USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 34
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The year 1842 saw the completion of nearly all this work, at least in sufficient measure to introduce the water into the city. And now began a series of celebrations. First, after the water from the dam in the Croton had been allowed to enter the conduit, a little boat spe- cially constructed, called Croton Maid, and capable of holding fonr persons, journeyed through the entire length of the aqueduct for the purpose of a thorough inspection. On June 27 the water was allowed to enter the reservoir at Eighty-sixth Street in the presence of a distin- guished company; and again, on July 4, the day was made doubly glorious by similar ceremonies in the august presence of State and City dignitaries, on the occasion of introducing the water for the first time into the distributing reservoir on Murray Hill. It was not until October 14, 1842, however, that the monster demonstration was made. wherein the whole population were given a chance to express their delight at the boon the art of man had bestowed upon them. A splen- did and ingenionsly arranged fountain had been placed in City Hall Park. now, alas, gone! There was a large central pipe with eighteen smaller ones, and so arranged that by shifting the plate of the conduit pipe the spouting waters could be made to assume seven different shapes. This fountain was set playing all day: the power back of it
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being such that the heavy column of water from the largest pipe was forced to a sheer height of sixty feet. The city famous for proces- sions since the days of the " Federal ship Hamilton " in 1788, organ. ized one for this day which put all the former ones to the blush. The President was invited, but did not come; but the Governor was there, and members of Congress, and Mayors of neighboring cities, and for- eign consuls. Upon the reviewing stand these exalted people watched for two hours and ten minutes go by a procession indicating by floats the interest which each trade or handiwork, or profession, took in the enterprise just completed. Church bells rang, cannon boomed, flags and bunting decorated public and private buildings. The procession came marching down Broadway, and turned around the southern ex- tremity of the City Hall Park into Park Row, thus going by the splen-
CROTON
WATER
.1842
THE CROTON-WATER CELEBRATION.
did display of the fountain on two sides. A prominent place in the parade was taken by the temperance organizations that dated only from the year 1840, and it was a feature of the collation served at the City Hall to the invited guests, that no wine or spirits of any kind were offered,-nothing but Croton water. Upon one of the floats drawn by six horses were pipes and other materials and models used in the construction of the conduit. At the City Hall the exercises con- sisted of the formal transfer by President Stevens of the Board of Construction, to the President of the Croton Aqueduct Board, a speech in reply by the latter, and speeches by Mayor Robert H. Morris and Governor William H. Seward. Illuminations at night closed a day of happy memory, marred by no disturbances of any kind.
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In the history of municipal government in our city we reach an event during this period of the most critical importance. In 1834 home rule for New York was finally made complete by the popular election of the Mayor. It is strange how persistent ancient tradi- tions are. Peter Stuyvesant refused the privilege of electing their Burgomasters to the people of New Amsterdam in 1653. The Royal Governor and his Council invariably appointed the Mayor under the English rule. And when English rule was repudiated and the people became their own sovereigns, the idea that the Mayor of a city must be appointed by some outside authority so prevailed that the appoint- ing power was vested in a specially created body, the Council of Ap- pointment, clumsy in composition and hardly ever smooth in its oper- ations. Concessions had been gradually making, however, to the genius of republican government, and as we saw in 1822, only the Recorder remained to be appointed by State authority, Sheriff and Clerk being elected by the people, and the Mayor by the Common Council. The last Mayors who were thus put in office during the period now in hand were Walter Bowne and Gideon Lee. Mr. Bowne was of Quaker descent, his family settling at Flushing before the days of Stuyvesant, and getting well persecuted by the Director. Mr. Bowne's political affiliations were with the Democrats. His sister had married Walter Franklin, who built the house Washington first occupied, her second husband being Samuel Osgood; and one of her daughters became the first wife of De Witt Clinton. Mr. Bowne also married out of the Quaker line, taking for a wife a daughter of one of the old Dutch families of King's County. He engaged in the hard- ware business at Burling Slip and Water Street, and attained great wealth. He was elected Mayor in 1828, serving for several terms, and had before this represented the city as Senator at Albany. In 1833 he was succeeded in the Mayorality by Gideon Lee, who served only one year. He was a native of Massachusetts, establishing an exten- sive leather business, still maintained by his sons, in the "Swamp " district. In 1834 the State Constitution was changed so as to give to New York City alone of all the cities of the State the privilege of elect- ing a Mayor by popular vote. In 1834 that vote was very extensive. amounting practically, since 1826. to manhood suffrage, except in the case of colored people. All male white citizens who rented a tene- ment at an annual rate of $25 at least, and all taxpayers were per- mitted to vote at charter elections. Accordingly, on April 10. 1834. the citizens of New York met at the polling places in the several wards, to do what their forefathers had only once done before nearly a century and a half ago, under the Democratic rule of Jacob Leisler. Democrats (with a slightly different signification) ruled on this day. Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence was the candidate of Tammany Hall. strong partisans of Jackson. Gulian C. Verplanck was min as an in- dependent. non-partisan candidate, apart from issues of a national
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bearing. Lawrence was elected, but unhappily a fierce riot attended this first exercise of home rule. Indeed. throughout this year (1834) that deserves to be honorably marked, so many disgraceful riots oc- curred that it is known, from that less honorable circumstance, as " the year of the riots."
