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 II > Part 6
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
and the Tribune (one cent) had 9,500. It was compelled soon to advance its price to two cents. At one time subsequently the cir- culation of the Weekly Tribune attained a circulation of 200,000.
The Tribune still flourishes as a leading daily journal in the metrop- olis. Its founder (Horace Grecley) died from the effects of overwork of the brain late in 1872, but it continues to be marked by great ability in its management. It is to-day worthy of the great editor who founded it .*
One of the greatest inventions in connection with the art. of printing since Faust and Guttenberg lived was made in New York at about the time of the advent of the Tribune. That invention was the " light- ning press," devised by Richard M. Hoe, eldest son of Robert Hoc, one of the earliest printing-press manufacturers in the city of New York.
Richard M. Hoe's father, the founder of the firm of R. M. Hoe & Co., was a native of Lancashire, England, where he was born in 1784. His
* Horace Greeley was born in Amherst, N. H., in February, 1811. He was the son of a small farmer, was educated at a common school, learned the printer's trade at Poultney, Vermont, and in Angust, 1831, found his way to New York City, where he was employed in his trade. He maile an unsuccessful attempt to establish a one-cent newspaper. In 1834, in connection with Jonas Winchester, he established The New Yorker, a literary weekly paper, of which he was editor. It continued seven years, but was not pecuniarily successful. After the political " hard cider" campaign in 1840 he established the Tribune, the career of which is mentioned in the text. He was a member of Congress in 1848, and in 1851 he visited Europe the first time. His course at times during the Civil War was rather eccentric. He was one of Jefferson Davis's bail bondsmen before that person was indicted for treason, after the war.
Mr. Greeley was a presidential elector in 1864. In 1869 he was the Republican candi- date for comptroller of the State of New York. In 1872, though always a Whig and Republican in politics, Mr. Greeley accepted the nomination for the Presidency of the United States from the Democratic party, and was defeated. His intense mental and physical labors during that campaign, working upon a brain that had been overtaxed for many years, prostrated his nervous system. Added to these causes was painful watch- ing at the bedside of his dying wife at the close of the campaign. He died at his home at Chappaqua, in November, 1872.
Horace Greeley was a great man. He was honest, conscientious, ever true to his con- victions, faithful in everything. His errors were of the head, not of the heart. The latter was large enough to embrace sympathy for all human kind.
Mr. Greeley was the author of several important books. The most pretentious one of any was " The American Conflict, " a history of the Civil War in America. He had for- merly (1856) published a " History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension." His death produced a profound impression of regret throughout the country. Good men of all parties mourned his loss. His body lay in state in the City Hall, New York, for one day, where it was visiteil by a vast imultitude of people, whose emotions attested the love and reverence they felt for the dead editor and the friend of man.
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SECOND DECADE, 1840-1850.
father, a well-to-do farmer, apprenticed him to a carpenter. Robert was a bright, ambitious boy. Attracted by accounts of the far greater facilities for advancement in the business of life offered in the United States than in his own country, and the chances for the enjoyment of political and social freedom here, Robert purchased the remainder of the period of his apprenticeship, and at the age of nineteen years landed at the city of New York. On his first arrival he formed the acquaintance of the benevolent little Scotchnan, Grant Thorburn, who kept plants and seeds for sale in a building on Cedar Street, once occu'- pied as a Friends' meeting-house, in front of which he had a pretty flower garden. The lad could not get work at his trade on account of the yellow fever, and he had no money. The kind seedsman offered to board him until he could find employment. A week after he entered Thorburn's dwelling he was seized with the fever and nearly died. Mrs. Thorburn nursed him tenderly, and he recovered. The recipient of this favor in the hour of his great need gratefully remembered the act. and the homes of his children were ever open to Grant Thorburn as a welcome guest until his death, at the age of ninety years.
Young Hoe soon established himself as a master carpenter, married a daughter of Matthew Smith, of Westchester, within a little more than a year after his arrival ; formed a business partnership with one of her brothers, and continued in the business of carpenter and printer's joiner for many years. His brother-in-law, Peter Smith, invented a printing press, and Hoe and Smith engaged in the manufacture of presses. On the death of these two brothers in 1823, Mr. Hoc succeeded to the entire business, giving employment to only a few men, and in 1825 he publicly announced himself as a printing-press manufacturer.
