USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 33
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The vast crowds summoned by the alarm of fire stood by in mute helplessness as this magnificent palace, reared as a fane of indus- try, the pride of the whole city, crumbled to pieces before their eyes. The interior was soon revealed, and the noble marble features of Hamilton seen to rise above a sea of flames around it, but ere long the fierce heat swallowed it up in the universal destruction. Almost ad- joining the Merchants' Exchange in Garden Street, or Exchange Place, stood the old South Reformed Church. Into its front had been built the old stone saved from the church in the fort when it was de- stroyed by fire at the time of the Negro Plot in 1741, recording that Director William Kieft had caused the congregation to build it. It seemed that the fire-fiend was determined the testy little Governor's only good deed should not have any memorial of it for posterity, for the church was the next victim of the flames, and was hopelessly de- stroyed, never to rise again from its ruins. The course of the wind kept the fire from striking across to the northern side of Wall Street, thus saving the banks and the old City Hall, where the Custom House was then building. On the south side of Wall Street the progress of the fire was toward the East River. Along five streets, William, Han- over, Pearl, Water, and Front, the flames were driven southward by the fierce wind, carrying stores, warehouses, everything before them. On the open space at Hanover Square goods of all kinds were piled high in the center by the merchants in the vicinity, but there was no escape from such an avalanche of fire as was now approaching. The fire came traveling toward it from William, Hanover, and Pearl streets. and the costly pile of silks, satins, laces, cashmere shawls, and all was soon consumed. The fire then rushed on beyond and ravaged Pearl and the streets east of it as far as Coenties Slip. Stone Street was made into an avenue of flame, and some buildings in Broad Street were attacked. Since water failed, gunpowder was tried, hoping to stop the fire by desolating houses in front of it and making spaces it
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could not leap across. But gunpowder was not to be had in the city, and only a small quantity was brought from the Navy Yard in Brook- lyn. Before the fire was finally checked seventeen compact city blocks in the very heart of the business portion (then perhaps mainly the drygoods district) had been reduced to utter rnin. Six hundred and ninety-three buildings had succumbed to the flames. On Front Street no less than eighty had been destroyed; on South, seventy-six; on Pearl, seventy-nine; on Water, seventy-six; on Exchange Place, sixty-two. The total loss was estimated at more than eighteen mill- ions of dollars. Some of the individual losses were overwhelming; one merchant had on hand three hundred thousand dollars' worth of silks, of which not a dollar was saved; another lost two Inindred thou- sand dollars in teas and brandies. Mr. Stephen Whitney suffered a loss of five hundred thousand dollars. Curious and thrilling inci- dents are still borne in mind by old residents whose youthful eyes looked in horror upon the awful spectacle. At one time the East River was on fire. threatening destruction to the shipping. At the head of Coenties Slip a lot of barrels had been piled up containing tur- pentine. As the fire struck them the barrels burst and the burning fluid ran into the river, floating and burning on the top of the water. One tells of a brave effort on the part of an officer and some sailors from the Navy Yard to save the statue of Hamilton in the rotunda of the Exchange. Ropes were thrown around it and the attempt was nearly crowned with success when a cry went np that the roof was falling. and the brave fellows barely escaped being buried in the ruins. Another erewitness has a story of the almost miraculous escape of a noble old sycamore tree. which stood on the corner of Beaver and William streets, on the prem- ises of ex-Mayor Cadwallader D. Colden. It stood unharmed with rnin all around it. A circumstance remembered with much gratifica- tion was the help afforded by the then infant enterprise of the rail- road. A locomotive rushed from Jersey City to Newark carrying the news of the disaster, and forthwith returned drawing a train of flat cars with fire engines, less than an hour afterward. The fire was finally checked in its career in the wide space at Coenties Slip. in- creased materially by blowing up a few houses in the vicinity with gunpowder. Not too much praise can be bestowed upon the action of Captain Mix and a party of sailors of the United States Navy, who. in the coolest manner, carried about kegs of powder through showers of sparks, and near the roaring flames, covered only with tarpaulin or pea jackets. Sixteen hours steadily had the fire lasted, and it was now far past noon of Thursday, December 17. but for some days streams of water had to be poured upon the hot and smoldering re- mains. The scene of the fire was a ghastly sight: nothing but parts of walls of some of the finest buildings and storehouses of the city re- mained standing. Scores of the richest men were ruined, many fami-
PROCESSIO
PROCESSION OF NAVY OF ALL NATIONS IN NEW YORK HARBOR, APRIL 26, 1893, COLUMBIAN CELEBRATION.
