USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 43
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A SENSE of the perishing condition of the city for the want of water took possession of the public mind. The cool, clear-headed, undis- mayed business-men of New York, while devising means for rebuilding their commercial structures, discussed the long-pending measure of bring- ing water from the adjacent country to the relief of the island metropolis. Fire and famine are usually twin companions. In the late deplorable destruction of property the fire had been in its magnitude the direct result of a water famine.
But the greatest consternation was presently awakened in view of the probable financial consequences of the disaster. One firm after another failed. It was a winter of distress - not a propitious moment for divert- ing a few millions, more or less, to the construction of aqueducts and bridges. At the same time prudence pointed out the danger
1836. of procrastination. The public health as well as safety required water. The supply had never been equal to the demand - which was increasing in rapid ratio. The population had reached two hundred and seventy thousand ; and the great human tide was flowing in from the Old World in a resistless and almost overpowering current. From the brackish wells and the old Tea Pump to the practical operation of the Manhattan Water-
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Works in Reade Street - which managed to distribute very poor water, pumped from wells, through the lower part of the city in hollow logs - the citizens had always been restricted. And the more people the less water. The situation had become absolutely appalling.
New York was the most extravagant city in the known world as far as charity was concerned. No other community ever had been so taxed with providing for the destitute of all climes. They came bankrupt in character as well as finances, wrecks of incapacity, miseducation, prodi- gality, and crime- not only from across the ocean but from every part of our own continent. The metropolis was a general asylum for vagrants. The brains of political philosophers were vexed with the problem of how to provide most effectually for both poverty and vice, while humanity never faltered in the matter of dollars and cents.
Gas was introduced into the city below Canal Street in 1825, meeting with much opposition. Many persons were afraid to have it in or near their dwellings. Explosions were predicted. When the newspapers sug- gested that the great fire originated in the bursting of a gas-pipe, scores of men were ready to exclaim, "I told you so!" Samuel Leggett, presi- dent of the old Franklin Bank, originated the first gas company in New York in 1823, and became its president. He introduced gas into his own handsome private residence in Franklin Square, and opened his doors hospitably to the public in order to demonstrate the utility of the new source of light and comfort.1 He also about the same time attempted to furnish the city with water from the Bronx River.
The various schemes agitated for supplying the city with wholesome water would form an interesting chapter. The question had been before the people more or less for several decades. Projects for boring artesian
1 Samuel Leggett was a man of enlarged ideas and great practical benevolence. He was the son of Thomas Leggett, of Westchester County, a large landholder, driven from his estate by the " Cow Boys" in the Revolution, who came to the city on the return of peace and went into a lucrative business, purchasing the fine house subsequently occupied by his son, and, not being ready to take immediate possession, rented it to Comfort Sands for a brief period. Samuel Leggett and his brothers succeeded their father in business, and were among the notable New York merchants of the early portion of the present century. William Leggett was of the same family, a cousin of Samuel Leggett ; he married, in 1828, Almira, daughter of John Waring, and in the autumn of the same year established The Critic, a weekly literary journal, which at the end of six months was united with the New York Mirror, to which he was a contributor. In 1829 he became associated with William Cullen Bryant in the Evening Post ; and in 1836 was the editor of the Plain Dealer, a weekly devoted to politics and litera- ture. William, son of Samuel Leggett, married a daughter of Wager Hull, a descendant of Admiral Sir Wager Hull of the British Navy, and bought the spacious mansion at the corner of St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue : their daughter, Sarah H. Leggett, has founded with admirable success a Home for Working Women in the New York of to-day ; she has also established the Fifth Avenue Reading-Room.
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THE CROTON AQUEDUCT.
wells, for cutting an open canal to the Housatonic River in Connecticut, and for obtaining water from the Passaic River in New Jersey, were among those which had claimed attention and been abandoned. The Croton River, flowing into the Hudson near the old Van Cortlandt manor- house, forty miles above the city, seemed the most promising source. Traversing a beautiful, high, rolling region of country, known as the Croton water-shed, where ten or more picturesque natural lakes might at any time be brought into service, it offered special advantages. Surveys and estimates were made in 1834 by commissioners appointed for the purpose. The popular vote in 1835 decided upon the undertaking, although a very strong party was continually harping on extravagance, and declared that water which had been good enough for their ancestors would suffice for them. The fire was incontrovertible evidence of the imperative need of water to preserve the city from destruction, and the work was pushed forward in spite of serious obstacles.
