USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, Vol. II > Part 25
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around it, and the building was saved with great diffi- culty. The 1st of September was set apart for a public ovation, by the municipal authorities, to Mr. Field and the officers of the expedition. The celebration sur- passed everything of the kind ever witnessed in the city. A morning thanksgiving service was held at Trinity Church, at which two hundred clergy officiated. At noon Mr. Field and the officers of the ships landed at Castle Garden and were received with a national salute. A procession was formed, extending from the Battery to the Crystal Palace, where the mayor presented to Mr. Field the freedom of the city in a gold box, with the thanks of the community. At night the firemen paraded the streets in a torch-light procession to do honor to the hero who had achieved such a miracle, and whose fame was in every one's mouth. On that very day the voice of the cable was suddenly hushed. The revulsion that followed was excessive. The cable at once fell into contempt, and was publicly decried as a hoax or a stock speculation, many denying that any message had ever passed over it, though four hundred messages had been transmitted in the interval, and the papers of the day proved that events were pub- lished in the English journals forty-eight hours after their occurrence in America ; a thing impossible without the intervention of the telegraph. To give a single example of this fact, unknown to many, Mr. Eddy, a well-known telegraph operator, died suddenly at Bur- lington, Vt., on Monday, August 234, and his death was telegraphed to England and published in the London Times, August 25th. Mr. Field fell, in the publie estimation, from the rank of a successful hero
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to that of a visionary schemer and perhaps adven- turer ; his task was rendered tenfold more difficult by its momentary success, and for almost. ten years he was doomed to struggle against the tide, stimulating the unwilling faith of his coadjutors, and raising the immense sums of money that were necessary to carry out his gigantic undertaking in the midst of an un- heard-of season of financial depression and civil war. It is safe to say that not one man in a million would have persevered ; but his iron will carried him successfully to the end, as did that of Fulton before him. In the inter- val of waiting, important improvements were effected in the manufacture of telegraphie machinery, and a mammoth ship, the Great Eastern, was built, whose vast capacity and smooth motion gave increased facilities for the successful laying of the cable. The company was revived, and on the 23d of July, 1865, the Great Eastern set sail, trailing in her wake the precious wire. So many precautions had been taken that failure seem- ed almost impossible. In spite of all this care a fault occurred when twelve hundred miles at sea, and in attempting to recover it, the cable snapped and went down.
It was necessary to begin the work anew. The ship returned to England; three millions of dollars were raised to prosecute the undertaking, a new cable was made, and on the 13th of July, 1866, the Great Eastern again sailed with the cable, and this time suc- ceeded in carrying it safely across the Atlantic, after twelve years of almost superhunan effort. Nor was il:is ali; the huge vessel retraced its course, and, with the aid of its powerful grappling machinery, succeeded
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in fishing up from the bottom of the sea, two miles deep, the cable that had been lost the year before ; and, having spliced it, established a second line of com- munication between the Old and New Worlds.
The final success of this enterprise was hailed with delight, and for the second time Mr. Field was re- garded as the hero of the age. The Chamber of Com- merce of New York gave a public banquet in honor of the Ocean Telegraph and its projectors, at the Metro- politan Hotel on the 15th of November, 1866, in which the most distinguished personages of the country par- ticipated, either in person or by letter, and the Thirty- ninth Congress presented a gold medal to Mr. Field, with the thanks of the nation.
An achievement so vast, accomplished in the face of such difficulties, and conferring such benefits on man- kind, justifies the tribute of one of the greatest of Eng- lishmen, John Bright, when, in a speech at a monster meeting at Leeds, addressing a hundred thousand of his countrymen, he said : "A friend of mine, Cyrus W. "Field of New York, is the Columbus of our time ; for, "after not less than forty passages across the Atlantic "in pursuit of the great aim of his life, he has at length, "by his cable, moored the New World close alongside "of the Old."
A great step in advance was taken in New York during the same year, by the organization of a Metro- politan Board of Health, consisting of four commis- sioners, appointed by the governor by and with the consent of the Senate, the health officer and the Police Board, which was invested with extensive powers, and charged with the task of abating nuisances and watching
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ILFAUTV. WELLS PEL
Ail Souls Church, corner of Fourth Avenue and Twentieth Street. 55 The spire, which foris part of the design of the church, hus not yet been erected.