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lies of opulence reduced to penury. And now also came into play the baser elements of human nature. At the peril of their lives a swarm of thieves set themselves to rummaging among the seething ruins. Over ninety men were arrested during the night while the fire was still at its worst, caught in the act of removing articles of value placed in the street for safe keeping. Two hundred were taken the day after, and more as the days went on, till police courts and prisons could no longer hold the hordes of miscreants. And amid the crimes likely to suggest themselves at such moments of fearful excitement, we do not wonder there was one precisely in line with what was going on. One wretch was caught actually trying to set on fire a house on the corner of Stone and Broad streets. It was necessary to call in the aid of the United States marines, who formed a cordon of sentinels along the water front from Fulton to Wall street ferries, and up Wall as far as the ruins of the Exchange. They stood with fixed bayonets ready to drive back robbers from the afflicted district, or prevent the escape of those from within their ranks. Upon official investigation the nearest conclusion that could be arrived at as to the origin of the fire was that a gas-pipe in the store at 28 Merchant (Hanover) Street must have sprung a leak, and the escaping gas set on fire by live coals in an open grate or stove; for it was remembered by some that they had heard a sound as of an explosion proceed from the building at that number. Even in her very calamity New York found the proof of her greatness, the evidence that she was already the head and center of the com- merce and finance of the nation. " The artisan and manufacturer," so says a chronieler whose connections are with other cities than our own, " in almost every district of the United States, however remote, were irretrievably involved. Indeed, every species of business and every ramification of trade throughout the Union were seriously af- fected. It was the fountain-head that had been so dreadfully rav- aged, and the whole nation felt the shock."
As if naturally drawn to a place which was assuming this promi- nent and unquestioned leadership in finance, New York in 1829 was honored by being adopted as the residence of one who has been called the greatest financier this country has ever produced after Hamilton. This was the Hon. Albert Gallatin, who was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Jefferson, and held that office until under Madison in 1811 he felt constrained to resign it on account of a serious difference of opinion with his chief in the matter of renewing the charter of the Bank of the United States. He had been a strenuous, perhaps even bitter, opponent of Hamilton, but on the most fundamental principles of finance he could not but be in accord with that master mind. Curi- ously enough, neither of these men were natives of the United States, and both were of French extraction, Gallatin being a French Swiss, born in Geneva. Gallatin had represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate when quite young; he had traveled extensively
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in Europe, keenly observing men and affairs; was a man of wide read- ing and diversified sympathies in art. literature, and education, and was regarded as the best talker in the country. He rented a house far uptown, where people of wealth and standing were beginning to settle. Mayor Hone resided on the corner of Broadway and Great Jones Street; Gallatin took a house in Bleecker Street. It was not long after he came here- in himself a valuable accession to New York society-when it was determined to derive for the city the benefit of his financial genius and experience. In 1832 was organized the Na- tional Bank of New York. and a lion's share of the stock was sub-
COENTIES SLIP IN THE FIRE OF 1835.