A dam was thrown across the Croton River creating a lake five miles long, from which a conduit of solid masonry was constructed to the city forty-five miles in length. In its course it encountered snags of every description. Sixteen tunnels in rock vary in length from one hundred and sixty to one thousand two hundred and sixty-three feet. At Sing Sing an elliptical arch of hewn granite is eighty-eight feet span, with its key-stone upwards of seventy feet from the waters of the brook beneath. In Westchester County the aqueduct crosses twenty-five streams from twelve to seventy feet below the line of grade, besides numerous brooks. At Harlem River the famous High Bridge was erected for its accommodation, a mag- nificent structure of granite one thousand four hundred and fifty feet in length, with fourteen arches each of eighty feet span, one hun- dred and fourteen feet above tide-water.
About four miles below High Bridge, in what is now Central Park, was located a large receiving reservoir at The Murray Hill Distributing Reservoir. [Fifth Avenue.] first covering thirty-one acres - although another was soon constructed covering one hundred and five acres - from which the water was conducted to a distributing reservoir on
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Murray Hill. Besides these, a " high service " reservoir near High Bridge was found necessary, and a lofty tower was built, with powerful pumping machinery, for forcing water into a tank at the top of the tower holding fifty-five thousand gallons, to supply the more elevated portion of the city. The iron mains laid beneath the street surface to carry water to the buildings are about four hundred miles in length at the present writing.
The whole decade, until 1845, was devoted to the construction of the Croton Aqueduct. It was so far completed in 1842 that the water was admitted to the city. Prior to that great event the commissioners and engineers walked through its entire length of forty-five miles. It is arched above and below so as to form an ellipse measuring eight and one half feet perpendicularly and seven and one half feet horizontally. It slopes about thirteen inches to the mile, and has a capacity of carrying one hundred and fifteen million gallons of water per day. When the water was introduced a voyage was made from Croton Lake to the city within the aqueduct, by four persons, on the Croton Maid, a boat fash- ioned for the purpose.
The achievement, like that of the Erie Canal, was destined for a degree of usefulness wholly beyond the most extravagant estimate. Its impor- tance in a hygienic and economic view was rightly foreseen ; in insurance alone it caused the reduction of forty cents on every one hundred dollars in the annual rates. Its accomplishment, by a single city, at a cost of upwards of nine millions, in a period of unprecedented commercial embar- rassments, and in the face of vast natural obstacles, was a marvel for all future generations ; and it is a work worthy of being ranked with the old Roman aqueducts. Henceforward there would seem no project too bold nor enterprise too great for New York to undertake.
On the 4th of July, 1842, the Croton River, turned into its new and enduring channel, rushed into the city. The event was celebrated with an imposing military and civic procession seven miles in length. The gorgeous display in point of magnitude and invention eclipsed both its predecessors - the great Federal pageant of 1788, and that of the canal celebration in 1825. While parading the streets, the rejoicing multitudes were suddenly greeted with the opening of the beautiful fountains, and the wildest enthusiasm prevailed. The several divisions of the procession halted at the City Hall Park, where Samuel Stevens, president of the State Board of Water Commissions, made a stirring address, consigning the cus- tody of the nearly completed works to John L. Lawrence, president of the Croton Aqueduct Board - who also made an appropriate speech. By request of the corporation of the city, George P. Morris, the popular
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T.L. SMART
" ' Water leaps as if delighted While her conquered foes retire ! Pale Contagion flies affrighted With the baffled demon Fire !' "
Page 731.
CROTON RIVER FLOWING INTO THE CITY.
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song-writer and editor, had prepared an ode for the occasion, which was sung by the members of the Sacred Music Society, standing before the gushing waters of the Park fountain. The following are a few of the closing lines :-
"Water leaps as if delighted, While her conquered foes retire ! Pale contagion flies affrighted With the baffled demon Fire ! Water shouts a glad hosanna ! Bubbles up the earth to bless ! Cheers it like the precious manna In the barren wilderness.
"Round the aqueducts of story, As the mists of Lethe throng, Croton's waves, in all their glory, Troop in melody along. Ever sparkling, bright, and single Will this rock-ribbed stream appear, When posterity shall mingle Like the gathered waters here."
