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.

In 1797 was built, where the burying-ground had been, an arsenal which extended from Twenty-fourth Street and over the site of the Worth Monument.

In the City Plan, completed in 1811, provision was made for a parade-ground to extend from Twenty-third to Thirty-fourth Streets, and Seventh to Third Avenue. The Commissioners decided that such a space was needed for military exercises, and where, in case of necessity, there could be assembled a force to defend the city. In 1814, the limits of the parade-ground were reduced to the space between Twenty-third and Thirty-first Streets, Sixth and Fourth Avenues, and given the name of Madison Square.

The Arsenal in Madison Square was turned into a House of Refuge in 1824, and opened January 1, 1825. This was the result of the work of an association of citizens who formed a society to improve the condition of juvenile delinquents. The House of Refuge was burned in 1839, and another institution built at the foot of Twenty-third Street the same year. A portion of the old outer wall of this last structure is still to be seen on the north side of Twenty-third Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A.

In 1845, at the suggestion of Mayor James Harper, Madison Square was reduced to its present limits and laid out as a public park. Up to this time a stream of water had crossed the square, fed by springs in the district about Sixth Avenue, between Twenty-first and Twenty-seventh Streets. It spread out into a pond in Madison Square, and emptied into the East River at Seventeenth Street. It was suggested that a street be created over its bed from Madison Avenue to the river. This was not carried out, and the stream was simply buried.

The road which branched out of the Bloomingdale Road at Twenty-third Street, sometimes called the Boston Post Road, sometimes the Post Road, sometimes the Boston Turnpike, ran across the present Madison Square, striking Fourth Avenue at Twenty-ninth Street; went through Kipsborough which hugged the river between Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, swept past Turtle Bay at Forty-seventh Street and the East River, crossed Second Avenue at Fifty-second Street, recrossed at Sixty-third Street, reached the Third Avenue line at Sixty-fifth Street, and at Seventy-seventh Street crossed a small stream over the Kissing Bridge. Then proceeded irregularly on this line to One Hundred and Thirtieth Street, where it struck the bridge over the Harlem River at Third Avenue. The road was closed in 1839.

The monument to Major-General William J. Worth, standing to the west of Madison Square, was dedicated November 25, 1857. General Worth was the main support of General Scott in the campaign of Mexico. His body was first interred in Greenwood Cemetery. On November 23rd the remains were taken to City Hall, where they lay in state for two days, then were taken, under military escort, and deposited beside the monument.

The Madison Square Presbyterian Church, at Madison Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, was commenced in 1853, the earlier church of the congregation having been in Broome Street. It was opened December, 1854, with Rev. Dr. William Adams as pastor.

At the southeast corner of Twenty-third Street and Lexington Avenue, the College of the City of New York has stood since 1848, the opening exercises having taken place in 1849. In 1847 the Legislature passed an Act authorizing the establishment of a free academy for the benefit of pupils who had been educated in the public schools of this city. The name Free Academy was given to the institution, and under that name it was incorporated. It had the power to confer degrees and diplomas. In 1866 the name was changed to its present title, and all the privileges and powers of a college were conferred upon it. In 1882 the college was thrown open to all young men, whether educated in the public schools of this city or not. In 1898 ground was set aside in the northern part of the city, overlooking the Hudson River, for the erection of modern buildings suitable to meet the growth of the college.

The House of Refuge in Madison Square was, after the fire in 1839, rebuilt on the block bounded by Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Streets, First Avenue and the East River. It was surrounded by a high wall, a section of which is still standing on the north side of Twenty-third Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A. The river at that time extended west to beyond the Avenue A line. The old gateway is there yet, and is used now as the entrance to a coal-yard. Some of the barred windows of the wall can still be seen. In 1854 the inmates were removed to Randall's Island, and were placed in charge of the State.

Bellevue Hospital has occupied its present site; at the foot of East Twenty-sixth Street, since about 1810. The hospital really had its beginning in 1736, in the buildings of the Public Work-house and House of Correction in City Hall Park. There were six beds there, in charge of the medical officer, Dr. John Van Beuren. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, yellow fever patients were sent to a building known as Belle Vue, on the Belle Vue Farm, close by the present hospital buildings. In about 1810 it was decided to establish a new almshouse, penitentiary and hospital on the Belle Vue Farm. Work on this was completed in 1816. The almshouse building was three stories high, surmounted by a cupola, and having a north and south wing each one hundred feet long. This original structure stands to-day, and is part of the present hospital building, other branches having been added to it from time to time. The water line, at that time, was within half a block of where First Avenue is now.

In 1848 the Almshouse section of the institution was transferred to Blackwell's Island. The ambulance service was started in 1869, and was the first service of its kind in the world.