First came the Election Riot, in April. Tammany was divided into two factions. The Whigs (old Federalists) had long been in the minority, but Tammany's division made the election very close and correspondingly exciting. so that Lawrence' was elected by only a small majority. At that time there was no registration of voters, and in each of the fourteen wards there was only one polling place; thus trouble could easily be made by violent and fraudulent persons. About noon there was great disturbance at the polling place in the Sixth Ward, in the heart of the poorest section of the city, the vicin- ity of the " Five Points." Jackson Democrats took possession of the polling place, sacked its contents, and destroyed the ballots already cast. Near by, on the block bounded by Centre, Elm, Franklin, and White Streets, stood the State Arsenal. The mob surged toward Broadway raiding the gun shops, and it was feared they would rifle the Arsenal of its arms. A number of citizens hastened to the aid of the police until the Twenty-seventh (later the Seventh) Regiment could be brought into action; who further prevented any harm being done by the mob here. In the evening partisans of the Whigs met at Masonic Hall in Broadway opposite the Hospital, and voted to repair in force next day to the Sixth Ward polling place, and compel a fair vote for their candidate. There was no disturbance on the next day; but on the third there was an encounter on Broadway in front of Masonic Hall, in which the Mayor himself and many of the city-watch were linrt in an attempt to re- store order. This was accomplished only by the aid of the militia. It was the first time the Twenty-seventh (or Seventh) Regiment had displayed its efficiency as an aid to keep or restore peace and protect life and prop- MASONIC HALL ON BROADWAY. erty, and was the beginning of a brave and brilliant career for it. The Common Council showed its appreciation of its services by passing a vote of thanks "to the individuals who thus nobly sustained their reputation as citizen soldiers, and proved the importance and necessity to the city of a well-disciplined militia in time of peace, as well as in time of war."
The " Abolition Riot " was next on this undesirable list. Slavery was abolished in the State, as we saw; but cotton having made slav- ery profitable, and its production and export having become an im-
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mense business, naturally a large portion of New Yorkers were di- rectly interested in the maintenance of slavery at the South. Hence the populace looked with no favor on the agitations for abolition in the Union which William Lloyd Garrison had begun. In the autumn of 1833 he had sought to organize publie meetings to advocate the cause in New York City. These meetings were usually molested by the mob, and often broken up altogether. In July, 1834. a mob at- tacked a chapel on Chatham Street, which had been rented by the colored people for religious services, and where a negro minister was preaching. The audience was driven out after a slight resistance. Lewis Tappan, a rich Quaker merchant, who, like all of his faith, was an enthusiastic friend of the negroes, was present at the meeting. He had been one of those to call the abolition meeting the previous October, and he was marked for vengeance by the mob. They fol- lowed him to his house in Rose Street near by, hooting and threaten- ing him, and throwing stones at his house. The next day the chapel was again visited and broken open, but there were no negroes there. So the mob rushed to the Bowery Theater, whose manager was an abolitionist; driven away by the police before much harm was done. the miscreants rushed back to Rose Street and sacked the house of Nathan, the brother of Lewis Tappan. It is pleasant to note here a circumstance growing out of this event at the fire of 1835. The Tap- pan brothers had a great drygoods business. Their warehouse was built of stone, and the windows were provided with shutters of heavy boiler iron to guard against such attacks by the mob as had ruined their homes on Rose Street. These walls and shutters resisted the fire for a long time, so that ere it reached the warehouse ample op- portunity was given to a great number of the colored people to show their love and gratitude. They fairly risked their lives in helping to save the firm's goods. The books and papers and one hundred thou- sand dollars' worth of property were thus removed to a place of safety. "The energy and daring," remarks an eyewitness, "with which the colored people pressed forward. in the face of every ob- stacle, to save Mr. Tappan's property, greatly impressed the bystand- ers."
