The Oliver Street Baptist Church was built on the northwest corner of Oliver and Henry Streets in 1795. It was rebuilt in 1800, and again in 1819. Later it was burned, and finally restored in 1843. The structure is now occupied by the Mariners' Temple, and the record of its burning is to be seen on a marble tablet on the front wall.
Oliver Street—that is, the two blocks from Chatham Square to Madison Street—was called Fayette Street before the name was changed to Oliver in 1825.
James Street was once St. James Street. The change was made prior to 1816.
Mariners' Church, at 46 Catherine Street, was erected in 1854, on the southeast corner of Madison Street. Prior to that, and as far back as 1819, it had been at 76 Roosevelt Street.
Banker Street having become a byword, because of the objectionable character of its inhabitants, the name was changed to Madison Street in 1826.
Between Jefferson and Clinton Streets, and south of Henry, was a pond, the only bit of water which, in early days, emptied into the East River between what afterward became Roosevelt Street and Houston Street. A wet meadow, rather than a distinct stream, extended from this pond to the river as an outlet. This became later the region of shipyards.
On what is now Cherry Street, between Clinton and Jefferson Streets, was the house of Col. Henry Rutgers, the Revolutionary patriot, and his farm extended from that point in all directions. On a tree of this farm Nathan Hale, the martyr spy of the Revolution, was hanged, September 22, 1776. On this same farm the Church of the Sea and Land, still standing with its three-foot walls, at Market and Henry Streets, was built in 1817.
In 1828, at the corner of Henry and Scammel Streets, was erected All Saints' Church (Episcopal). It still stands, now hemmed in by dwelling-houses. It is a low rock structure. A bit of green, a stunted tree and some shrubs still struggle through the bricks at the rear of the church, and can be seen through a tall iron railing from narrow Scammel Street. In 1825 the church occupied a chapel on Grand Street at the corner of Columbia.
The first house designed especially for many tenants was built in 1833, in Water Street just east of Jackson, on which site is now included Corlears Hook Park. It was four stories in height, and arranged for one family on each floor. It was built by Thomas Price, and owned by James P. Allaire, whose noted engine works were close by in Cherry Street, between Walnut (now Jackson) and Corlears Street.
Where Grand and Pitt Streets cross is the top of a hill formerly known as Mount Pitt. On this hill the building occupied by the Mount Pitt Circus was built in 1826. It was burned in 1828.
At Grand, corner of Ridge Street, is the St. Mary's Church (Catholic), which was built in 1833, a rough stone structure with brick front and back. In 1826 it was in Sheriff, between Broome and Delancey Streets. It had the first Roman Catholic bell in the city. In 1831 the church was burned by a burglar, and the new structure was built in Grand Street.
Actual work on the pier for the new East River Bridge, at the foot of Delancey Street, was begun in the spring of 1897.
Much confusion has arisen, and still exists, in the designation of the territory under the names of Manhattan Island and Island of Manhattan. The two islands a hundred years ago were widely different bodies. They are joined now.
Manhattan Island was the name given to a little knoll of land which lay within the limits of what is now Third, Houston and Lewis Streets and the East River. At high tide the place was a veritable island. There seems to be still a suggestion of it in the low buildings which occupy the ground of the former island. About the ancient boundary, as though closing it in, are tall tenements and factory buildings. On the grounds of this old island the first recreation pier was built, in 1897, at the foot of Third Street.
The Island of Manhattan has always been the name applied to the land occupied by the old City of New York, now the Borough of Manhattan.
In the heart of the block surrounded by Rivington, Stanton, Goerck and Mangin Streets, there is still to be seen the remains of a slanting-roofed market, closed in by the houses which have been built about it. It was set up in 1827, and named Manhattan Market after the nearby island.
Work on the Hamilton Fish Park was begun in 1896, in the space bounded by Stanton, Houston, Pitt and Sheriff Streets, then divided into two blocks by Willett Street. This was a congested, tenement-house vicinity, where misery and poverty pervaded most of the dingy dwellings. In wiping out the two solidly built-up blocks, Bone Alley, well known in police history for a generation, was effaced. On the west side of Willett Street, midway of the block, Bone Alley had its start and extended sixty feet into the block—a twenty-five-foot space between tall tenements, running plump into a row of houses extending horizontal with it. When these houses were erected they each had long gardens, which were built upon when the land became too valuable to be spared for flower-beds or breathing-spots. In time they became the homes of rag-and bone-pickers, and thus the alley which led to them got its name, which it kept even after the rag-pickers and the law-breakers who succeeded them had been driven away by the police.