scribed to by John Jacob Astor, on condition that Mr. Gallatin should be made its President. He accepted the offer, although he had then passed the seventy-first year of his age. It was fortunate he thus identified himself with the finances of the city, for these were about to pass through a fearful crisis. The anti-Federalists, now known as Democrats, had always disliked Hamilton's scheme of a Bank of the United States. Gallatin was as determined a Democrat as any of that party, but he did not let partisanship becloud his reason on the subject of the bank, and, as we saw. he had resigned the Treasury be- cause Madison and his cabinet would not support his endeavors to re- tain the bank in operation. The re-chartering of the bank was made a political issue of the most blindly partisan nature under Jackson's
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administration. In fact, he had come into power pledged to abolish it. The charter of the bank finally expired in March, 1836, and, of course, its renewal was impossible under Jackson. It accepted a charter from the State of Pennsylvania. But now a lot of irrespon- sible state banks sprang up everywhere, reveling in the funds of the United States promiscuously distributed among such institutions by Secretary Taney. From 1830 to 1837 three hundred of these banks came into existence, and their operations were of a very unsteady na- ture. While times were flush everything went well enough. "Sud- denly a check came," says John A. Stevens, whom we find it safer to follow in the statement of the financial situation than to attempt our own account of it. " The balance of trade turned against the United States to a sum of one hundred and fifty millions, and coin was shipped abroad to liquidate the account. But as the entire amount of specie in the country did not exceed the sum of seventy-three millions. the reaction was sharp. Had there been any government debt to attract a foreign investment, the situation might have been tempered. It must not be forgotten that at this period the United States was not a specie-producing country. It accumulated only as the result of a sound financial policy. It could not be retained when demanded by Europe, except by a general suspension. The result was unavoidable."
The result was the great financial panic of 1837. On May 10 every bank in the city suspended, Mr. Gallatin's among the number. The tide of distrust and the lack of financial bottom throughout the coun- try was too much for even the greatest genius to counteract. But he immediately went to work seeking to remedy the situation. At his instance a meeting of New York bankers was held, at which a con- vention of representatives from all the banks in the country was pro- posed, to assemble in New York in October, and confer upon an agree- ment as to a time for the resumption of specie payments. It was nec- essary for the New York banks to be prompt about this, as it was the law of the State that a bank failing to resume within a period of one year should be dissolved as a corporation. The convention of October and another in December, bringing delegates together from seventeen States, could not make up their minds to set any date for resumption earlier than January 1, 1839. The New York banks could not wait so long. although they would have consented to July 1, 1838. Accord- ingly they took matters into their own hands, and feeling strong enough with such a person as Gallatin in their midst and encouraging the undertaking, they resolved to resume on May 10, 1838, or precisely a year after suspension. The example thus set keyed up the financial courage in other parts of the country, and the banks generally re- sumed on July 1. It may be of interest to add that in the year of the panic. 1837, there were twenty-three banks in the city. with a capital aggregating the sum of $20,361,200.
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An event of a nature to put New York in touch with the public af- fairs of the nation was the visit of Daniel Webster in March, 1837, a week or two after one of the sons of New York State, Martin Van Buren, the only Knickerbocker that has ascended the Executive chair of the nation, had been inaugurated. Webster had married for his second wife a lady of New York, Caroline, the daughter of Herman Le Roy, who resided at 7 Broadway, or next door below the historic Burns's Coffee House of Revolutionary fame. Here, in 1829, she was married to the great orator, it being an auspicions year for him, as that also of his famous debate with Hayne. The champion of inter- nal improvements was not of the President's party, and the Whigs (descendants of the Federalists and ancestors of the Republicans) ten- dered Webster an ovation. In the evening an audience of four or five thousand assembled in Niblo's Hall to listen to a speech by Webster on the issues of the day-the National Bank, and the forceful methods to sup- press it adopted by the party of Jackson and his " Heir Apparent." now in the White House.
During the period now in hand immi- gration from Europe began to assume proportions of astonishing magnitude. It will be remembered that there is an account preserved of emigration to New Amsterdam during seven years. from 1657 to 1664, and that the total number of persons brought over during that period was about eleven hundred. In 1708, 1709. and 1710 the German Pala- CHRISTOPHER COLLES. tines were driven across the Atlantic by the distresses of war, and the three thon- sand of them that came at once in the latter year filled the munici- pal anthorities with alarm. Before the War of 1812 immigra- tion from abroad attained to a goodly figure, and shortly after the war the mmbers became still larger. But from 1818 to 1819 there was a sudden leap upward, no less than twenty thousand immigrants being reported at the Mayor's office. Then there seemed to be a lull in the flood, for during the nine years from 1820 to 1829 the average annual number of arrivals was abont ten thousand, or about ninety thousand altogether. The next nine years, however, saw a phenomenal influx of foreigners; from 1830 to 1839 as many as 343,517 persons arrived. 151.672 of these com- ing from Ireland alone. In the decade from 1840 on. the average per year became nearly one hundred and thirty thousand. No wonder that the foreign vote, and especially the " Irish vote," began to count in politics. The Democrats seem to have charmed the newcomers
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most, and their influence turned the scale decidedly in favor of that party, as a reward for which local offices began to fall to the share of foreign-born citizens in large proportions.
