The great number of immensely tall office-buildings on lower Broadway, literally "sky-scrapers," so encompass the street as to give it the appearance of a deep canyon as one gazes along it between them. The Bowling Green Building out-tops the Washington Building, and there are the Welles, Standard Oil and Aldrich Court Buildings, the latter marked by a tablet of the Holland Society, being erected on the site of "the first habitation of white men on Manhattan Island." Opposite it is one of the most curious appearing of these tall structures, the Tower Building, nearly two hundred feet high and only twenty-five feet wide. Just above, the tall light sandstone building of the Manhattan Life Company is surmounted by a cupola three hundred and fifty feet high. The Empire Building rises twenty stories, and the American Surety Building at the corner of Pine Street, nearly opposite Trinity churchyard, twenty-three stories, three hundred and six feet, being surmounted by the various weather-gauging instruments of "Old Probabilities." Here are also the magnificent buildings of the Union Trust and the Equitable Life Companies.
Opposite Trinity Church, Wall Street leads off from Broadway, with winding course and varying width, down to the East River, following the line of the ancient Dutch palisade wall which it has replaced. Here is the financial centre and the domain of the bankers. One block down, Broad Street enters from the south, and the narrower Nassau Street goes out to the north. At this corner, on the one hand, is the white marble Drexel Building, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan's office, and on the other the United States Treasury and Assay Office. The huge Manhattan Trust Building also is there, rising three hundred and thirty feet, and opposite is the Stock Exchange, while across Broad Street from the latter is the Mills Building, the home of many bankers and brokers. In Nassau Street is the magnificent building of the Mutual Life Insurance Company. These financial structures at Broad and Wall Streets are regarded as the most valuable real estate in the world. The Treasury and Assay Office contain most of the gold owned by the Government, and in the latter the kegs of gold are made up that are shipped to Europe. It holds millions of gold bars that make annual excursions in fast steamers across the ocean and back again, to adjust our varying foreign exchange balances. The Treasury is a white marble building fronted by an imposing colonnade and a broad flight of steps, and here is a bronze statue of Washington on the spot where he was inaugurated the first President of the United States in 1789, the location being then occupied by the old Federal Hall, where the first Congress met. Farther down Wall Street, the next corner is William Street, where there is a massive dark granite building with an elaborate Ionic colonnade. The interior contains a large rotunda surmounted by a dome supported by eight immense columns of Italian marble. This building was originally constructed for the Merchants' Exchange, and it afterwards became the Custom House. It is hereafter to be the office of the National City Bank, the largest financial institution of New York. Wall Street goes on to the river, where there is a ferry to Brooklyn. Down William Street is the broad, low, granite building, with a columned portico, of the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, another financial institution of renown.
It is evident, as Broadway is traversed northward between the huge office-letting structures, reared skyward, and among them the little, narrow, crooked streets, pouring their traffic into the main stream, carrying a vast, surging mass of humanity, that the crowded-in New Yorker, deprived of lateral expansion, thus seeks needed relief by mounting upward. Fulton Street here stretches across the island from river to river, the turmoil from its conflicting streams of traffic showing the full tide of restless development in lower Broadway. Above is the white marble Park Bank and the enormous St. Paul Building, rising three hundred and eight feet, twenty-six stories high. Opposite is the sombre church of St. Paul, with a tall spire, the oldest church-building in New York, built in 1756, containing the memorial of General Montgomery, who fell at the storming of Quebec in 1775, and in the graveyard a monument to Emmet, the Irish patriot. Just beyond is the triangular City Hall Park, with Park Row diagonally entering Broadway. Here can be got an idea of the rush and restlessness of New York, for two enormous streams of traffic pour together into lower Broadway, at probably the worst street-crossing in the world.
THE CITY HALL PARK.
