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.