THE GROLIER CLUB
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
1912
Copyright, 1912, by
The Grolier Club of the
City of New York
LIST OF WOODCUTS
| Device of the Grolier Club[Title-page] | |
| PAGE | |
| Tail-Piece | [viii] |
| “From Bowling Green to Trinity Church.” | |
| 1 Head-Band | [3] |
| “New York has grown by the process of destruction, and has become metropolitan through successive stages of self-effacement.” | |
| 2 Tail-Piece | [28] |
| “And there was a bridge on the Boston Post Road ... which bore the suggestive name of the Kissing-bridge.” | |
| 3 Head-Band | [29] |
| “The old Government House.” | |
| 4 Tail-Piece | [51] |
| “The old-fashioned gentleman who was last seen on the Albany Post Road.” | |
| 5 Head-Band | [52] |
| “Celebrated in the ‘Salmagundi’ papers as Cockloft Hall.” | |
| 6 Tail-Piece | [67] |
| “Sitting ... overlooking the river ... the old man delighted to recall the golden Knickerbocker age.” | |
| 7 Head-Band | [68] |
| “Whose distinction was invariably expressed in a green or common, a Congregational spire, an academy, and rows of graceful elms.” | |
| 8 Tail-Piece | [88] |
| “Let it be taken from the top of Weehawk Hill, overlooking New York.” | |
| 9 Head-Band | [89] |
| “In the back room of Wiley’s shop ... Dana met Cooper, Halleck, Brevoort.” | |
| 10 Tail-Piece | [121] |
| “Lines to a water-fowl.” | |
THE WRITERS
OF KNICKERBOCKER
NEW YORK
KNICKERBOCKER
NEW YORK
In these days, when New York has become a metropolitan city with a population of four million souls, and the old city has shrunk politically into the Borough of Manhattan, it is not easy to recall the obliterated outlines of the Town which was satirized by the vivacious young men who wrote the “Salmagundi” papers. Unlike Rome, which has been rebuilt half a dozen times on its early site and largely out of its old materials, so that the city of to-day is a kind of palimpsest in stone, brick, and mortar, New York has grown by the process of destruction, and has become metropolitan through successive stages of self-effacement. Here and there one comes upon a building which has survived from the late colonial period, but no structure now standing bears witness to the taste or lack of taste of the Dutch settlers, and the streets preserve no traces of the old lanes and highways save an occasional name as misleading descriptively as the Bowery. Canal Street is as stolid a reminiscence of a water-channel as is the heavy warehouse frontage of Grub Street of the humorous or tragic traditions of literary Bohemia in the days of Mr. Pope and Dr. Johnson. New York has changed its form almost as often as, according to the physiologists, men change their bodies. It has kept certain characteristics which marked its youth and predicted the traits of its maturity; but its growth has been so great that the divergencies between the latest and the earliest city seem to be differences in kind rather than in degree.
The New York in which Washington Irving was born in April, 1783, was still in the possession of British troops, who withdrew six months later, leaving a half-ruined city behind them. The population had been reduced from twenty thousand to ten thousand; shipping had deserted the captive town, and the wharves were rotting from disuse; streets which had been opened before the war to afford room for growth were desolate and forlorn, with that overgrowth of straggling weeds which is the final evidence of neglect. Many public and private buildings which had been used for military purposes were falling in ruins. The great fire of September, 1776, had left a large part of the western side of the little city a mass of ruins; and Broadway from Bowling Green to Trinity Church was a dreary waste of blackened walls and heaps of rubbish. There was no money in the city treasury, and the once growing town was apparently blighted. Other cities had been more active in the struggle for independence; none had suffered more severely from the devastation of war.