The period previously selected as an epoch in our city's history closed with a pageant in celebration of the Erie Canal. an enterprise undertaken by the State. The year 1842 was marked by a celebration equally imposing, to do honor to the completion of an enterprise un- dertaken by the city alone for the benefit of its own citizens and as a municipal necessity. This was the system of water works, by which an abundant supply of wholesome and palatable water was obtained from the Croton River. far up in Westchester County, by means of an aqueduct, reservoir, and an elaborate network of subterranean pipes. The water in the city had been from the earliest times notoriously bad. People sank wells on their own premises, but the water they drew therefrom was hardly fit to drink; it was bad to the taste and dangerous to the health. The seven public wells. in Broadway, Broad Street, and Wall Street. were not intended for drinking purposes, as they collected the drainage and rainwater that ran through the cen- ter of the street. After a while it was discovered that one well in the city afforded pure and cool and palatable water. It was apparently inexhaustible; a pump was put into it, and the water drawn from it carried in casks about the city and sold to people at their doors. This well and pump were at the corner of Park Row and Roosevelt Street. quite outside the limits of habitation until well into the eighteenth century. As the water was principally used for cooking purposes, and for preparing tea. the pump re- ceived the name of the Tea Water Pump. The first at- tempt to establish waterworks a little ENGINE IN WATERWORKS OF 1116. less primitive was made as early as the year 1774. Two acres of ground were pur- chased from the van Cortlandt estate for twelve hundred pounds, on Broadway. on the east side between the present Pearl and White streets, and thus almost opposite the site of the New York Hospital. which was then in course of erection. Here a reservoir was con- structed under the direction of the Engineer. Christopher Colles, into which water was pumped from wells dug on the grounds, and also from the Collect Pond in the rear. The water was then conducted by
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means of wooden pipes to different parts of the city. It was a very ingenious system, and won the admiration of English officers during the occupation by the enemy. One describes what he saw very mi- nutely; speaking of one of the wells, he says: " The well is forty feet in diameter, and thirty feet down to the surface of the water. In this well is an engine which forces the water almost to the top. and from thence through a wooden tube up to the top of the hill, which is a distance of about five rods. At the top of the hill is a pond [the res- ervoir] covering one-quarter of an acre. from eight to eleven feet deep." It was remembered by the people who watched the construc- tion of the Clermont at the shipyard at the foot of East Houston Street, that the curious mechanism put inside that boat very much re- sembled the pumping machinery of the Colles water works, afterward utilized by the Manhattan Company. But somehow these works fell into an innocuous desnetude. Whether because the water was bad. or the supply insufficient, or that the British were not up to the Yan- kee ingenuity of the thing, the water works were abandoned. and the people had to resort again to their good old friend, the Tea Water Pump. It may have been, after all. the poor quality of the Collect water. That limpid lake so often celebrated was not what it seemed to be as far as drinking water went. In 1798, when another system of water works was about to be erected in its vicinity, proposing to draw from it, some one spoke very irreverently of our historic pond: " The Collect behind the Tea Water Pump is a shocking hole, where all im- pure things center together, and engender the worst of unwholesome productions. Some affect to say that the water is very cool and re- freshing. Everybody knows from experience the water gets warm in a few hours, and, sometimes, almost before it is drawn from the carter's hogsheads. Can you bear to drink it on Sundays in the sun- mer time? It is so bad before Monday mornings as to be very sickly and nanseating, and the larger the city grows, the worse the evil will be." The works then in contemplation were those of the Manhattan Company. Their counsel. Aaron Burr, had hoodwinked the Feder- alists by getting from them a charter for supplying the city with water, and " other business." At that time " watering " stock had not yet become either a phrase or a practice, else the connection be- tween finance and water works would not have seemed so illogical. At any rate, banking was the business Burr and his clients had in mind, and the Manhattan Company, although a bank to this day, calls itself by this indefinite name, not at all suggestive of its real bnsi- ness. It could not, however, leave the water problem entirely un- touched. An engineer at its request laid before the company a plan which resembles in some features the system now in operation. The water was to be drawn from the Bronx River, carried in an open canal to the Harlem, and across that river in an elevated iron pipe to a reservoir on this island, where the water was to be subjected to fil-
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tration. But the Manhattan Company having its charter, nothing was done toward this excellent plan. The company obtained control of the ground and machinery utilized by Colles, built a reservoir in Chambers Street between Broadway and Centre, dug wells in the vicinity, using for its plant part of the building of the smelting fur- nace on Reade near Centre street, and laid bored logs under the sur- face of the streets to convey the water. But again the water failed to satisfy either in quantity or in quality, as may be imagined from the description of it given above. The company was more intent upon banking than water, and the people had to return once more to the Tea Water Pump and water carried in from the surrounding country.