On the night of July 11, the trouble was removed to another part of the city. St. John's Church was not now on the edge of a wilder- ness but in the center of the finest residences of the choicest people of the town. Nor was it the only church in that distant neighbor- hood. A fine Presbyterian Church stood on the corner of Varick and Laight Streets, opposite the same swamp, which had now been con- verted into a handsome park, accessible only to the residents upon its surrounding streets, like Gramercy Park to-day. And still further out, as it would have been thought in 1807. in Spring Street near Varick, was another Presbyterian Church, within a stone's throw of Bury's Richmond Hill estate, now for many years owned by John
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Jacob Astor. The Rev. Samuel H. Cox, the pastor of the Laight Street Church, was an inveterate foe of slavery, outspoken, and fear- less; and the Rev. Henry G. Ludlow, of Spring Street Church, was equally offensive to those who were now rioting. So the mob swerved over to this part of town and made fierce attacks on the churches of these clergymen. As a result Dr. Cox resigned a little later, as his congregation did not like him to provoke such ruinous assaults on their property. Both of his sons entered the Episcopal Church, and one was later the celebrated Cleveland Cox. Bishop of Buffalo. While the rioters were busy with these churches the Twenty-seventh (Seventhi) Regiment marched upon them. They had thrown up bar- ricades in regular Parisian style. The militiamen with all the sang froid of veterans stormed and carried the barricades, and scattered the materials in every direction, the mob back of them having done the same for themselves before the resolute advance of the citizen soldiers. The next day the volunteer firemen offered their assistance in quelling the mob, and the disturbance passed away.
But a taste for rioting is infectious. In August, 1834, there was again another tumult of the populace. It was considerably more of the nature of the uprisings to which we are accustomed in these days. it being an attempt to interfere with the building of the New York University on Washington Square. In 1824 there was trouble at the building of Scudder's Museum on Broadway, because stone-cutters objected to the use of marble as a building material. Not a workman could be found willing to labor at its construction, and a convict had to be pardoned out of Sing Sing prison in order to get the work done. With this in mind the authorities of the University arranged to have the marble for their edifice hewed and shaped by the State prisoners at Sing Sing, the blocks being taken there direct from the West- chester marble quarries. This did not suit the stone-cutters in the city, and the riot that ensued goes by their name, although doubtless due as much to the rough element among their sympathizers. The mob was headed off in time by the Twenty-seventh (Seventh) who en- camped on Washington Parade ground (now the Park) and were kept under arms for four days and nights.
In 1835 there was another riot, called the " Five Points' Riot " from its locality. It grew out of the antagonism between native Ameri- cans and the Irish immigrant population. It had been announced that an Irish regiment was about to be organized, and the Americans of the " baser sort " did not like it, so there was a free fight in the streets converging near Chatham Square, on Sunday, June 21. The prominent citizens who tried to preserve the peace were. as usual. roughly handled, and some badly injured, yet to the credit of the municipal government it must be said that their own police quelled the disturbance without the intervention of the militia. Finally, in 1837. this era was marked by a " Flour." or " Bread Riot." The panic
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was near its birth and speculation of all kinds was rampant. There had been a short crop of wheat the season before, and it was an- nounced that it was certain the crop of Virginia was ruired for the next season. This was just a state of things for the feverish financial frame of mind to seize upon for running up prices and cornering the stock there was on hand. Prices went up at a ruinous rate. Flour advanced from $7 to $12 per barrel; meat jumped to a fancy price, and coal rose to $10 per ton. The people became aware that commis- sion merchants were accumulating provisions and keeping them back from the markets, in order to get still higher prices later. A meeting was called in the City Hall Park at four o'clock in the afternoon of February 10, 1837, in the manner of the pre-Revolutionary days,-by means of a placard borne about the city where the laboring people mostly lived, bearing the words, " Bread, Meat, Rent, Fuel,-the voice of the people shall be heard." At the meeting one of the rough and ready orators told his excited auditors that a commission mer- chant of the name of Eli Hart, had in store in his warehouse on Wash- ington Street, fifty-three thousand barrels of flour. If true, there must have been some intention of " cornering " about this. At any rate the announcement acted like a spark on gunpowder upon the crowd. In a twinkle they were rushing down to Washington Street, forced open Hart's store, and ere long it rained flour barrels upon the street. About five hundred ruined barrels had thus been supposed to con- tribute to cheaper flour when the cry that the militia was coming dis- persed the mob. One or two other stores were visited in a similar manner, discouraging, it is to be hoped, the abominable practice of speculating in the price of such daily necessaries.