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over the public health of New York and Brooklyn. The act to create a Metropolitan Sanitary District and Board of Health therein, for the preservation of life and health and to prevent the spread of disease, passed the Legislature on the 26th of February, 1866; and James Crane, M.D., Willard Parker, M.D., Jackson S. Schultz and John O. Stone, M.D., were appointed to constitute the said Board. This measure had been called forth by the dread of an impending visitation of the cholera, which had ravaged New York at different times, especially in 1832 and 1849, and which was raging violently in Europe. In the preceding Novem- ber the steamship Atlanta, an emigrant vessel, had arrived at New York from Europe, having on board several passengers sick of Asiatic cholera. No hospital on land had been provided since the destruction of the Quarantine Buildings on Staten Island, and the sick were obliged to take refuge on a floating hulk in the bay, which had been used during the summer for the reception of yellow fever patients. In a few weeks the disease broke out at Ward's Island, where several deaths occurred. The severity of the weather checked its further progress ; but the belief was general that it would break out with fresh violence in the spring. The Board of Health vigorously set to work to purify the city, the hygienic condition of which was deplorable. Under the energetic management of the Health Commissioners, the streets were swept, the tenement quarters disin- fected, the fat and bone boiling establishments and slaughter-houses removed beyond the limits of the city, the markets cleaned, the practice of driving cattle through the streets during the day-time discontinued, and many sanitary measures effected.
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In the spring the steamship England arrived at Hal- ifax, with one hundred and sixty cases of cholera, exclusive of forty that had died on the voyage from Liverpool. Information was at the same time received that two vessels had stopped at Bermuda on their way to New York, and were quarantined there on suspicion of having cholera on board. The only quarantine hos- pital possessed by New York was a hulk that would accommodate about three hundred patients. In view of the danger, the Board of Health petitioned the gov- ernor for a grant of extraordinary powers to provide for the accommodation of the sick and the purification of the city. These powers were granted till the 15th of October. The Board made earnest efforts to estab- lish a quarantine, but were thwarted on every hand ; the inhabitants of Staten Island, Coney Island, Sandy Hook, and all other eligible spots in the vicinity of New York, strenuously opposed the establishment of a chol- era hospital in their neighborhood ; and though steps were taken to occupy Seguin's Point by force, nothing permanent was effected, and thus the matter remained.
Meanwhile, the expected visitant arrived. On the 18th of April the steamer Virginia reached New York from Liverpool, with a number of cholera cases of the most malignant type on board. The sick were transferred to a hospital ship, and those in health to a steamer fitted up for their accommodation Twelve days after, on the Ist of May, the first case of cholera broke out in New York, in an old, ill-drained tenement-house on the corner of Third Avenue and Ninety-third street. The victim was a woman, who died in a few hours. The next day another case occurred at 115 Mulberry street,
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five miles distant. From this time the disease slowly extended, until it reached its height in August. It was confined, however, almost wholly to the badly drained and insalubrious districts of the city, and to the public institutions on the islands round about. In Brooklyn it raged with great violence. The Board of Health kept vigilant watch over the pestilence, and succeeded in checking its ravages so far that the whole number of fatal cases in the city, including the shipping at the wharves and the vast floating population, was but four hundred and sixty ; while the whole number of deaths from cholera, comprising the hospitals and the penal institutions on the islands, was twelve hundred and twelve. In the Western cities, whither it extended with fearful rapidity, the victims were numbered by thou- sands. During the continuance of the pestilence the barracks on the Battery, which had been used during and since the war as a depot for troops passing through the city, were converted into a hospital, together with the United States Transit Hospital immediately adja- cent. The barracks in front of the Five Points House of Industry were also used as a depot for disinfectants. A hospital was established in Second Avenue, and a corps of medical men and nurses was organized to serve during the plague, which finally disappeared in October.
A marked event in the dramatic world, during this year, was the visit of the celebrated Italian tragedienne, Adelaide Ristori, the former rival of Rachel, who arrived at New York in the autmon of 1866, and soon after made her debut with great success. After a brilliant tour throughout the whole country, Madame Ristori, or rather
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the Marchese del Grillo, revisited the city in the following spring, and took her final departure thence for Europe on the 18th of May, 1867.