There was, forty years ago, a well of good, drinkable water at the point where Rivington and Columbia Streets now cross.
The little frame house at the northwest corner or Rivington and Clinton Streets was the home of "Mother" Frederica Mandelbaum for many years, until she was driven from the city in 1884. This "Queen of the Crooks," receiver of stolen goods and friend of all the criminal class, compelled, in a sense, the admiration of the police, who for years battled in vain to outwit her cleverness. When the play, "The Two Orphans," was first produced, Mrs. Wilkins, as the "Frochard," copied the character of "Mother" Mandelbaum and gave a representation of the woman that all who knew the original recognized. Other plays were written, and also many stories, having her as a central figure. She died at Hamilton, Ontario, in 1894.
At the crossing of Rivington and Suffolk Streets was the source of Stuyvesant's Creek. From there, as the streets exist now, it crossed Stanton Street, near Clinton; Houston, at Sheriff; Second, near Houston; then wound around to the north of Manhattan Island, and emptied into the East River at Third Street.
In Rivington Street, between Ludlow and Orchard, is the Allen Street Memorial Church (M. E.), built in 1888. The original Church, which was built in 1810, is two blocks away, in Allen Street, between Delancey and Rivington Streets. It was rebuilt in 1836, and when the new Rivington Street structure was erected the old house was sold to a Jewish congregation, who still occupy it as a synagogue.
In Grand Street, between Essex and Ludlow Streets, the Essex Market was built in 1818. The court next to it, in Essex Street, was built in 1856.
On the Bowery, opposite Rivington Street, is a milestone (one of three that yet remain) which formerly marked the distance from the City Hall, in Wall Street, on the Post Road. The land to the east of the Bowery belonged to James De Lancey, who was Chief Justice of the Colony in 1733, and in 1753 became Lieutenant-Governor. A lane led from the Bowery, close by the milestone, to his country house, which was at the present northwest corner of Delancey and Chrystie Streets. It was in this house that he died suddenly in 1760. James De Lancey was the eldest son of Etienne (Stephen) De Lancey, who built the house which afterwards was known as Fraunces' Tavern, and which still stands at Broad and Pearl Streets. He later built the homestead at Broadway and Cedar Street. Originally the name was "de Lanci." It became "de Lancy" in the seventeenth century, and was Anglicized in the eighteenth century to "De Lancey."
Where Grand Street crosses Mulberry was, until 1802, the family burial-vault of the Bayard family, it having been the custom of early settlers to bury their dead near their homesteads. The locality was called Bunker Hill.
St. Patrick's Church, enclosed now by the high wall at Mott and Prince Streets, was completed in 1815, the cornerstone having been laid in 1809. It was surrounded by meadows and great primitive trees. This region was so wild that in 1820 a fox was killed in the churchyard. In 1866 the interior of the church was destroyed by fire. It was at once reconstructed in its present form. Amongst others buried in the vaults are "Boss" John Kelly, Vicar-General Starr and Bishop Connelly, first resident bishop of New York.
At Prince and Marion Streets, northwest corner, the house in which President James Monroe lived while in the city still stands.
The St. Nicholas Hotel was at Broadway and Spring Street, and on the ground floor John Anderson kept a tobacco store, to which the attention of the entire country was directed in July, 1842, because of the murder of Mary Rogers. This tragedy gave Edgar Allan Poe material for his story "The Mystery of Marie Roget," into which he introduced every detail of the actual happening. Mary Rogers was a saleswoman in the tobacco store, and being young and pretty she attracted considerable attention. She disappeared one July day, and, soon after, her body was found drowned near the Sibyl's Cave at Hoboken. The deepest mystery surrounded her evident murder, and much interest was taken in attempts at a solution, but it remained an unsolved crime.
On the east side of Broadway, between Prince and Houston Streets, on July 4, 1828, William Niblo opened his Garden, Hotel and Theatre, to be known for many years thereafter as Niblo's Garden. Prior to that, he had kept the Bank Coffee House, at William and Pine Streets.
The Metropolitan Hotel was built in Niblo's Garden, on the corner that is now Broadway and Prince Street, in 1852, at a cost of a million dollars. The theatre in the hotel building was called Niblo's Garden. The building was demolished in 1894, and a business block was put up on the site.
