USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 37
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return trip was commenced. The road soon vindicated the wisdom of its projection and justified the expense of its construction. Three years later. in September, 1854. the report of business for the preced- ing twelve-month showed that the road had carried 1,125,123 passen- gers and 743.250 tons of freight. The earnings amounted that one year to about 16 or 17 per cent. of the total cost. It had in operation 183 locomotives and 2.935 cars.
The next trunk line to be established between New York and the west was the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. It also aimed to connect the Metropolis with Lake Erie and the Lake region in general, its course being almost exactly parallel, and in many places within a stone's throw of the Erie Canal. It took advantage of the comparatively level country near the borders of Lake Ontario, and of the natural highway to the Hudson afforded by the valley of the Mohawk River. But it was not originally conceived as a trunk- line: it grew to be one by the accretion of several short lines. One section of it, that between Albany and Schenectady, is historic as the first railroad projected and the first in actual operation in America. It was chartered in 1826, and in September, 1831, before the prelimi- nary survey had been made for the Erie Road, it was already running between its two termini. Piecemeal the stretch of country between the upper Hudson and Buffalo was supplied with railroads. There were the Utica & Schenectady; the Syracuse & Utica; the Rochester & Syracuse; the Buffalo & Rochester. But besides this direct exten- sion, or dove-tailing of one road into another, making a continuous line, there were other roads branching off. The Schenectady & Troy branched northwestward. There was the Syracuse & Utica Direct. which indicates that the other was not quite so direct. From Buffalo there first went a road only as far as Lockport; but soon the present " Falls Branch " was laid out by the company, establishing the Roch- ester, Lockport & Niagara Falls Railroad. There came also to be the Mohawk Valley Railroad, welding together the iron tracks all the way from Rome or Utica to Albany. And while this was being done in the upper and western part of the State, steadily cutting into the freight and passenger traffic of the Erie Canal. projectors had not failed to see the necessity of connecting New York with that upper system, nor the opportunity afforded for easy construction by the east bank of the Hudson. Hence in 1846 the Hudson River Railroad Com- pany was chartered, and the first trains began to run in 1851. about six months after the Erie had been opened for traffic. The New York Central Railroad, in 1853, combined all the fragmentary railways west of Albany to Buffalo, with its side branches, under one company and management. Then making one more combination in 1869 with the Hudson River road, there was constituted the second trunk line connecting New York with the interior country. Philadelphia. in 1854, was connected by rail with Pittsburg, and many roads were rnn-
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ning in New Jersey, connecting New York in a desultory manner with Philadelphia and other points. We noticed that at the fire of 1835 a locomotive rushed to Newark with the news, and drew back a number of much-needed fire engines. When Daniel Webster came on his visit to New York in 1837 he traveled from Philadelphia to Perth Amboy by the Camden & Amboy Railroad, then recently opened for traffic. There steamers met the trains, and conveyed passengers to this city. First these various railways of New Jersey became one corporation, as the United Railroads of New Jersey, and then these were absorbed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, making more perfect and less costly the connection of New York with the middle and southern States, as well as sending an artery of traffic from the great heart of commerce into the middle western States.
Great was the effect upon the business of the country of these won- derfully increased facilities of communication. The telegraph, the steamship, the railroad, brought all the world closer together, and sent the products of the world flying to each other's markets, putting into rapid and augmenting circulation great sums of money. The en- terprises themselves called for large investments of capital from which phenomenal returns were expected. Hence the very stimulus to business produced by the progress of the world spread the fever of speculation, with its usual consequences. There was the recovery of business after the war of 1812, and a panic about 1818 or 1819. There was a rush of trade about 1825 and a depression a few years later, sub- sequent both, if not consequent, upon the development of river steam- boats and the opening of the Erie Canal. There was the panie of 1837, and now again in 1857 business was prostrated by a fearful col- lapse. " Commercial crises are periodic," observes Prof. Jevons. " It would be a very useful thing if we were able to foretell when a bubble or a crisis was coming, but it is evidently impossible to predict such matters with certainty. Nevertheless, it is wonderful how often a great commercial crisis has happened about ten years after the previous one." Whether just due or far past due, the crash came in 1857. In Angst, the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company sus- pended payment, its obligations amounting to seven millions of dol- lars. The shock to publie confidence was terrible. There was a sud- den run on banks and savings-banks, and suspension was inevitable everywhere. In September, Philadelphia banks led those of all Penn- sylvania in cessation of payment. In October, the banks of New York followed suit, but they resumed in December. The excitement on October 13, just before the suspension, was indescribable. At ten o'clock, the hour for opening the banks, there were from thirty to forty thousand people in Wall Street, surging in front of the various insti- tutions, each man eager to get in before the other and draw his money before the stock on hand should be exhausted. Trade was paralyzed all over the country. Factories ceased running, and workmen had no
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way of earning wages. Steamers on lakes and rivers were unem- ployed. Cargoes from abroad were sent back again, and shiploads of emigrants returned, afraid of the prospects in the new country. Proofs accumulated that the unnatural stimulus to business given by the new conditions of traffic and transport had brought on the calam- ity. " A prodigious weight of insolvency had been carried along for year's in the volume of trade. Extravagance of living had already sapped the foundations of commercial success. Mismanagement and fraud had gained footing in public companies to an incredible degree. Hundreds of millions of bonds were issued with little regard to the validity of their basis." The suffering among the poor which ensued
PANIC OF 1857. SCENE IN WALL STREET.
in the city, with winter on hand, was alleviated as much as possible by benevolent provisions on the part of the authorities. Many of the unemployed were given work in the construction of Central Park then under way, and at other public works in charge of the city. Sonp- houses were opened in many parts, and food and fuel distributed with a lavish hand. In spite of all efforts, however, it is supposed that many perished from cold and starvation. It was a sad, long, and dreary winter, but with spring confidence again revived and the coun- try made ready for recovery. Over five thousand failures were re- ported, with liabilities running up toward three hundred millions.
The Five Points have been mentioned more than once in the pre-
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ceding pages. In the earlier days of a primitive colonial town the ex- istence of such a blot upon municipal life was impossible. While the city grew but was still diminutive, as compared with the period now reached, the conditions were not yet favorable for the dregs of society to sink to such a depth, although the gravitation was beginning, and "Canvas town " after the fire of 1776, gave a foretaste of the later phenomenon. For such the " Five Points " was; it was so eminent in its horrors of iniquity, of moral as of physical filth, that it had become famous throughout the world, and among the " sights" of America that tourists would not miss, was this abominable region. Dickens cannot finish his first paragraph on New York in his " American Notes " without speaking of it: " There is one quarter. commonly call- ed the Five Points, which, in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be safely backed against Seven Dials, or any other part of famed St. Giles's." But London was older and bigger: it is to be deplored that New York had already caught up with it in these evidences of human degradation. The region was not far from the old Collect Pond. Five streets converged here to a point: Mulberry, Baxter. Worth, and two others whose names are not now the same. Indeed the region has been greatly altered and purified, the small blocks of irregular or triangular shape formed by the intersection of the streets having been removed, and the space thus made converted into the present Mul- berry Park. It was as much as a person's life was worth to go through this region in the daytime. One was liable to ride encount- ers of all sorts on the part both of men and women. Dickens visited the spot accompanied by a policeman, and he has left on record his impressions: " Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. Nearly every house is a low tavern; lanes and alleys paved with mud knee-deep; underground alleys where they dance and game. All that is loathsome, drooping. and decaved is here." In 1850 efforts be- gan to be made on the part of Christian women to penetrate this black darkness of sin with the light of Christianity: but we defer an account of this good work to a succeeding chapter.
Those who remember to have seen, in the late sixties or early seven- ties (we will not be too precise lest some of our lady readers might re- member it) the bridge that spanned Broadway at the intersection of Fulton Street, will note with interest that this same corner was an intolerably congested one as early as 1852. Here was focussed the traffic from Brooklyn per Fulton ferry, and that from Jersey City per Cortlandt Street ferry, meeting the tides of carts and trucks and om- nibuses and carriages and pedestrians, hurrying about on business errands that could not wait. It was impossible to cross either Fulton Street or Broadway, and the delays were vexations both to the vehi- cles and the foot passengers. So some good and wise alderman in 1852 suggested that a passenger bridge be built at this crowded spot, to be reached by stairs from the sidewalks on Broadway. Mr. Valen-
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tine has preserved a lithograph in one of his Manuals (1856) showing the structure proposed. So far as we can recall the one that was built in later days, the plan was but slightly different. One could skip lightly up one stairs and down the other, if Fulton Street was to be crossed : a broad platform the full width of Fulton between the euros. extended across Broadway. It was not a popular institution with the ladies, and doubtless a truck loaded more than usually high. would have to turn back into a side street, not without seintillations of profanity from the driver. So it endured no very great length of time, and has faded almost from the memory even of those who were privileged to utilize the well-meant convenience.
As an indication of the growth of the city we read with interest that in 1849 no less than 1,618 houses were built. The city was get- ting quite compact as far north as Thirty-fourth Street. yet open spaces were not infrequent in various localities below that. Fifth Avenue had already become the fashionable street, and with dreadful monotony, however severely splendid, arose the interminable rows of brown-stone fronts, " all alike outside, and all furnished in the same style within." says one who knows. " heavy furniture, gilding, mirrors, glittering chandeliers. If a man was very rich he had a few feet more frontage, and more gilding, more mirrors, and more chandeliers." Yet once in a while a house would appear out of the ordinary run. On the corner of Thirty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue the wealthy Dr. Townsend erected a mansion in 1855, which. as the newspapers ex- pressed it, was a specimen of "almost royal splendor." It was thought too fine to be feasted on only by the eyes of the owner and his family; accordingly the ladies of the Five Points Mission asked whether the public could not be permitted to look upon its " roval splendor " at so much per head. the proceeds of the sale of the tickets of admission to go for the benefit of the squalid wretches these ladies were trying to regenerate downtown; truly a curions combination of the extremes of poverty and wealth, and a novel way of helping the poor. That fine house is gone, but a later generation was made to look upon a still more palatial home upon the next corner below. at 34th Street, built by A. T. Stewart, and now the quarters of the Man- hattan (Democratic) Club. In 1850 street railways had become pretty general, but it is sad to learn that the franchises, even at that early date, were obtained by bribery of the common council. The earliest cars had run only to 14th Street; they needed to go up further now. Yet the resident on Bleecker Street, or about St. John's Park, in 1846. was of the opinion that 14th Street was far uptown. St. John's Park and church were now the center of a fashionable neighborhood. Here resided the families of Alexander Hamilton (Mrs. Hamilton lived un- til about 1858), General Schuyler, and General Morton. "They owned their houses," says " Felix Oldboy," whose father was pastor of a church nearby, " and had their own keys to the massive gates of the
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park, from which all outsiders were rigorously excluded." About 1850 another select neighborhood grew up farther uptown, in the sec- tion long known as Chelsea, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, from 27th to 30th Streets. A few vestiges of its faded respectability still reveal themselves to the observant eye.
In 1844 the Wall Street Presbyterian Church could no longer with- stand the pressure of business. Its fine building was sold, and the block between 11th and 12th Streets on Fifth Avenue was purchased. where the " First Presbyterian Church," dangerously near the ruin- ous downtown limits, still stands. Garden Street Church, after the fire, had become two bands. One party was so wildly foolish as to de- termine to build away up on Washington Square, corner of Washing- ton Place, opposite the New York University. The conservative ele- ment could not fall in with this madness and therefore built on MInr- ray Street. Alas! they themselves had to pass Washington Square and build up on 21st Street and Fifth Avenue, and now the Washington Square and the 21st Street Churches have both beeen demolished to make room for lige business buildings, while the 21st Street congregation. still clinging to the old name of South Church (so ap- propriate to that which was first the most northerly, and later the most southerly. church edifice in the city), worship in an Episcopal Church purchased by them and converted to their own usages, on the corner of 38th Street and Madison Avenue. No less interesting is it to follow the migrations of the other churches that once resounded with the Dutch language. In 1844 the last service was held in the Middle Dutch Church on Nassan Street. The government had bought the property (or leased it) and altered it just as it was muto a Post- office, with a nondescript array of additional buildings. But in 1839 the Collegiate Reformed people had already dedicated a new and magnificent structure on the corner of Lafayette Place and 4th Street. It was an imitation in solid granite of the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens, but by a crazy freak, the architect piled on the top of the front pediment a steeple, which made the effect simply preposterous. The officers had the good sense to have it removed after some years. and now the church became a real ornament to the city, and worthy of the study of lovers of Greek architecture. This church. so far away from Nassau Street, became the Middle Church in 1854, when a hand- some and graceful marble church in the Gothic style, with a single steeple, was erected on the corner of Fifth Avenne and 29th Street. This is still the " Marble Collegiate." only unfortunately, like Dr. Parkhurst's and old Trinity, and others in like case, steeple and church and all are dwarfed by the lofty building (a hotel) that stands by its side. Lafayette Place Church made way for business several years ago, and in 1869 the " North " Church in Fulton Street (now en- tirely Sonth), after completing a round century, was demolished. It is of course impossible, except in a history specially devoted to
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churches, to follow all the migrations of congregations originally downtown. We have indicated enough of them to give an idea of the general trend. The claim of the original historie church to such par- tienlar notice, however, cannot be denied. We add that after the Fulton Church was also made to disappear, the complement of three principal edifices usually maintained as a tradition from the past. was filled up by the exceedingly elaborate Gothic brownstone edifice on the corner of 48th Street and Fifth Avenue. The account of the chief architectural ornament in the way of church building, St. Patrick's, on 50th Street, belongs properly to a later period, although the corner stone was laid in 1858. In 1846 the present splendid structure re- placed the church erected in 1790 on the old site of Trinity.
As many as sixteen public schools were scattered throughout the city in 1842. All the buildings of the Public School Society had now been turned over to the Board of Education, and as the population increased the schoolhouses multi- plied. Greenwich was fast losing all marks of having been a village or a suburb. vet it was by no means as vet solidly built up. It re- joiced in the old school- house at Hudson and Grove Streets, and there was also one on Greenwich Avenne. the former Greenwich Lane. The latter became the scene of a frightful calamity, the FRENCH CHURCH IN 1834. horror of which is not yet forgotten, and which gave occasion to a wise and salutary law as to the hanging of doors in public buildings. One of the lady teachers had come to at- tend to her duties on the morning of November 20. 1851, although she had not been well for a few days. About two o'clock in the afternoon, weary with the day's work, she was overcome by a sudden faintness depriving her of the power to speak. Her pu- pils became very much alarmed. and some of the larger girls in the class, seeing she was about to faint. cried to the others to go and get some water. The cry of " water " was taken up by the children, and this alarmed those of the neighboring classes, who, imagining that it was wanted to extinguish a fire. changed the cry for " water " into one of " fire." This produced an instantaneons panic all through the school. Pupils rushed pell-mell and blind with fright from one room after another in one mad rush toward the stairs. These were arranged
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at eight angles around a wide well in the center. Several little ones stumbled ere they reached the bottom and those behind fell over their prostrate forms, piling into a heap by the front door. The door was locked, according to the enstom of the day, but even if it had not been, it would have been impossible to open it with that solid mass of juven- ile humanity blocked against it on the inside, the doors at that time invariably swinging inward. Meanwhile the children still on the up- per floors could not be restrained from crowding down the stairs. The struggling mass pressing against the banisters upon the different flights and upon the landings, soon demolished these frail guards, and as they broke away the children from the first, second, or third stories, and the upper portions of the stairways, kept falling sheer down upon their suffocating companions below. The same cry of fire that had done the mischief within was taken up outside when the shriek- ing and the struggling was heard, and a fire engine was soon on the spot. This fortunately brought helping hands to the scene of the calamity, and several children, as in their desperation they were jumping to their death from windows, were caught and saved by the firemen and others in the street. Soon after the parents of the children came hurrying to the school frantic with anxiety as to the fate of their little ones. About forty children were taken dead from the building, and a few more died from their injuries later. While some were bruised and mangled by their fall, the most came to their death from suffocation. A law was passed shortly afterward re- quiring all doors on public buildings to be hung so as to swing out- ward or both ways.
Some account has already been given of the march of fashionable society uptown. Besides those places mentioned, the wealthier citi- zens were congregating around Washington Square, now converted from a parade ground into a handsome park (after having been a ghastly Potter's field, or pauper burying ground). In Bond Street, Astor Place, Clinton Place (famed only lately by Crawford's novels), houses went up worth tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand dollars. As early as 1842 numerons servants in livery were affected, quite in the European style. Not always the " old families " occupied these sections, or affected such style. They were found rather around St. John's, or in the Chelsea neighborhood. In these showy mansions were apt to be found the " nouveau riche," satirized by Dickens in "Martin Chuzzlewit," and by George W. Curtis in the "Potiphar Papers." The aping of Europe was the consequence of the trips across the Atlantic that were made so convenient by the increasing steam- ships. As Mr. Roosevelt says rather severely, but with truth: "New York possessed a large wealthy class which did not quite know how to get most pleasure from its money. With singular pov- erty of imagination, they proceeded on the assumption that to enjoy their wealth they must slavishly imitate the superficial features, and
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the defects rather than the merits of the life of the wealthy classes of Europe. . They put wealth above everything else, and therefore hopelessly vulgarized their lives." In the very midst of this fashionable crowd occurred one of those sensational murders in high life that have occasionally startled New York citizens. On Jannary 30, 1857. Dr. Harvey Burdell, a prominent and wealthy dentist living on Bond street, was found murdered in his room. At the coroner's inquest suspicion fixed upon a Mrs. Cunningham, who had been his housekeeper, or worse, as the guilty person, and she was arrested and subjected to a trial. The matter was complicated by a claim of mar- riage to Dr. Burdell by this woman, and Rev. Mr. Marvin, of the Re- formed Church on Bleecker and Amos (now West 10th) streets, was brought forward to testify he had married them, but not much more was proved than that the man at the ceremony had personated Dr. Burdell. Accomplices of the woman were also placed under arrest and tried. The case was watched with breathless interest by the whole town. There was evidence enough against Mrs. Cunningham and some other occupants of the house to secure a conviction by the Coroner's Jury and an indictment for murder by the Grand Jury. But the trial resulted in the acquittal of all the acensed. and mystery still hangs over the real incidents of the case.
It is like a whiff of the good old days to read of a benevolent and antiquarian Boniface who about this period furnished the citizens of New York with a collection of historical relies, and among them the umtilated remnant of William Pitt's statne. placed at the intersection of Wall Street and William in 1770. On the corner of West Broad- way and Franklin Street, west side, where now wholesale grocers rear their great warehouses, but close to the choice residence-quarter of the St. John's Park of those days, there stood what was called by the proprietor. Riley's Fifth Ward Museum Hotel. It was the especial delight of the children of the neighborhood, as " Felix Oldboy " re- members with a relish, who had, like all others, free access to the room where the curiosities were displayed. Here was the club which had brained Captain Cook in the Sandwich Islands: Jackson's pipe: Tecumseh's rifle. But on Franklin Street, just outside the basement door, stood the most interesting, if not the most sightly, relic of all. It was the statue of Pitt. or what was left of it after the British soldiers had vented their spite on it, as representing too stanch a friend of the colonies. It was a little too late for the days of sum- mary beheadings, or doubtless George III. would have enjoyed giving his great minister a taste of it. But the soldiers, in loyal deference to the noble feelings of their master, knocked off the marble head of the statue, and broke off an arm and demora lized the seulptor's effort gen- erally. Mr. Riley found it somewhere and seized upon it in his thirst for relies; so there it stood at least seventy years after the day of its abuse, to remind children of both smaller and larger growth of the
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