USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 30
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It was the proud privilege of New York to lead in the treatment
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that became so uniqne a visitor. She had not much time to prepare for his reception, but nowhere could it have been more heartfelt and more splendid. One of the steamships came alongside and took the Marquis on board, whereupon the procession fell into line behind it on its return to the city. As his boat passed Governor's Island a salnte of guns was fired which was the signal for all the forts in the harbor to belch forth flame and sound. In this joined also the steam frigate Fulton, constructed in 1814 by the inventor, with cannon- proof sides, and which would have done marvels if the war had not then terminated. It was useful on this day in firing salutes of wel- come. At Castle Garden Lafayette reviewed the military, after which he entered a baronche and was driven to the City Hall, now only abont twelve years old, where the Mayor introduced Lafayette to the
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ARRIVAL OF LAFAYETTE IN 1824.
Common Council, who made him a complimentary address, and as- sured him he was the city's guest. After another review of troops, the Council and their guest were driven to the City Hotel, corner of Broadway and Cedar Street, where a suite of rooms had been set apart for the visitor, and the whole party partook of a dinner. In the evening fireworks and illuminations and torchlight processions attested the joy and interest of the citizens. An immense balloon was sent np. ablaze with light, from Castle Garden, representing an ancient knight on horseback in full armor. like Bayard of France. sans peur et sans reproche, and betokening the nobility of the great and good Lafayette. From day to day the Marquis visited various points of interest. A reception was tendered him at the rooms of the His- torical Society, where he sat in a chair once occupied by Louis XVI ..
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which had been presented to the society by Gouverneur Morris. In a graceful address by Dr. Hosack (who was present at the Burr-Ham- ilton duel) he was informed that he had been elected an honorary member. On August 20 Lafayette was escorted by a squadron of cavalry and the Mayor and Corporation in carriages to the city bound- ary at Kingsbridge, on his way to Boston. On September 10 he passed through the city again on his way to the middle and southern States, when the feature of the occasion was a sacred concert in St. Panl's. In September, 1825, Lafayette returned home in a frigate named Brandywine, after the first battle in which he fought for the nation's liberty.
It is a natural transition from one naval parade to another, and that only a little more than a year later. There is no city in the world that is more advantageously situated for such displays, and it is no wonder several have to be recorded in the course of her an- nals. If in 1824 New York set out to honor a distinguished gnest, in the parade of 1825 she had good reason to honor and congratulate her- self on the foresight and enterprise of her citizens. Well might she celebrate in a manner never to be forgotten that achievement which was to bring her untold wealth, and make her not only the finest port of entrance on the continent, but also the natural ontlet for all the vast resources of the interior, both of her own State and of those vast northwestern commonwealths that were just about to be born. For this is what the Erie Canal meant to our city.
We have confined our attention pretty closely to Manhattan Island so far, as in duty bound not to go far afield with the task before us; but there was a big country back of Manhattan Island. New York State had been the first to yield her claims to the vagne and vast regions " toward the Pacific," or the Mississippi, and had thereby made possible, after the other States had done likewise, the endow- ment of the Federal Government with some sort of being and body. for withont publie domains it must ever have remained an abstrac- tion as feeble as the Confederation. In 1825 these indefinite regions were occupied by at least twenty-five States. Long before this it had been seen by men of brain and understanding that such a condition was bound to prevail, and that these regions back toward the Missis- sippi (and, since 1803, beyond the Mississippi), which were onrs, must have a chance to reach the seaboard with their products, of which they had a source inexhaustible in abundance and variety. What so natural a highway for the northwestern territory as its embosomed inland fresh-water seas and the valley of the Hudson, if these two could only be united by a channel for transportation. That was the problem, and it began to be discussed even in the days of Washing- ton. Gouverneur Morris, who comes before us in so many ways, was the one first to put on paper a plan for connecting Lake Erie and the Hudson. Surveys were ordered in 1810, Morris and De Witt Clinton
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appealing for aid to Congress as being a project involving the benefit of many States. But the Republicans (or anti-Federalists), now in control at Washington, had no great love for the doctrine of " inter- nal improvements." savoring too much of centralization of power. The war of 1812 interrupted all procedures of this character, but De Witt Clinton took it up again later. Unfortunately. party spirit managed to make an issue of it whereby Clinton could be antagon- ized and overthrown. and " Clinton's Ditch " became a byword and reproach. Finally, on April 17, 1817. an act passed the legislature after a heated discussion authorizing the raising of funds for the con- struction of a canal 353 miles long, forty feet at the surface, narrow- ing to eighteen at the bottom. with a depth of four feet of water. De Witt Clinton was made president of the board of commissioners. This same year, on July 1, Clinton became Governor of the State, and on July 4 presided at the ceremonies attending the breaking of the first ground near Rome. The construction went on in two directions from this point. The cost was estimated at $4,571,813. The entire cost. when the finishing touches had been made in 1836, was found to be $7.143.789. On October 22, 1819. the first boat was drawn from Rome to Utica. with Governor Clinton. Chancellor Livingston and other prominent promoters of the enterprise aboard. In 1824. politi- cal hatred, still connected with the project, caused a wantonly need- less removal of Clinton from the Board; but the indignation aroused thereby sent him back in triumph into the gubernatorial chair. just in time to be the principal figure in the grand celebration of the open- ing of the canal to public use in 1825.