Across the street from Niblo's, on Broadway, in a modest brick house, lived, at one time, James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist.
At No. 624 Broadway, between Houston and Bleecker Streets, was Laura Keene's theatre. On March 1, 1858, Polly Marshall made her first appearance on any stage at that theatre. Later it became the Olympic Theatre.
At Broadway and Bleecker Streets, a well was drilled, in 1832, which was four hundred and forty-eight feet deep, and which yielded forty-four thousand gallons of water a day.
Tripler Hall was at No. 677 Broadway, near Bond Street. Adelina Patti appeared there on September 22, 1852, when ten years old, giving evidence of her future greatness. She sang there for some time, usually accompanied by the boy violinist, Paul Julien.
Tripler Hall had been renamed the Metropolitan Hall, when it was destroyed by fire in 1854. Lafarge House, which stood next it, was also burned. The house was rebuilt on the site, and opened in September, 1854, under the name of the New York Theatre and Metropolitan Opera House.
Rachel the great was first seen in America at this house, September 3, 1855. Later the house became the Winter Garden.
The first marble-fronted houses in the city were built on Broadway, opposite Bond Street, in 1825. They were called the Marble Houses, and attracted much attention. Being far out of the city, excursions were made to view them. Afterwards they became the Tremont House, and are still in use as a hotel.
A pipe for a well was sunk in Broadway, opposite Bond Street, in April, 1827, it being thought that enough water for the supply of the immediate neighborhood could be obtained therefrom. The water was not found, however.
No. 31 Bond Street was the scene of a celebrated murder. The house is torn down now, but it was identical with the one which now stands at No. 29. On January 3, 1857, Dr. Harvey Burdell, a dentist, was literally butchered there, being stabbed fifteen times. A portion of the house had been occupied by a widow named Cunningham, and her two daughters. After the murder, Mrs. Cunningham claimed a widow's share of the Doctor's estate, on the ground that she had been married to him some months before. This claim started an investigation, which resulted in Mrs. Cunningham's being suspected of the crime, arrested, tried and acquitted. Soon after her acquittal, she attempted to secure control of the entire Burdell estate, by claiming that she had given birth to an heir to the property. The scheme failed, for the physician through whom she obtained a new-born child from Bellevue Hospital, disclosed the plot to District Attorney A. Oakey Hall. The woman and her daughters left the city suddenly, and were not heard of again. The mystery of the murder was never solved.
The part of Houston Street east of the Bowery was, prior to November, 1833, called North Street. At the time the change in names was made the street was raised. Between Broadway and the Bowery had been a wet tract of land many feet below the grade. In 1844 the street was extended from Lewis Street to the East River.
The Bleecker Street Bank, which was just east of Broadway, on the north side of Bleecker Street, was moved in October, 1897, to Twenty-first Street and Fourth Avenue, and called The Bank for Savings. It had originally been in the New York Institute Building in City Hall Park.
In the heart of the block inclosed by the Bowery, Second Avenue, Second and Third Streets, is a hidden graveyard. It is the New York Marble Cemetery, and so completely has it been forgotten that its name no longer appears in the City Directory. On four sides it is hemmed about by tenements and business buildings, so that one could walk past it for a lifetime without knowing that it was there. On the Second Avenue side, the entrance is formed by a narrow passage between houses, which is closed by an iron gateway. But the gate is always locked, and at the opposite end of the passage is another gate of wood set in a brick wall, so high that nothing but the tops of trees can be seen beyond it. From the upper rear windows of the neighboring tenements a view of the place can be had. It is a wild spot, four hundred feet by one hundred, covered by a tangled growth of bushes and weeds, crossed by neglected paths, and enclosed by a wall seventeen feet high. There is no sign of a tombstone. In the southwest corner is a deadhouse of rough hewn stone. On the south wall the names of vault owners are chiseled. Among these were some of the best known New Yorkers fifty years ago. The records of the city show that this land was owned by Henry Eckford and Marion, his wife. They deeded it to Anthony Dey and George W. Strong when the cemetery corporation was organized, July 30, 1830. There were one hundred and fifty-six vaults, and fifteen hundred persons were buried there. This cemetery is forgotten almost as completely as its own dead, and its memories do not molest the dwellers in the surrounding tenements who overlook it from their rear windows, and use it as a sort of dumping-ground for all useless things that can readily be thrown into it.
