USA > New York > New York City > History of New York City : embracing an outline sketch of events from 1609 to 1830, and a full account of its development from 1830 to 1884, Volume I > Part 45
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46
414
HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
Great changes in the localities of business centres were begun in this decade. We have already noticed the localities of groups of various kinds of business previous to the year 1830, and the first migrations from these groups.
The great fire in December, 1835, caused a much greater migration, especially in one branch of business, than had yet been seen. The locality of that fire, as we have observed, was the chief centre of the wholesale dry-goods business. The smitten district was soon rebuilt with far superior structures, but the inordmate demands of the owners for rent caused the former occupants to push across Wall Street ..
jacket. While tarrying there he saw in a New York paper an advertisement for an artist to retouch photographs at an establishment in the Bowery. He went to the city, and was employed there.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Mr. Kurtz took the preliminary steps toward becoming a naturalized citizen. He left the city with the Seventh Regiment National Guard, for Washington, and remained with it in the capacity of sergeant until the expira- tion of its term of enlistment-three months. In 1863 he took charge of the artistic department of a Broadway gallery, and the next year he married Miss Clotilde Raetle. In 1865 he started a photographic gallery of his own far up Broadway, where Lord & Taylor's store now is, and in the same year he introduced the carbon process, which renders photographs altogether unalterable in the air. He also introduced porcelain miniatures. At the annual fair of the American Institute, held in the autumn of 1865, he received the first medal of that institution for superior photographs.
In 1866 Mr. Kurtz made a revolution in photography by introducing the " Rembrandt effect," which method has been adopted at all the chief photographic galleries of the world. In 1870 he received at the Paris Exposition the first premium for superior photographs. It was the first medal that ever came to the United States as a premium for photographs. At the Vienna Exhibition in 1873 he received the first and greatest awards for portraits -- the Medal of Progress and the Medal of Art (medal for good taste) combined.
In 1874 Mr. Kurtz opened the Kurtz Gallery. on Madison Square, a model building for the exhibition of photographs and productions in every other department of art. He invested $130,000 in that building and its equipment. The next year he introduced the " transfer crayon" portraits, which abolish crayon drawings on photographic bases. The process he kept secret. In 1876 his name was first mentioned by the jurors at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, in their report. " for general artistic excellence in all styles of portrait photography, plain, crayon, oil, and pastel, and for a new process of making durable crayons." He was the only artist whose crayon drawings were admitted as " works of art" to Memorial Hall (where photographs were excluded) by a committee of eminent artists. Orders for his crayon drawings have been received from Paris and other cities of Europe.
In 1880 Mr. Kurtz had received letters-patent for the " vibrotype, " an improvement of the old way of taking photographic pictures ; also for the " conigraph," an invention for a variety of uses for artists who work on paper. The latter was patented in France.
Mr. Kurtz has filled the offices of president of the German Phot ygraphie Society, vice- president of the American Photographie Society, and president of the Palette Art Associ- ation.
415
FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840.
They made Pine, Cedar, and Liberty streets the great centre of the wholesale dry-goods trade. Gradually firm after firm ventured upon Broadway in the lower part. In 1840 a wholesale store on Broadway, half a mile from the Battery, was unknown. The centre of business was then within a quarter of a mile of the Battery. When a venture- some merchant opened a wholesale store on the site of old Grace Church, on the corner of Rector Street and Broadway, conservative and cautious men said, " Too high up!"
But the omnibuses and the city railroads soon wrought a change in business and domestic arrangements. These made transportation to a distance of two or three miles easier than foot travel a distance of half a mile, and enabled the merchant and professional man, the mechanic and the common laborer, to have their homes more remote from their respective places of employment. The families of merchants left the often inconvenient and undesirable quarters over the stores for more spacious and comfortable dwellings, where they could enjoy more light and air. The city, containing in 1840 nearly 313,000 inhabitants, rapidly spread out in fan-like shape, with the City Hall Park as the base, at which point several of the railways still radiate. At that period the streets above Fourteenth were rapidly filling up with dwell- ings, and very small stores and shops for the supply of local wants.