The exercises commenced at a distance from New York, but she was made a participator very soon after they began. At 10 o'clock a. m., October 26, 1825, Governor Clinton, Chancellor Livingston. General Stephen Van Rensselaer. Thurlow Weed. Col. William L. Stone, of the Commercial Advertiser, the official historiographer of the celebration, and other distinguished gentlemen. embarked on the first canal boat that was to undertake the journey. the Seneca Chief, at Buffalo. The start was made: immediately a gun boomed, and at the utmost distance where it could be heard another was fired. and so the signal went all along the line of canal and river down to New York and Sandy Hook. In one hour and thirty minutes the people of New York knew that the party had begin their journey. At Albany the steamer Chancellor Living- ston took on board the distinguished guests, and took in tow a large fleet of canal packets. At about five in the morning of Novem- ber 4. the fleet reached the city, and anchored off the State Prison at Greenwich, about where Christopher Street Ferry is now. At sun- rise the booming of cannon and ringing of bells announced to the city that the Governor and the fleet from Buffalo had arrived. They were soon greeted by an array of vessels coming from below. The Mayor
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and Corporation came on board to extend their congratulations. Taking the Governor and his party on board their steamers, they went back to the Battery and lay there to review the fleet from Buf- falo as it filed past, under the booming of salutes from Castle Will- iam. A United States schooner, the Porpoise, lay just outside Saudy Hook. Thither the Governor and suit were taken, and all the rest of the naval procession formed in a circle around her. It was one of those ideal days we so often enjoy in this latitude early in Novem- ber; there was not a wind stirring, and the sea lay as smooth and al- most as motionless as glass. Now occurred the most impressive por- tion of the ceremony. The Governor, lifting up a small cask con- taining water from Lake Erie, the stopper was removed, and the water poured into the ocean, " intended," as the Governor said, " to indicate and commemorate the navigable communication which has been accomplished between our Mediterranean seas and the Atlantic Ocean." Now came forward Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell, who had been for some time collecting bottles of water from various prominent rivers of the world, and emptied into the ocean water from the Ganges and Indus, of Asia; the Nile and Gambia, of Africa; the Thames, the Seine, the Rhine and Danube, of Europe; the Mississippi and Columbia, of North America, and the Orinoco, Amazon, and La Plata, of South America.
In the meantime festivities on a grand scale had been conducting on land. A procession four and a half miles long had been defiling through the principal streets gayly decorated with flags and bunting and evergreens and flowers. Societies and trades upon floats repre- sented allegories indicative of their objects or occupations. It was arranged that the head of this pageant should reach the Battery about the time the head of the naval procession should arrive from Sandy Hook, and the dignitaries of the State and city lay near enough the shore in their boats to review the procession as it passed. The persons reviewing fell into the rear, and marched up Broadway to the City Hall. At night illuminations and fireworks made the city one blaze of light, the City Hall especially presenting a spectacle of marvelous and sparkling beauty. "Such rockets," says the histor- ian of the day, " were never before seen in New York. They were uncommonly large. Now they shot forth alternately showers of fiery serpents, and dragons, gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire; and now they burst forth and rained down showers of stars floating in the atmosphere like balls of liquid silver. The volcanic eruption of fire- balls and rockets with which this exhibition was concluded afforded a spectacle of vast beauty and sublimity." We would say that the eruption of fine phrases over so rare a show indicates that editors of New York journals were slightly affected with provincial simplicity in those days. On the evening of Monday, November 7. the festivities were concluded with a grand ball in Lafayette Amphitheater in Lau-
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CITY HALL ILLUMINATED FOR ERIE CANAL CELEBRATION.