There is another Marble Cemetery which historians sometimes confuse with this hidden graveyard, namely, one on Second Street, between First and Second Avenues. Some of the larger merchants of the city bought the ground in 1832, and created the New York City Marble Cemetery. Among the original owners was Robert Lenox. When he died, in 1839, his body was placed in a vault of the First Presbyterian Church at 16 Wall Street. When that church was removed to Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street the remains of Lenox with others were removed to this Marble Cemetery. The body of President James Monroe was first interred here, but was removed in 1859 to Virginia. Thomas Addis Emmet, the famous jurist, is also buried here. One of the most conspicuous monuments in St. Paul's churchyard, the shaft at the right of the church, was erected to the memory of Emmet. A large column on the other side of the church preserves the memory of another man whose body does not lie in the churchyard, for William James Macneven was interred in the burying-ground of the Riker family at Bowery Bay, L. I.
In Second Street, between Avenue A and First Avenue, stood a Methodist church, and beside it a graveyard, until 1840; when the building was turned into a public school. There were fifteen hundred bodies in the yard, but they were not removed to Evergreen Cemetery until 1860. Only fifteen bodies were claimed by relatives. One man who applied for his father's body refused that offered him, claiming that the skull was too small, and that some mistake had been made in disinterment.
Second Street Methodist Episcopal Church, between Avenues C and D, was built in 1832, the congregation having previously worshipped in private houses in the vicinity. At one time this was the most prominent and wealthiest church on the eastern side of the city.
The Bouwerie Village was another of the little settlements—once a busy spot, but now so effaced that every outline of its existence is blotted out. It centred about the site of the present St. Mark's Church, Second Avenue and Tenth Street. In 1651, when Peter Stuyvesant, the last of the Dutch Governors, had ruled four years, he purchased the Great Bouwerie, a tract of land extending two miles along the river north of what is now Grand Street, taking in a section of the present Bowery and Third Avenue. As there was, from time to time, trouble with the Indians, the Governor ordered the dwellers on his bouwerie, as well as those on adjoining bouweries, to form a village and gather there for mutual protection at the first sign of an outbreak. Very soon the settlement included a blacksmith's shop, a tavern and a dozen houses. In this way the Bouwerie Village was started. Peter Stuyvesant in time built a chapel, and in it Hermanus Van Hoboken, the schoolmaster, after whom the city of Hoboken is named, preached. Years after the founding of the village, when New Amsterdam had become New York, and when the old Governor had returned from Holland, where he had, before the States-General, fought for vindication in so readily giving up the province to the English, Stuyvesant returned to end his days in the Bouwerie Village. He died there at the age of eighty, and was buried in the graveyard of the Bouwerie Church. St. Mark's Church, at Tenth Street and Second Avenue, stands on the site of the old church, and a memorial stone to Peter Stuyvesant is still to be seen under the porch. It reads:
When Judith, the widow of Peter Stuyvesant, died, in 1692, she left the church in which the old Governor had worshipped to the Dutch Reformed Church. A condition was that the Stuyvesant vault should be forever protected. By 1793 the church had fallen into decay. Then another Peter Stuyvesant, great-grandson of the Dutch Governor, who was a vestryman of Trinity Church, gave the site and surrounding lots, together with $2,000, and the Trinity Corporation added $12,500, and erected the present St. Mark's Church. The cornerstone was laid in 1795 and the building completed in 1799. It had no steeple until 1829, when that portion was added. In 1858 the porch was added. In the churchyard were buried the remains of Mayor Philip Hone and of Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. It was here that the body of Alexander T. Stewart rested until stolen. Close by the church was the mansion of Governor Stuyvesant. It was an imposing structure for those days, built of tiny bricks brought from Holland. A fire destroyed the house at the time of the Revolution.
When Peter Stuyvesant returned from Holland he brought with him a pear tree, which he planted in a garden near his Bouwerie Village house. This tree flourished for more than two hundred years. At Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue, on the house at the northeast corner, is a tablet inscribed:
In 1785 half a dozen persons in the First Bouwerie Village, then scattering to the school east from the site of Cooper Union, met at the "Two Mile Stone"—so called from being two miles from Federal Hall—in the upper room of John Coutant's house, on the site where Cooper Institute stands now. The room was used as a shoe store during the week. Here, on Sundays, ministers from the John Street Church instructed converts. Peter Cooper, who was a member of the church, a few years later conceived the idea of connecting the school with the church. The organization was perfected, and he was chosen Superintendent of this, the first Sunday School of New York.
