Vauxhall Garden occupied (according to the present designation of the streets) the space south of Astor Place, between Fourth Avenue and Broadway, to the line of Fifth Street. Fourth Avenue was then Bowery Road, and the main entrance to the Garden was on that side, opposite the present Sixth Street. At Broadway the Garden narrowed down to a V shape. On this ground, for many years, John Sperry, a Swiss, cultivated fruits and flowers, and when he had grown old he sold his estate, in 1799, to John Jacob Astor. The latter leased it to a Frenchman named Delacroix, who had previously conducted the Vauxhall Garden on the Bayard Estate, close by the present Warren and Greenwich Streets. During the next eight years Delacroix transformed his newly-acquired possession into a pleasure garden, by erecting a small theatre and summer-house, and by setting out tables and seats under the trees on the grounds, and booths with benches around the inside close up to the high board fence that enclosed the Garden. He called the place Vauxhall, thereby causing some confusion to historians, who often confound this Garden with the earlier one of the same name. This last Vauxhall was situated a mile out of town on the Bowery Road. It was an attractive retreat, and the tableaux were so fine, the ballets so ingenius and the singing of such excellence, that the resort became immensely popular, and remained so continuously until the Garden was swept out of existence in 1855. Admission to the grounds was free, and to the theatre two shillings. In its last years it was a favorite place for the holding of large public meetings.
Cooper Union
Cooper Union, at the upper end of the Bowery, was built in 1854. Peter Cooper, merchant and philanthropist, made the object of his life the establishment of an institution designed especially to give the working classes opportunity for self-education better than the existing institutions afforded. His store was on the site of the present building, which he founded. By a deed executed in 1859 the institution, with its incomes, he devoted to the instruction and improvement of the people of the United States forever. The institution has been taxed to its full capacity since its inception. From time to time it has been enriched by gifts from Mr. Cooper's heirs and friends. The statue of Peter Cooper, in the little park in front of the building, was unveiled May 28th, 1897. It is the work of Augustus St. Gaudens, once a pupil in the Institute.
On a part of the site of Cooper Union, at the east side of what was then the Bowery, and what is now Fourth Avenue, stood a house which was said to have been haunted. It was demolished to make way for Cooper Union. No permanent tenant, it is said, had occupied it for sixty years. It was a peaked-roofed brick structure, two stories high.
The house of Peter Cooper was on the site of the present Bible House, at Eighth Street and Third Avenue. He removed in 1820 to Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue, and his dwelling may still be seen there.
Astor Place
Astor Place is part of old Greenwich Lane, which led from the Bowery Lane past the pauper cemetery, where Washington Square is now, over the sand hills where University Place now is, and took the line of the present Greenwich Avenue. This was also called Monument Lane, because of a monument to the memory of General Wolfe erected on the spot where the road ended, at the junction of Eighth Avenue and Fifteenth Street.
Astor Place, as far as Fifth Avenue, was called Art Street when it was changed from a road to a street. The continuation of Astor Place to the east, now Stuyvesant Street, was originally Stuyvesant Road, and extended to the river at about Fifteenth Street. It was also called Art when it became a street. On the south side of this thoroughfare, just west of Fourth Avenue, Charlotte Temple lived in a small stone house.
At the head of Lafayette Place, fronting on Astor Place, is a building used at this time as a German Theatre. It was built for Dr. Schroeder, once the favorite preacher of the city, of whom it was said that if anyone desired to know where Schroeder preached, he had only to follow the crowds on Sunday. But he became dissatisfied and left Trinity for a church of his own. He very soon gave up this church, and for a time the building was occupied by St. Ann's Roman Catholic congregation. Afterward it became a theatre and failed to succeed.