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rens Street (later South Fifth Avenue) given by the officers of the mili- tia. We conclude this account with a citation once more from the ap- pointed chronicler of the event, who at least enjoys the inestimable advantage over later scribes of having been an eye-witness of and a partaker in the ceremonies. His style is exceedingly Sophomoric (nothing else can be looked for from an editor in the twenties), but the sentiments of praise for the State are just, and may well be shared by us as we read this day: " For a single State to achieve such a vic- tory, not only over the doubts and fears of the wary, but over the ob- stacles of nature, causing miles of massive rocks at the mountain ridges to yield to its power, turning the current of error as well as that of the Tonawanda, piling up the waters of the mighty Niagara, as well as those of the beautiful Hudson; in short, eansing a navi- gable river to flow with gentle enrrent down the steepy mount of Lockport; to leap the river Genesee; to "-(but really the tropes that follow are too splendid, and we hasten to the close) " and all in the space of eight short years, was a work of which the oldest and richest nations of Christendom might be proud."
But New York City did something also for others. Greece was in the throes of her struggle for independence, and in 1825 the news- papers of the city rang with appeals for the heroic nation, which might have put to shame the indifference of the times that are upon us now. Many ships loaded with grain, flour, clothing, were sent to relieve the impoverished Greeks, and large sums of money forwarded. This did much to encourage them to hold out until their object was at- tained, at least to the extent of casting off the yoke of Turkey. Whether their object was precisely to get a monarch from the regions of Scandinavia, and be ruled by a family whose scion has lately shown the Turks a fine pair of heels, may be seriously called into question.
Invention as illustrated by Fulton's steamboat, and enterprise as exemplified by the Erie Canal, were destined to prepare a future for New York, the greatness of which none dared even hope in that early period of the century. Yet, strangely enough, her anthorities were actually laying out the lines for a growth in population which would have seemed miraculons to them could they have been told of it. In 1807 the city had not made its big jump to Greenwich yet, and that even in 1822 and 1823 was only meant as a temporary expedient. The solidly built-up portion of the town might be bounded by Leon- ard Street, to Broadway, a cirenit around the Collect. then up along Mulberry to Bullock (Broome) Street. then along Broome east to Suf- folk, back past Grand and Division streets, and along Montgomery to Water Street or the East River. It was not for nothing that Hous- ton Street was called North Street, for it was indeed very far north of the utmost boundaries of solid habitations. Yet what do we find done by a commission composed of our old friend Gouverneur Morris and Simeon De Witt and John Rutherford? Calling the next street to
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Houston First Street, they arranged a plan of thoroughfares running up as far as 155th Street, crossing avenues mimbered east to west from 1 to 12; east of First Avenue, the alphabet to be used to desig- nate those for which there was room. At regular intervals of about ten blocks transverse avenues were to run east and west, as at 14th, 23d, 34th. 42d, 57th, 72d, 79th, 86th, 96th. 106th, 116th. 125th. 135th. 145th, and 155th. In short, these audacions persons mapped ont in 1807 the system of streets far up the island wherewith we are now famil- iar, and which, while not picturesque in form nor inventive in designa- tion, is exceedingly convenient and quite a godsend to a stranger who would be hopelessly lost in Brooklyn. No wonder they apolo- gized for their conduct: " To some it may seem a matter of surprise." they wrote, " that the whole island of Manhattan has not been laid out as a city "; they left precious little not laid out. "To others." they continued. " it may be a subject of merriment that the commis- sioners have provided space for a greater population than is collected at any spot on this side of China. They have in this been governed by the shape of the ground. It is not improbable that considerable numbers may be collected at Harlem before the high hills to the southward of it shall be built upon as a city; and it is improbable that for centuries to come the ground north of Harlem flats will be covered by houses." We now know that the centuries have been contracted into decades. Events have proved how much faster things move in America than men's boldest expectations dared hope ninety years ago. Surely it must have been some wag who suggested that the rear of the City Hall was built of brown stone (since marbleized) be- cause it was not supposed at the time it was built that many of the citizens would ever live on that side of it to see it as they came down town.
