USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 52
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Although the mad rush and whirl of waters here had caused dismay to sailors of all sorts and nationalities, from the days of doughty Oloff the Dreamer and his crew, until far into the present century, no attempts were made to deal with the problem of improving the chan- nel by removing the obstructions until 1851. A French engineer, M. Maillefert, proposed to destroy the rocks by a process of surface blast- ing, and the New York Chamber of Commerce were impressed with the feasibility of his plan. He estimated the cost at $15,000, of which Henry Grinnell furnished one-third; and permission was granted by the Federal Government to do the work. Charges of gunpowder of one hundred and twenty-five pounds each were incased in tin canisters and placed on the top of the rocks under water. They were connected by wires with batteries on the shore and exploded by electricity, the weight of the superincumbent water helping to increase the destruc- tive effects upon the rocks. But after all not much was gained by these explosions; jagged points were removed, and several feet of depth gained over many of the smaller reefs, but the great solid rock beneath was not disturbed, and no greater depth whatever secured on such reefs as Hallett's Point and Flood Rock. But a fine feature of the undertaking was that the expenses were kept within the estimate, only $13,681 having been spent. In 1866 the United States Govern- ment took hold of the work in earnest, placing it under the engineer- ing care of General John Newton. In attacking the smaller rocks his method was to drill them from a scow anchored over them; in this way powerful explosives were introduced into their center and they were successfully shattered so that a depth of twenty-six feet was attained. In July 1869 Hallett's reef was attacked. The plan here was to advance from the land side with a cofferdam to keep back the water. A shaft was then sunk and galleries excavated, radiating thence in every direction, whose pillars and roofs were stocked with explosives. Flood Rock was assailed in the same manner, only. being much larger, two shafts and a double set of galleries were mined. The detailed account of these delicate and skillful operations belongs to
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another chapter, and will there be fully given. On September 24, 1876, the mines under Hallett's reef were exploded, furnishing a splen- did display as the columns of water rose up into the air, but causing no damage by the shock on land. Immediately hereafter work was begun on Flood Rock, which was blown up on October 10, 1885. The total cost of the Hallett's Point work was $81,092; and that of Flood Rock, although a five times larger blast, was $106,509.
While this useful work had been going on beneath the waters at one end of the harbor of New York, a splendid. ornamental structure had been in preparation for the entrance at the other. Soon after the establishment of the French Republic in 1870, a design was conceived at the suggestion of M. Laboulaye, to give some substantial expres- sion to the cordiality of feeling between itself and the American Re- public. It should be a memorial also to the relations of friendship between the two nations dating from the beginning of American In-
IIELL GATE EXPLOSION.
dependence. A French-American Union was formed in France and a million francs ($200,000) raised by one hundred thousand subscrib- ers. The monument selected was a colossal figure typical of Liberty enlightening the world, to be placed in the harbor of New York, con- spicnons by day and by night to entering mariners and voyagers. The great statue was necessarily slow in building. The seulptor selected was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the author of the Lafayette statue in Union Square. On his visit to New York in connection with its unveiling in 1876, as he sailed up the bay his eye fell on Bedlow's Island, which he at once selected as the proper site for the Statue of Liberty. It then became the object of the American people to prepare a pedestal worthy of the figure to be presented, and under the leader- ship of a committee of which William M. Evarts was chairman, $300,- 000 was raised for that purpose. The hand holding the torch, with the