The winter of 1866-1867 was marked by great severity. The East River was entirely frozen over, an event of rare occurrence, and in the space of a few hours hundreds of persons crossed from Brooklyn to New York on the ice. The interruption to ferry navi- gation was so great that the public was stimulated to undertake the long talked-of project of bridging the East River, and the Legislature granted permission to two companies to construct elevated bridges, one from the vicinity of Chatham Square, in New York, to Fulton street, in Brooklyn, and the other from the neighbor- hood of Yorkville to the opposite point. About the same time a novel undertaking was commenced in the form of an elevated bridge for pedestrians, known as the Loew Bridge, across the corner of Broadway and Fulton street, a passage which had become extremely perilous from the crowd of vehicles constantly accumu- lated at that point. During the same session, an act was passed by Congress authorizing the purchase, by the government, of the lower end of the City Hall Park, on which to erect a new Post-office.
Various land-marks passed away in the spring of 1867. St. John's Park, which, comparatively a few years since, was the centre of wealth and fashion, was sold to the Hudson River Railroad Company, and trans- formed into a depot. This park had formed a portion of the "Queen's Farm," granted to Trinity Church in 1705 by Lord Corubury, and the title of which is still contested by the heirs of Aneke Jans, the widow of
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On the 13th of February, 1867, the old Society Library, on the corner of Broadway and Leonard street, was destroyed by fire. This edifice had been built in 1839 by the New York Society Library Asso- ciation, which occupied it until 1853. It was then sold to the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., who re- modeled it, and used the ground-floor for their book- store ; the upper stories being occupied by numer- ous societies, editors and artists. In 1860 the pub- lishing house of the Messrs. Appleton & Co. was re- moved to Broadway near Grand street, and the building was leased to the mercantile firm of S. B. Chittenden & Co., who were its occupants at the time of its destrue- tion, and whose loss thereby amounted to nearly a million of dollars. The Grecian facade of the build- ing remained for some time standing, alnost unscathed
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by the fire; the beautiful ruin is worthy of remem- brance.
In March Tammany Hall, on the corner of Frank- fort and Chatham streets, was sold to make way for a newspaper establishment, the Tammany Society having purchased the site of the Medical College in Fourteenth street, which had fallen a prey to the conflagration which destroyed the Academy of Music on the 26th of May, 1865, in order to erect a new hall thereon. Tam- many Hall stood on the Leisler estate, near, or on the spot, where the unfortunate Leisler was buried. It was erected in 1811, and had long been conspicuous in the political annals of the city.
Another noticeable conflagration was that of the 23d of March, 1867, which swept away Winter Garden from the face of the earth, and seriously injured the adjoin- ing Southern Hotel. This was a fatal spot, Tripler Hall, the Lafarge Hotel, and the Metropolitan Theatre, having been burned to the ground thereon in succession. The fire, however, only gave a fresh impetus to private enterprise, and searcely was the building in ashes, when its successor was projected.
To chronicle all the changes, however, that have occurred and are occurring, would far transcend the limits of our work. Far different, indeed, is the New York Island of the present day, with its forests of cities, its marble, iron and free-stone palaces, and its million of bustling inhabitants, from the grassy hills which met the eye of Hudson little more than two centuries and a half ago. Then the island belonged to Nature, now it has become the property of Art. The marshes are drained, the forests levelled, and the fair, broad farms
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laid out into building lots and traversed with large iron pipes, conveying fire and water side by side through the earth. Scarce a vestige remains of the primitive Man- hattan. Under the impetus given it by the Central Park, the city is fast rushing northward, and, in all probability, comparatively few years will pass before the whole island will be covered with a compact mass of buildings.