The quarters becoming cramped, in 1795 the congregation moved to a two-story building a block away, on Nicholas William Street. This street, long since blotted out, extended from what is now Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street, across the Cooper Institute site and part of the adjoining block, to Eighth (now St. Mark's Place), midway of the block between Third and Second Avenues. The street was named after Nicholas William Stuyvesant. When the old John Street Church was taken down, in 1817, the timber from it was used to erect a church next to the Sunday School (called the Academy). This church was called the Bowery Village Church. In 1830, the Bowery Village Church having been wiped out by the advancing streets of the City Plan, Nicholas William Street went with it, and a church was then established a short distance to the east, on the line of what is now Seventh Street, north side, and this became the Seventh Street Church. In 1837 persons living near by who objected to the church revivals presented the trustees with two lots, nearer Third Avenue. There a new church was built, which still stands.
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, 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 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.
The ground at the junction of Astor Place and Eighth Street was made a public square in 1836. In the midst of it may now be seen a statue of Samuel S. Cox.
Astor Place Opera House, at the junction of Eighth Street and Astor Place, where Clinton Hall stands now, was built in 1847. It was a handsome theatre for those days, and contained eighteen hundred seats. It was opened on November 22nd with "Ernani." On May 7th, 1849, at this house occurred the first of the Macready riots. The bitter jealousy existing between William Charles Macready, the English actor, and Edwin Forrest, which had assumed the proportions of an international quarrel, so far as the two actors and their friends were concerned, was the cause. The admirers of Forrest sought, on this night, to prevent the performance of "Macbeth," and a riot ensued in which no particular damage was done. On May 10th, in response to a petition signed by many prominent citizens, Macready again sought to play "Macbeth." An effort was made to keep all Forrest sympathizers from the house. Many, however, gained admission, and the performance was again frustrated. The ringleaders were arrested. A great crowd blocked Astor Place, and an assault upon the theatre was attempted. Macready escaped by a rear door. The Seventh Regiment and a troop of cavalry cleared Eighth Street and reached Astor Place. The mob resisted. The Riot Act was read. That producing no effect, and the assault upon the building and the soldiers defending it becoming more violent each moment, the mob was fired upon. Three volleys were fired. Thirty-four persons were killed and some hundred injured. Over one hundred soldiers and many policemen were also hurt.
On August 30th, 1852, the name of the house was changed to the New York Theatre, under the direction of Charles R. Thorne. In a month's time he gave up the venture and Frank Chanfrau took it up. He also abandoned it after a few weeks.
In 1854 the Opera House was reconstructed and occupied by the Mercantile Library. It was given the name of Clinton Hall, which had been the name of the library's first home in Beekman Street. This building in time gave way to the present Clinton Hall on the same site.
Lafayette Place was opened through the Vauxhall Garden in 1826.
The Astor Library, in Lafayette Place, was completed in 1853, and was opened in 1854. The site cost $25,000.
The Middle Dutch Reformed Church was built in Lafayette Place in 1839, at the northwest corner of Fourth Street after its removal from Nassau and Cedar Streets. A new church was built at Seventh Street and Second Avenue in 1844. In the Lafayette Place building was a bell which had been cast in Holland in 1731, and which had first been used when the church was in Nassau Street. It was the gift of Abraham de Peyster, and now hangs in the Reformed Church at Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street.
Next to this church, for many years, lived Madam Canda, who kept the most fashionable school for ladies of a generation ago. Her beautiful daughter was dashed from a carriage, and killed on her eighteenth birthday—the age at which she was to make her début into society. The entire city mourned her loss.
Soon after Lafayette Place was opened, La Grange Terrace was built. It was named after General Lafayette's home in France. The row is still prominent on the west side of the thoroughfare, and is known as Colonnade Row. A riot occurred at the time it was built, the masons of the city being aroused because the stone used in the structure was cut by the prisoners in Sing Sing prison.
John Jacob Astor lived on this street. He died March 29th, 1848, and was buried from the home of his son, William B. Astor, just south of the library building.