From that period extensive retail stores rapidly multiplied on Broad- way below Canal Street, and some speedily appeared above that point. The first of these retail stores which finally expanded its enormous proportions and continued to our day was that of Alexander T. Stewart, who, at the time of his death in 1876, was the most extensive and probably the wealthiest merchant on the earth.
Mr. Stewart was of Scotch-Irish descent. He was born in 1803, at a little town six miles from Belfast, Ireland. Left an orphan under the care of his grandfather, who was a Methodist, at the age of eight years, he was educated with a view to the ministry. Before he had graduated from Trinity College his grandfather died, and he was left without a known relative in the world. He left the college with hon- ors, and at the age of twenty years came to America.
Mr. Stewart landed at the Battery in 1523. His guardian was a Friend or Quaker, and he gave Stewart letters of introduction to some of his coreligionists in New York. Being a fair linguist and well edu- cated, Stewart obtained a situation in a public school. He was also a teacher of penmanship for a while, and one of his pupils in that art was the late Fletcher Harper, of the firm of Harper &- Brothers.
A seeming trivial circumstance introduced him into the mercantile
416
HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
world. He expected to receive a small patrimony when he should be twenty-one years of age. Ile brought some money with him. 1 young man of his acquaintance applied to him for some funds where- with to stock a small dry-goods store. Stewart advanced the money. the little store was stocked, but his friend could not go on with the business, and Stewart concluded to undertake it himself.
Stewart went to Ireland for his patrimony, and invested $3000 of it in goods. Soon after his return there appeared in the Daily Advertiser (September 2. 1825) a modest advertisement announcing that A. T. Stewart offered for sale, at No. 283 Broadway. " a general assortment of fresh and seasonable dry goods." He had rented one half of a store in a little wooden building exactly opposite where he erected his great marble building afterward. He had a sleeping-room in the rear. He moved into a larger store, at No. 262 Broadway, and not long afterward to No. 257, where, by industry, discretion, sagacity, vigilance, and persistence, he laid the foundation of his extensive business and great fortune. He soon rose to the head of the dry-goods business of the country.
On the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street stood quite an imposing building known as Washington Hall. It was completed in 1812, and was the finest structure, in an architectural point of view, in the city at that time. It was erected under the auspices of the Wash- ington Benevolent Society, one of several political organizations of that name which originated in Philadelphia at about the beginning of the century, but was not thoroughly organized until a dozen years after- ward. In politics these societies were opposed to the Tammany socie- ties. They disappeared with the demise of the Federal party, during the administration of President Monroe.
In 184S Mr. Stewart, by great comercial sagacity and operating upon a cash basis, had accumulated a fortune sufficient to enable him to purchase Washington Hall, which had been used for many years as a hotel. Upon its site, the front of which extended from Chambers Street to Reade Street, he erected a magnificent marble structure for hfs business, five stories in height. on Broadway. That store-the pioneer of marble, freestone, and iron stores on Broadway-attracted great attention at home and abroad. It was an efficient advertisement for Stewart. The Astor House, grand in size and built of granite, had been until then one of the architectural wonders of the city : now Stewart's store was a prolific topic of remark.
Fourteen years later, Stewart's business having outgrown his great store, he resolved to anticipate the up-town movement of population,
412
FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840
the unmistakable symptoms of which were then apparent. He pur. chased a part of the Randall estate (the Sailors' Snug Harbor), between Ninth and Tenth streets and Broadway and Fourth Avenue, whereon he built an extensive iron structure, six stories in height, with a base- ment and sub-basement. It was not unlike, in outward appearance. the great down-town store, which was subsequently devoted to the wholesale dry-goods business. In the new retail store about two thou- sand persons were employed, and the running expenses of the estab- lishnent were estimated at over $1,000,000 a year. The sales in the two establishments are said to have amounted to $203,000,000 in three vears, and his net income for several years was over $1,000,000.
The business of the house of A. T. Stewart & Co. was literally " world-wide" at the time of his death in 1876. A foreign office had been established at Manchester, England, where English goods were collected, examined, and packed. The firm had a factory at Belfast for the perfecting of Irish linens. At Glasgow they had a house for the collection and forwarding of Scotch goods. They also had a store at Paris, where were gathered goods from India, France, and Ger- many. They had a woollen house at Berlin, and a silk warehouse at Lyons. They also had mills in Europe and America for the manufact - ure of goods exclusively for their house, and their agents and buyers were continually " travelling between Hong Kong and Paris, Thibet and Peru."
