SAMUEL B. RUGGLES
1831
COMMEMORATED BY THIS TABLET
IMBEDDED IN
THE GRAMERCY FARM BY
JOHN RUGGLES STRONG.
1875.
Madison Square
There was no evidence during the last part of the eighteenth century that the town would ever creep up to and beyond the point where Twenty-third Street crosses Broadway. This point was the junction of the Post Road to Boston and the Bloomingdale Road. The latter was the fashionable out-of-town driveway, and it followed the course that Broadway and the Boulevard take now. The Post Road extended to the northeast. At this point, in 1794, a Potter's Field was established. There were many complaints at its being located there, where pauper funerals clashed with the vehicles of the well-to-do, and there was much rejoicing three years later, when the burying-ground was removed to the spot that is now Washington Square.
Arsenal in Madison Square