It has been said that at the election of Mayor Lawrence his major- ity was much reduced becanse Tammany Hall was divided into two factions. One of these called themselves the " Equal Rights " party becaused opposed to monopolies, franchises or charters for banks or other corporations. The rather clumsy name was changed into a more popular designation by a circumstance which illustrates the beginnings of things wherewith we have been so long familiar. Gas had been in use for ten years, and its introduction into private and public buildings was quite common. But matches were then still a novelty. It was a great convenience to have the tinder-box and flint supplanted by a little splinter of wood, which by a mere scratch would emit fire. At a meeting in Tammany Hall the faction opposed to the " Equal Rights " noticed that at the approaching proceedings they would be outnumbered by their rivals. Accordingly ther thought to disperse the gathering and disconcert the opposition by turning out the gas-lights. It happened, however, that some of the " Equal Rights " men carried boxes of the newly invented matches upon their persons, and the lights were soon ablaze again. The matches went by the name of Loco foco, on what principle of Latin-
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ity (if any) it is hard to tell. But the opportune possession of these handy substitutes for the tinder-box gave the name of " Locofocos " to the party which had hitherto carried a more descriptive title. It is correctly remarked by Miss Booth " that most, if not all, of the party appellations which have served at various times to distinguish the politics of the country first originated in this city-Federalist. Republican, Whig, Democrat. Locofoco, and many more." In 1837 Mayor Aaron Clarke, the second to be elected by the people, owed his success to the strength of the Locofoco faction which so crippled Tam- many Hall that the Whigs, whose candidate he was, carried the elec- tion. He had 17.000 votes, and two other candidates had 13,000 and 4,000 respectively. The term of the Mayor was only one year then, and in 1838 the Whigs again profited by division in the ranks of " the enemy." But Mayor Clarke's plurality was only about five hundred then, and in 1839 the Democrats, now united by accepting in common some of the Locofoco ideas, carried the charter election, and continued to do so until 1844. Isaac L. Varian, whom Clarke had beaten by five hundred votes the year before, now in turn had beaten him by over a thousand. He was highly spoken of by men of the opposite party, and was popular as a prominent " fire-lad," or member of the Volun- teer fire department, which furnished no less than seven Mayors to the city. He owned a farm about where the Gilsey House stands, on Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street. When he was re-elected in 1840. the novel expedient of registering voters previous to election was first put into operation. It was combined with the division of the wards into voting districts, so that instead of one polling place for each ward there were now several, greatly ex- pediting the work of receiving bal- lots and gaining time, as now all the voting could be done on one day. It is a pity that in 1842 the excel- lent provision of registering was re- pealed. In 1841 Robert Hunter MAYOR WALTER BOWNE. Morris was elected Mayor. His name
is of interest, bringing back vividly the old colonial times. Ile was a descendant of Lewis Morris, the Chief Justice of New York Province under Robert Hunter. the Royal Governor. The Chief Jus- tice had named one of his sons after the Governor, and the name was revived once more in the Mayor. He owed his election probably to a species of political persecution. In 1838 he was appointed Recorder of the City, the one officer still remaining under the control of the
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Governor of the State. Just before election day in the presidential campaign of 1840, when Harrison was the Whig candidate, a plot was organized by a certain Glentworth for " colonizing " voters from Philadelphia in New York. They were to be brought to New York on the pretense of being employed to lay pipes for the Croton water. The Recorder and Distriet-Attorney on receiving wind of the plot. went at once to the house of Glentworth to demand his papers, for fear the evidence might be destroyed. It was not precisely regular in a free country, and Governor Seward, himself a Whig, removed Morris from office. This was the signal for the Democrats to vindi- cate his promptness in exposing the fraud of the opposition, and Mor- ris was elected Mayor at the next charter election in 1841. and during three subsequent years. In 1840 the population had grown to 312 .- 852. In 1842 the city was divided into seventeen wards. Those who have read with delight the many historical items there collected, and have looked with gratitude npon the pictures of houses and neighbor- hoods which would otherwise have been buried in oblivion, contained in the long series of Valentine's Manuals, will not deem it unworthy of notice in a history of this city. that Mr. Valentine, as Clerk of the Common Council, issned the first of these mannals in this same year 1842. It was but a small volume, and contained as yet no historical matter.
