USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 19
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a movement this was, yet four hundred people opposed its opening to one man who petitioned for it. This was the Rev. Evan M. Johnson, after whom Johnson Street is named, because it ran through his prop- erty. He was a man of large means, rector of an Episcopal church, without salary, and builder of one or two out of his own pocket. In 1853 the avenue was extended beyond the city limits into the Myrtle Avenue and Jamaica Plank Road. In the previous year a similar convenience for communicating with the outside town was con- structed toward the south, in the shape of the Brooklyn, Greenwood, and Bath Plank Road. It started at the junction of the present Fourth Avenue and Thirty-sixth Street (the historic Martense's Lane), and ended at the Bath House in New Utrecht. Along it for many years ran a dummy-engine railroad, lately converted into a trolley-car road. To encourage traffic between the city and the coun- try on the island back of it, the toll bridge on the Flushing and New- town Road (now Flushing Aveme) was made free. As we shall see later, the inlets at Red Hook had been finely utilized and converted into the Atlantic Basin; as a result, that portion of Brooklyn received a mighty impulse of life. In 1848 no less than thirty-five streets were laid out in the vicinity, and it was not long before residences were go- ing up along them all. For this neighborhood was materially im- proved in another respect. It had been fearfully malarial; indeed, the miasma rising from the marshes about Gowanus Creek had even made a residence on the Heights and on the slope toward Pros- pect Park very undesirable. Mr. Daniel Richards, the originator of the Atlantic Basin, undertook in 1848 and 1849 to confine the spread- ing, useless but noxious waters of the creek, into the more regular and useful channel of a canal. It was to be one hundred feet wide and nearly a mile in length, and of a depth to float ordinary canal- boats or sloops and schooners deeply loaded. The head of it was to touch Douglas Street, with a branch between Third and Fifth streets up to Fourth Avenue. That these endeavors to incite people to live or do business in Brooklyn had the desired effect, we may gather from some building statistics. In 1843 the houses erected numbered a total of 570, of which about 70 were put up in the Sixth Ward, or the vicinity of the Atlantic Basin and the Gowanus Canal. In 1849 it was ascertained that during the preceding twelvemonth, 2,100 buildings had gone up in the city, of which 700 were credited to the Sixth Ward. The matter of public parks was receiving better atten- tion. On a map of 1839 no less than eleven parks and squares are indicated. Many of these have not materialized, however well they looked on paper. A " Washington Park " was to be located at the junction of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. But this was not deemed a good place for it, so, in 1845. all the region around Fort Greene was secured for a park, and the patriotic name attached to that. But Fort Greene proved a more potent title; the best informed citizens of
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Brooklyn would look puzzled when asked for the whereabouts of Washington Park, and, finally, the sensible resolution was passed to give the park the name in everybody's mouth. Yet the space, valu- able for its historic memories as for the natural advantages of its landscapes, was preserved only by the most prompt and vigorous action on the part of a few publie-spirited citizens. A petition, signed by five thousand persons, went up to Albany asking for the speedy passage of a law that would save the property from vandalism and greed, and, on April 27, 1847 (when General Grant was celebrating his birthday in Mexico), the law was passed. Fort Greene Park thus became a possibility, and since has been developed into its beautiful reality, a bit of romance and nature in the midst of hard stone and brick, with its wide reaching views from the northwest parapet over two cities (now boroughs), and the river and bay between. The ex- pansion of the city made necessary public conveyances for the many people who were not quite of the quality to " keep a gig." Attempts to meet this necessity were made early, but were not always effective. We have mentioned a line of stages between Fulton Ferry and the Navy Yard. Later a line of omnibuses ran from that ferry to Bed- ford, and the other eastern portions of the city. But the service was quite unsatisfactory, and, therefore, unprofitable. The drivers, in fact. were too accommodating. They would not think of starting on any schedule time, for fear some dilatory customers might be left be- hind. At any time they would leave the direct road and diverge into side streets for a quarter of a mile or more to catch a stray passen- ger, who hailed them by