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.