Up to this period the principal wharfage for shipping had been on the East River shore, and indeed to this day the large sailing vessels may still be seen lying there. But with the advent of the steamboat the North River shore began to be utilized, and now there was an ex- tent of three miles of wharfage from Corlear's Hook around the Bat- tery to Hubert Street. where the North Battery was located. on the Hudson. As was noticed in connection with the " Abolition Riot." the newly developed cotton trade of the South was making much business for New York as well. The cotton was brought here to be trans-shipped to Europe, or sent to the factories in New England. In 1827 no less than 215.705 bales of cotton came to the port. of which 191.626 were sent to Enrope, and 24,000 to home . manufacturers. Commerce had received a frightful blow from the fire of 1835, but the recovery was quick and characteristic. The panie of 1837 was another calamity to mercantile interests, but good times soon sne- ceeded. The Erie Canal was bringing a golden stream of prosperity from the inexhanstible West, and the railroads and telegraph. soon to be noticed, were doing much to add to the commercial and finan- cial importance of the city. One handmaid of business was gradnally approaching its modern marvelous efficiency. In 1799 the mail was an expensive luxury and slow in movement : for a distance less than forty miles the cost of carrying a letter was eight cents; for a distance between three and five hundred miles the cost was twenty cents; and over five hundred miles, twenty-five cents. In 1842 the rates were
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still high from our standpoint: three cents for less than three hun- dred miles; ten cents for more than three hundred miles. At the close of the century merchants had complained because the postoffice was taken up by Bauman to 62 Broadway, or the corner of Liberty Street. In 1807 it was nearer the center of business again, at the corner of William Street and Garden Street (Exchange Place). Theodorus Bailey, the Postmaster, lived in the house. There were one hundred boxes in the vestibule, entered, from William Street. In 1827 the postoffice was removed to the Merchants' Exchange, and in 1835 was involved in its destruction. It was then taken to the Rotunda in City Hall Park, whence, about 1844, it went to the old Middle Dutch Church in Nassau Street, and to its present imposing home, again in City Hall Park, less than thirty years ago.
This was the era of the introduction of the cheap and great New York daily newspapers. There were a great number of journals pub- lished in the city during the first three decades of the century, some of which, such as the Commercial Advertiser, and Evening Post, we have already mentioned. The Morning Courier, edited by James Watson Webb, the father of General Alexander S. Webb, the hero of Gettysburg and President of the College of the City of New York; the Courier and In- quirer; the Journal of Com- merce, started in 1827; the New York Mirror, for which N. P. Willis and Poe and other ce- lebrities wrote, were among the most prominent ones. They were dignified and stately af- NEW-YORK fairs, costing six cents at the lowest per number, but not vulgarly hawked upon the streets; they were sent around to regular subscribers. In October. 1832, James Gordon Bennett ventured upon some- thing more accessible to small purses. He started the New CONTOIT'S GARDEN, BROADWAY, 1830. York Globe, sold at two cents a copy, but the paper only lived a month. A bolder innovation was that conceived by a young doctor of the name of Sheppard. On January 1. 1833. he issued the Morning Post; its cost was only a penny a paper, and another novelty was the employment of boys to carry it about the streets and sell it to people whose patronage they solicited-in short, newsboys. He had barely suc-
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