the wave of a handkerchief. This made their arrival at the specified terminus an affair of great uncertainty, so that walking was often preferable, if one would save time. But, about 1840, the stages and stage routes then in operation were bought up by a Mr. Montgomery Queen, who was the owner of the Excelsior Stables on Washington Street. He at once introduced regularity. system, and punctuality into the service. The time of starting was fixed, and no deviation from the route was to be made. For a while the drivers and the public would not take Mr. Queen seriously; but he was in earnest. He threatened instant dismissal if empovees did not obey his directions. Pretty soon the public learned that it would save time decidedly to ride in Mr. Queen's stages, as they left on time and arrived on the time specified at the place whither they were bound. So they began to patronize the stages extensively. That same determination, however, which was so advantageous to his busi- ness, carried Mr. Queen into some eccentricities. He was desirous of keeping a record of his customers, and this, not only in the way of numbers, but of their names. So his drivers were directed to count passengers as they collected fares, and also to inquire the names of the passengers. The people saw no special use in this feature of their daily journey, and they declined to deliver up their identity with
THE GREAT DRY-DOCK, BROOKLYN NAVY YARD.
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their money. Mr. Queen was not to be put off in this way, and he threatened dire things, even refusal to convey the recalcitrant cus- tomers. A simple devise was then hit upon. As the driver went about the stage before starting asking the names one fine morning, he was confounded at receiving from every one the same reply : " Montgomery Queen." Having driven a whole stageful of Montgomery Queens to the ferry, the startling announcement had to be made to the proprie- tor, who took the hint and left people's names alone.
Mr. Queen was quite above that narrowness and shortsightedness which makes modern capitalists who have invested in one kind of rapid transit fight tooth and nail every new mode proposed. When the horse-car railroads began to loom up as the next best thing to his own stages, Mr. Queen became at once an advocate of the new method of transportation. Street cars made their first appearance in Brooklyn in the summer of 1854. These were the cars of the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, incorporated in December, 1853. The routes upon which these novel vehicles were run were Fulton Avenue, Myr- tle Avenue, Flushing Avenue, and Court Street, diverging thus to- ward four cardinal points in the territory of Brooklyn. The first trips for pay were made on July 4, 1854, between three or four miles of track having then been laid on these routes. And thus came the advent of modern days and ways. Even before the street cars Brooklyn had lost much of its ancient aspect, scarcely a single house reminding one of Dutch times remaining within the city limits as defined then, except in the Gowans section, where the Cortelyou house, at Fifth Avenue and Third Street, and the Bergen house, on Thirty-third or second, near Third Avenue, long stood as mementos of the days of the fathers.
The great event in the history of Brooklyn's commerce, industry. and trade during this period was the construction of the Atlantic Basin, in the year 1845. Opposite Governor's Island, and along But- termilk Channel, from Red Hook northward, there had always been numerous inlets or ponds, issuing by narrow mouths into the Bay. At high tide they were filled, and the surrounding flats covered. At low tide the flats were bare and the ponds shallow. This natural feature had led to the erection of mills, of which Van Dyck's and Sebring's ( or Suebringh's) have been noted before. About 1840, a Mr. Daniel Richards conceived the idea that out of these ponds and flats could be constructed a basin into which merchant vessels could be conveyed and sheltered while they discharged their cargoes for importation or re-shipment into adjoining warehouses. A company was organized by him in 1840, with a capital of one million dol- lars. Forty acres of flats and inlets were purchased along the shore of Buttermilk Channel. Upon the outside flats cribs of piles were built, filled in with stone, and as the shallow ponds were deep- ened, the mud and soil thus secured were made to increase
