A pipe for a well was sunk in Broadway, opposite Bond Street, in April, 1827, it being thought that enough water for the supply of the immediate neighborhood could be obtained therefrom. The water was not found, however.
Burdell Murder
No. 31 Bond Street was the scene of a celebrated murder. The house is torn down now, but it was identical with the one which now stands at No. 29. On January 3, 1857, Dr. Harvey Burdell, a dentist, was literally butchered there, being stabbed fifteen times. A portion of the house had been occupied by a widow named Cunningham, and her two daughters. After the murder, Mrs. Cunningham claimed a widow's share of the Doctor's estate, on the ground that she had been married to him some months before. This claim started an investigation, which resulted in Mrs. Cunningham's being suspected of the crime, arrested, tried and acquitted. Soon after her acquittal, she attempted to secure control of the entire Burdell estate, by claiming that she had given birth to an heir to the property. The scheme failed, for the physician through whom she obtained a new-born child from Bellevue Hospital, disclosed the plot to District Attorney A. Oakey Hall. The woman and her daughters left the city suddenly, and were not heard of again. The mystery of the murder was never solved.
The part of Houston Street east of the Bowery was, prior to November, 1833, called North Street. At the time the change in names was made the street was raised. Between Broadway and the Bowery had been a wet tract of land many feet below the grade. In 1844 the street was extended from Lewis Street to the East River.
The Bleecker Street Bank, which was just east of Broadway, on the north side of Bleecker Street, was moved in October, 1897, to Twenty-first Street and Fourth Avenue, and called The Bank for Savings. It had originally been in the New York Institute Building in City Hall Park.
Marble Cemetery
In the heart of the block inclosed by the Bowery, Second Avenue, Second and Third Streets, is a hidden graveyard. It is the New York Marble Cemetery, and so completely has it been forgotten that its name no longer appears in the City Directory. On four sides it is hemmed about by tenements and business buildings, so that one could walk past it for a lifetime without knowing that it was there. On the Second Avenue side, the entrance is formed by a narrow passage between houses, which is closed by an iron gateway. But the gate is always locked, and at the opposite end of the passage is another gate of wood set in a brick wall, so high that nothing but the tops of trees can be seen beyond it. From the upper rear windows of the neighboring tenements a view of the place can be had. It is a wild spot, four hundred feet by one hundred, covered by a tangled growth of bushes and weeds, crossed by neglected paths, and enclosed by a wall seventeen feet high. There is no sign of a tombstone. In the southwest corner is a deadhouse of rough hewn stone. On the south wall the names of vault owners are chiseled. Among these were some of the best known New Yorkers fifty years ago. The records of the city show that this land was owned by Henry Eckford and Marion, his wife. They deeded it to Anthony Dey and George W. Strong when the cemetery corporation was organized, July 30, 1830. There were one hundred and fifty-six vaults, and fifteen hundred persons were buried there. This cemetery is forgotten almost as completely as its own dead, and its memories do not molest the dwellers in the surrounding tenements who overlook it from their rear windows, and use it as a sort of dumping-ground for all useless things that can readily be thrown into it.
The Second Marble Cemetery