The New York City Hall Park was the ancient "Commons," or public pasturage, and it now contains the headquarters of the city government, and may be regarded as the political and business centre. It is enclosed by Broadway, Park Row and Chatham Street, a triangular space, formerly a sort of garden around the City Hall, but now well occupied by other buildings. At the southern extremity is the Post-office, which cost $7,000,000, a grand granite structure in Doric and Renaissance, with a fine dome and tower, which are a landmark for miles. Around this Park, and in the many streets radiating from it, are a vast aggregation of corporate institutions and great buildings devoted to all kinds of business. Here are the offices of newspapers, banks, trusts, insurance companies, railways, lawyers, politicians, exchanges, etc., with lunch-rooms and restaurants of every grade, liberally provided to feed or stimulate the multitude. The famous hotel of a past generation, the Astor House, rich in historical associations, stands on the opposite side of Broadway from the Post-office. Along Park Row are the great newspapers, and here is Printing House Square, adorned with statues of Benjamin Franklin and Horace Greeley, appropriate in this region deluged with printer's ink. Here is the Ivins Syndicate Building, finished in 1898, the loftiest structure in New York, twenty-nine stories, its towers rising three hundred and eighty-two feet. The tall and narrow Tribune Building, of red brick with white facings, has its clock tower reared two hundred and eighty-five feet, while beyond is the Pulitzer Building, of brownstone, with a gilded dome, its apex rising three hundred and seventy-five feet. The building of the American Tract Society on Nassau Street is twenty-three stories and three hundred and six feet high, with a restaurant on the top. Park Row runs into Chatham Square, over which the Brooklyn Bridge terminal comes out, with elevated and surface railroads all about. This is a location of cheap shops and concert halls, and is prolonged into the Bowery, an avenue of the humbler classes, lined with shops, theatres and saloons, generally crowded, and having four sets of street cars running on the surface, besides the elevated roads above. The ancient Dutch farms on this part of the island were known as the "Bauereies," whence came the name of the street.
Chambers Street bounds the City Hall Park on the north, and upon it faces the Court-house, a massive Corinthian building of white marble, finished in 1867, famous as the structure which the "Tweed Ring" of that time used to extract about $15,000,000 from the city treasury on fraudulent bills, or more than five times the actual cost of the work. It stands on part of the site of an old fort, which in the Revolution was the British outpost commanding the approach to the city by the Northern or Bloomingdale Road, now Broadway. The City Hall, to the southward, is a less pretentious and much older building, constructed in the Italian style, of white marble with freestone at the back to the northward, it being supposed at the time of its completion, 1812, that "no one of importance would ever live to the north of the building," then a broad expanse of farms. Here is the office of the Mayor and the meeting-place of the Board of Aldermen, and its chief apartment is the "Governor's Room," adorned with portraits of various Governors of New York and Revolutionary patriots, and having among its treasures Washington's desk and chair which he used when first President of the United States, and also the chairs of the First Congress. To the southwest of the City Hall a fine statue of Nathan Hale, an early victim of the Revolution, executed by the British in New York in 1776, faces Broadway.
Near Chambers Street and the northern end of the Park a noted building stands on the opposite side of Broadway, a modest brownstone structure without any pretension nor of much height, but containing a famous bank, whose phenomenal success is everywhere known. This is the Chemical Bank, originally started as a chemical manufacturing company with banking privileges. The chemistry seems to have been a failure and soon abandoned, but the banking talents were so well developed that the shares of $100 par value have sold for over forty times that sum. The capital is only $300,000, but it has amassed a surplus over twenty times the amount, and is the strongest bank in New York. Among the large shareholders are said to be three New York ladies who married foreign titles—the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (who was Miss Pine, afterwards Mrs. Hamersley, and now Lady Beresford), the Duchess de Dino (Miss Sampson), and the Comtesse de Trobriand (Miss Jones). It is here that the noted Mrs. Hetty Green generally conducts her financing, a lady of immense fortune and peculiar ideas, who has been one of the greatest money accumulators of New York. Across Chambers Street, and occupying an entire block, is the building that originally was "Stewart's Store," where the late Alexander T. Stewart made most of his success in the dry-goods trade, now converted into a vast office building for all kinds of business. This was the outpost of the "Dry Goods District," for Broadway northward for several blocks, including a wide belt of adjacent streets, now deals with all kinds of products of the mill and loom, clothing and similar articles. Here are located the agents and factors for many mills at home and abroad, and their traffic sometimes exceeds a thousand millions of dollars a year. The pulse of the American dry-goods trade throbs in this locality, weakening or strengthening as poor or good crops give the farmers and working-people a surplus to spend upon dress. Mr. Stewart once said that if every woman decided to pass a single season without a new bonnet it would sufficiently diminish trade to bankrupt this whole district. Canal Street crosses New York through the northern portion of the district, a broad highway, formerly a water course draining an extensive swamp across Broadway to the Hudson River. In this locality, east of Broadway, are two famous regions—the "Five Points," now, however, much improved, and "Chinatown." The latter, in Mott Street, has its Joss House, restaurant, theatre and opium joints, and is picturesque with swinging lights and banners. In Leonard Street, standing where once was part of the swamp, is the noted Tombs City Prison, thus named because originally it was a sombre gray building in the gloomy Egyptian style, but this was recently replaced by a modern structure. The Criminal Courts adjoining are connected with it by a bridge.