Bull's Head Village was located in the district now included within Twenty-third and Twenty-seventh Streets, Fourth and Second Avenues. It became a centre of importance in 1826, when the old Bull's Head Tavern was moved from its early home on the Bowery, near Bayard Street, to the point which is now marked by Twenty-sixth Street and Third Avenue. It continued to be the headquarters of drovers and stockmen. As at that time there was no bank north of the City Hall Park, the Bull's Head Tavern served as inn, bank and general business emporium for the locality. For more than twenty years this district was the great cattle market of the city. As business increased, stores and business houses were erected, until, toward the year 1850, the cattle mart, which was the source of all business, was crowded out. It was moved up-town to the neighborhood of Forty-second Street; later to Ninety-fourth Street, and in the early 80's to the Jersey shore. The most celebrated person connected with the management of the Bull's Head Tavern was Daniel Drew. He afterwards operated in Wall Street, became a director of the New York and Erie Railroad upon its completion in 1851, and accumulated a fortune by speculation.

At Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue, on the southeast corner, the house numbered 399-401, stands the old "Cooper Mansion," in which Peter Cooper lived. It was formerly on the site where the Bible House is now, at the corner of Eighth Street and Fourth Avenue. Peter Cooper himself superintended the removal of the house in 1820, and directed its establishment on the new site so that it should be reconstructed in a manner that should absolutely preserve its original form. Now it presents an insignificant appearance crowded about by modern structures, and it is occupied by a restaurant.

This corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue was directly on the line of the Boston Post Road. Just at that point the Middle Road ran from it, and extended in a direct line to Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street.

The Little Church Around the Corner, a low, rambling structure, seemingly all angles and corners, is on the north side of Twenty-ninth Street, midway of the block between Fifth and Madison Avenues. It is the Episcopal Church of The Transfiguration. Its picturesque title was bestowed upon it in 1871, when Joseph Holland, an English actor, the father of E. M. and Joseph Holland, the players known to the present generation, died. Joseph Jefferson, when arranging for the funeral, went to a church which stood then at Madison Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, to arrange for the services. The minister said that his congregation would object to an actor being buried from their church, adding: "But there is a little church around the corner where they have such funerals." Mr. Jefferson, astonished that such petty and unjust distinctions should be persisted in even in the face of death, exclaimed: "All honor to that Little Church Around the Corner!" From that time until the present day, "The Little Church Around the Corner" has been the religious refuge of theatrical folk. For twenty-six years of that time, and until his death, the Rev. Dr. George H. Houghton, who conducted the services over the remains of actor Holland, was the firm friend of the people of the stage in times of trouble, of sickness and of death.

The lich gate at the entrance of the church is unique in this country, and is considered the most elaborate now in existence anywhere. It was erected in 1895, at a cost of $4,000.

The congregation worshipped first in a house at No. 48 East Twenty-fourth Street, in 1850. The present building was opened in 1856. Lester Wallack was buried from this church, as were Dion Boucicault, Edwin Booth, and a host of others. In the church is a memorial window to the memory of Edwin Booth, which was unveiled in 1898. It represents a mediæval histrionic student, his gaze fixed on a mask in his hand. Below the figure is the favorite quotation of Booth, from "Henry II": "As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; a man that fortune's buffets and rewards has taken with equal thanks." And the further inscription: "To the glory of God and in loving memory of Edwin Booth this window has been placed here by 'The Players.'"

At Lexington Avenue and Thirtieth Street is the First Moravian Church, which has occupied the building since 1869. This congregation was established in 1749. In 1751 their first church was built at No. 108 Fair (now Fulton) Street. In 1829 a second house was erected on the same site. In 1849 a new building was erected at the southwest corner of Houston and Mott Streets. This property was sold in 1865, and the congregation then worshipped in the Medical College Hall, at the northwest corner of Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, until the purchase of the present building from the Episcopalians. It was erected by the Baptists in 1825.

At Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street is the Brick Presbyterian Church, which stood at the junction of Park Row and Nassau Street until 1858, when the present structure was erected. The locality was a very different one then, and the square quaintness of the church looks out of place amid its present modern surroundings. There is an air of solitude about it, as though it mourned faithfully for the green fields that shed peace and quietness about its walls when it was first built there.

It is related of William C. H. Waddell, who, in 1845, built a residence on the same site, that when he went to look at the plot, with a view to purchase, his wife waited for him near by, under the shade of an apple tree. The ground there was high above the city grade.