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the solidity of the outer portion. Upon these were built ware- houses four stories high, mostly of granite. The line of these houses fronting the bay is half a mile long, broken in the center by a passage two hundred feet wide. Even at low tide vessels drawing twenty feet can pass in and out, which is a great advantage, as at Liverpool similar basins have to be shut off from the outside harbor by sluice-gates holding the water during low tide. The basin back of the warehouses can contain large sea-going vessels by the hundred. Piers and wharves are thrown out into the middle of it, and another line of brick warehouses stands along the rear boundary. It was an enter- prise that inevitably secured an immense concentration of traffic. The accommodations for import trade were far superior to anything that New York could offer, as goods could be transferred from ships to storage without intervening transportation upon carts. The effect upon the section of Brooklyn in the immediate vicinity of the Basin has already been noted. In June, 1841, the first labor upon the enter- prise began. The cornerstone of the first warehouse was laid in May, 1844, and by 1848 the whole of the outside line of warehouses was com- pleted. In 1847 the first steam grain elevator ever erected in the port of New York was finished here upon the North Pier. Meantime, the people of Brooklyn were pleased to observe that the Government was making a first-class navy yard of the one established within the borders of the city. At the instance of Senator Henry C. Murphy, who had been Mayor of Brooklyn a few years before, Congress, in 1844, au- thorized the construction of a splendid stone dry dock, which was fin- ished in 1851. The main receptacle is 286 feet long at bottom and 307 at the top; and its width is 35 feet at the bottom, 98 feet at the top; the depth being 36 feet. The dock rests upon 9,000 piles. Greater things may have been done at the Navy Yard since, but this earlier achievement aroused much wonder and admiration at the time.
Increase of commerce and traffic made more financial institutions desirable, and the Atlantic and Brooklyn Bank had been added to the one established before the incorporation. When came the crash of the panic of 1837, the three city banks suspended specie payment. In 1840 their combined capital had reached $1,000,000 again. In 1845 the Long Island Bank was added to the others, and in 1850 the City Bank. In 1853 the Long Island and Phoenix Fire Insurance com- panies were established. During this period disappeared the last of an interesting class of industries which had been identified with the history of Brooklyn from its early and primitive days. This was the ropewalk owned by P. and A. Schermerhorn. It ran from Smith Street for several hundred feet between State and Schermerhorn streets, and was considered one of the largest concerns of the kind in the country. On December 29, 1841, it was destroyed by fire, and never rebuilt. Being where it was, it had rather interfered with the proper development of that section of the city, and its place was soon
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taken by neat residences, in keeping with those for which the neigh- borhood is still noted. The manufacture of white lead had been car- ried by this time to a remarkable extent, there being more than one great " works " for its production. The Brooklyn Company put forth nearly twelve thousand tons annually; it occupied an entire block on Front, between Washington and Adams streets, and employed nearly a hundred hands. A product of which Brooklyn citizens had no sneh cause to be proud was that issuing from its six distilleries, three rectifying establishments, and one brewery, all of which were in vigorous operation in 1851. They gave employment to nearly two hundred people, but it will be hard to calculate to what other hun- dreds or thousands their five millions of gallons of whisky brought desolation and poverty. Brooklyn was a good field for missionary work on this ground, and it was well that Father Mathew made it a visit in 1849. He was received with distinguished honor by the Mayor and Common Council, and, remaining in the city for a while. accomplished much good here as elsewhere. The business going on so increasingly in the city made expedient the erection of a first-class hotel, modeled after the best in New York. Such was the Pierrepont House, erected on Montagne Street, corner of Hicks, and opened to the public in May, 1854. Another concomitant of this phase of city life was the development of the Postoffice facilities. During the last of the village days, from 1829 to 1841, Mr. Adrian Hegeman kept the office in his stationery store on Fulton Street, near Hicks. After a city's dignity had been attained, and an ex-Mayor, George Hall, was made Postmaster, the location was still anything but commensurate with the altered circumstances, it being placed in the rear of a store on Hicks Street, opposite Doughty. In 1845 a new postmaster took the office to Fulton, between High and Nassau streets, but the fire of 1848 swept it away. Next we find the office at No. 6 Court Street, or Montague Hall, corner of Montagne Street; but, in 1853, Mr. Daniel van Voorhis removed it back to Fulton Street (337 and 339). There were now nine letter carriers, which sufficed for the city as it then was.