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forearm, were sent to America in 1876, exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and afterward placed in Madison Square, opposite the Worth monument, where Farragut's statue stands now. On July 4, 1880, the noble work of art was formally made over to the American Minister. The statue was temporarily set up in Paris, and the unveiling and presentation were made the occasion of brilliant exercises. In April, 1883, work was begun on Bedlow's Island upon the foundation of the pedestal, the designs accepted being those of the celebrated architect Richard M. Hunt. Lack of funds occasionally interrupted the construction, but the people were aroused to the ne- cessity of the work by powerful appeals through the press and by in- fluential individuals, and early in 1886 the committee were enabled to announce that they were ready to place the statue on its base. It had been in the country for nearly a year. In May, 1885, the figure, re- duced again to its several plates, was stored aboard the Isère, a trans- port steamer furnished by the French Government, and on June 17, it arrived in New York harbor. Several American war vessels met the Isère at the Narrows and escorted her up the Bay, while hundreds of other vessels followed in their wake. The American committee, with guests, among whom was Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney, and the French representatives, landed on Bedlow's Island, where French choral societies furnished a choir of three hundred voices for the singing. Next the party crossed over to the Battery and a mili- tary procession escorted them to the City Hall where a luncheon was served in the Governor's room. But all this enthusiasm and festivity were greatly eclipsed on October 28. 1886, when the colossus had been placed in its position, the work upon it completed, and all was ready for the final and formal unveiling. It was another " Eighth Wonder " of the world, there being now several in the vicinity of New York, be- ginning with the Fourth Avenue Tunnel, including the Brooklyn Bridge, and ending with this last addition. The torch blazed away more than 306 feet above the waters of the harbor, the pedestal being 155 feet from foundation to the top, and the figure of Liberty measuring 151 feet from the hem of her garments sweeping the pedestal to the top of the torch. As some one remarks, the Colos- sus of Rhodes, with his somewhat ungraceful straddle, was a small boy compared to this maiden with her graceful pose. Forty people can stand in her head, even if forty tales can not proceed from it as they did from the head of Sir Walter Scott. The gigantic torch lifted up with such apparent ease, can comfortably accommodate twelve persons without crowding. The plates completing the exterior are riveted together, and the whole is braced powerfully by ribs of steel within, calculated to withstand the force of a gale blowing at the rate of one hundred miles an hour.
On the day set for the unveiling ceremonies. October 28, 1886, twenty thousand people marched past a reviewing stand on Madison
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Square, where President Cleveland sat to see them pass. It was un- happily a dreary day. a drizzling rain in the air and endless mnd under foot. The
parade marched down Broadway to the Battery. Later in the day the President was tak- oll to Bedlow's. now Liberty. Is- land. Distinguish- ed Frenchmen had come over to honor the occasion: the Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Instrue- tion, members of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies, and also the Vice-President of the Municipal Council of Paris. Comte De Lesseps. the hero of the Suez canal, once more presented the state in the name of France. and William M. Evarts spoke for the American peo- ple, and presented the pedestal. President Cleve- land accepted the gift from both in a few well-chosen words. Then M. "LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD." Bartholdi removed the veil from the head, and cannons and steamship whistles made the moment hide- ously hilarious, rendering the prayer by Dr. Richard S. Storrs as the literary exercises commenced, perfectly inaudible to those even near- est to him. M. Lefèvre delivered an oration in French, and Chauncey
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M. Depew another in English, and this completed the ceremonies. The rain prevented the fine pyrotechnic displays intended to have made the night brilliant, but all the shipping in the harbor was bright with lights on masts and rigging.
On February 4, of this same year (1886), a strike of horsecar drivers and conductors took the public and the directors of several companies by surprise. At four o'clock in the morning the gangs of men who were to begin the day's runs, failed to put in an appearance, and when the hours for going to downtown offices arrived, many thousands of citizens were astonished to find no cars running. There were of course the elevated roads, but plenty of people still utilized the horse- cars, especially the Broadway line, and this, as well as the University Place, the Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Avenne lines, were all "tied up." The demand was for a day of twelve hours, instead of the excessively long time of fourteen or even seventeen hours. The strike was so quietly and wisely organized, and the demand was so reasonable, that the companies all acceded to the men's demands, and therefore there was no violence whatever on the part of the men, and no attempt to place other employees on the part of the directors. At two o'clock in the afternoon an agreement was came to, and by four o'clock, or twelve hours after its commencement, the strike was off and cars began to run again, amid the cheers of the men and of a sympathetic public.