While the aqueduct was progressing, with all the petty annoyances connected with the details of such an enterprise, affairs throughout the nation reached a feverish crisis. Martin Van Buren, who had in New York reduced the management of his party to a science 1837. systematizing it until it was the most perfect organization ever known in this country, was inaugurated, on the 4th of March, 1837, Presi- dent of the United States. But financial disaster was the grand legacy of the preceding administration. When the public March 4. money which had been withdrawn from the Bank of the United States, was deposited in the local banks, it became easy to obtain loans. Specu- lation extended to every branch of trade, and especially to Western lands. New cities were founded in the wilderness, and fabulous prices charged for building-lots. Hardly a man could be found who had not his pet project for realizing a fortune. Foreign goods at the same time were im- ported heavily. To pay for these, gold and silver were sent abroad in large quantities. Just before the close of his second term, Jackson issued the famous " specie circular," requiring payments for the public lands to be made in hard money, which swept the gold and silver into the Treas- ury. Bitter fruits were to be harvested.
Business men could not pay their debts. Consternation seized all classes. The storm burst with terrific fury in New York. During the
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first three weeks in April two hundred and fifty houses stopped payment. The losses exceeded one hundred millions. Property of all kinds declined
April. in value. From New York the panic extended to the remotest
quarters of the Union. The failures in New Orleans reached twenty-seven millions in two days. Eight of the States in part or wholly failed. Even the national government could not pay its debts. Univer- sal bankruptcy seemed impending. The seasons had been unfavorable to agriculture, and nearly a million and a half bushels of wheat, for home consumption, were imported from Europe into New York during the early spring.1 The question of payment was discussed with alarm. A general run was made upon the banks. The State of New York, for a loan not exceeding half a million, at six per cent interest, publicly adver- tised, received not a bid. The policy of the Bank of England in declining May 10. any further extension of credit reacted with great intensity.
After deliberate consultation among the officers and directors, all the banks in New York suspended specie payments on the 10th of May.
James G. King, of the great banking-house of Prime, Ward, & King, a leading member and afterwards president of the Chamber of Commerce, was one of the sagacious few whose voice, countenance, and counsel were cheerful and hopeful. He perceived the magnitude and extent of the danger ; but he believed that mutual aid and confidence would mitigate, and perhaps control the evil, and his example of calm self-possession inspired others with courage. The merchants and traders of the city meeting the same day at the Exchange, in pursuance of a call numer- ously signed by leading men of all pursuits and parties, he addressed them, offering resolutions to the effect that paper notes of the different
1 Flour, during the winter of 1836 and 1837, was twelve and fifteen dollars a barrel, and the poor people suffered severely. It was rumored that a few of the larger flour and grain dealers had taken advantage of the scarcity to buy up all the flour in the city. The old war-ery of "the poor against the rich " was raised, which finally terminated in a riot. On the 10th of February, a placard, headed, "BREAD ! MEAT ! RENT ! FUEL ! - their prices must come down !" appeared in conspicuous places calling for a meeting in the Park. Six thousand or more gathered - a motley crowd of whom the greater part were foreigners - and demagogues harangued them until they were fitted for almost any work of spoliation. The popular fury was chiefly directed against Eli Hart, a great flour-merchant, who, it was said, had fifty-three thousand barrels of flour in his store. The mob assaulted the building, and in the end carried it by storm, in spite of the efforts of Mayor Lawrence and a large police force ; the rioters threw barrels of flour by fifties and by hundreds from the windows, together with sacks of wheat amounting to over one thousand bushels -until the street, according to a writer of the day, "was knee-deep in flour and wheat." Several other stores were attacked, but through the combined efforts of the citizens and the police the mob was dispersed as night approached. Some forty of the rioters were captured, tried, and sent to the State prison : the ringleaders, however, escaped.
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ENGLAND SENDING GOLD TO NEW YORK.
banks should pass current as usual until such time as the resumption of specie payments might be found practicable. Nathaniel Prime seconded the resolutions - which were put separately, and each unanimously adopted. The sanction thus given by the leading business men to the step taken by the banks produced a salutary effect. The community breathed more freely, and trade revived.
During the summer efforts were made to return to specie payments. But disasters thickened. Three of the largest London houses interested in American trade failed ; and the return of a large amount of sterling bills drawn on those houses added to the general dismay.