The business world had now received a new impulse and vast facili- ties for its increasing transactions by means of the railroads. When Brooklyn became a city but few were in operation in the country; yet Long Island was among the earliest of its sections to enter upon the enterprise of building and operating them. The " Brooklyn and Ja- maica Railroad Company " was incorporated as early as 1832, and four years later, or on April 18, 1836, it was ready with its double track of eleven miles, and began to run trains to Jamaica. That very day was seized upon by the " Long Island Railroad Company," chartered in 1834, to break ground for the continuation of the road to the end of the island, which was not completed till 1844. The im- pulse to the enterprise was to provide a quick means of transit be-
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tween New York and Boston. But by the time the road was finished there was direct communication between those two cities, involving no transfer of boats and the uncertain experiences of a water pas- sage. Hence the Long Island Railroad remained simply as the de- veloper of the insular interests and traffic. It started at South Ferry, the foot of Atlantic Street, or Avenue. The high ground where Cob- ble Hill had frowned grimly at the enemy in 1776, was pierced by a tunnel and sunken roadbed of nearly a mile in extent, wherein no stops could be made for passengers. A nucleus of population was found at Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, where is now the railway station. The next spot north stopped at was Bedford, and the next after that East New York, which became a " paper city " about 1837. Then there was a stretch of six miles to Jamaica without much popu- lation to furnish passengers. The speed attained was never more than twelve miles an hour. It was not long before Brooklyn was deprived of this evidence of nineteenth century progress. The people along Atlantic Avenue objected to the perils of a train rushing along at the tremendous speed of twelve miles an hour. So, after a while, the company were forced to leave the convenient terminus at South Fer- ry, close up the tunnel with its approaches, and betake themselves to regions quite outside the city limits. As Flatbush Avenue was as yet beyond the line of dense population, the trains might run on Atlantic Avenue beyond that point, but the main offices and sta- tions were taken to Hunter's Point, and Brooklyn is still practically only a side station, with the terminus of its railroad system at an in- convenient and comparatively inaccessible point. It was perceived too late that Atlantic Avenue had gained nothing and Brooklyn had lost much by the excessive nervousness of the residents on that thor- oughfare.
An American city without newspapers would be as hard to imagine as one withont politicians. Even before its village days, Brooklyn had been supplied with periodicals of that kind, as we saw, usually ven- turing out only once a week, and emboldened to two weekly issues after village incorporation. The first daily appeared in 1834, the Brooklyn Daily Adrertiser, which changed back and forth from " Daily " to " Evening" and again to " Morning" at a bewildering pace, but kept up appearing every twenty-four hours, until it gave up the shorter title and announced itself with great pomp to be The Native American Citizen and Brooklyn Erening Adrertiser, which must have taken nearly the half of the sheet to print. Horace Greeley had its printing and editing in charge during part of its peregrina- tions under these varying titles. In 1840 the Brooklyn Daily News appeared as the champion of the Democrats of that day. One of its editors, however, later in the same year began to publish the Long Island Daily Times, in the Whig (anticipatory Republican ) interest. But the lion and the lamb lay down together, the one inside the other,
THE BATTLESHIP MAINE, THE FINEST SHIP EVER BUILT AT THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD.
(FROM 1886-1890.) Destroyed in Havana Harbor, February 15, 1898.)
