USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 28
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passed Mr. William Bayard's country seat at Greenwich, and the condition of the patient compelled them to seek shelter for him there, which was eagerly accorded. Hither to his deathbed were summoned Mrs. Hamilton and the numerous and youthful children. Everything was done to save the precious life, some French warships sending sur- geons skilled in gunshot wounds. But all was in vain. The deadly purpose had guided too well the pistol's aim. All that day and through the night Hamilton suffered intensely. Early the next morn- ing the pain abated, but exhaustion, the forerunner of death, set in. Several hours were thus spent in comparative comfort, in conversa- tion with wife and children. and the offices of religion. At two o'clock in the afternoon of July 12, 1804. Hamilton died. There was an out- burst of genuine and spontaneous grief in every part of the nation. Federalists and Republicans sunk their political differences in the deep-felt sorrow for a life so useful and powers so transcendent sac- rificed so ruthlessly. Cincinnati and members of the bar wore mourn- ing badges for several weeks. On Saturday, July 14, funeral services were held in Trinity Church, and Gouverneur Morris delivered his famous eulogy. We may stand to-day before the simple monument in Trinity churchyard, on the side of Rector Street, and read the brief but expressive phrases rendering a true account of this remarkable life: " The Patriot of Incorruptible Integrity, the Soldier of Approved Valour, the Statesman of Consummate Wisdom, whose Talents and Virtues shall be admired by grateful Posterity, long after this marble has mouldered into dust."
Immediately upon the evacuation of New York by the British a change of Mayors was effected. David Matthews was fain to leave the city, his record making such a step quite expedient for him. In his place the constituted authorities at once appointed James Duane, associated with Jay and other eminent patriots in the service of his country. Democracy only gradually awakened to its prerogatives. and for many years to come, whether Radicals or Conservatives were in power, a great number of offices now elective remained appointive. as before. To meet this supposed necessity of carrying on govern- ment, a Council of Appointment was created by the Constitution of 1777. which consisted of the Governor of the State as Chairman, and four Senators, one each from the four districts of the State. Richard Varick was appointed Recorder, and Marinus Willett. Sheriff, both of them having served in the field, while Duane, much like Jay. had done his work mainly in Congress and in civil life. His town house was in King (Pine) Street, which he found in ruins; at Twentieth Street, be- tween Third and Fourth Avenues, he had a farm or country seat. through which ran a very crooked little stream called Krommetje. or Krom Messie. in Dutch signifying little crooked, or crooked little knife : and from this was derived the anglicized term " Gramercy." the name still borne by the Park in that neighborhood. Duane held
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office till 1788, and was then succeeded by Richard Varick, the Re- corder. Ile had done good service in the war, was Arnold's aide-de- camp at the time of the treason, and when a little fit of temper had cansed Hamilton's removal for a while, was employed as secretary by Washington. He was a lawyer by profession, and held office till 1800. In that year the Federalists lost control of affairs in the State, and Edward Livingston was appointed Mayor. He belonged to the famous Colonial family which had taken umbrage at Hamilton and cast in their influence on the radical side of politics. He left the city in 1803, settling in New Orleans, recently acquired with the Louisiana pur- chase, and later became JJackson's Secretary of State. And now there comes forward as Mayor a man destined to play an important part for many years in the annals of the nation, the state, and the city. De Witt Clinton, nephew and secretary of Governor George Clinton, the son of General James Clinton, received the appointment in 1803. hold- ing it for three years, then after another three years resuming the office, and continuing in it for five years, or quite through the " War of 1812." In 1807 Marinus Willett was made Mayor, an office that was fitly his by hereditary right, a pleasant reminder of the fact that his grandfather several times removed. Thomas Willett, had been the first to receive the appointment of Mayor when Nichols made an end of the reign of the Burgomasters in 1665. An important duty fell to the lot of Mayor Livingston, the laying of the cornerstone of a new City Hall. on September 20, 1803, from which arose the present bean- tiful building in the park. This Mayor