It is a pity that some of the picturesque features of the island- and even of the city, as not yet too severely usurping the island-have been made to disappear in carrying out the rigorous plan-on the square-of our worthy commissioners. A landscape gardener onght to have been added to their Board. But since such artist was not until lately deemed a necessary adjunet to a Park Board. we could hardly have expected such an intelligent provision in 1807. Who would not love to see Canal Street again in its ancient dress, as it was in 1811? All across the island from North to East River there ran that depression, which may still be traced by a diligent student of the city's topography. It included the greater and less Collect ponds. extensive swamps or salt-meadows, and more or less actively flowing creeks carrying in and out the waters as the tides rose and fell. It was thought that both looks and health would be improved if a canal were dng. and by a wider, deeper, and more regular channel the in- terior waters or swampy grounds could be drained. This was ac- cordingly done, and as a result there was created, even at that late
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date, a perfect representation of one of the streets of the city's earliest namesake, Amsterdam. Canal Street was made of a width of one hundred feet from building line to building line. In the center ran the canal, forty feet wide, with rows of trees planted on each bank. and the thoroughfares on either side were thirty feet wide. Where the canal crossed Broadway a stone bridge, or arched culvert, was erected.
Not only have these evidences of diversity in the island's landscape disappeared, but there are other streams whose departure we must mourn. Little would we to-day suspect they had ever been. " Gram- erey," as already mentioned, is a faint reminder of the crooked little stream that ran through Mayor Dnane's farm where the thus-named Park is now. Minetta Lane and Street are other reminders of a brook or creek. Few uptown resi- dents would know where to find these. They are not a speci- ally delectable neighborh o o d. The two are at right angles to each other; the "Lane" running straight from the beginning of Sixth Ave- nue to Macdou- gal Street, and BROADWAY AT CANAL STREET, 1811. the " Street " to Bleecker Street, opposite Downing. "The Minetta was a famons stream for trout," says "Felix Oldboy." It was a branch (or indeed two branches, east and west, were so called) of the Bestevaer Kil. a Dutch name meaning Grandfather's Creek, which fell into the North River at the foot of Hammersley (now West Houston) Street. Running in a generally northeastern direction through Washington Square, at the corner of Waverly and University Places it took a sharp turn northward, and had its source somewhere near the Sonth- ampton Road, or just about at the corner of 17th or 18th streets and Sixth Avenue. It was only the other day that we were reminded of its former existence, when the foundations were dug for a mammoth store at the corner of 18th Street and Sixth Avenne, and an appar- ently inexhaustible supply of water was met with. At about 11th Street, near Fifth Avenue, the Minetta's eastern branch separated
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from the Kil, and ran nearly to the corner of Broadway and 20th Street. Up in Harlem there was a creek running from some distance in the interior into the East River, about where 96th Street is now; but part of that water system has been utilized in the series of small lakes and cascades and murmuring brooks in the Ramble, ending in Harlem Lake at the northeastern extremity of Central Park.
It was seriously proposed by a number of gentlemen whose taste and foresight are to be commended, to utilize the fine opportunities for park-making offered by the Collect Pond and its surroundings. From the very earliest times this pond has figured prominently in the annals of our city, from the unhappy murder of the Indian in 1626 to the steamboat experiment in 1797. We are now about to chronicle its demise. In 1808, however, it was suggested that it be perpetuated as a feature of our city by purchasing its environs so far as owned. to
CORNER CHAPEL AND PROVOST STREETS (WEST BROADWAY AND FRANKLIN STREET) 1826.
banish the squatters, and beautify this section with all the arts of the landscape gardener. Que cannot refrain from contemplating with grief the letting pass of so favorable an opportunity for creating a most delicious break in the dreary monotony and hardness of down- town existence. But the scheme was deemed too chimerical. An- other company of capitalists had in mind cutting a ship-canal from the East River, through what is now " the Swamp " or leather-busi- ness section, and making the deep pond a receptacle for merchant- men which could thus be unloaded directly in front of the ware- houses, which would have been an imitation of another conspicuous feature of the city's Dutch prototype. Even this would have afforded some relief to the eye, and have kept intaet a very valuable provision
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of nature. But neither did this meet with the approval of the exceed- ingly weighty common sense of the wise men of Gotham. And now soon began the process which has resulted in the utter disappearance of the Collect. The neighboring hills, on Broadway, at Chatham Square, toward the old Commons, were denuded of their tops, and severely planed down at their sides, and the earth cast into the suffer- ing, and once thought unfathomable, waters of the Pond, and it was no more forever. A final word as to its name. It has a pious sound, in violent contrast with the impious deed that first brings it to our notice. But its derivation is quite unecclesiastical: the shells found on its beach, which helped to make lime for mortar, made the Dutch call its jutting beach Kalk Hoek-Chalk Point, or Hook. Now, in- elegant pronunciation in Dutch would make of the monosyllable Kalk a dissyllable Kallek, as tourists in Holland have heard guards call out Delleft instead of Delft, as they passed that historie town. Kal- lek, by an easy transition, became Collect to English ears, without assistance from the prayer-book.