The ground between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Fortieth and Forty-second Streets, now occupied by Bryant Park and the old reservoir, was purchased by the city in 1822, and in 1823 a Potter's Field was established there, the one in Washington Square having been abandoned in its favor. The reservoir, of Egyptian architecture, was finished in 1842. Its cost was about $500,000. On July 5th water was introduced into it through the new Croton aqueduct, with appropriate ceremonies. The water is brought from the Croton lakes, forty-five miles above the city, through conduits of solid masonry. The first conduit, which was begun in 1835, is carried across the Harlem River through the High Bridge, which was erected especially to accommodate it. At the time the reservoir was put in use the locality was at the northern limits of the city. On Sundays and holidays people went on journeys to the reservoir, and from the promenades at the top of the structure had a good view from river to river, and of the city to the south. The reservoir has not been in use for many years.

The park was called Reservoir Square until 1884, when the name was changed to Bryant Park.

On July 4, 1853, a World's Fair, in imitation of the Crystal Palace, near London, was opened in Reservoir Square, when President Pierce made an address. The fair was intended to set forth the products of the world, but it attracted but little attention outside the city. It was opened as a permanent exposition on May 14, 1854, but proved a failure. One of the attractions was a tower 280 feet high, which stood just north of the present line of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. In August, 1856, it was burned, and as a great pillar of flame it attracted more attention than ever before. The exposition buildings and their contents were in the hands of a receiver when they were destroyed by fire October 5, 1858.

Bryant Park has been selected as the site for the future home of the consolidated Tilden, Astor and Lenox Libraries.

Murray Hill derives its name from the possessions of Robert Murray, whose house, Inclenberg, stood at the corner of what is now Thirty-sixth Street and Park Avenue, on a farm which lay between the present Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) and the Boston Post Road (the present Third Avenue). The house was destroyed by fire in 1834. On September 15, 1776, after the defeat on Long Island, the Americans were marching northward from the lower end of the island, when the British, marching toward the west, reached the Murray House. There the officers were well entertained by the Murrays, who, at the same time, managed to get word to the American Army: the latter hurried on and joined Washington at about Forty-third Street and Broadway, before the English suspected that they were anywhere within reach.

The Murray Farm extended down to Kip's Bay at Thirty-sixth Street. The Kip mansion was the oldest house on the Island of Manhattan when it was torn down in 1851. Where it stood, at the crossing of Thirty-fifth Street and Second Avenue, there is now not a trace. Jacob Kip built the house in 1655, of brick which he imported from Holland. The locality between the Murray Hill Farm and the river, that is, east of what is now Third Avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, was called Kipsborough in Revolutionary times.

The British forces landed, on the day of the stop at the Murray House, in Turtle Bay, that portion of the East River between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh Streets. It was a safe harbor and a convenient one. Overlooking the bay, on a great bluff at the present Forty-first Street, was the summer home of Francis Bayard Winthrop. He owned the Turtle Bay Farm. The bluff is there yet, and subsequent cutting through of the streets has left it in appearance like a small mountain peak. Winthrop's house is gone, and in its place is Corcoran's Roost, far up on the height, whose grim wall of stone on the Fortieth Street side at First Avenue became in modern times the trysting-place for members of the "Rag Gang."

Forty-seventh and Forty-ninth Streets, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, enclose the tract formerly known as the Elgin Garden. This was a botanical garden founded by David Hosack, M. D., in 1801, when he was Professor of Botany in Columbia College. In 1814 the land was purchased by the State from Dr. Hosack and given to Columbia College, in consideration of lands which had been owned by the College but ceded to New Hampshire after the settlement of the boundary dispute. The ground is still owned by Columbia University.

The block east of Madison Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets, was occupied in 1857 by Columbia College, when the latter moved from its down-town site at Church and Murray Streets. The College occupied the building which had been erected in 1817 by the founders of the Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb—the first asylum for mutes in the United States. The original intention had been to erect the college buildings on a portion of the Elgin Garden property, but the expense involved was found to be too great. The asylum property, consisting of twenty lots and the buildings, was purchased in 1856. Subsequently the remainder of the block was also bought up.

At Fiftieth Street and Fifth Avenue is St. Patrick's Cathedral, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1858. The entire block on which it stands was, the preceding year, given to the Roman Catholics for a nominal sum—one dollar—by the city.

The Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in the adjoining block, on Fifth Avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty-second Streets, was organized in 1825, but not incorporated until 1852, when the present buildings were erected.

There is still standing, in Third Avenue, just above Fifty-seventh Street, a milestone. It was once on the Post Road, four miles from Federal Hall in Wall Street.

Close by Fiftieth Street and Third Avenue, a Potter's Field was established about 1835. Near it was a spring of exceptionally pure water. This water was carried away in carts and supplied to the city. Even after the introduction of Croton water the water from this spring commanded a price of two cents a pail from many who were strongly prejudiced against water that had been supplied through pipes.