At this juncture James G. King sailed for England. He was warmly received and eagerly consulted by the bankers and merchants of London. While discussing measures proper to be taken in the terrible crisis, he startled the bank-parlor by suggesting that the Bank of October. England and the great capitalists, instead of continuing to embarrass American merchants by discrediting paper connected with the American trade, should at once send over to New York several million dollars in coin. He declared that such a supply would determine the New York banks upon their future course. After some hesitation the Bank of England consented. A consignment of one million pounds sterling in gold was shipped to New York in March, 1838, on the sole responsibility of Prime, Ward, & King, and the guaranty of Baring Brothers & Co. Curtis, governor of the Bank of England, wrote to King, on the day prior to the first shipment of eighty thousand sovereigns : "The object of the bank in the operation is not one of profit - the whole transaction is out of the ordinary course of its operations. I deem it inexpedient to fix any precise period within which the returns should be made. Having shown your house so much confidence in intrusting the management of this great concern in its hands, it would but ill agree with that confi- dence if I were to prescribe limits, which might, in many ways, act most inconveniently, and deprive the bank of the advantage of your judgment and experience." King hastened home, the vessel in which he was a passenger bearing the second shipment of gold. The New York banks had already determined to resume specie payments within a year from the day of suspension - on or before the 10th of the coming May - and Samuel Ward, the partner of King, had been active in organizing a public meeting which again pledged the whole business community to stand by the banks. A convention of delegates from several of the States formally declared resumption impolitic and unsafe for some time to come; and the banks of Pennsylvania absolutely refused to come into the measure. But the reign of irredeemable paper terminated, and the city of New York,
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which had been compelled to lead the way in suspension, now had the great honor and the supreme satisfaction of leading the way in resump- tion, and of smoothing the way for others. As the coin arrived it was sold on easy terms to the various banks in the city ; also in Boston and Pennsylvania. A reaction took place, depression vanished, and misfor- tunes were retrieved.1 The Bank of England's treasure was managed with skill and fidelity by the house in which such signal confidence was reposed, and the transaction was closed without loss and with great promptitude.
James G. King, who, by taking the initiative in this important measure,
James Gore King.
rendered a service of vast moment, not only to his native city and State, but to the whole coun- try, was the third son of the states- man, Rufus King, and the grandson of John Alsop. He was forty-six years of age, of distin- guished personal appearance and ac- complished scholar- ship, affable and en- gaging in manners, and of exceptional integrity, executive ability, and worldly wisdom. He was,
indeed, an admi-
rable representative of the old-school merchant and banker - a class of men who have contributed with princely generosity to the rise of the metropolis, and who are still covering continents with railroads and oceans with steamships. He studied law in his youth, but finally turned his attention to commerce. From 1818 to 1824 he resided in Liverpool, doing a large business in partnership with his brother-in-law, Archibald Gracie. He returned to New York through an invitation to become a partner in the banking-house with which he was henceforward
1 Hunt's Lives of American Merchants.
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BANKS. MONEYED INSTITUTIONS.
connected, and which subsequently was reconstructed under the name of James G. King & Sons.1
In relation to banks and banking institutions in the metropolis a few facts will best illustrate their steady growth. In 1800 two incorporated banks only were in operation. In 1812 the number had multiplied into eight, with an aggregate capital of some ten and one half millions. No new banks were chartered until some time after the war had ceased. But in 1840 thirty banks existed in the city, of which six were banking asso- ciations formed under the general banking law.2 The grand total of capital employed was a little less than twenty-nine and one half millions. In 1880, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of banking enterprise, the number of national, State, and savings banks located in the city are upwards of one hundred, independent of the private banking-houses, Loan and Trust, and Safe Deposit companies. The rise of insurance companies has been no less rapid. Prior to 1820 there were but twelve, inclusive of fire and marine, in New York and Philadelphia. In 1840 New York alone sus-
1 James Gore King, third son of Rufus and Mary Alsop King (born in New York City, May 8, 1791, died 1853), married Sarah Rogers, daughter of Archibald Gracie, in 1813. Chil- dren : 1. Caroline, married Denning Duer ; 2. Harriet, married Dr. George Wilkes ; 3. James Gore King, Jr., judge of the Superior Court of the State of New York, married Caroline, daughter of Governor John A. King; 4. Archibald Gracie King, president of Institution for Savings of Merchants' Clerks, married Elizabeth D., daughter of William A. Duer, pres- ident of Columbia College ; 5. Mary, married Edgar Richards ; 6. Frederica, married J. C. Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of State under President Grant, Minister to Germany, and judge of the Court of Claims ; 7. Edward King, president of Union Trust Company, married Isabella Ramsey Cochrane, niece of Dean Ramsey of Edinburgh ; 8. Fanny, married James L. McLane, of Baltimore. - Family Archives
The wife of the eminent merchant, Archibald Gracie, was Esther, daughter of Moses and Hannah Fitch Rogers. (See pp. 521, 522.) Her mother, Hannah Fitch, was the daughter of Governor Thomas Fitch of Connecticut. The great-grandfather of Governor Fitch (Thomas, son of William Fitch, member of the British Parliament) came to Boston from England in 1637, removing to Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1651, where the family has ever since been one of wealth and high position. Moses Rogers, elder brother of Mrs. Gracie, married Sarah, daughter of Benjamin Woolsey (see p. 522). Their children were : 1. Sarah E. Rogers, mar- ried Hon. Samuel M. Hopkins ; 2. Benjamin Woolsey Rogers, married Susan, daughter of William Bayard, whose son, Benjamin Woolsey Rogers, married Helena, daughter of Richard K. Hoffman, M. D. ; 3. Archibald Rogers, married Anna, daughter of Judge Nathaniel Pen- dleton ; 4. Julia A. Rogers, married Francis Bayard Winthrop. - Haldane.