also nearly succumbed to one of the pestilences so frequent in the city on account of its imperfect sanitary arrangements, which became the more threatening as the population increased. In 1803 there was a visitation of yellow fever. from which Mayor Livingston himself suffered, but fortunately recov- ered. In 1798 a more serious epidemie had ravaged the population. two thousand seven hundred and sixty people being carried off be- tween July 29 and November 1. Two lighter visits of this terrible plague had occurred in 1791 and 1795. The plague of 1798 swept over seventeen cities of the union. Pigs had served as seavengers, and slaves too had been utilized as instruments for cleansing the city, and after 1795 if was attempted to drain off obnoxious fluids by means of underground wooden pipes. But it was yet many a decade before san- itary conditions were adequate to preserve the city from these fright- ful visitations. The whole city budget in 1800, covering its primitive police, fire. prison, paving, lighting, and other expenses, amounted to only one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. In 1804 the people were allowed to vote at charter elections by ballot instead of rira roce, as heretofore, and it seemed necessary to specify that a person must vote only in the ward where he resided. At this time the popu- lation of over sixty thousand was divided into nine wards. The streets were slowly creeping up Broadway on the west side, and the Bowery
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on the east, leaving still a wide gap of open country between. Here lay the Collect in all the glory of its glassy surface, suggesting ship canals to some people and an ornate park to others. At Washing- ton's inauguration the residence of the people had not much gone be- yond the New York Hospital at Dnane Street on Broadway, and had about reached in anything like thick array Grand Street on the east, Corlear's Hook being still a tract of open country. A decade later and we find some blocks pretty well covered with houses as far as Laight Street, but in a narrow strip close to the river. When Mayor Willett assumed the chair in 1807 not much advance had been made, but Leonard Street from Broadway to the river marked the outskirts of population, together with the strip of blocks aforesaid extending beyond Desbrosses; and Bullock (Broome) Street formed the outer boundary on the east side. In 1790 there is the first record of side- walks, for only a little distance along Broadway at City Hall Park. In 1793 the number- ing of the houses was regulated, vet the directory of 1789 in- dicates numbers, but in a very haphazard manner. No. 33 Broadway was on the corner of Cortlandt Street. 29 was near Maiden Lane, 62 on the corner of Liberty, and 133, Jay's house, as we saw, was below Wall, and on the THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE. " even " side of the way. When the patriots first retook their own in 1783, the as- pects of the city must have been dreary in the extreme, with a deplorable " Canvastown " and blackened ruins right in its cen- ter. But these evidences of indigence and calamity gradually disappeared, and edifices of noble appearance came to adorn the rejuvenated capital. Among the first efforts at architectural beauty and grandeur, after the Federal Hall, must be reckoned the Gov- ernment House, intended first for the official residence of the President of the United States. In 1790 the ramparts of the fort and all its buildings were cleared away, and upon this advan- tageously located space was reared an imposing structure, with pil- lared and pedimented front porch facing the Bowling Green, and mak- ing a fine close for the vista from Broadway. But the Federal govern- ment fled from the city before it was completed. Then Jay occupied it as Governor, but the State government also took wings. The Govern- ment Honse then was utilized as a Custom House until 1815, when
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building and lots were sold by a thrifty Chamberlain at a profit of $60,000 over the original cost, and six handsome brick residences rose upon the block. Strangely enough there has been some talk recently of again putting up a Custom House upon the spot. Looking over a list of houses and lots valued at over $10.000 in 1799, we find that the Tontine House, in Wall Street, was the dearest in the city, being put at $35,000. The estate of Dr. Van Zandt, on Water Street, was put at $25,000. Daniel Dunbar, on Front Street, owned a house worth $23,- 500. The Franklin House was valued at $12,000, and the other Wash- ington residence, the Macomb houses (double), were worth $25.000. It is a pity that a fire in 1804, carrying away over forty houses, de- stroved the Tontine Coffee House, as seen above the most costly build- ing in town, and also rich in historic association.