Upon the tablet displayed at the reservoir on Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue appears first on the list of commissioners the name of Samuel Stevens. He was alderman from the Second Ward for sev- eral years, and his name deserves that prominence, because it was largely through his intelligent interest and perseverance that New York at last secured for itself that indispensable necessity to health- good and abundant water brought readily into every home. A plan was drawn up by competent engineers, much bolder than the one of 1798, but on the same principle. It was proposed to draw the water from the Croton River, at a distance of forty miles from the City Hall; to conduct it by an aqueduct to the Harlem River; across this by a lofty bridge; then to one or two distributing reservoirs placed on Manhattan Island. The cost of such a system was to run into the millions, and the people who had just been given the privilege, as we shall see below, of voting for their own Mayor in 1834, were asked to vote on the question of " Water," or " No Water," in 1835. A large majority voted in favor of the expensive scheme. But not a few mur- mured at the cost. They did not want to appear more squeamish in their taste than the fathers who had found the MANHATTAN COMPANY'S WATERWORKS. Tea Water good enough. But the fire in December stopped the mouths of grumblers, and there soon was all the required popular enthusiasm back of the scheme to push it along to accomplishment. A dam was built across the Croton River, making a basin capable of holding five hundred millions of gallons, covering four hundred acres of land. An aque- duct was constructed down to the Harlem River, carrying the heal- ing streams by tunnels through rocks and hills, and upon embank- ments across valleys and intervening streams. Across the Harlem was thrown the magnificent High Bridge, even yet not eclipsed in its
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glory by neighboring structures, but long alone and supreme, carry- ing the conduit of iron and brick over fourteen piers of solid granite. a length of nearly fifteen hundred feet; the arches supporting the con- duit and connecting the piers having spans of eighty and fifty feet. and at their keystones rising one hundred and fourteen feet above tide water in the Harlem. This bridge struck the island at the present One Hundred and Seventy-fourth Street, or about a mile above the utmost limit (One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street) of Simeon De Witt's plan of 1807. Here much later a small reservoir was built for Harlem honses. The water was brought to the open air for the first time after its journey of forty miles, in a reservoir placed where the paper plan indicated Sixth Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street, but where they never came to be, as Central Park usurped the place of streets in that vicinity. This was a very large receptacle, covering thirty-five acres, and capable of holding one hundred and fifty mill- ions of gallons, giving plenty of healthy exposure to the air. This reservoir is the square portion of the system now to be seen in Central Park, the circular and larger basin having been added later. A last reservior was built on Murray Hill. at Fifth Avenue, between Fortieth and Forty-second streets, soon to depart because. with appliances now in use, it is not needed, and is an eyesore instead of an orna- ment amid its elegant surroundings. It was wont to be visible for miles of open country around when it first reared up its Egyptian walls. The distribution by iron pipes commenced at this reservoir, its lofty situation giving sufficient head of water for every part of the city below it. The New York Public Library is to occupy its site.
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