The mention of the Broadway line recalls another episode in munic- ipal affairs that bids the citizen of New York hide his head in shame. Stages were still running in bewildering multitudes over the busy thoroughfare as late as 1884. Then a horsecar line was talked of; but it awoke a horror in many minds that Broadway should be blocked up and hampered with cars running on rails, which could not dodge with the marvelous skill that the stage drivers had acquired, but must keep rigidly on their undeviating course. Nevertheless. somebody saw big profits in the enterprise, which indeed were sub- sequently realized, as the cars on Broadway are constantly crowded, no matter how rapidly one is sent after the other. To the surprise of all, a railroad company operating another line received from the Al- dermen a franchise to build a railway on Broadway. All went well for a year or so. But a lady, prominent in social and literary circles, was robbed by burglars, and pawn tickets traced some of the articles to the pawnshop kept by one of the Aldermen. She pushed the case and it was discovered that the Alderman's relations to the articles were not altogether innocent. One discovery led to another, and finally the secret came out why so generous a donation had been made to the Broadway railroad, for which some companies had offered to pay a large sum to the city. A sum of $300,000 had been expended by the successful company in bribes, about $20,000 apiece being the " price " of the city fathers. Henry M. Jaehne, the pawnbroker, was
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indieted in December, 1885, and in May, 1886, he was convicted and sentenced to serve nine years in State's prison. The sentence was ap- pealed from, but confirmed in October, and the Alderman was sent to Sing Sing. The trial of Alderman Arthur J. McQuade took place in December, 1886. The diffienlty of proving the actual circumstances of a bribe, made the results in punishment thus barren. but the ex- posure and disgrace broke down the president of the Broadway road, and he died not long after.
As the time approached when the nation would be privileged to celebrate the accomplishment of a full century of Federal Union, the people of New York City made up their minds to celebrate it in a man- ner worthy of that great occasion, and of the magnificent metropolis which owed its marvelous growth and prosperity to the success of the Government established in 1789. It was not forgotten that in its " day of small things," when Chambers Street was its utmost limit of habitations, New York was the Federal Capital, and that here the glorious experiment was put feebly, but hopefully, into operation. In New York, therefore, should occur the most splendid and elaborate celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the inauguration of Washington as President of the United States on April 30. 1789. Preparations for the festivity were made years in advance. The idea originated with the New York Historical Society at a meeting held in March, 1884. It was seconded in an effective manner at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in 1886. A general committee of two Imndred gentlemen was appointed, with Hamilton Fish as chairman, and this committee divided itself into ten sub-committees, charged with as many different main details of the celebration. These com- mittees were appointed and began their work in 1887. It was resolved to devote three days to the celebration, April 29, 30, and May 1. The people were requested to decorate their dwellings and places of busi- ness with flags and bunting, and appropriate devices, and there was a universal response. Never before had the city presented such an appearance. Every business street was one mass of colors. A feature never seen before was the strips of bunting a foot or two wide, divided into three equal stripes of red, white, and blue, each field strewn with stars inmerable; it made very effective material for decorating the fronts of houses. The stars and stripes of course prevailed, but many houses displayed flags with three broad bands of the tricolor. thereby unconscionsly reproducing the first flag (of the Dutch Republic) that waved over the city. A terrible downpour of rain on Saturday. April 27. imfortunately spoiled many of the cheaper materials used in the decorations, as it made the colors run into each other. But. nevertheless, the array maintained itself in pretty good shape everywhere. No section of the city formed an exception. Mr. Roosevelt rightly dwells on the significance of this fact. " In all the poorer quarters of the city." he remarks, " where the population
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was overwhelmingly of foreign birth of origin, the national flag, the stars and stripes, hung from every window, and the picture of Washington was displayed wherever there was room. Flag and portrait alike were tokens that they already chal-
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BONWIL
WALL STREET-SCENE OF EXERCISES IN 1889.
lenged as their own, American nationality and American life, glorying in the nation's past and confident in its future." An im- pressive evidence came to the writer on Sunday, April 28, the day be- fore the celebrations began, that in its century of existence, with all its vast strides in power, wealth, influence, territory, such as not the
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maddest fancy had dared conceive at the beginning in 1789-the Re- public had not vet exceeded the span of life sometimes accorded to a human being: for on that day he was introduced to a lady who cele- brated her one hundreth birthday! Remembering that four years before, at Grant's funeral, the country stood amazed at the 440,000 visitors accommodated by the metropolis with comparative ease. vin- dieating the wisdom of selecting New York for his tomb. it may here be said as a last preliminary observation, that no less than one million of people visited the city during the Washington centennial.