Mr. Stewart had no taste for politics as such, nor aspirations for official position. Ile was very retiring in his habits. By his shrewd business management he had honestly and deservedly acquired the title of a " merchant prince, " and he wore the honor with modesty. He was chairman of the honorary commission sent by the United States to the Paris Exposition. President Grant nominated him for a seat in his cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury, but an existing and wise law barred his entrance upon the duties of the office.
It is said that Mr. Stewart's private charities, of which the world knew nothing, were extensive and generous. Hle designed to make provision for various public charities. In March, 1876, he had ad. dressed a letter to his wife (they had no children), in which he stated this determination, and that he depended upon her to carry out his plans in case he should fail to complete them himself.
These generous plans were not executed by those who had the man- agement of Mr. Stewart's estate after his death. He had begun the construction of a town on Hempstead Plains, on Long Island, called Garden City, designed to furnish comfortable homes at moderate
418
HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
prices. He also had in progress at the time of his death a magnificent iron building on Fourth Avenue, between Thirty-second and Thirty- third streets, intended to furnish comfortable homes to respectable working-girls. A magnificent cathedral (which also serves as a mauso- leum) has been erected at Garden City, at a cost that would have built scores of cottages. And the Home for Working-Girls was dedicated, before it was completed, to the service of Mammon. Its ground floor (as was originally intended) is devoted to mercantile pursuits, but the remainder of the building, designed for benevolent uses, was made a " first-class" hotel.
The Home for Working-Girls would have been the noblest monument imaginable to the memory of the benevolent and generous merchant prince. Even the mercantile house of A. T. Stewart & Co., which formed a magnificent monument to his memory as a business man and a citizen, who, by his genius and lofty probity, had for half a century contributed immensely to the prosperity and good name of the city of New York, was allowed to disappear from the realn of commercial life in the city almost immediately after his death. There is now, seven years after his departure, on April 10, 1876, nothing in the great metropolis to keep alive in memory a knowledge of the existence there of Alexander T. Stewart, excepting his marble mansion on Fifth Avenue, the rapidly fading recollections in fashionable society and of mercantile circles of " Stewart's," and the fact that he left behind him a fortune of $50,000,000.
K
CHAPTER XXIII.
D URING this first decade places of amusement and associations for social enjoyment multiplied and were modified in character by the prevailing tone of society. The theatre was the chief source of intellectual amusement, for the lyceum lecturer was unknown. The Park Theatre maintained its supremacy as a dignified and well-con- ducted play-house. It was the usual place of introduction to the American public of the best foreign actors, dancers, and singers, also of the best native talent. It was at that house that Thomas A. Cooper,* Charles Mathews. the Keans, Charles and Fanny Kemble, Malibran, Celeste, Fanny Elisler, Madame Vestris, and others first made their appearance in this country, at about the period under con- sideration.
Miss Clara Fisher was a most remarkable young woman, and fairly bewitched New York society at the beginning of this decade. She . was a plump English giri of exquisite form, below the middle height in stature, vivacious, running over with fun, her cheeks continually dim- pled with siniles. She was seventeen years of age when she first arrived in New York. She first appeared at the Park Theatre. The town seemed crazed by her presence. Her name was given to hotels, stages, and race-horses. She continually performed in the character of boys or striplings. Having her hair cut short behind,
* Thomas Apthorpe Cooper, though an old man, was a favorite actor during a portion of this decade. He was born in England in 1776, and went upon the stage when he was seventeen years of age. under Stephen Kemble, at Edinburgh. At the age of twenty he appeared on the boards in Philadelphia as Hamlet. He was at one time the manager of a theatre in New York, and did not leave the stage until 1536, when he was sixty years of age.
in February, 1833, Mr. Cooper took a benefit at the Bowery, on which occasion he introdneed to the stage his beautiful and accomplished daughter. Priscilla Elizabeth, in the character of Virginia. She entered the profession reluctantly, but did well. In September, 1839, she married Robert Tyler, son of (afterward) President John Tyler, and she was the presiding lady at the White House while her father-in-law was President. Her mother was a danghter of Major Fairhe and granddaughter of Robert Yates, of New York State. In 1811 President Tyler appointed Cooper military storekeeper at Frankfor. 1. Pennsylvania.