Nor have the suburbs failed to keep pace with the city. Indeed, the whole country within a radius of thirty miles may be considered as a part of New York, a sleeping place for its citizens. Across the East River lies Brooklyn, the third city in the Union, somewhat overshadowed by the greatness of her mammoth neigh- bor, with the thriving villages of Green Point, Hunter's Point, Ravenswood aud Astoria stretching to the north- ward along the Sound shore ; and on the west shore of of the Hudson are Jersey City, the Paulus Hook of the Dutch settlers, Hoboken, and the picturesque heights of Weehawken. The lines of the Hudson River, Harlem and New Haven Railroads, are studded with thrifty towns, populated by the New Yorkers, who have also monopolized Staten Island and spread far back on the Jersey shore.
The islands in the East River are admirably adapted by their location to the penal institutions of which they are made the site. On Blackwell's Island, opposite Yorkville, are the Penitentiary, Lunatic Asylumn, Als Houses, Hospital and Workhouse. Above this are Ward's Island, where the Emigrant Hospital is situated, and Randall's Island, the site of the Pauper Nursery and the House of Refuge. In New York Bay, south-
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west of the Battery, are Ellis and Bedloe's Islands, both strongly fortified for the protection of the harbor. A little to the south-east of the Battery is Governor's Island, the site of Fort Columbus and Castle William, and below this, in the heart of the Bay, is the beautiful Staten Island, the villa of the merchant princes of New York, commanding the Narrows by Forts Tompkins and Richmond, with numerous batteries. The opposite shore of the Narrows is protected by Fort Hamilton on Long Island and Fort Lafayette on Hendrick's Reef, about two hundred yards from the shore. On a mole, connected by a bridge with the Battery, is Castle Garden, the fortress of olden times, now used as the depot of the Commissioners of Emigration. The Sound entrance is defended by Fort Schuyler and other works.
Numerous ferries connect New York Island with the neighboring shores, and it is probable that ere long the broad rivers on both sides will be spanned with bridges. At Harlem River it is connected with the main land by the Harlem Turnpike and Harlem Railroad Bridges, McComb's Bridge and the High Bridge of the Croton Aqueduct, while Spuytenduyvel Creek, the northern boundary of the island, is crossed by the well-known Kingsbridge, first built of wood, by order of the Cor- poration, as early as 1691.
At the Dry Dock, on the north-east shore of the island, and also on the opposite shore, are the exten- sive ship-yards of the city ; and at the United States Navy Yard, in the Wallabout, is the Naval Dry Dock, the largest in the world.
The public buildings of the city are numerous, and are mostly in keeping with its wealth and importance.
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Sub-Treasury.
In the Park is the New Court House, the City Hall and various minor buildings, devoted to municipal purposes ; close by, in Centre street, is the City Prison, or "Tombs." a gloomy structure in the centre of the most squalid portion of the city.
In Wall, at the head of Broad street, on the site of the old City Hall and Custom House, erected in the beginning of the century. is the Sub-Treasury of New York, an edifice of Grecian architecture, built of Mas- sachusetts marble, at the cost of nearly a million of dol-
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lars. Adjoining this, in the building formerly occupied by the old Bank of the United States, is the Assay Office. On the corner of Wall and William streets, is the Custom House, a magnificent edifice of blue Quincy granite, 'built originally for the Merchants' Exchange, at the cost of over a million of dollars. The old Post- office in Nassau street is doomed, and measures are being taken to give the city one worthy of the name. The libraries of the city are numerous and worthy of notice. The chief free public Library is the Astor, in Lafayette Place, between Fourth street and Astor . Place, which was erected by means of a bequest of $400,000 made to it in 1848, by John Jacob Astor. The building was first opened to the public in 1854, with a collection of eighty thousand volumes, under the superintendence of Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell. It has since been doubled in size and the collection increased to over one hundred thousand dollars, by the liberality of William B. Astor, the son of the founder.
The oldest library in the city is the Society Library in University Place, between Eleventh and Twelfth streets ; the history of this we have already sketched. In a tasteful stone edifice on the corner of Second Ave- nue and Eleventh street, is the Historical Society, Library, founded in 1804. Here is found a choice collection of historical works, chiefly pertaining to American history, a rare assemblage of coins and relics, the Abbot collection of Egyptian curiosities, the Nine- veh marbles, and many other valuable objects. In the Clinton Hall building, once the Astor Place Opera House, is the library and reading-room of the Mercan- tile Library Association, which was organized in 1836,
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( uistom House
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with seven hundred volumes, for the purpose of sup- plying the merchants' clerks with facilities for reading and study, and which now possesses over seventy-five thousand volumes. A free reading-room has also been established in the Cooper Union, together with a pic- ture gallery. Other libraries, too numerous to specify, and containing many thousands of volumes, are attached to the various professional and educational institutions of the city.
