USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 42
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The Lower Bay has eighty-eight square miles, and the Upper Bay four- teen square miles of anchorage, a total of 102 square miles. The water front of the city has been greatly improved for the purposes of a harbor by its great system of jetties and docks. There is a total of 478 miles of water front and seven hundred miles of wharf room.
To the interior stretches the Hudson River, navigated by some of the finest vessels that ever floated on inland waters, and connected for freight purposes by the great canals which, before the railroad became a fact, had been opened to form a line of traffic communication between the great lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. Of the Erie Canal the Legislature authorized the final survey on April 13, 1806; work was begun at Rome, in Oneida County, July 4, 1817, and the first boat, the Seneca Chief, left Buffalo October 26, 1825, and arrived in New York City November 4, 1825. The second of the canals of importance is the Champlain Canal, begun in November, 1817, and opened September 10, 1823. It connects Lake Champlain with the Hudson River and the Erie Canal. Many other canals in the State add their quota to the traffic which has its southern terminus in New York City.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
When Hudson came through the Narrows and crossed the broad Upper Bay, his first idea was that he had found the passage to Cathay, that had been the dream of the adventurers from the days of Columbus. He missed Cathay, but found a greater land. His voyage up the Hudson has been fully described, from his own narrative, in the first part of this volume, and that river was the most important discovery of his voyage. It was that river, with the possi- bilities that it opened for trade with the aborigines, that made his discovery especially valuable to civilization, and that caused the settlement of New Neth- erland a decade later. The commercial Dutch, fully alive to the value of water- ways as trade thoroughfares, founded the settlement which has expanded to the present New York, because of the usefulness of the river as a business highway. The historic importance of Hudson's discovery has never been questioned, and the proposition that there should be a tercentenary celebration of the discovery held in 1909 was, therefore, a most appropriate one.
It was not the tercentenary of the city, but of the river, for the city was not founded for several years after the Half-Moon sailed up what Hudson called the "Groot Rivier" or Great River. Even that was not its first name, for the respective Indian tribes, which were very numerous, whose villages lined its shores, each called the river by their individual tribal names, as the "Shate- muc," "Mohican" and "Cahohatatea." The first Dutch settlers named it "Mauritius" in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau, then at the head of the United Netherlands, while the English, in the earliest maps of the region made by them after the discovery, indicated it in those maps as "Hudson's River," that being the basis of their rather shadowy claim to the region, because Henry Hudson, though at the time master of a Dutch ship, was an English- man. After English sovereignty was established the name "Hudson River" became the permanent one. From the first, however, both under the Dutch and the English, the residents of the City of New York have, to this day, used the alternate name of "North River" almost as frequently as the proper name of that great stream, because the stream or strait on the other side of the island is named "East River."
The proposition that there should be a great celebration commemorative of the three hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the river by Henry Hudson was made as far back as 1901, by Eben Erskine Olcott, and at that time and afterwards, by communications to newspapers and by personal advo- cacy, he impressed his views upon people of influence. In 1902 he called together a number of prominent citizens at an informal dinner at the Univer- sity Club, where the first discussion of plans for the proposed celebration took place.
Meanwhile there was developed a desire to properly celebrate another event connected with the Hudson River, scarcely second in importance to the
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original discovery of the river itself, and even more general and international in its bearing, this being the centenary of steamboat naviga- tion, beginning with the successful voyage of Robert Fulton's Clermont in 1807. This, too, was a proposition so full of merit and desir- ability that it appealed to a large number of people as favorably as did the proposition to celebrate Hudson's discovery. It did not seem possible, however, to properly honor both events on two separate occasions so close together as 1907 and 1909, and for this reason it was finally decided to merge the two anni- versaries in one celebration, the planning and execution of which was finally accomplished by the appointment, by the governor of the State of New York and the mayor of the City of New York, of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission, which was incorporated in 1906. Before it came to this point there had been much effective and patriotic preliminary work, first by Mr. Olcott. the original proposer, and afterward by other gentlemen in association with him, leading up to the final organization of the commission.
