, when the cemetery was removed to Cypress Hills, L. I., the Common Council having in that year prohibited burials within the city limits. But though there were no burials, the congregation have persistently refused to sell this plot, just as they have the earlier plots, the remains of which are off Chatham Square and in Eleventh Street, near Sixth Avenue.
Love Lane
Abingdon Road in the latter years of its existence was commonly called Love Lane, and more than a century ago followed close on the line of the present Twenty-first Street from what is now Broadway to Eighth Avenue. It was the northern limit of a tract of land given by the city to Admiral Sir Peter Warren in recognition of his services at the capture of Louisburg.
From this road, when the Warren estate was divided among the daughters of the Admiral, two roads, the Southampton and the Warren, were opened through this upper part of the estate.
The name Love Lane was given to the road in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and was retained until it was swallowed up in Twenty-first Street. This last was ordered opened in 1827, but was not actually opened until some years later. There is no record to show where the name came from. The generally accepted idea is that being a quiet and little traveled spot, it was looked upon as a lane where happy couples might drive, far from the city, and amid green fields and stately trees confide the story of their loves. It was the longest drive from the town, by way of the Post Road, Bloomingdale Road and so across the west to Southampton, Great Kiln roads, through Greenwich Village and by the river road back to town.
The road originally took its name from the oldest daughter of Admiral Warren, who married the Earl of Abingdon.
There are still traces of Love Lane in Twenty-first Street. The two houses numbered 25 and 27 stood on the road. The houses 51, 53 and 55, small and odd appearing, are more closely identified with the lane. When built, these houses were conspicuous and alone, at the junction where Southampton Road from Greenwich Village ran into Love Lane. They are thought to have been a single house serving as a tavern.
Close by, at the northeast corner of Twenty-first Street and Sixth Avenue, the house with the gable roof is one that also stood on the old road, though built at a later date than the three next to it.
The road ended for many years about on the line with the present Eighth Avenue, where it ran into the Fitzroy Road. Some years previous to the laying out of the streets under the City Plan in 1811, Love Lane was continued to Hudson River. Before it reached the river it was crossed, a little east of Seventh Avenue, by the Warren Road, although there is no trace of the crossing now.
Chelsea Village
Although Chelsea Village was long ago swallowed up by the city, and its boundaries blotted out by the rectangular lines of the plan under which the streets were mapped out in 1811, there is still a suggestion of it in the green lawns and gray buildings of the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which occupies the block between Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets, Ninth and Tenth Avenues.
Chelsea got its name in 1750, when Captain Thomas Clarke, an old soldier, gave the name to his country seat, in remembrance of the English home for invalided soldiers. It was between two and three miles from the city, a stretch of country land along the Hudson River with not another house anywhere near it. The house stood, as streets are now, at the south side of Twenty-third Street, about two hundred feet west of Ninth Avenue, on a hill that sloped to the river. The captain had hoped to die in his retreat, but his home was burned to the ground during his severe illness, and he died in the home of his nearest neighbor. Soon after his death the house was rebuilt by his widow, Mrs. Mollie Clarke. The latter dying in 1802, a portion of the estate with the house went to Bishop Benjamin Moore, who had married Mrs. Clarke's daughter, Charity. It passed from him in 1813 to his son, Clement C. Moore. The latter reconstructed the house, and it stood until 1850.
Clement C. Moore's estate was included within the present lines of Eighth Avenue, Nineteenth to Twenty-fourth Streets and Hudson River. These are approximately the bounds of Chelsea Village which grew up around the old Chelsea homestead. It came to be a thriving village, conveniently reached by the road to Greenwich and then by Fitzroy Road; or by the Bowery Road, Bloomingdale, and then along Love Lane.
London Terrace
In 1831 the streets were cut through and the village thereafter grew up on the projected lines of the City Plan. It was for this reason that Chelsea, when the city reached it, was merged into it so perfectly that there is not an imperfect street line to tell where the village had been and where the city joined it. There are houses of the old village still standing; notably those still called the Chelsea Cottages in Twenty-fourth Street west of Ninth Avenue, and the row called the London Terrace in Twenty-third Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.
The block on which the General Theological Seminary stands was given to the institution by Clement C. Moore, and was long called Chelsea Square. The cornerstone of the East Building was laid in 1825, and of the West Building, which still stands, in 1835.
It was this Clement C. Moore, living quietly in the village that had grown up around him, who wrote the child's poem which will be remembered longer than its writer—"'Twas the Night before Christmas."