Our task is ended. Statistical lists we do not intend to give, nor shall we trespass upon the limits of that modern institution, the directory, by further mapping out the city, with its massive banking houses, its mag- nificent churches, and its marble-fronted palaces, all changing from hour to hour with such kaleidscopic rapidity that the picture of to-day would scarcely be recognized to-morrow. It suffices to say that in pala- tial splendor, in gorgeous magnificence, and in lavish dis- play of inexhaustible wealth, New York may well be regarded as bearing off the palm from all other cities in the Union. Yet were this all, did her claims to her proud title of the Empire City rest merely upon the power of riches, were she but the Golden City, the Venice of the Western Continent, then indeed we might tremble for her future, sure that the seeds of decay were lurking in her heart. But that she has played a far different part in the history of her country, her annals give sufficient proof. The first to practice that religious freedom which the Eastern colonists emigrated from the Old World to secure for themselves only to deny to others, and to throw open her doors to the poor and oppressed of her sister settlements; the first to
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vindicate the freedom of the press ; the first to enter a practical protest against the arbitrary Stamp Act by dooming herself to commercial ruin ; the first to shed her blood on the battle-fields of the Revolution, and the chief in furnishing the sinews of war without which the late gigantic confliet could never have been con- ducted to a successful termination, New York has not falsified in maturer years the promises of her youth. Not only has she given an impetus to gigantie schemes of internal improvement that challenge the admiration of the whole world-the Ocean Telegraph, the Steam- boat, the Erie Canal, the Croton Aqueduct, and the magnificent Central Park ; not only does she, by her open-handed liberality, attract to herself men of science, enterprise, and broad and earnest thought, ingenious me- chanics, far-seeing merchants, talented artists, and bril- liant literary men, but she has fostered within her own bosom statesmen, philosophers, inventors, and authors, who may compete advantageously with any in the world.
We have simply endeavored to chronicle the progress of the city, to select and briefly make mention of the most important facts from the mass of rich material which lies temptingly about us, looking longingly, mean- while, at the accessory incidents which would so charm- ingly fill up the picture and relieve the dullness of mere details, yet forced to desist by the conviction that the task would swell the volume beyond the compass of an entire library. What we could do, we have done ; and if any of the facts which we have thus collected and woven together shall suggest to the future historian tive desire to rescue the story of the past career of our eity from the neglect with which it has hitherto been too
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often treated, or shall inspire her citizens with love and pride of their native or adopted city, and urge them to perpetuate the memory of a glorious past by a still more glorious future, and to make their chosen home the Empire City in truth, not only of wealth, but of science, of learning, of art, of all that can elevate and beautify humanity, we shall feel that we have not labored in vain.
The future destiny of New York rests with the pre- sent generation ; their verdiet must decide whether she will patiently bear the name of the Golden City, by some so tauntingly bestowed upon her, or vindicate herself not only by past proof but by present action. That it is in her power, through her immense resources, her bound- less wealth, her buoyant elasticity, her composite popu- lation, the vast array of talent which lies at her disposal, and most of all, by the breadth, cosmopolitanism and geniality of the character of her people, to mould herself into what she will-to become the Athens of America, the centre of culture and of art-must be evident to all. Her fate is in her own hands ; whether her future fame is to rest on marble palaces or erudite universities-on well-filled warehouses or wealth of brain, she alone can decide. Let her but choose the latter position-let her but expend her wealth, regardless of outside display, in fostering talent, in encouraging art, in attracting to her- self by liberal patronage the intellectual power of the whole country, in endowing universities, and in develop- ing the mental resources of her own citizens, not by a lavish expenditure of money alone, but by an carne-t. appreciation of talent, and the time is not far dist. ... when she will be cordially acknowledged, both is friends and foes, as the EMPIRE Ciry, not only of il. UNION but also of the Wont !
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