During the first two hundred years in the history of the Hudson River there was com- paratively very little change in the method of its navigation. Prior to the historic period the Indians had navigated it with their bark canoes, but the white men who came used sails, as well as oars, in traveling up and down the river. after the first trip of Hudson's Half- Moon. The navigation of the river increased in volume, and the vessels used showed some improvement in construction, but it took the invention wrought out by Fulton's genius to give new life to the commerce, first of the Hudson River, and afterward of the world.
The earliest steamers on the Hudson were very crude in design, but the problems of steam navigation have very largely been worked out
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1
THE SINGER BUILDING
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
first on that stream; and it is on the Hudson River that navigation as applied to inland waters has reached its highest development. To Commodore Alfred van Santvoord, more than to any other man since Fulton, is due the wonderful development of the Hudson River as a highway of travel. To him is due the transition from the old-fashioned, uncomfortable, dingy and unsightly steamers of the early day, to the magnificence of the modern floating palaces, like the Hendrik Hudson and the Robert Fulton, representing the highest ideal of art and beauty as applied to naval architecture. On these steamers one may now travel with the utmost speed, comfort and luxury, while viewing the beauties of the "very good land to fall in with, and pleasant land to see," which so delighted Henry Hudson three hundred years ago.
The scenic beauties of the Hudson have been extolled by travelers from Hudson's day to this, and while Manhattan Island has had a wonderful trans- formation from the hilly forest that Hudson saw to the present wonderful city of lofty and sky-scraping buildings, the reaches beyond the city and northward to Albany are still scenes of beauty which make the Hudson justly regarded as a parallel and peer to the far-famed Rhine. Fortunately the spirit of con- servation and scenic preservation has taken strong possession of the public mind in our day, and measures are on foot to preserve and accentuate the scenic attractions and historic memorials of the Hudson. The new project of the Great Highland Park, now made certain by act of the Legislature, is one of these most worthy measures.
The Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission was composed of more than seven hundred prominent citizens of the State of New York, among whom were included, ex officio, the mayors of the forty-seven cities of the State, and the presidents of thirty-eight villages along the Hudson River. The joint interest of the State of New Jersey in the celebration was recognized by Gov- ernor Hughes by the appointment of fifteen citizens of New Jersey among the members of the commission. The expenses were paid from a State appro- priation and a large private fund.
The officers of the commission were: General Stewart L. Woodford, president; Herman Ridder, presiding vice president; Andrew Carnegie, Hon. Joseph H. Choate, Major General Frederick D. Grant, U.S.A., Hon. Seth Low, J. Pierpont Morgan, Hon. Levi P. Morton, Hon. Alton B. Parker, John E. Parsons, General Horace Porter, Hon. Frederick W. Seward, Francis Lynde Stetson, Hon. Oscar S. Straus, William B. van Rensselaer, and General James Grant Wilson, vice presidents; Isaac N. Seligman, treasurer; Colonel Henry W. Sackett, secretary, and Dr. Edward Hagaman Hall, assistant secretary.
The celebration was broadly planned and was executed upon the largest and most generous scale. The two events to be commemorated were recog- nized as being local in only a very restricted sense. The discovery of Hud-
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THE NAVAL CELEBRATION
son and the invention of Fulton were of world-wide significance, and all the nations were therefore invited to participate in the proceedings, and responded by sending some of their greatest fighting ships to take part in the great naval parade which opened the two weeks of pageantry.
The date of the celebration was set for the two weeks from September 25 to October 9, 1909, the principal events during the first eight days occur- ring in Greater New York and upon the Hudson River opposite the city. In the following week the celebration continued at the Hudson River cities from Yonkers to Troy.
The opening day, Saturday, September 25th, witnessed the most impos- ing display of vessels ever gathered in the harbor of New York, or in this country, and never excelled in diversity in any place, or on any occasion, in history. Holland, with due realization of the important connection of the Netherlands with the history of New York, and whose flag was the first to fly over the waters of the Hudson, had gone to great pains to produce a replica of the Half-Moon, which became one of the two leading features of interest of the entire celebration, the other being an exact reproduction of the Clermont, with which Fulton revolutionized the entire art of navigation and began a new epoch for the commerce of the world.