The aim was to reproduce, in as many partienlars as possible, the series of events that attended the inauguration of Washington in 1789. President Harrison, representing his earliest predeces- sor in the office, took train at Washington soon after midnight for Elizabeth on Monday, April 29. Thence he and his party were driven in carriages along the old road to Elizabethport. The committee of reception here met him and he was taken on board the United States dispatch boat, the Despatch, while the rest of the distinguished cou- pany followed on the steamers Monmonth and Sirius. These boats passed through two lines of warships anchored between Robbins' Reef and Liberty Island, the yards being manned and all the colors dis- played. The Despatch came to anchor in mid-stream opposite Wall Street. Washington had been conveyed all the way from Elizabeth- port to the foot of Wall Street in a barge rowed by twelve pilots, and steered by Captain Randall. This would have been too slow a pro- ceeding in these days; so it was ouly imitated to the extent of convey- ing President Harrison from the Despatch to the Wall Street ferry slip in a barge rowed by twelve pilots, commanded by Captain Am- brose Snow. As Governor Clinton and Mayor Varick had received Washington here in 1789. so Governor Hill received Harrison, at- tended by Mayor Grant and other officials of State and city. A lunch- eon was served at the Lawyers' Club in the Equitable Life Insurance building, after which the President was driven to the City Hall. As he passed up the steps a multitude of little girls strewed his path with flowers, and at the top he listened to an address, spoken by a member of the Senior Class of the Normal College; this part of the exercises being in imitation of the reception given to Washington as he passed through Trenton. N. J. The afternoon was spent in a reception to the people by the President in the Governor's Room, where he is said to have shaken hands or bowed to five thousand people. In the evening there was a ball at the Metropolitan Opera House, where a notable feature was a " quadrille of honor," participated in exclusively by descendants of families who were present at Washington's inaugural ball. The second day, Tuesday. Apris 30. the centennial anniversary day proper, was ushered in at sunrise by salvos of artillery. In the forenoon religions services were held in St. Paul's chapel. as they were held in the identical building in 1789. Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix. rector of
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Trinity, and Bishop Littlejohn, of Long Island, read special prayers and the regular service, while Bishop Potter, of New York, occupied the place of the first Bishop of New York, Samuel Provoost, of a cen- tury before, and preached the sermon. On the preceding Sunday, ser- vices commemorative of the occasion had been held in the churches of all denominations. The literary exercises of the day were held at the sub-treasury building, the site of the Federal Hall of old, a plat- form having been built over the broad stone stairs, and the partici- pants and guests grouping themselves about the statue of Washing- ton in the front and center. The President sat in the chair Wash- ington had occupied in the Senate Chamber a hundred years before, and the Bible upon which he had taken the oath of office was also placed prominently on exhibition. After a prayer by the Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, a poem was read, written for the or- casion by John G. Whittier, entitled " The Vow of Washington," after which the oration was delivered by Chauncey M. Depew. A short address was then made by President Harrison, and Archbishop Cor- rigan, of the Catholic Church, pronounced the benediction. Then the President and party, and the State and city officials, were driven to a stand on Madison Square to review the parade of troops. The march was up Broadway, to Waverly Place, to Fifth Avenue, to Fourteenth Street, around Union Square to Fifteenth Street, to Fifth Avenue, to Fifty-seventh Street. The first division was composed of the West Point and Naval Cadets, and United States infantry, cavalry, and ar- tillery. The second division consisted of the militia of the several states, twenty-three of them being represented, each detachment being headed by Governor and staff, and following in alphabetical order. New York State had 13,223 men in line, led by the gallant Seventh. The third division presented an impressive appearance, being made up exclusively of posts of the Grand Army of the Repub- lic, no less than ten thousand men being in line; the State having ap- propriated $20,000 for the transportation of posts from a distance. The evening was made brilliant with pyrotechnic displays in all the city parks, from the Battery to Mount Morris at One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Street and Madison Avenue. In Madison Square an open air concert was given by German singing societies, assisted by a band of seventy-five pieces. Two thousand voices sang under the di- rection of Theodore Thomas. The concert was opened with the render- ing of a selection from Wagner's Tannhauser; the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Oratorio of the Messiah was given by the chorus and band together. At the close the band and choir struck up the hymn America, but no sooner had the first strains sounded forth when the whole immense throng that crowded the Square and its adjoining streets joined in the familiar tune with an effect that was indescriba- ble. There was also a banquet in the Metropolitan Opera House that evening, attended by the President and ex-President Cleveland, at