In addition to such familiar names as the Fly Market (at Front Street and Maiden Lane), Oswego Market, foot of Liberty Street (first called Oswego Street, west of Broadway), and others, we now come upon the Spring Street Market, and the one in Grand Street. still in existence, which were established in 1807. Manufactures sprang into life all over the State, and our city led in this industry. Iron was worked from the ore. Woolen, linen. cotton, and silk cloth were woven; leather, glass, paper, clocks, hats, copper, brass, and tin utensils invited capital and largely repaid investment, while labor was busy and well rewarded, and prosperity made all classes contented. The Chamber of Commerce, although not interrupted in its life and usefulness during the enemy's occupancy of the city, took on new vigor and reorganized under a charter from the State in 1784. The first President under the new regime was John Alsop; the first Vice- President, our truculent Liberty Boy, Isaac Sears, alias " King Sears." The first bank was established in 1784-the Bank of New York. Its quarters were at first in the Walton house on Pearl Street. In 1787 it moved to No. 11 Hanover Square, and in 1797 took up its location at the corner of Wall and William streets, where it may still be found to-day. General McDongall. the John Wilkes of an earlier day, was its first President; in 1789 Mr. Isaac Roosevelt held the posi- tion. It remained the only bank in the city until 1799. when the Man- hattan Company, now at 42 Wall Street, asked for a charter, by the advice of Burr, to supply water to the city and do " other business." The " other business " was banking, and was the main object of the charter, which the Federalist majority in the legislature would not have granted to a Republican corporation. The water-works were set up on Chambers Street, near Centre, and included the old smelt- ing furnace on Reade Street. Just before the close of the century the Marine Insurance Company and the Mutual Fire Insurance Company were organized, and in 1801 these were followed by the Washington Fire Insurance Company. These institutions were already beginning to give its character to Wall Street. destined to become the " Street "
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in the financial world. Colonel Lamb was appointed Collector of the Port in 1784, and his house on Wall, near William, became at the same time the Custom House. He was noted for his opposition to the Constitution, the hot blood of the Liberty Boy days still keeping him a radical Democrat, and on the evening of the Federal celebration his house came near being looted by a mob. The Postoffice, opened three days after the evacuation, was at William Bedlow's honse, 38 Smith (William) Street. In 1789 it was at 8 Wall Street, and again later a successor took it to 62 Broadway, at the corner of Crown (Lib- erty) Street, which drew an expression of indignation from sundry merchants for being so far out of the way. The amount of business done in the city in those early days may be indicated by a few figures: The exports from New York in the year 1791 amounted to $2,505,465. On October 1, 1799, the exports of the United States reached the fig- ure of $78,665,522; of these Pennsyl- vania furnished $12,431,967 worth; Maryland, $16,299,609; but the highest amount was credited to New York, and was $18,719,527. In 1791 New York City ranked fourth in the matter of tonnage; on December 31, 1799, our city stood first of all the great com- mercial centers of the Union, with a tonnage of 106,537, while Philadelphia came next with 84,486. In the year 1786 the first city directory was pub- lished, a tiny volume one can stow away in a side pocket. The next was issued in 1789, not much larger; and SOCIETY LIBRARY IN 1795. as we come to those of 1798, 1799, 1800. 1806, and 1807, the size reaches a small duodecimo. The one of 1786 contains 900 names.
In the course of our narrative of stirring political events or great historical occasions we have had occasion to mention more than one of the prominent taverns or hotels. Of the ordinary taprooms there were many, three hundred and thirty licenses having been issued in 1789 alone. It is noted as an important fact in some published remi- niscences that the old City Hotel (Cape's Tavern, Province Arms, etc.), on the site of the Boreel Building, the former James De Lancey resi- dence, was the first building in the city (or country) to have a slate roof put up, in 1794. In 1807 the Federalist headquarters were at Me- chanics' Hall, corner of Broadway and Robinson Street (Park Place); the Democrats had theirs at Martling's Hotel, which stood on the site of the American Tract Society Building, 150 Nassau Street, corner Printing House Square, or Spruce Street. In 1811 these were trans- ferred to Tammany Hall, on the site of the New York Sun office.
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There were famous pleasure resorts out in the near country. The Belvidere, perhaps rather a private clubhouse, stood about on the corner of Montgomery and Cherry streets. The piazza and garden sloping down to the river, afforded a fine view of Brooklyn's wooded heights, and across Governor's Island over the Bay. Its ballroom was forty-five feet long, twenty-four wide, and seventeen high. From Chatham Square a racecourse was laid out northerly along the Bow- ery road, and abont a mile or more further out were the delectable Vauxhall Gardens, kept by the Frenchman Delacroix. Twenty-five cents a piece for four persons, or one dollar if you were alone, would procure a carriage ride from the stand at St. Paul's to the gardens. They were on the site of the present stor Library, but extended from Fourth Avenue quite to Broadway. John Jacob Astor bought the property in 1803 for $45,000, and leased it to Delacroix, who was still there in 1808.