In the Naval Celebration, flying the flags of all of the great powers as well as those of numerous countries of lesser importance, was collected what was probably the greatest fleet of war vessels that was ever mobilized. The naval vessels anchored at convenient distances apart, midstream of the North River, extending from Forty-second Street to a point above Spuyten Duyvil, numbering about one hundred sea fighters.
The ranking officer of the Naval Celebration was Sir Edward Hobart Sey- mour, G.C.B., admiral of the British Fleet, which was represented by the flag- ship Inflexible, largest of the warships assembled in the river, the Drake, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Black Prince. Germany also sent four of her great vessels, the Bertha, Bremen, Dresden, and Viktoria Luise, the latter being the flagship of Grand Admiral Von Koester. France, Italy, Holland, Mexico and Argentina were also represented among the warships, while the American Fleet was under the general command of Rear Admiral Seaton Schroeder on the battleship Connecticut (flagship).
Besides the war vessels more than one thousand other craft, including steamboats, private steam yachts and tugs took part in the parade, which formed at about one o'clock in the afternoon at a point midstream, between St. George, Staten Island, and Bay Ridge. Previous to the formation of the parade, beginning about 10.30 a. m., the Half-Moon and the Clermont, accom- panied by a part of its escort squadron, assembled in the Kill Von Kull and maneuvered along the Staten Island, Bay Ridge and Brooklyn shores, giving
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opportunity to many thousands on Staten and Long Island to see these two most remarkable vessels. The Half-Moon, during the ceremonies of the day, was manned by a detail from the Netherlands' cruiser Utrecht. The parade of vessels, including all except the war vessels, was under general command of Captain Jacob W. Miller, chairman of the Commission Committee for the Naval Parade. It was divided into eight squadrons, as follows: First Squadron, seagoing and coastwise merchant vessels; Second Squadron, steamboats ply- ing the inland waters of the United States, including ferryboats; Third Squad- ron, steam yachts; Fourth Squadron, motor boats; Fifth Squadron, tugs and steam lighters; Sixth Squadron, all sailing craft, and such other vessels as applied for anchorages, between Seventy-second Street and One Hundred and Thirtieth Street, Hudson River, during the ceremonies; Police and Public Safety Squadron, police, wrecking, fire and hospital boats; Escort Squadron, Half-Moon, Clermont, naval militia vessels, steam launches, cutters, small boats and government craft, such as torpedo boats and submarines detailed by the United States naval authorities; Patrol Squadron, United States revenue cutters and other government, State, municipal or private vessels, ordered or authorized by the secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor; Scout Squadron, fast steamers and motor boats to act as dispatch vessels under orders from the commanding officer of the naval parade. An incident of the parade which was not on the program was the collision between the Half- Moon and the Clermont, which while it caused no damage, led to the attach- ment of a tug to the Half-Moon, to take it to the reviewing stand at the foot of One Hundred and Tenth Street, its arrival there being greeted by a salute in which all of the great fighting vessels participated, which was beyond ques- tion the greatest cannonading ever heard in New York harbor.
It is said that this celebration brought to New York the largest crowd that ever was within its borders, including one million out-of-town visitors. This estimate is on the basis of reports from the hotels, which entertained six hundred thousand of these visitors, while it is doubtless true that at least two- thirds as many were either entertained in private houses or came early in the morning and left at night.
A large part of the parade was repeated at night with the added feature of illumination of the ships, while the river was made still more brilliant by a great elevated battery of forty searchlights of five hundred thousand candle- power each, which played up and down the Hudson from early dark till after midnight.