Memories of Nathan Hale, the Martyr Spy of the Revolution, hover about the neighborhood of Fifty-first Street and First Avenue. The Beekman House stood just west of the Avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty-second Streets, on the site where Grammar School No. 135 is now. It was in a room of this house that Major André slept, and in the morning passed out to dishonor; and it was in a greenhouse on these grounds that Nathan Hale passed the last of his nights upon earth. The house was built in 1763 by a descendant of the William Beekman who came from Holland in 1647 with Peter Stuyvesant. During the Revolution it was the headquarters of General Charles Clinton and Sir William Howe. It stood until 1874, by which time it had degenerated into a crumbling tenement, and was demolished when it threatened to fall of natural decay.

A very few steps from the East River, at Fifty-third Street, stands an old brick shot tower; a lonely and neglected sentinel now, but still proudly looking skyward and bearing witness to its former usefulness. It was built in 1821 by a Mr. Youle. On October 9th it was nearing completion when it collapsed. It was at once rebuilt, and, as has been said, still stands. In 1827 Mr. Youle advertised the sale of the lots near the tower, and designated the location as being "close by the Old Post Road near the four mile stone."

Within half a dozen steps of the old tower, in the same lumber yard, is a house said to be the oldest in the city. It is of Dutch architecture, with sloping roof and a wide porch. The cutting through and grading of Fifty-third Street have forced it higher above the ground than its builders intended it to be. The outer walls, in part, have been boarded over, and some "modern improvements" have made it somewhat unsightly; but inside, no vandal's art has been sufficient to hide its solid oak beams and its stone foundations that have withstood the shocks of time successfully. It was a farm-house, and its site was the Spring Valley Farm of the Revolution. It is thought to have been built by some member of the De Voor family, who, after 1677, had a grant of sixty acres of land along the river, and gave their name to a mill-stream long since forgotten, save for allusion in the pages of history.

A block away in Fifty-fourth Street, between First Avenue and the river, is another Dutch house, though doubtless of much later origin. It stands back from the street and has become part of a brewery, being literally surrounded by buildings.

The first suggestion of a Central Park was made in the fall of 1850, when Andrew J. Downing, writing to the Horticulturist, advocated the establishment of a large park because of the lack of recreation-grounds in the city. On April 5, 1851, Mayor Ambrose C. Kingsland, in a special message to the Common Council, suggested the necessity for the new park, pointing out the limited extent and inadequacy of the existing ones. The Common Council, approving of the idea, asked the Legislature for authority to secure the necessary land. The ground suggested for the new park was the property known as "Jones' Woods," which lay between Sixty-sixth and Seventy-fifth Streets, Third Avenue and the East River. At an extra session of the Legislature in July, 1851, an Act known as the "Jones' Woods Park Bill" was passed, under which the city was given the right to acquire the land. The passage of this Act opened a discussion as to whether there was no other location better adapted for a public park than Jones' Woods. In August a committee was appointed by the Board of Aldermen to examine the proposed plot and others. This committee reported in favor of what they considered a more central site, namely, the ground lying between Fifty-ninth and One Hundred and Sixth Streets, Fifth and Eighth Avenues. On July 23, 1853, the Legislature passed an Act giving authority for the acquirement of the land, afterward occupied by Central Park, to Commissioners appointed by the Supreme Court. The previous Jones' Woods Act was repealed. These Commissioners awarded for damages $5,169,369.69, and for benefits $1,657,590.00, which report was confirmed by the court in February, 1856.

In May, 1856, the Common Council appointed a commission which took charge of the work of construction. On this commission were William C. Bryant, Washington Irving and George Bancroft. In 1857, however, a new Board was appointed by the Legislature, because of the inactivity of the first one. Under the new Board, in April of the year in which they were appointed, the designs of Calvert Vaux and Frederick L. Olmsted were accepted and actual work was begun.

The plans for the improvement of the park, which have been consistently adhered to, were based upon the natural configuration of the land. As nearly as possible the hills, valleys and streams were preserved undisturbed. Trees, shrubs and vines were arranged with a view to an harmonious blending of size, shape and color—all that would attract the eye and make the park as beautiful in every detail as in its entirety.

The year 1857 was one of much distress to the poor, and work on the park being well under way, the Common Council created employment for many laborers by putting them to work grading the new park.

The original limits were extended from One Hundred and Sixth to One Hundred and Tenth Street in 1859.

As it exists to-day, Central Park contains eight hundred and sixty-two acres, of which one hundred and eighty-five and one-quarter are water. It is two and a half miles long and half a mile wide. Five hundred thousand trees have been set out since the acquisition of the land. There are nine miles of carriageway, five and a half miles of bridle-path, twenty-eight and one half miles of walk, thirty buildings, forty-eight bridges, tunnels and archways, and out-of-door seats for ten thousand persons. It is assessed at $87,000,000 and worth twice that amount. More than $14,000,000 have been spent on improvements.

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