420
HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
fashionable young ladies under twenty-five years of age adopted the fashion, and also her slight lisping speech.
Miss Fisher was a charming singer, and at the Park she introduced to the Americans the stirring song of " Hurrah for the Bonnets of Blue." It electrified audiences. She was equally at home in tragedy or comedy. On December 6, 1834, she married James G. Maeder, a distinguished musician, and the preceptor in vocal music of Charlotte Cushman.
Miss Fisher acquired an ample fortune in her earlier years, much of which was lost in the ruin of the United States Bank. Her last in- tended appearance on the stage was in 1844, for the benefit of her sister, Mrs. Vernon, but in 1851 she appeared at Brougham's Lyceum, and assisted occasionally at Niblo's. Her character was almost faultless.
Miss Alexina Fisher, a juvenile star, appeared on the boards of the Park in 1831, when she was ten years of age ; her last appearance in New York was in 1862, when she supported Edwin Booth at the Win- ter Garden in the characters of Ophelia, Desdemona, and Emilia.
Miss Julia Wheatley, daughter of the excellent Mrs. (Ross) Wheatley, made her first appearance as an actress at the Park in 1833, when she was fourteen years of age. She had been seen on its boards as a little dancer when she was five years of age. She had a rich and highly cultivated voice. Miss Wheatley was a great favorite for several years. In 1840 she married Mr. E. II. Miller, and retired from the stage.
Miss Emma Wheatley, the younger daughter of Mrs. Wheatley, was also a charming actress. She appeared as one of the children in Romeo and Juliet with Mrs. Barnes in 1828, and was a favorite before she was thirteen years old in 1834, when she made her first appearance as a regular actress, as Julia in Sheridan Knowles's Hunchback, at a benefit of her mother. She played the same character in company with the author while he was in this country, until 1837, when she married James Mason. His father, who was wealthy, gave them the means for supporting a pleasant home, and she retired from the stage. At the elder Mason's death his will gave them little. It was contested for, some time. Meanwhile Mrs. Mason resumed her profession. The courts finally awarded her husband an equal share in his father's estate. It was an ample fortune, but she did not live long to enjoy the happiness of a model home they had prepared. She died in 1$54, at the early age of thirty-two years.
Mrs. Wheatley, the mother of Miss Julia and Miss Emma Wheatley, was Miss Ross, a daughter of Lieutenant Ross of the British army. and was born in Nova Scotia in 1788. She came to New York with her
421
FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840.
mother after her father's death, and appeared at the Park Theatre, then quite new, as early as 1805. At the end of that season she mar- ried Mr. Wheatley. Altered circumstances caused her to resume her profession in 1$11. She had two daughters and a son, all of whom gained distinction on the stage. She finally retired from the profession in New York in 1843, with the highest character in every part of the drama of life.
About 1830 Charles J. Kean (as we have observed), Mrs. Barnes, and Master Burke, the latter a precocious Irish youth, were very pop- ular at the Park. Burke appeared as Young Norval. He was already a skilful violinist and also an accomplished singer, especially of humor- ous songs. His powers of mimicry were wonderful, and for several seasons he was a most attractive star at the Park. Burke became one of the first violinists of the age, and assisted Jenny Lind, Jullien, Thalberg, and others in their concerts. Mrs. Barnes took the part of Pocahontas in the play of Powhatan at the Park, a drama written by George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of Washington.
One of the most attractive actresses known to the American stage about 1831 or 1832 was Miss Emily Mestayer, doubtless well remem- bered by the older theatre-going readers. She is described as " lovely in form, complexion, and character." She was skilled in vocalism, and was for a long time the most popular of the dramatic profession in New York. At an early age she married Mr. Houpt, but retained her maiden name professionally.