The display of vessels in the day parade was especially significant when compared with the Half-Moon and the Clermont. Viewed from the river, from the deck of one of the steamboats participating in the parade, the im- pression of progress was especially emphatic; for the great liners at their
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BRILLIANT ILLUMINATION OF THE CITY
piers and docks, on each side of the river, were all bedecked for the occasion, and the display of bunting was the most profuse that was ever collected at one time in any place in the world. The parade represented the entire space of time and progress from Henry Hudson's Half-Moon to the giant dread- naught Inflexible, and from the puny Clermont to the mammoth Cunarder, the Lusitania. The illumination of the ships at night was a wonderful spectacle. the great Inflexible as well as ships of the German and American navies be- ing outlined in myriads of electric lamps.
A feature of the celebration which extended through the first week from Saturday to Saturday, inclusive, was the brilliant illumination of the city. which exceeded in magnificence anything which has ever been attempted at any place in the world. including not only the illumination along the river, but also along Broadway and other business thoroughfares, and along the line of march of the various land parades which were held several times during the week beginning Monday, September 27th. Especially brilliant was the Court of Honor, extending from Fortieth to Forty-second Street. in an artistic de- sign which covered the entire roadway at that point with a blaze of lights.
In connection with the celebration there were several exhibitions, includ- ing displays representative of the history of the city during three hundred years, made at the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn In- stitute, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. and the College of the City of New York. and the art exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, consisting of pictures of the early Dutch and Flemish schools and other pictures representative of historical subjects.
On Monday. September 27th, there was given, in the Metropolitan Opera House, a formal reception to the visitors to the city, presided over by General Stewart L. Woodford, president of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commis- sion, and begun with an address of welcome by Mayor Mcclellan to the guests. Among the most distinguished of the guests were Admiral Seymour. Admiral Von Koester. Admiral Le Pord. of the French fleet: Jean Gaston Dar- boux. the French representative: J. T. Cremer. Dutch delegate: Youssef Zia Pasha, representative of Turkey: Señor Don Pio Bolanos, from Nicaragua, and Don Esteban Carbo, of Ecuador, as well as other representatives of for- eign nations, who made brief responses to the welcoming speech of the mayor. From the Kaiser. Admiral Von Koester brought congratulations, and com- mented on the fact that this was the first time that the celebration of a single city had been made an international festival. One of the most interesting features in connection with this reception was the presence of the venerable author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who read an original poem. written for the occasion. which related to the achieve- ments of Hudson and Fulton. Other features of that day ( Monday ) were the
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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND CAMPUS
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THREE GREAT PARADES
dedication of Palisades Park by Governors Charles E. Hughes, of New York, and Franklin Fort, of New Jersey; and the laying of the corner stone of the monument to Henry Hudson, at Spuyten Duyvil, by Governor Hughes, with an appropriate address. In the afternoon four hundred officers of visiting warships were entertained on Governor's Island, by Major General and Mrs. Leonard Wood.
The Historic Parade of Tuesday, September 28th, was a brilliant and inspiring pageant. The line of march extended from One Hundred and Tenth Street at Central Park West, south to Fifty-ninth Street, thence east to Fifth Avenue, and south to Washington Square. Participating in the parade were nearly twenty thousand people, for the greater part in costume, and there were fifty-four floats, representing the history of New York City and the surrounding country in four periods: Indian, Dutch, colonial and modern. The modern division, however, brought the history down to no later events than the first Erie Canal boat and the introduction of Croton water into the city. The pageant was led by Mayor George B. McClellan and Herman Ridder, chairman of the Carnival and Historical Parades Com- mittee, accompanied by a platoon of police. On each of the three great parade days there was a detail of four thousand four hundred police to keep order along the line of march, along which the stands, the sidewalks, the windows, the parapets, and every available nook and corner from which a view of the parades could be obtained were filled with a crowd estimated to be in excess of two million people.