At the beginning of this century there were seven newspapers pub- lished in the city. In 1789 there were five: the New York Packet was published at 5 Water Street by Sammel London, and came out three times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; the subscription price was 16 shillings per year. The New York Journal was now pub- lished by Thomas Greenleaf. at No. 25 Water Street ; its price. two dol- lars a year (or 16 shillings), and was issued only on Thursday of each week. The name of the Daily Adrertiser indicates a step in advance in newspaper enterprise. It cost six dollars per annum, and was pub- lished by Francis Childs at 190 Water Street, corner of King (Pine). There was also a Daily Gazelle, published at 41 Hannover Square by the MeLean Brothers, and the Gazette of the United States, issued twice a week. on Wednesdays and Saturdays, from John Fenno's printing office at 9 Maiden Lane, its price being three dollars per year. To these were added later the Ercuing Post (1801). and Commercial _Ad- rertiser (1797). The former name had made its appearance in 1746. but as a daily it came forth for the first time on November 16, 1801. In 1788 Noah Webster, with strong Federalist proclivities, began to publish the American Magasine, but it did not survive for many months. Greenleaf had issued the Patriotic Register before his other paper, but some sarcastic remarks about the Federal Constitution brought the mob to his door on the eventful July 23. 1788, who smashed his plant, and he gave up its publication. The Price Current was a strictly mercantile paper. One famous dnel at least grew out of the personalities too freely indulged in in those days. Brockholst Livingston, afterward so honorably active in fonding the public school system, had, in a newspaper article, mercilessly ridiculed the organizers of a Federalist meeting. A Mr. Jones, one of their mem- bers, discovering the identity of the writer, gave this scion of the Colonial aristocracy, who now posed with all his family as fierce Dem- ocrats, a sound drubbing with a cane. A dnel was the result and Jones fell its victim.
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Some account has already been given of the effect of the location of the seat of government at New York upon the social life of the city. The advent of independence made visible a marked change every- where in the feelings of the humbler classes. Clergymen in Pennsyl- vania, writing to Europe, complained of the pride of the common peo- ple. One could no longer tell from the dress of trades-people and mechanies and their families, that they belonged to these humble callings. Their hats and coats and gowns were as good as anybody else's, and in the very expression of countenance they looked the sovereigns they had become. Anyone who has traveled in Europe and noted the countenances as well as attire of the laboring classes, and then observes those of our country on his return, will still see something of that difference that came over the spirit of our people after 1783 and 1789, and will glory in the fact rather than deplore it with the scandalized theologians of that earlier day. Lafayette ex- claimed on hisvisit in 1784: " But where are the people?"-there being no leather aprons, nor caps, nor any of the insignia of dependence. The people were all free and equal before the law, and also in their manner of dress. Emigration also now came in to modify the char- acter or complexion of the older population. Without any facts or figures to show just what that amounted to in the early years of the republic, still it must have been of considerable extent, since in 1794 we read of the formation of a society for the purpose of " affording information and assistance to persons emigrating from foreign coun- tries." The peace was not yet a year old, nor New York more than a few months in the possession of its own people, when in 1784 came to her from his native village of Waldorf in Germany one who was to become its wealthiest citizen and greatest real estate owner. This was John Jacob Astor, who set up a little store at 81 Queen (Pearl) Street, near the Quaker meeting-house, abont midway between Cherry and Monroe, where he bonght skins or furs and sold pianos on commission for his brother in London. We have seen that he bought the Vauxhall Gardens property in 1803. After 1804 he bought the Richmond Hill estate for $25,000, which sum, however, did not begin to satisfy Bun's creditors. In 1794 another interest- ing emigrant came to the city, who became a man of mark in bnsi- ness and literary lines. This was Grant Thorburn, the seedsman. He was a nailmaker by trade, but found his trade gone by reason of the recent introduction of nail-making machinery. He made the nails for the slate roof on the City Hotel; but after that, having no job and vet having marned a wife-towering far above his altitude of only fom feet, so that. as he duly records in his Reminiscences, he had to get up on a bench to kiss her-he set up a grocery store. That, too, proved a poor investment. Bnt one day he bought a geranium at the Fly. Market, and put it on his shelves in the window. A passer-by admired the flower, and gladly purchased it at the price the proprie-
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tor mentioned, which netted him a profit of twenty-five cents. He bonght some more plants, and sold these at a profit also; next some people from the country who could not conveniently carry potted plants home with them, asked for seed. And in this humble way was started one of the greatest seed businesses in the country. The little shop was in Crown (Liberty) Street near the spot where the first Quaker meeting-honse was erected. It is interesting to read how young Thor- burn, himself a humble mechanic, regarded the outbreak of fury against Jay for perfecting a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. He had climbed into a tree near the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, the indignation meeting having been called in front of Federal Hall, and he saw all the proceedings, including the stoning of Hamilton. " About this time," he wrote fifty years later. "John Jay arrived from London with the famons British treaty. General Washington, General Hamilton, and the majority of the men who had just hung up their swords, and wiped the dirt and sweat from their brows after achieving their country's independence, thought the treaty highly advantageons to their country; but the clammen, hodmen, dustmen. and cartmen thought otherwise." Thorburn was the " Laurie Todd " of JJohn Galt's novel, and sometimes wrote under that pseudonym.