While we are busy regretting bygone things within our city's pre- cinets, let us give a parting word to some old roads now no more trace- able. The Bowery Road we can follow easily enough, and where it began to be the Boston Road, at Fourth Avenue, we can still go on along that thoroughfare to Union Square; but we should carry it be- vond to Madison Square. Here it turned eastward, and kept going east and west between Third and Fourth, sometimes toward Second or even First avenues. The Bloomingdale Road is sufficiently re- called to us by the course of Broadway, and Greenwich Road by that of Greenwich Street above Warren or Chambers. Greenwich Lane is now Greenwich Avenue, and Monument Lane ran from where it struck Washington Square (it is not extended thus far now) to Astor Place, which was once called Art Street. The Great Kity Road ran from the river road at foot of Gansevoort Street, past Greenwich Lane in a straight line to where it met the Skinner Road, at 15th Street and Seventh Avenue, the latter having come from the river at Christopher Street, and making a right angle at the Minetta Water about 11th Street. At the junction of Great Kity and Skinner Roads began the Southampton Road, which, with one or two northeastward bends, struck the Abingdon Road about midway between Broadway and the Fitzroy Road. Part of the Abingdon Road was called Lovers' Lane, and is now 21st Street. The Fitzroy Road began at Great Kity Road, at about 14th Street, midway between Seventh and Eighth ave- nues, and ran along the general direction of Eighth Avenue, but not, of course, so mathematically straight.
We have not given much attention to the churches and their for- tunes for some time; but much had happened in that particular of our city's life and appearance, and we must hasten to record what is most interesting. In 1808 there were thirty-three churches in New
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York : nine Episcopalian, three Dutch Reformed, one French Hugue- not (now also Episcopalian), one German Reformed, one German Lutheran, one English Lutheran, three Baptist, three Methodist, one Moravian, six. Presbyterian, one Independent or Congrega- tional, two Quaker, and one JJewish Synagogue. In 1803 an event occurred in the annals of the Dutch Reformed Church. which cannot fail to be of significance to any one interested in our city's history. We saw that a complete century after the English conquest, or in 1764, the first English-speaking minister was called to the Dutch Church. After the Revolution the ancient vernacular retired more and more into the background. The Dntel Reformed pastors now all preached in English, of whom Dr. Linn was reputed the best preacher in the country, he also serving as Chaplain of the House of Representatives while Congress sat in New York. To satisfy the diminishing remuant who still clung to the mother tongue, the South Church in Garden Street (Ex- change Place) was set apart for Dutch services, and in 1789 Dr. Gerardus A. Kuypers was called from Paramus, N. J., to min- ister to this flock. But still from year to year the number of anditors at the Dutch preaching grew less and less; and in 1803 it was resolved to stop it altogether. A farewell service was held in the Garden Street Church, to which all those who could still understand Dutch flocked from all parts of the city. It must have been an impressive occasion. No doubt. in spite of the necessity of the case, it was a somewhat sad moment when for the last time that language was to be heard in public worship which earliest conveyed the praise of God from the heart of man on Manhattan Island. The year 1807 was again notable in the history of the Dutch Reformed denomination in the city. A church was built on Franklin Street, between Church and Chapel (now West Broadway) streets, which was attended by a congregation having a separate organiza- tion from the Collegiate Church, which had hitherto, with all its churches, been the one and only church corporation of that faith. In 1813 something still stranger happened. One of its churches, the oldest after that in the Fort. the South or Garden Street Church, was sold or accorded to another organization ontside its own. In the uptown march of churches the hereditary descendant of this earliest church-building was found until recently at the corner of 21st Street and Fifth Avenue, and is now on the corner of 38th Street and Madison Avenue, still called the Sonth Reformed Church. In 1803 and 1805 Dutch Reformed Churches were established in Greenwich and Bloom- ingdale villages respectively; the one in Harlem has been noticed as founded in 1660. Other evidences of the upward (at least northward) trend of churches are the removal of the Cedar Street Presbyterian Church to Murray Street, which later went to 14th Street, near 6th Avenue, and very recently to the vicinity of Central Park. The Ilu-
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