When Mr. Hoe heard of the introduction in England of the flat-bed cylinder printing press, he sent an intelligent mechanic thither to ex- amine it. His report caused the alert and ingenious Hoe to make great improvements in the press and begin the manufacture of presses in the United States. They were soon in general use here. In 1832 his health failed, and he relinquished the business to his eldest son, Richard M. Hoe, and Matthew Smith, son of his old partner.
Robert Hoe died the next year, at the age of forty-nine. Soon after- ward the new firin erected quite extensive buildings for their business on the corner of Broome and Sheriff streets, in the eastern part of the city, where now (1883), in greatly extended accommodations, the most of their work in the manufacture of circular saws and printing presses is carried on. They have also quite extensive works at the old place of business in Gold Street.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
Mr. Smith died in 1842, when Richard M. Hoe associated in busi- ness with himself his two brothers, Robert, Jr., and Peter S., under the present firm name of R. M. Hoe & Co.
Richard M. Hoe is a remarkable inventor. He was born in the city of New York in 1812. In 1837 he patented in the United States and in England a new method for grinding circular saws which is now universally used. In 1846 appeared his most wonderful invention, the " lightning printing press," better known as the rotary press. The form of type is secured upon the surface of a horizontal cylinder, and prints at every revolution as many papers as it has impression cylin- ders. At first there were four cylinders ; these were finally increased to ten, giving the press a capacity for making 20,000 impressions in an hour, on one side of the sheet. This press soon superseded every other in the United States, in Great Britain, in cities on the continent of Europe, and in Australia.
It was not long before Mr. Hoe produced an evidence of his genius still more wonderful than his simple rotary press. It is known as the web perfecting press. It is capable of printing on a continuous web or roll of paper several miles in length, on both sides of the roll at the same time, and cutting off and folding ready for the carrier from 15,000 to 20,000 perfected newspapers an hour ! The paper is drawn through the press at the rate of one thousand feet a minute. The Tribune-the little penny sheet in 1841-is now (1883) printed on a web perfecting press at the regular rate of 15,000 an hour.
The growth of Hoe's establishment is a conspicuous example of the mighty expansion of business in the city of New York during the last fifty years. In 1842 it was carried on in a small way in Gokl Street. Now its floor room would cover several acres. Their main estab- lishunent covers considerably more than one entire block, bounded by Grand, Broome, Sheriff, and Columbia streets. The main structure, on the corner of Grand and Sheriff streets, is six stories in height ; the remainder are four stories in height. The total surface of floor-room amounts to over 200,000 square feet, or over four acres ; in all the work-shops the floor room is equal to five aeres in extent.
The total number of persons employed in the several establishments at the beginning of the year 1883 was over 1000 ; the yearly amount of wages paid was 8750,000, and the number of apprentices was about 250. For the benefit of the latter the proprietors furnish an evening school during the winter months, in which mechanical drawing is taught two evenings in a week and mathematics one evening a week to cach boy. Every apprentice is compelled to attend this school.
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SECOND DECADE, 1840-1850.
No charge is made for their tuition ; on the contrary, cach apprentice receives a good lunch, consisting of sandwiches and coffee, after leav- ing work and before going into the class. The head teacher in this evening school devotes his whole time to this work and in visiting the sick and poor among the workmen.
In the establishment of R. Hoe & Co. (Richard M., Peter S., and Rob- ert Iloe) is a shop benefit society of over 800 members, who by means of co-operation are enabled to buy necessaries of life at the lowest whole- sale prices. In the year 1882 the purchasing committee of the society bought and distributed among the subscribers (all members) about 400 tons of coal, 300 barrels of flour, and 8000 pounds of coffee, at whole- sale prices, thereby saving much to the workmen.