During this period the Society Library advanced far enough to be enabled to put up a goodly building at the corner of Nassan and Cedar Streets, opposite the Middle Dutch Church. This was in 1795. And in this connection it is not amiss to remember that the first American novel was written by a New York citizen. In 1796 Charles Broekden Brown had come from Philadelphia to reside here; he mar- ried a daughter of the Rev. Dr. William Linn, one of the Collegiate Reformed Pastors, living on Murray Street; and in 1798 he published " Wieland, or the Transformation." In 1804 the New York Histori- cal Society was organized in the picture room of the old City Hall. with Mayor De Witt Clinton as first President. Other literary and benevolent associations sprang up, among them the Tontine. a sort of early building and loan, and life insurance company combined; the Humane Society, for the relief of distressed debtors; the Mam- mission Society. mainly composed of Quakers, for aiding and edu- cating slaves; the Sailor's Sung Harbor, founded by Captain Thomas Randall, who guided Washington's barge in 1789. In the year of the inanguration Tammany Society was organized. somewhat as a demo- cratic protest against the aristocratic tendencies of the Cincinnati. John Pintard. prominent in business circles, and later a charter mem- ber of the Historical Society, was its first Chief or Sagamore. Its meetings were held in France's Tavern in its earliest days. The so- ciety signalized itself by celebrating the third centenary of the dis- covery of America on October 12, 1792. An " elegant oration " was delivered. a banquet served in the evening at which fourteen toasts were given, beginning with Columbus and ending with Washington.
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HAMILTON-BURR DUELING GROUND.
THE MONUMENTS AND VIEW OF CITY IN DISTANCE.
while allegorical representations entertained the guests after the good cheer had been disposed of. They were in high feather in 1790 when the halfbreed McGillivray and twenty-eight representative war- riors of the Creek nation came from Georgia to negotiate a treaty with the United States at New York by Washington's special request. The Tammanyites arrayed themselves in Indian costume and did the hon- ors of the occasion. But the real Indians did not quite know what to make of these extemporized specimens, and, lacking the sense of hu- mor, came very near being insulted, thinking the intention was to ridi- cule them.
A curious instance of the primitive manners of a great portion of
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the inhabitants of the capital-proving how provincial it still was after all-is afforded by the " Doctors' Riot " so called. It was not a riot of doctors but against them. The New York Hospital on Duane Street and Broadway had been fully completed after the war, and de- voted to its commendable purposes. In connection with it a medical school on a small scale was initiated, and it was rumored that bodies were occasionally abstracted from the Potter's Field for dissecting purposes. This and the fact of the dissection itself, horrified the masses very much, and the circumstances were greatly exaggerated. On Sunday, April 13, 1788, a mischievous boy climbed a ladder left standing by some mechanics who had been engaged to make repairs on the building. He looked down into one of the rooms, when a medi- cal student flourished a dead person's arm in his face to frighten him. He had recently lost his mother, and the report soon spread among the class to which he belonged that it was his mother's body which the students were cutting up. This report acted like fire upon pow- der. A mob soon gathered and rushed to the hospital in search of the obnoxious students and doctors. Several citizens. John Jay among them, sought to appease the raging populace and bring them to rea- son. Jay and the others found the task impossible, and retired from the attempt with injuries to their own persons. It was some days before the militia and the wiser citizens, organized for defense. succeeded in restoring the city to peace and good order. The doctors meanwhile had barely escaped with their lives, and a Dr. Cochrane's house was gutted. Other prominent citizens fared as badly as Jay. Mayor Dnane and Governor Clinton had as little power over the mul- titude as the ever persuasive Hamilton. The good Baron Steuben. now a resident of the city, obtained a broken head or skin in the af- fray. The soldiers were forced to fire into the mob, killing five and wounding eight.
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