Go to No. 1 Broadway and remember that George Washington and Lord Cornwallis once lived there.
Go to the United States Treasury, on Wall Street, and remember that in front of it used to stand a pillory and a whipping-post.
In a building that stood where the United States Treasury stands, General Washington was installed as President. In the open balcony he stood with silver buckles and powdered hair, in dress of dark silk velvet. (People in those days dressed more than we moderns. Think of James Buchanan or General Grant inaugurated with hair and shoes fixed up like that!)
Go to the corner of Pearl and Broad streets, and remember that was the scene of Washington's farewell to the officers with whom he had been so long associated.
Go to Canal street, and remember it was so called because it once was literally a canal.
The electric telegraph was born in the steeple of the old Dutch Church, now the New York post-office—that is, Benjamin Franklin made there his first experiments in electricity. When the other denominations charge the Dutch Church with being slow, they do not know that the world got its lightning out of one of its church steeples.
Washington Irving was born in William street, halfway between John and Fulton. "Knickerbocker" was considered very saucy; but if any man ever had a right to say mirthful things about New York, it was Washington Irving, who was born there. At the corner of Varick and Charlton streets was a house in which Washington, John Adams and Aaron Burr resided.
George Whitefield preached at the corner of Beekman and Nassau streets.
But why particularize, when there is not a block or a house on the great thoroughfare which has not been the scene of a tragedy, a fortune ruined, a reputation sacrificed, an agony suffered or a soul lost?