PETER COOPER AND PETER STUYVESANT.
At Bond Street, in advancing up Broadway, are encountered the booksellers, this with adjacent streets being the home of much of that trade. In Lafayette Place is the spacious Astor Library, and in the wide Astor Place is the handsome new building of the Mercantile Library. The former is now a part of the New York Public Library. A half-century ago the site of the Mercantile Library was occupied by the "Astor Place Opera House," then a leading theatre, and in the adjacent streets occurred the "Macready riots" in 1849. The rivalries of Edwin Forrest and Macready resulted in an effort by the partisans of the former to prevent the latter from playing in the Opera House on the night of May 10th. The Forrest faction attacked the building with stones, and the police being unable to control them, troops were called out, and, firing several volleys along Astor Place, they suppressed the riot and dispersed the mob, but at a cost of about sixty killed and wounded. At the end of Astor Place and its junction with Third Avenue is the Cooper Institute, occupying an entire block, a large brownstone building with a fine front, founded and endowed in 1857, at a total cost of about $1,000,000, by Peter Cooper, for the free education of men and women in science and art. His statue stands in front. It also received in 1900 additional gifts from his executors and $300,000 from Andrew Carnegie. Peter Cooper was a wealthy manufacturer and merchant of the broadest philanthropy. At a recent anniversary of the Institute his son-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt, speaking of him, said: "Fifty years ago three men, all of whom started in life as poor boys, got together and talked over various ways by which they could be of benefit to the public. They were Peter Cooper, Ezra Cornell and Matthew Vassar. The latter said he would found a school for girls, and he founded Vassar College. Mr. Cornell said he would found a school for boys, and he founded Cornell University. Peter Cooper said he would found a school for both girls and boys, and he founded Cooper Union. But Mr. Cooper's school differs from the others, in that here, any boy or girl may receive an education absolutely free of charge." Opposite the Cooper Institute is an immense red building, the "Bible House," the home of the American Bible Society, where the Scriptures are printed by the millions, in all languages, for distribution throughout the world—over eighty different languages and dialects being used.
Diagonally northeast from Astor Place runs Stuyvesant Street, formerly the country lane leading out to the ancient farmhouse of old Governor Stuyvesant, surnamed "Peter the Headstrong." Here was built "St. Mark's Church in the Bowerie" in the last century, then a mile out of town, and the quaint little Stuyvesant House still stood, at that time, perched on a high bank near the church, having, with its odd-looking overhanging upper story, been built of small yellow bricks brought out from Holland. In the days of New Amsterdam this region was Governor Stuyvesant's "Bauerie," and to it he retired when compelled to surrender to the English in 1664. He lived in this secluded spot for eighteen years, dying in 1682, and his brown gravestone occupies a place in the wall of the church. He was the last of the Dutch Governors, energetic, aristocratic and overbearing, and described by Irving as a man "of such immense activity and decision of mind that he never sought nor accepted the advice of others;" Irving further saying that he was a "tough, sturdy, valiant, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate leather-sided, lion-hearted, generous, spirited old Governor."