Edwin Forrest made his first appearance in New York City in 1826, at the age of twenty. He was a native of Philadelphia. Having performed at Albany. he came to New York and played the part of Othello at the Bowery Theatre. Ile very soon made his way to the position of a great American tragedian. John Augustus Stone's tragedy of Metamora and Dr. Bird's tragedy of The Gladiator were written for Forrest. He appeared in the latter at the Park in 1831. In 1834 distinguished citizens of New York honored him with a public banquet, on which occasion he was presented with a massive gold medal designed by Ingham, having appropriate devices and inscrip- tions. In 1837 he married a daughter of John Sinclair, the English vocalist. The marriage was infelicitous. He performed both in America and in England. He cherished a fend with Macready, and his course in wantonly persecuting that excellent actor led to the sad Astor Place riot in 1849, which will be noticed hereafter. The cele- brated Josephine Clifton first appeared on the stage in 1831. She was a native of New York, and was then eighteen years old. Miss Clifton
422
HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
appeared at the Bowery Theatre as Belvidera. Possessed of surpassing beauty in form and feature, and thoroughly cultivated for the purpose, she was successful at the start, and at once became a star of the first magnitude. In 1835 she appeared at the Drury Lane Theatre, London. She brought out the play of Bianca Visconti in 1837, which was written for her by N. P. Willis. Miss Clifton married Mr. Place. manager of a New Orleans theatre, in 1846, and died in that city the next year.
The Ravel Family introduced a most charming pantomime perform- ance into New York in 1832, and the same year Charles Kemble # and his charming daughter of twenty appeared at the Park Theatre, first in Hamlet and then in The Merchant of Venice, he as Shylock and she as Portia. They produced a great sensation in the theatrical and fash- ionable world. She was immediately the acknowledged Queen of Tragedy.
The cholera raged in New York in 1832, and was injurious to the business of the theatres as well as other pursuits. The aggregate receipts of all the theatres in the city of New York during the " cholera season" was only $50,000.
The Ravels were favorites for a long series of years, and are yet remembered with pleasure. not only by the older residents of New York, but by the visitors to the city forty or fifty years ago. After playing at the Park and Bowery they went to Niblo's, where they performed several successive seasons, making great profits for themselves and the proprietor of the theatre. They also performed at Palino's Opera House, in Chambers Street. The troupe was gradually changed, but
* Charles Kemble was fifty-seven years of age when he first appeared in New York. He became an actor when he was only a lad. He married a distinguished German actress in 1806. who became the mother of Frances Anne and Adelaide Kemble. The former was born in London in 1811. She first appeared on the stage at Covent Garden in 1829. She inherited from her mother much of the extraordinary talent then exhibited. She was a lithe and slender girl. No actress in America ever held her audience under absolute control like Fanny Kemble. Her hand was sought, with offers of great wealth ; she gave it to Pierce Butler, a wealthy slaveowner then living near Philadelphia. Their dispositions and tastes were utterly incompatible : their affections were alienated : a legal separation took place after she had borne two daughters, and she assumed her maiden name. The stage was distasteful to her, or rather its associations, and she soon began dramatic readings, to which she ever afterward adhered as a profession.
Fanny Kemble wrote a play called Francis First, which was introduced at Covent Garden before she was twenty years of age. She was imperious in manner, and offended the American public by her criticisms. For these she apologized. A drama from her pen-The Duke's Wager - was performed at the Astor Place Opera House. Her " Letters" to Miss Sedgwick, at the breaking ont of our Civil War, produced a sensation, as they revealed the iniquities of the slave system as she saw it on her husband's plantation.
423
FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840.
ever kept up their reputation. In 1857-58 they played an engagement of three hundred nights at Niblo's, giving a performance four times a week. Portions of the old troupe won triumphs at Niblo's so late as 1865.
Tyrone Power, the great Irish comedian. first appeared in New York at the Park Theatre in 1833, in the character of the Irish Tutor. He was then thirty-six years of age, and had been engaged in dramatic performances since 1815. He was unrivalled in his personation of Irish character. He was also an accomplished writer. His "Impres- sions of America" had a ready and large sale. Power was about five feet eight inches in height, compactly built, with light hair and com- plexion, and in spirits was overflowing with geniality and good- humor. Ile was also a fine musician and dancer. Power was lost in the ill-fated steamship President, which foundered at sea while on a voyage from New York to Liverpool. She was never heard of.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.