R. Hoe & Co have a branch of their establishment in Chicago and also in London. Their saw business is very large, and the manufacture of printing presses of every kind, as well as articles for the use of printers, is very extensive. At a recent visit of the writer to their establishment there were over 200 machine printing presses in course of construction, most of them already ordered. The tools used in their business are valued at $1,000.000.
Immediately associated with the invention of the printing press are the arts of type-making,'stereotyping, and electrotyping, which are now carried on very extensively in the city of New York. During the second decade type-making and stereotyping had assumed large propor- tions in that city, wherein the latter process was first introduced in the year 1813 by David Bruce, brother of George Bruce, the latter the most eminent type-founder in New York during a period of about fifty years.
David Bruce sailed from Leith, Scotland, in the year 1793, and landed at Philadelphia. His brother George reached the same city from Scotland two years later, when he was about fourteen years of age. He learned the printer's trade in Philadelphia. In 1798 the yellow fever drove the brothers from that city. They journeyed to New York, thence to Albany, where they both obtained employment in a printing office a while ; but they returned to New York in the fall, walking the whole distance, and made that city their permanent abode. In 1806 they started a book printing office, at the corner of Wall and Pearl streets, under peculiar circumstances. The printing of " Lavoi- sier's Chemistry" was offered them. They had neither an office, type, nor press, yet they resolved to undertake the commission. They borrowed a font of type and a printing press, and they executed the work promptly.
Desirous of doing their work better, they explained their projects to
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
an acquaintance in Philadelphia, Adam Ramage (inventor of a printing press and a standing press), and asked him for a standing press on credit. Ile sent one to them, and it was the first standing press for smoothing printed sheets, which the printers of that city considered an unnecessary innovation. The printing of the book greatly pleased their employers, and work flowed in abundantly. At the end of three years they had nine presses at work.
David Bruce went to England in 1812. Earl Stanhope had just completed the contrivance of a new method of stereotyping by immer- sion. Mr. Bruce bought the secret and partly learned the process. Returning to New York in 1813, the brothers made arrangements for introducing the process into this country. By perseverance they over- came many obstacles. David invented the planing machine, which overcame the objection that the plates, as cast, were of irregular thick- ness. He also invented mahogany shifting blocks to bring the plates to type height. Having surmounted all difficulties, they stereotyped the New Testament in bourgeois type in 1814, the first book ever printed from stereotype plates in America. They made two sets of plates, one for themselves and one for Matthew Carey of Philadelphia. An Eng- lishman named Watts and Mr. Fay, father of the author and diplomat, Theodore S. Fay, afterward brought stereotyping to the highest per- fection in this country .*
In 1816 the American Bible Society was founded, and the Bruces stereotyped their first issues. So it was that New York won the honor of being the first place in America where the process of stereotyping was performed.
In 1816 the brothers Bruce abandoned printing, bought a building on Eldridge Street, and George devoted his talent to type-making, while the genius of David was engaged in stereotyping. George had learned from experience the necessity of being independent of others, as far as possible, in business, so he set about cutting his own steel punches for making type. With exquisite taste he soon became one of the most artistic of type punch-cutters. His designs for fancy type, combination borders, and ornaments showed rare artistic taste and skill. He would sit quietly in his private office for many hours engaged in this, to him, delightful labor. I saw him so engaged, his thin gray hair beautifying a placid countenance when cutting exquisite punches for great primer script, with defective vision, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. It was his last work.
* See " A History of American Manufactures," by Dr. J. Leander Bishop.
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SECOND DECADE, 1840-1850.
