Up Broadway a little farther, at the Fulton Street corner, is the publication office of the Evening Post, a building which more than any other in New York should call forth thoughts of Bryant, for he was the editor of that newspaper for two-and-fifty years. When he joined the staff in 1826, in two years succeeding Coleman as editor and remaining so until his death, the Evening Post had its office in William Street, near Pine. But Bryant spent many years of his editorial life in the Broadway building, and one of its attractions, now pointed out to all visitors, is the poet's window on an upper floor where he sat at his desk, that was always stacked high and negligently with all manner of useless papers and rejected manuscripts, and looked over the city to the south as he worked.
VIEW OF OLD BUILDINGS IN WILLIAM STREET,
LOOKING TOWARDS MAIDEN LANE, 1800.
Standing beside this window there are memories of other men than Bryant to be called up, for here remembrance of many of his associates comes vividly to mind. There was William Leggett, the poet's friend and business companion, the brilliant journalist who wrote Tales of a Country Schoolmaster, and who worked beside Bryant from 1829 to 1836. With thoughts of him come those of Parke Godwin, who joined the Evening Post staff the year after Leggett left it, who as long as the poet lived was his close friend, and who, marrying Bryant's daughter Fanny, wove closer year by year the relations that bound them. There are memories, too, of John Bigelow, who occupied an editorial chair on the Post for a dozen years after 1849.
Going still farther up Broadway in search of Bryant reminders, you walk past the Post-Office and over the stretch of pavement made historic by the personal encounter between the poet and William L. Stone. This happened in 1831, and Stone, then editor of the Commercial Advertiser, was not at all friendly to Bryant. The two met there on the parkside, just opposite where Philip Hone lived, and Hone, looking from his window, saw the encounter. Sitting down he immediately wrote of it in the diary which is such a perfect reflection of the city's history during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Those were the days when Stone was collecting his information concerning the Indians which he afterwards utilized to such advantage in The Life of Joseph Brant, The Life of Red Jacket, and kindred books.
Keeping on up Broadway to Leonard Street, thence over across town three blocks west to 92 Hudson Street, the stroller comes to a warehouse that has been reared above the home where Bryant lived when he became editor of the Evening Post and from which he often walked around the corner to 345 Greenwich Street to make an evening call on his near neighbor and friend J. Fenimore Cooper.
On a little farther, up Varick Street this time, past the old Chapel of St. John's, lingering in its stately age quiet and dignified amid the unwholesome neighbors that have grown up around it. On the very next block, close by Canal Street, there is a red brick house with stone steps, and here Bryant lived after his removal from Hudson Street.
This same Varick Street leads straight north for half a mile until it touches Carmine Street, and in the second block of that thoroughfare is the house of age-worn brick that was the poet's "home in Carmine Street," of which he spoke so often and so affectionately.