On Thursday was the occasion of the great Military Parade, which was unique in the history of parades in America because of the large representa- tion of foreign forces in the line. Admiral Seymour, with his blue-jackets and marines, led the line of march, after the preliminary police platoon to clear the way, followed by detachments from the German, Netherlands, French and Italian fleets. After these came United States Coast Artillery, United States Marine Corps, West Point Cadets, Naval Militia, the National Guard, after whom came a small but interesting company of Argentine Cadets; and ending up the line of march, the Regulars in khaki uniforms. There were twenty-five thousand men in line in this parade, all excellently drilled, the Ger- man sailors and marines making the finest appearance among the foreigners, while among the American forces the West Point Cadets and our own Sev- enth Regiment were especially admired for the excellence and precision of their marching and evolutions.
On Saturday there was another parade, the Carnival Pageant, which occurred at night. It was brilliantly illuminated and was participated in by many of the civic societies and social organizations of the city, and in addi- tion to brilliant costumes and a very large number of allegorical floats, was
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conspicuous for its liberal use of lights, probably the most profuse ever used on a similar occasion.
On Friday, October Ist, the naval parade proceeded up stream, visiting points from Yonkers to Newburg, and on this up-river trip they were accom- panied by the steamer Roosevelt, in which Commander Peary went to the North Pole, the commander himself, with Captain Bartlett, master of the ves- sel, being on board in the parade to Newburg.
The remainder of the celebration was all at up-river points, closing on October 9th. In the city, beside the special events enumerated, there were many others, notably aeroplane flights by Wilbur Wright and Glenn Curtiss, who, on Wednesday, September 29th, made ascents from Governor's Island, Mr. Wright especially making a trip which attracted much attention, because he circled several times around the Statue of Liberty. There were also local celebrations and parades in the Bronx and in Brooklyn Borough, and a large number of private receptions and festivities in which the foreign visitors were the honored guests.
The Hudson-Fulton Celebration was a valuable and educational enter- prise, and did much to impress the people of the City of New York, and the many thousands of visitors to it, with the fact that the city has a history worthy of study, and has accomplished more in the way of municipal growth than ever did any other city in the brief space of three centuries.
McKim, Mead & White, Architects
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE NEW PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD STATION
CHAPTER THIRTY - SEVEN
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCE TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES AND PUBLIC UTILITIES OF THE CITY
Commerce, in a new country, follows the line of least resistance, and the most obvious thing for the first white settlers of New Netherland to do was to trade with the Indians for the commodity which, when bought and ship- ped to Europe, would be most sure of a market. So that the settlement at the south end of Manhattan Island, which soon came to be called New Am- sterdam, was first known as a shipping place in the fur trade.
Beaver skins were brought in by the Indians and continued to be the staple of export trade in the colony for years; yet the business was paltry in comparison with modern trade figures. Restrictions were placed upon trade by rules which the Dutch West India Company made for the purpose of secur- ing a monopoly of the trade of its province, but at the best it was not possi- ble to send many furs to the Netherlands, in the earlier days, for the ships available for the trade were scarce and infrequent, and few were of greater capacity than one hundred tons burden.
Supplies, except those procured from the Indians, came chiefly from Hol- land, although several privateers were in commission and occasionally brought in prizes of captured Spanish vessels. In 1643 a privateer owned in New Am- sterdam brought in two Spanish prizes laden with tobacco, sugar and ebony.
The trade with the Indians was largely barter. Certain cloths, hatchets, knives and other articles of cutlery and hardware, as well as many trinkets, were readily accepted by the Indians. For use as money only wampum ( white and black) was current until, during the administration of Pieter Stuyvesant as director-general, that governor made beaver skins current at eight florins ($3.20), by an ordinance in 1657. Wampum still continued current, although from time to time ordinances had to be made, and proclamations issued by the governor, regulating the use of wampum, which on account of its increas- ing quantity, several of the merchants hesitated to receive. Even after the English occupation of the colony, wampum was legalized by act of the Assemi- bly, November 7, 1692, which was followed by a proclamation of the gover- nor, which fixed a table of exchanges, making six white wampums equal to three black wampums, three black wampums equal to one stiver, and twenty stivers equal to "one guilder or six-pence, current money of this province." Payments under ten shillings could be made in loose wampum, without any restriction, according to these tables of value, while sums of money amount- ing to more than £5, if paid in wampum, were not legal tender unless the
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