Many of the novelties introduced into the trade to facilitate printing and to elevate the standard of excellence were designed or invented by I:im. The first issue of the Patent Office under the act of 1842 for pro- treting designs was granted to George Bruce for one of his incompar- able scripts. His life was contemporary with the rise and progress of the typographical art in this country to its highest standard. Ile found the art of type-founding undeveloped, stereotyping unknown, printing in a wretched state, the newspaper in its infantile condition, and American literature yet unborn. *
* George Bruce was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, June 26, 1781. When not quite fourteen years of age he came to America, settled in Philadelphia, and with an elder brother, as we have seen, subsequently engaged in the business of book printing in New York early in the present century. His business career with his brother is related in the text. From 1816 until his death, on July 5, 1866, he was engaged in the business of a type-founder in New York City. Chambers Street was opened in 1818, and in it he erected a house for a foundry, and this place he occupied all the remainder of his life. His brother and he remained together in business some time longer. In 1815 they issued the first specimen-book of " The New York Type Foundry." The health of his brother failing, the latter purchased a farm in New Jersey, and the firm was dissolved in 1822. Then George relinquished stereotyping and engaged exclusively in making type. He introduced improvement after improvement, until the beautiful productions of his foundry gained for it a wide reputation and extensive and profitable business.
In 1833 Peter C. Cortelyou became a business partner of George Bruce, and remained so until 1850, when he retired, and Mr. Bruce's only son, David W., took his place, and mainly conducted the business during the latter part of his father's life. His name did not appear in the firm until after the death of his father, when it was changed to " George Bruce's Son & Co." Under that firm name David W. Bruce yet (1883) con- tinues the business at the old place, 13 Chambers Street.
In 1851 Mr. Bruce secured the services of James Lindsay, an expert type-founder and stereotyper, to superintend his foundry. That position Mr. Lindsay held until his death, in 1879. The elder Bruce gave him a junior partner's interest in the profits.
Mr. Bruce was an early member of the New York Historical Society, and of the St. An- drew's Society, which he joined in 1804 ; was a member and liberal patron of the Typogra- phical Society and the Printers' Library, a member and for several years president of the Mechanics' Institute, * a member of the American Institute, an officer for many years of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen and of the Apprentices' Library, and a member of the Masonic fraternity. Soon after the Civil War broke out the manufact- urers of type organized a type-founders' association. Mr. Bruce was elected its presi- dent, and remained in that office until his death. In a quiet way Mr. Bruce was always doing good. He was of slight frame, slow and deliberate of speech, and grave in man- ner ; and always wearing a white neckeloth, simple attire, and of serious countenance, he would be taken by a stranger for a clergyman. He had all the industry, integrity, tena- city, and self-will of the Scotch. Under his apparently cold exterior was a warm, forgiv- ing, and generous nature.
* The Mechanics' Institute was incorporated in 1833, and was for some years quite a flourishing institu- tion in the city of New York. It had a respectable library, philosophie apparatus, scientific lectures, and. for a number of years, a flourishing day school. It also held annual fairs for a few years. Its rooms were in the basement of the City Hall a number of years, and subsequently on Fourth Avenue. At its dissolu- top its library formed the nucleus of that of the Cooper Union.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
It was in the city of New York that the important chemical process known as electro-metallurgy was first applied to the production of elec- trotypes for printing. The late Professor James J. Mapes, in the year 1840, was publishing the American Repertory of Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures. He had seen accounts of the production of fac-similes of copperplate engravings by chemical precipitation. Desirous of so copying a certain engraving for his magazine, he and the late Dr. J. R. Chilton made successful experiments to that end. The result induced James Conner, an eminent type-founder in New York forty years ago, to attempt the production of matrices for casting type by chemical precipitation. He succeeded, and this finally led to the process now universally applied in producing copper-faced type for printing known as electrotyping .*
Besides Bruce and Conner, White and Farmer were leading type- founders in New York in this decade. Mr. Farmer is yet carrying on the business with vigor at the corner of Gold and Beekman streets, under the firm name of Farmer, Little & Co. The establishment was first founded at Hartford, Conn., in 1804, and in 1812 it was removed to Thames Street, New York. Thence it was removed to Gold Street, then to Cliff and Beekman streets, and finally to its present location, where it has a very extensive and thoroughly equipped type-foundry.