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which eight hundred guests sat down at twenty-six tables, under the eyes of five thousand spectators. The third and last day. Wednesday, May 1. opened again with the booming of artillery. The feature of this day was a civic parade. in which seventy-five thousand people participated. The President reviewed it from the stand at Madison Square, and the line of march was along the same streets, but in the opposite direction. from Fifty-seventh Street down as far as Canal Street and Broadway. The first division was educational. led by stu-
THE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL ARCH.
dents from the City College, Columbia University, and the University of New York. There were several floats, the historical ones represent- ing John Smith, Henry Hudson and his crew, William Penn and the Quakers, Washington crossing the Delaware, and the Inauguration of 1789. The press, kindergarten schools, trades, and allegorical tab- leaux. also were represented upon floats. In the afternoon President Harrison and party returned to Washington, while the day was closed by a banquet in Brooklyn and a reception by the Bar Association to
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the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. The parades on these two days passed under three Triumphal Arches on Fifth Avenue. It was resolved as a permanent memorial of the occasion to replace the one at the foot of the Avenue in Washington Square with a marble arch. The people generously responded, and the cor- nerstone was laid on Decoration Day, 1890, by the Grand Master of the State of New York, John W. Vrooman. It was completed in 1892, but not formally received by the city until May 4, 1895, in order to await the completion of the sculptures. The arch is 70 feet high, adorned with several groups of senlpture and bas-reliefs, and is con- structed of the finest dolomite marble. Its cost was $128,000. It bears two inscriptions, one indicating the purpose of the arch or the occasion it commemorates; the other records in imperishable charac- ters that noble sentence of Washington which rallied and raised to the highest pitch of unselfish devotion the patriotism of the Constitu- tional Convention of 1788, resulting in the instrument which honestly meant to secure the good of the whole country. The words are: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God." And so New York City, with all the rest of the country, entered upon the second century of Federal Govern- ment, with homage to the past and gratitude for the present, as read in large characters in all the details of those three days of unpar- alleled, dignified, appropriate, in every way satisfying and inspiring, celebration. The city richly deserves the commentary of one who knows its virtues and its foibles as well as any man alive, and whom we have already cited: "For all its motley population, there is a most wholesome underlying spirit of patriotism in the city, if it can only be aroused. Few will question this who saw the great processions on land and water, and the other ceremonies attendant upon the cele- bration of the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of Federal Government."
After the overthrow of the Tweed Ring, there was for many years a succession of Mayors, selected from among the very best citizens. William F. Havemeyer, who had already served in that capacity in 1845 and in 1848, and who took a prominent part in breaking up the infamous Ring, was nominated for Mayor in the autumn of 1872, and elected by an overwhelming vote. He did not live to complete his term, being stricken with apoplexy on November 30, 1874, within a month of its termination, when his successor, Mr. William H. Wick- ham, was already elected. Mr. Wickham was of an old Long Island family, and had also come prominently before the people in the effort to down Tweed and his fellow thieves. It is still remembered how he filled the city offices with men of the highest order of ability and char- acter, such as the whole nation have since delighted to honor, includ- ing William C. Whitney, General Fitz -. John Porter, and Dr. E. G. Janeway. An extraordinary event marked the close of his adminis-
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