2 The Banking Associations in 1840 were as follows : Agency of the Bank of the United States (Philadelphia), George Griswold and Richard Alsop associates ; North American Trust and Banking Company, Joseph D. Beers president ; Mechanics' Banking Associa- tion, E. D. Comstock president ; American Exchange Bank, David Leavitt president ; Bank of Commerce, John A. Stevens president ; New York Banking Company, John Dela- field president. The combined capital of the five, independent of the United States Agency, was nine millions. In 1840 four savings-banks only were in operation. ( Williams's Annual Register for 1840. ) The first, as heretofore recorded, was founded in 1819. In 1880 twenty- four are in successful operation. (Appleton's Dictionary of New York and Vicinity for 1880. )
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tained forty-four. In 1876 ninety-four fire-insurance companies were connected with the Board of Fire Underwriters, with a capital of eighty- five millions ; and in addition to these were ten marine and twenty life- insurance companies. The total cash capital of moneyed institutions in the city at present is not less than a thousand million dollars.
Prisons seemed to be as essential as banks to the general prosperity of the city. Indolence and pauperism produced offenders against the laws faster than edifices could be constructed for their discipline and punish- ment. Of convicts, seventy per cent were foreigners ; of police arrests, for all manner of offenses, seventy-five per cent were vagrants from other places and countries. As early as 1796 the legislature provided for two state-prisons, one to be erected in Albany and the other in New York City. The commissioners in charge of building Newgate, on the Hudson, in what was then Greenwich village, were John Watts, General Matthew Clarkson, Isaac Stoutenburgh, Thomas Eddy, and John Murray. It was opened in 1797, but it soon became too crowded, and in 1816 the Auburn state-prison, on a much larger scale, was projected ; during the same year a penitentiary for persons convicted of minor offenses was built on the East River shore at Bellevue, near the almshouse; in 1826 the Bellevue Hospital was built, and the three buildings surrounded by a stone wall. About the same time Newgate was sold and the site for a state-prison selected at Sing Sing, with reference to the employment of convicts in working the extensive quarries of marble in that vicinity. This was completed in 1828. The city-prisons, for the safe-keeping of offenders awaiting trial, becoming inadequate to the demand, the Halls of Justice, better known as The Tombs, was built upon the site of the old Collect, or Fresh-Water Pond - illustrated on a former page. It was completed in 1838, covering a whole block ; and it is probably the purest specimen of Egyptian architecture to be found outside of Egypt itself. If it was not so unfortunately located it would be one of the most imposing build- ings in the city ; but its really grand proportions are dwarfed almost into insignificance. It stands in a hollow, so low that the top of its massive walls scarcely rises above the level of Broadway, only some one hundred yards distant from its western façade. The granite was brought from Maine, with the exception of the stone of the old Bridewell, demolished about that time. Internally, The Tombs is rather a series of buildings than a single structure. There is now a city prison connected with each police court- seven or more in all. The only one, excepting The Tombs, having any architectural pretensions is the Jefferson Market Prison, a unique and handsome structure of irregular shape, in Italian Gothic style, situated on Sixth Avenue, corner of Tenth Street.
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