The year 1842 was an eventful one in the history of the city of New York, for in the summer of that year the waters of the Croton River, more than forty miles away, were let into the city. In a preceding
* James Conner was a native of Hyde Park, Duchess County, N. Y., where he was born April 22, 1798. He learned the printer's trade. Before he was twenty-one years of age he entered the office of the National Advocate, published by M. M. Noah, as a half-pay hand, but soon became employed with a book printer, where he might gain a more per- fect knowledge of the business. He soon became very expert, and was employed by Watts, an Englishman, who was a skilful stereotyper, and then he learned that busi- ness, and became a leading stereotyper. For about three years he was employed in Boston, when he returned to New York and established himself there as a type-founder. He made the first stereotype plates of a folio Bible ever made, and sold the plates to Silas Andrews, of Hartford, Connecticut, for $5000. He afterward produced other stereotyped works of great utility, and published them himself. Among these were " Maunder's Treasury of Knowledge" and a Polyglot Bible. For the latter he made and intro- duced a new size and style of type called agate. Mr. Conner was ever alert in the matter of improvements in his business, and employed every useful appliance to the perfection of his art. He became possessed of David Bruce's patent for the machine casting of type. In 1844 Mr. Conner, whose personal qualities made him popular, was elected county clerk of New York for three years. By re-election he was continued in that office six years. He died in May, 1861. His two sons have ever since continued the business. They have a large establishment on the corner of Reade and Centre streets, and one of the best equipped in the city.
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SECOND DECADE, 1840-1850.
chapter we have traced the history of the great Croton Aqueduct from its inception till its completion.
The water commissioners having walked through the aqueduct, a distance of more than forty miles, on a tour of inspection, pronounced its construction perfect, and on the 4th of July, 1842, the water at Croton Lake, in Putnam County, was let into the aqueduct and allowed to flow across High Bridge and into the city, filling the great distribut- ing reservoir on Murray Hill, the Incleberg of Revolutionary times. This structure is of dark granite, in Egyptian style of architecture, and has a capacity of 20,000,000 gallons, and covers an area of two acres. Its walls average forty-four feet in height above the adjacent streets. l'pon the top of the wall, which is reached by massive steps, is a broad promenade, from which may be obtained very extensive views of the vity and the surrounding country beyond the two rivers. The safety of the passengers on this promenade is made secure by a battlement of granite on the outside, and by an iron fence next the water.
The larger of the distributing pipes being completed in October, the water was let into them on the 14th of that month, on which occasion the great event, and one next in importance to the completion of the Erie Canal, to the city of New York, was celebrated by a grand civic and military display. As such displays are similar on all occasions, we will not weary the reader with details. It is said to have exceeded in numbers and imposing appearance the great Federal Celebration of 178S and the Canal Celebration in 1825.
The procession was nearly seven miles in length. Fountains were opened as the line passed by, creating many demonstrations of joy. The several divisions of the procession halted at the City Hall Park. where the president of the State board of water commissioners, Samuel Stevens, after an able address, turned over the great work to J. L. Lawrence, president of the Croton Aqueduct board. Then the Sacred Music Society, standing before the sparkling waters of the City Hall Park fountain, sang a stirring ode composed at the request of the city authorities by George P. Morris, " the lyric poet.
* George P. Morris was born in Philadelphia in October, 1802, and died in New York City in July, 1864. He went to New York in early life and engaged in literary pur- snits, publishing verses when he was fifteen years of age. With Samuel Woodworth he began the publication of the New York Mirror in 1823. He was associated in the conduct of that weekly periodical with Theodore S. Fay and N. P. Willis at different times. He established the Evening Mirror in 1844, a daily paper, assisted by Willis and Hiram Fuller. In 1816 he established the Home Journal. He was a brigadier-general of a city military brigade. As a lyric pout. General Morris acquired wide popularity. The most noted of his lyrics was " Woodman Spare that Tree." The last complete edition of his poems was published in 1860.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
In a hygienic and economical view, the importance of this great work cannot be estimated. In insurance alone it caused the reduction of forty cents on every $100 on the annual rates.
Notwithstanding the ridge line or watershed. including the Croton valley above the dam, is 101 miles in length, the stream itself 30 miles long, and its tributaries 136 miles in length, and the total area of the valley 352 square miles, with 31 natural lakes and ponds, it was soon doubted whether the supply of water provided for by the magnificent work would be sufficient even for the wants in the near future of the rapidly increasing population of New York City.
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