A line drawn through Astor Place and continued to the Washington Arch in Washington Square, through Fifth Avenue to the neighborhood of Tenth Street, with Fourth Avenue as an eastern boundary, would roughly enclose what used to be the Eliot estate in the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was a farm of about twenty-one acres in 1790, when it was purchased for five thousand pounds from "Baron" Poelnitz, by Captain Robert Richard Randall, who had been a ship-master and a merchant. Randall dying in 1801, bequeathed the farm for the founding of an asylum for superannuated sailors, together with the mansion house in which he had lived. The house stood, approximately, at the present northwest corner of Ninth Street and Broadway. It was the intention of Captain Randall that the Sailors' Snug Harbor should be built on the property, and the farming land used to raise all vegetables, fruit and grain necessary for the inmates. There were long years of litigation, however, for relatives contested the will. When the case was settled in 1831, the trustees had decided to lease the land, and to purchase the Staten Island property where the Asylum is now located. The estate, at the time of Captain Randall's death, yielded an annual income of $4,000. At present the income is about $400,000 a year. It is conceded that the property would have increased more rapidly in value had it been sold outright, instead of becoming leasehold property in perpetuity.
Many efforts have been made to cut through Eleventh Street from Fourth Avenue to Broadway. The first was in 1830, when the street was open on the lines of the City Plan. Hendrick Brevoort, whose farm adjoined the Sailors' Snug Harbor property, had a homestead directly in the line of the proposed street, between Fourth Avenue and Broadway. He resisted the attempted encroachment on his home so successfully that the street was not opened through that block. He was again similarly successful in 1849, when an ordinance was passed for the removal of his house and the opening of the street.
Grace Church, at Tenth Street and Broadway, was completed in 1846. Previous to that date it had been on the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector Street, opposite Trinity Church.
There is a reason for the sudden bend in Broadway at Tenth Street, close by Grace Church. The Bowery Lane, which is now Fourth Avenue, curved in passing through what is now Union Square until, at the line of the present Seventeenth Street it turned and took a direct course north and was from thereon called the Bloomingdale Road. This road to Bloomingdale was opened long before Broadway, and it was in order to let the latter connect as directly as possible with the straight road north that the direction of Broadway was changed about 1806 by the Tenth Street bend and a junction effected with the other road at the Seventeenth Street line.
At Thirteenth Street and Fourth Avenue there was constructed in 1834 a tank which was intended to furnish water for extinguishing fires. It had a capacity of 230,000 gallons, and was one hundred feet above tide water. Water was forced into it by a 12-horse power engine from a well and conducting galleries at the present Tenth Street and Sixth Avenue, on the site of the Jefferson Market Prison.
In 1861 James W. Wallack moved from Wallack's Lyceum at Broome Street, and occupied the new Wallack's, now the Star Theatre, at Thirteenth Street and Broadway. His last appearance was when he made a little speech at the close of the season of 1862. He died in 1864.
Union Square was provided for in the City Plan, under the name of Union Place. The Commissioners decided that the Place was necessary, as an opening for fresh air would be needed when the city should be built up. Furthermore, the union of so many roads intersecting at that point required space for convenience; and if the roads were continued without interruption the land would be divided into such small portions as to be valueless for building purposes.
The fountain in the square was operated for the first time in 1842, on the occasion of the great Croton Water celebration.
The bronze equestrian statue of Washington was erected in the square close by where the citizens had received the Commander of the Army when he entered the city on Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783. The statue is the work of Henry K. Brown. The dedication occurred on July 4, 1856, and was an imposing ceremony. Rev. George W. Bethune delivered an oration, and there was a military parade.
The Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, was built in 1854 by a number of citizens who desired a permanent home for opera. On October 2nd of that year, Hackett took his company, headed by Grisi and Matio, there, the weather being too cold to continue the season at Castle Garden. The building was burned in 1866 and rebuilt in 1868.
In Third Avenue, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets, is an old milestone which marked the third mile from Federal Hall on the Post Road.
The Friends' Meeting House, at East Sixteenth Street and Rutherford Place, has existed since 1860. In 1775 it was in Pearl Street, near Franklin Square. In 1824 it was taken down and rebuilt in 1826 in Rose Street, near Pearl.
St. George's (Episcopal) Church, at Rutherford Place and Sixteenth Street, was built in 1845. The church was organized in 1752, and before occupying the present site was in Beekman Street.
Early in the century a stream of water ran from Stuyvesant's Pond, close by what is now Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue, to First Avenue and Nineteenth Street, having an outlet into the East River at about Sixteenth Street. In winter this furnished an excellent skating-ground.
Gramercy Park, at Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets and Lexington Avenue, was originally part of the Gramercy Farm. In 1831 it was given by Samuel B. Ruggles to be used exclusively by the owners of lots fronting on it. It was laid out and improved in 1840. In the pavement, in front of the park gate on the west side, is a stone bearing this inscription: