USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 48
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Within a remarkably short time of each other, there died during this period some of the most eminent New York journalists. We have related the death of Horace Greeley, on November 29, 1872. Ou June 18, 1869, his early coadjutor on the Tribune, but later editor of the Times, Henry J. Raymond, passed away. On June 1. 1872, the founder of the Herald died, the venerable James Gordon Bennett, who had reached the goodly age of seventy-seven, while Greeley was only sixty-one, and Raymond not more than fifty. Of still greater age, and more widely known as a literary man and poet, was the editor of the Erening Post. William Cullen Bryant. He was seventy-eight in the year that Greeley and Bennett died, and lived till 1878, attaining the high age of eighty-four. A most honorable part was played by such papers as we have just mentioned in the warfare against Tweed. We have related how Sheriff O'Brien brought doen- ments exposing the Ring's financial operations to the proprietorof the Times, and how, from July 20 to 29, 1871, this journal gave the facts freely to the public. Connolly came to Mr. Jones, either before the publication of the papers or after the first had come out. and offered
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him deliberately the enormons bribe of $5,000,000 if he would sup- press the damaging information. The bribe was indignantly spurned. Laying aside all journalistic rivalry, the Tribune. the Post, the Staats- Zeitung, and other respectable sheets, nobly supported the Times in its ernsade. But Harper's Weekly deserves especial credit for the pub-
NOV. 7 4 187 /
THE .TAMMANY RING SMASHED
THAT'S WHAT THE PEOPLE DID
THE
ABOUT IT
TWEED
TAMMANY BOYS WHIPPED OUT OF THEIR BOOTS
RE-ELECTED BY 10.000 MAJORITY
FR!(HE WANTED 30.000 MAJORITY)
THISWEENY GONE TO CRASS.
MAYOR HAUL DONE BROWN.
CON HOFFMAN'S VETO POWER NEUTRALIZED
NEW YORK TREA
SHANY
MERTEN
GfNET
TAMMANY BRAINS
TWEED CARTOON-"TO THE VICTOR BELONGS THE SPOILS."
lication of Thomas Nast's irresistible cartoons. By means of these. as we saw. Tweed was identified even in Spain. The monumental robber feared these cartoons immensely more than he did the expo- snres and diatribes in the other journals. " I don't care what people write," he said, " for my people can't read. But they have eyes, and
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they can see as well as other folks." Of course Nast was offered money and a host of other favors, honses, trips to Europe, ad libitum, but equally in vain.
The commerce of the city had greatly suffered from the war. The Southern privateers made sad havoc among her shipping until the Alabama was finally sunk. The merchant marine thus destroyed was not replaced after the war, because ships were being built of iron rather than wood, and we were not yet in a condition to compete with England in that kind of building. To remedy this defect, protection was tried. No vessel constructed abroad was allowed to obtain American registry. Whatever the excellence of this plan may be theoretically, the shipbuilding industry was certainly kept at a dis- count, while the carrying trade passed at the same time to other nations. Between 1850 and 1855 seventy-five per cent. of our ocean traffic of all our imports and exports, was carried in vessels of Amer- ican make and ownership. In 1869 the percentage had fallen to just thirty, considerably less than half, with the commerce of the world greatly increased in those fourteen years.
Social life in the city in the period after the war was marked by a continuation in the establishment of societies for mntnal improve- ment, or with benevolent designs. In April. 1866, was founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Its establishment was due to the compassion, energy, and single-heartedness of one man. Mr. Henry Bergh. He inherited a comfortable fortune from his father, the celebrated shipbuilder, Christian Bergh, mentioned more than once in previous chapters. He was at one time Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburgh, and traveled extensively thronghont Europe. The ernelties to animals he saw perpetrated there, were fully matched by what was daily witnessed in our own streets. But when he began to agitate for laws on the subject he found there was a public sentiment to be created from the very beginning. In the face of the indifference and ridicule of all, and of the hostility of those whose profit it was supposed to be to practice cruelties, he persisted in his efforts, founded his society, succeeded in educating sentiment in this city, and all over the country, and finally secured laws upon the statute books which seriously interfered with the practices that had hitherto been indulged in with impunity. The agents of the Society are now everywhere. and it will no more do to brave their in- terference than that of policemen themselves. Another society of ex- cellent design was that for the Suppression of Vice, incorporated at the instance of Anthony Comstock in 1873. Its purpose was to check the dissemination of obscene literature, and the procuring of laws punishing those guilty of printing or circulating such degrading and ruinons reading. Mr. Comstock has also, even to this day, to bear the brunt of much ridicule and rancor, but the good accomplished by the Society is incalculable. A society of a quite different order, and then
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unique in the social history of the Republic or city, was that of Sorosis, a club for women, organized with twelve members in March, 1868. It was founded by Mrs. J. C. Croly, and its object was stated to be " to promote pleasant and useful relations among women of thought and culture, and render them helpful to each other." These ladies engaged in discussions at regular fortnightly meetings, on such varied topics as Education, Art. Science, Music, Philanthropy. Drama, House and Home, Business, and Journalism. The Society has grown to goodly proportions since, and continues to be a force in the social life of the city.
There were some notable buildings erected during the years im- mediately succeeding the war, indicative of the growing interest of the citizens in matters of art. The various wanderings of the Na- tional Academy of Design from the Old Clinton Hall in Beekman Street to its present elegant home, have al- ready been briefly traced. It had no building of its own till the one now occupied was erected on the corner of Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, completed in 1866. Its style is peculiarly artistic, making it quite unique among the architectural features of the city. It is of the Venetian Gothic order, gray and white marble (or graywacke) and bluestone blending in various designs. The cost was $237,000. raised by popular sub- Heung Bergh seription. Two years later. October 31. 1868. the cornerstone was laid for the fine struc- ture of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion directly opposite the Academy; in the Autumn of 1869 it was ready for occupancy. In 1867 Pike's Opera House, afterward purchased and run by James Fisk, and since known as the Grand Opera House, was creeted on the corner of Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue. Early in 1869 Edwin Booth opened the theater built by him on the corner of Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue. It was to be do- voted to Shakespearean and the highest kind of drama. But it is no more; a somewhat discouraging commentary on the theatrical tastes of the community. The venture proving a complete failure. entailing much loss on the eminent tragedian. the building was long since sold and torn down and stores now occupy the site. Opposite Booth's was erected the massive granite structure of the Masonic Temple. Its cornerstone was laid in June, 1870. As the Old Hall on Broadway. nearly opposite the New York Hospital, between Duane and Pearl. had been considered the finest building next to the Merchants' Ex- change in earlier decades, so this edifice, when completed. took a foremost rank among the noblest and most imposing structures that
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grace the city in these later days. Among these now the United States Government began to place one worthy of itself and of the city. It was high time that the postoffice should have a fitting home. In 1873 it was still doing its work the best way it conld in the old Nassau Street Church, with its colony of outbuildings. But for a year or two the splendid granite building occupying the southern end of the old City Hall Park had been in course of erection. In 1870 the work was begun, and in August, 1875, it was ready for use. It is doubtful if in a later decade the people would have allowed the historic Park to be so seriously curtailed even for so noble a purpose as this. Again, in 1869, the construction of the Grand Central depot was begun, oppo- site the northern end of the Fourth Avenue tunnel, which was such a marvel to an earlier generation. Opened to traffic October 9, 1871, it was at that time the largest railway station in the United States, with a length of 696 feet and a width of 240 feet. affording room for twelve tracks side by side. The old depot at Twenty-seventh Street became Barnum's Hippodrome, and later Madison Square Garden. In March, 1867. Tammany Society prepared to move to its new home on Fourteenth Street, selling its old hall on Park Row to the Sun newspaper.
In the way of church erection it would be impossible to trace the various and increasingly handsome edifices the numerous denomina- tions were erecting in various parts of the city. St. George's was still located in Beekman Street at the beginning of this period; and until 1869 the North Collegiate stood in Fulton. But in 1872 the latter was gone, and its counterpart, as the northernmost of the Collegiate Re- formed Churches, stood on Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street, an elegant brown stone structure of highly ornate Gothic style, dedi- cated in 1872. A notable event in the history of the religious life of the city was the meeting of the World's Evangelical Alliance in New York, in October 1873. This Alliance represents all the Protestant denominations in the world, and was organized in 1845. The first meeting was held in London in 1846; the second in Paris, in 1855; the third in Berlin, in 1857; the fourth in Geneva, in 1860; the fifth in Amsterdam, in 1867. At the latter session the New York delegates were authorized to invite the Council to meet in New York at its next world-session, providing thus for a quite natural transition from the Old Amsterdam to the New. Various political disturbances and the Franco-Prussian war interfered, so that not till October 1873. was the Alliance prepared to meet again. A social reception was given the foreign delegates at the Young Men's Christian Association Building on the evening of October 2. The business meetings began on Friday. October 3, and were continued until Saturday, October 11. On Sunday evening, October 12, a grand public farewell service was held at the Academy of Music, which was thronged to its fullest capacity.
This same period witnessed an advance in the educational system
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of the city. In 1869 the election of members of the Board of Educa- tion by the people was abolished by the legislature, and power given to the Mayor to appoint twelve Commissioners. These new men fonnd to their surprise that the law giving the Board authority to erect a college for young men. also permitted the establishment of a similar institution for girls. They straightway proceeded to do so. and as there was felt a great need of well-trained teachers, they de- termined to make the preparation of these the special object of the girls' college. Hence it received the name of the Normal College. Mr. Thomas Hunter, the Principal of Grammar School No. 35. who had distinguished himself by abolishing corporal punishment, was appointed Presi- dent of the new in- stitution. On Feb- ruary 14, 1870. it began work on the second floor of a long. two story building on Fonrth Street. extending from Broadway nealy to Lafayette Place. These quar- tors soon proving too small. a noble building was erect- ed up town. At first a part of Bry- ant Park was so- licited from the city, but it was wisely refused. THE NORMAL COLLEGE. There was the old Hamilton Park. however, at Fourth Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street, running back to Lexington Avenue, which had never been utilized. This ground was given for the Normal College, and upon this the present structure arises, occupied for the first time in the autumn of 1873.
During the war the city's progress had almost come to a standstill as regards the extension of streets and the spread of population. Whereas before the war some eight hundred honses had gone up yearly, not more than from sixty to eighty per year were built from 1861 to 1865. The population seems even to have somewhat de- creased. During the Tweed régime, while much was stolen and much bad work was done. a few enterprises were put under way tond- ing to beantify the city. The Boulevard was laid ont from the corner
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of Fifty-ninth Street and Eighth Avenue to Tubby Hook or Inwood, following the old Bloomingdale Road and making a drive of eighteen miles. St. Nicholas Avenne took the place of the old Harlem Lane, a dead level of nearly a mile, but carried beyond that up the rocks of Harlem Heights beyond One Hundred and Sixty-first Street till it crossed Tenth Avenue. Some avenues further down town now among the finest were then as yet in an inchoate state. Madison Avenue above Forty-second Street was a confusion of dirt and rocks. Lexing- ton Avenne was not carried beyond Sixty-fifth Street. Transit was ouly by horse cars and stages. The horsecar is still with us to some extent, wherein we must appear slow to other cities. But the stage is no more, except in a totally different and deteriorated form on Fifth Avenue. The stages used to be things of interest, and their management a matter of skill, with their double teams of four horses on some lines. It may be interesting to recall the routes of the six principal lines. They were the Broadway and Fifth Avenue, turning into the latter at Fourteenth Street; the Broadway. Twenty-third Street, and Ninth Avenne, taking passengers to the old Hudson River Railway Depot at Thirtieth Street; the Broadway and Fourth Ave- nue, running to the Harlem Railway Depot; the Broadway and Eighth Street; the Broadway and Second Street; and the Madison Avenue; not one of them running further north than Forty-seventh Street. In 1873 squatters possessed the rocks still standing high and dry on Sixth Avenue between the horsecar depot at Forty-third Street and the Park. Then, too, the spot where now rise the palatial man- sions of the Vanderbilts on Fifth Avenue was a bare rock just peep- ing above the surface. As another evidence of the little regard then paid to the preservation of the city parks, the elegant St. John's Park was sold in 1867 to the Hudson River Railroad Company, which soon occupied the entire area with a huge freight depot. Many of the nicest and oldest families of the city had made their abode there be- fore this; and some of these, the celebrated engineer John Ericsson among them. refused to leave the neighborhood even after its desecra- tion by a clamorous traffic.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CITY CROSSES THE HARLEM RIVER.
ARLEM VILLAGE is no more. Harlem as a separate dis- triet of the city, easily distinguished, isolated, apart, a refuge from the hubbub of business and traffic,-has also long ceased to be. It has been engulfed by the tide of popu- lation now spread all over the island, and the elevated roads have brought it as near the heart of business as Fourteenth Street or Forty-second Street were in carlier decades of the century. Harlem
WATER TOWER, HIGH BRIDGE AND WASHINGTON BRIDGE.
is now only a name, hardly even a section; just as Greenwich, and Chelsea, and Yorkville, and Manhattanville, and Carmansville, are but names, their original limits only to be identified by the antiquar- ian. Before we allow our minds to contemplate the conditions which deprived Harlem of its distinctive features or separate existence, " a longing, lingering look behind " at the ancient state of things may not be out of place. We have seen how in the time of Kieft, Dr. de la Montagne, his sole councillor, occupied a tract of land covering part
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of Harlem, between Fifth or Third Avenues and the East and Harlem Rivers; and that Joachem Pietersen Kuyter, his bold antagonist and accuser, held another large plantation further up along the Harlem River, which he named " Zegendael," or, Bliss-vale. Walloons early settled in this vicinity and they used to go and hear Domine Michael- ius preach in the mill-loft, and afterward Domine Bogardus down in Pearl Street, walking all the way from Harlem; those from New Rochelle, ferrying themselves across to the foot of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Van Twiller took possession of the Barents Islands (Randall and Ward); and one of his council se- cured a section of Harlem below One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and along the East River. Still as people did not seem dis- posed to found a permanent or compact settlement there, and Stuy- vesant's military mind was set on having a post at this extremity of the island as a defense against incursions from the mainland on the part of either Indians or Yankees, in March, 1658, the Director and Council of New Netherland passed a decree that a village be founded at this point. A name was readily found for it. Amsterdam in Hol- land was flanked by the city of Haarlem at a distance about equal to that of the proposed village from the fort; and what more natural than that New Amsterdam should have its New Haerlem, as the Dutch city's name was spelled in that day. A road was laid out in an east and west direction, touching the East River at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and a second road parallel to it some fifteen rods to the north. Between these were staked off the lots facing on either street, and about 93 feet deep; somewhat deeper as they tended west- ward, the two streets diverged toward the West. Cross streets here and there connected the two main ones, so that there might be about four lots to a block. Northward the land was laid out in farms or " gardens." On August 14, 1658, ground was first broken in the work of preparing these blocks and lots, and on September 10, the surveys and staking were finished. In this same summer of 1658, however, the laborers and such settlers as there were, were greatly afflicted by the " distempered atmosphere," so that a peculiar sickness, attended with great " debility," prevailed among them, and proved fatal to some. This, of course, was what we moderns call " malaria," a dis- temper which has been no stranger to Harlem in its later history. In- deed it was a common saying in the days which we have now reached in our narrative (about 1874) that malaria afflicted the very dogs there to such a degree that they were too weak to bark, or had to lean up against a fence to go through that exercise. It cannot be wondered at that people hesitated about settling there: but Stuyvesant's will was wont to override greater obstacles than this, and those who had accepted lots were ordered to go and occupy them on pain of losing them. So the Slots, and Cressons, and Tourneurs, and Demarests, and Montagnes went out to brave the malaria, and they succeeded in
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surviving and leaving posterity. The spring and summer of 1659 saw these permanent settlers and earliest Harlemites arrive. A Court of Justice was established and Magistrates appointed on August 16, 1660. In this same year a church was founded. During the summer the devout villagers had walked to New Amsterdam and worshiped in the Fort Church. But that could not be kept np in winter time. So in November, 1660, we find a Rev. Mr. Michael Zyperus buying a home in Harlem, and services were held in a private house, or some barn. The first church-building was put up in 1664, close by the river and between One Hundred and Twenty-fifth and One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Streets. It stood on the south side of the northerly one of the two main roads, which was called the Grooten Weg (Great or Main Road) or Kerk Laan (Church Lane). In 1686 the frame building was replaced by a substantial one of stone. its length and breadth about the same, with a steeple and gilt weathercock, of which the Haerlemmers were very proud. It was erected on the north side of the lane, and was not removed till 1825. the cemetery surrounding it re- maining till 1868. In 1825 a large church was built on the corner of Third Avenue and One Hundred and Twenty-first Street. The build- ing still remains but when the elevated trains came thundering by and disturbed worship, it was turned around to face One Hundred and Twenty-first Street, and upon its ample front yard separating it from the Avenue, a tall business edifice was erected, producing a com- fortable revenue, and deadening the irreverent noise of the trains. When the English came in 1664, Nichols tried to change the name of the village as he had that of the city, and called it Lancaster. But that name never " struck in," and Harlem has prevailed to this day. All through the eighteenth century Harlem was the objective point of lovers and pleasure parties for sleighrides in winter or chaiserides in summer. When in 1807 Gouverneur Morris and Simeon De Witt laid out their system of streets as far as One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, they apologized to an amazed public, by saying that it was quite reasonable to suppose that people would begin to put up dwell- ings on the plains of Harlem, before they would occupy the interven- ing hills to the Sonth. And their foresight has been vindicated abun- dantly by the event. About the middle of this century, before the advent of the horse-car, and while stages still took infrequent jour- neys to Harlem, there were no houses whatever along Third Avenue between a tavern at Ninety-seventh Street, itself a distant outpost. and One Hundred and Second Street. From that point to One Hun- dred and Twentieth Street only a few scattering houses were to be seen, while north of that street the dwellings were quite compact. vet to no greater number than two hundred, and stretching no further than Fifth Avenue to the westward. Then was St. Nicholas Avenue but plain Harlem Lane, with its three-quarter mile dead level, and shady trees offering a splendid speed-way for testing horseflesh.
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Mount Morris rejoiced in the plebeian title of Snake Hill, a curious rise of rock and hill in the midst of the plain, affording splendid views of rivers and islands, and bays, and woods and hills, in every direction. In 1865 the horse-ears had come into being, and more people and more honses followed, but a visitor who had been familiar with the village in 1846 still found it very little changed. The great transformation came when the elevated roads were built. Before this it had been more convenient to live in Brooklyn or even in New Jersey than in the upper part of Manhattan Island : but now there was no object in leav- ing the island, and people flocked to Harlem. In 1874 it was still
ELEVATED RAILROAD-CURVE AT 110TH STREET.
separated, on the side of Third Avenue, by a wide gap of open country extending from abont Ninetieth Street to One Hundredth Street. It took the horse-cars fifty minutes to convey passengers from Que Hnn- dred and Twenty-ninth Street to Twenty-third Street, and nearly an hour and a half to the City Hall. All this was soon changed when the swift trains began to thunder over head, and reduced the time from utmost Harlem to the Battery to ouly three-quarters of an hour. The alternative to the horse-cars before that were the steamboats leaving Harlem at the foot of One Hundred and Thirtieth Street at frequent intervals throughout the day. There was a whole " Sylvan " family of them, the Sylvan Grove, and Glen, and Dell, and others, some of
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which were quite fast boats. A few of the trips were " express." when no stops were made between Harlem and Peck Slip. By this means business men could reach down-town offices in about half an hour's time, or more, according to their distance from Peck Slip. The trip was a grateful relief after the care and confinement of business in the evening, and a bracing preparation for the day's duties in the morn- ing. But the " L " roads were a little more expeditious, and did not make it very essential as to the precise minute one should start from home; and so this pleasing and wholesome steamboat service fell into disuse and was abandoned.
The earliest attempt at an elevated railroad to run through the streets of New York, was the Greenwich Street Road, running on one side of Greenwich Street from the Battery to Thirtieth Street and Ninth Avenue. The section between the Battery and Cortlandt Street was opened to the public in July. 1867. The track was laid on solid beams of iron of the form used ordinarily in buildings, and evidently not as strong as the open-work that makes the trusses of the later structures. At any rate there was a break down at one of the street crossings where the spans were necessarily longer, and no more was heard of the Greenwich road or any other for some years. There was some hesitation too as to what mode of propulsion to adopt. At first a cable was used, and later small locomotives. But neither gave satis- faction. In 1875 the first Rapid Transit Commission was appointed as the result of an act of the Legislature, and after long deliberation. considering various proposed methods, the Commission decided in December that elevated roads were the most practicable. Of course the questions of noise and of the disfiguring of the streets were raised in objection. One plan proposed to build the structure between the blocks, through people's back-yards; but finally it was resolved to sae- rifice the looks of the streets for the sake of the great benefit to be de- rived from rapid transit. Two companies were chartered, the Gilbert to construct railways on the West side, and the New York on the East side. The Gilbert Company became the Manhattan, and in 1879 the roads all came under one management. Cyrus W. Field pur- chased a controlling interest iu the New York Company, and applying to this new enterprise that energy which had secured to the world the Atlantic Cable, the work was rapidly and efficiently pushed for- ward. Some years later, by one of those inevitable financial fluctua- tions attendant upon successful enterprises, the price of elevated rail- way stock went down to a ruinously low figure. At this juncture Mr. Jay Gould bought enough of Mr. Field's shares to save him from utter ruin. Since that time Mr. Gould, and after his death, his sons, have retained control of all the elevated railways in the city.
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