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when the News and Times became one. For, by this time, there had come upon the scene the paper that has survived all these, and is closely identified with Brooklyn in name, history, and advancement; which, though affiliated with a party, is greater than its party, and has became a household friend and intelligent guide of thought in the homes of people of all parties alike. We need hardly say that we refer to the Brooklyn Eagle, founded in 1841. At its start it was unfortunately saddled with one of those yard-long titles, of which early Brooklyn journalists seem to have been so fond. It was then the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat. Mr. Henry C. Murphy, a name to conjure with, was the proprietor. Its success was assured from the beginning, which dates from its first issue on December 27, 1841. William B. Marsh was its first editor, and, when he died in 1846, the editorial chair was occupied by a character since become widely known in the literature of the country. This was none other than Walt Whitman, the eccentric poet, or, rather, the poet of the eccentric meter, who then consented to be known by the unabbre- viated and commonplace name of Walter. He only held the position for one year, but in that time did a good thing for Brooklyn, as he might properly boast in recent days, in agitating the securing of the land which now adorns the city in the shape of Fort Greene Park. The Eagle, in 1853, became conspicuous by the then unprecedented enter- prise of furnishing news dispatches every hour, and more than one edi- tion of an afternoon. A curious journalistic undertaking was that of a child's paper called the Tyro, three inches by two in size, published in 1841 by a son of Dr. Howard, and his cousin, Joseph Howard, the latter having since advanced quite beyond the " tyro" state in jour- nalism in more senses than one.
In the early years of Brooklyn as a city a marked distinction in the character of the inhabitants was noticeable, as one looked to one or the other side of Fulton Street, where it wound its serpentine way up the hill from the ferry, and lost itself in the country back of the City Hall. It was remarked by the citizens themselves, and struck the cas- ual visitor with equal force. On the right-hand side, as one proceeded up from the ferry, upon Columbia Heights, and the plateau in their rear, were found elegant mansions of the rich, who, even then, in this republican country, made some pretensions to aristocracy. On the left, down Prospect and High and Concord and Myrtle, toward the Wallabout, and in the hollow back of Sands Street and Washington, there resided the more democratic multitude; not always the abject poor, but people in moderate circumstances, occupying small dwell- ings of wood or brick. It is a distinction which has perdured to the present day. A glance to the right to-day, as one steps into Fulton Street from the ferry, reveals upon the beetling crags above Furman Street, stately residences with the magnificent prospects of bay and river. So along Henry and Hicks and Pierrepont and Montague, and
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in all that neighborhood are seen the brownstone dwellings of the rich. Looking to the left down Front Street one perceives abodes of absolute squalor, where Italians now most congregate, while further away from the ferry, and further up and beyond the ridge of Sands Street, while noting a steady improvement in the surroundings, one sees mainly the humble homes of honest toilers for their daily bread, comfortable and neat; homes for the solid backbone of the nation, that middle class which is the mainstay of national virtue.
An inevitable result of the rapid growth of population in times when sanitary precautions were so few, was the invasion of infectious disease. In the same summer (1849) that New York lay prostrate beneath the scourge of the Asiatic cholera, Brooklyn was visited by it also. It came with grim impartiality to the sections where the rich had their abodes as well as to those of the poor. It commenced its ravages in Court Street, in its southern portion, where the low- lands had been filled in from the surrounding hills, so as to make foundations for the thirty-five streets that sprang up in the wake of the Atlantic Basin. The heaviest mortality was in this vicinity, but one-fifth of the cases occurred in other localities more favorably located. Altogether nearly six hundred and fifty people fell victims to the cholera, which was about one in one hundred and fifty of the population; while in New York, the mortality that same summer was one in eighty-six. In the year 1854 the epidemic again visited Brooklyn and raged in the widely separated neighborhoods of Pacific Street and Plymouth Street. The number of deaths exceeded by about a dozen that of the previous visitation.
A natural transition from these sad events leads us to speak of a feature of Brooklyn which is exceedingly prominent, and might have obtained for her not only the sobriquet of "New York's Bed room," but also that of "New York's Graveyard." We refer, of course, to the great multitude of cemeteries in and about the city as now constituted. Of these, Greenwood has obtained such fame, because of its many splendid adornments from the hand of art and nature both, that it constitutes properly one of Brooklyn's chief boasts, in spite of its funereal associations. In 1799, the township of Brooklyn, not yet a village, not yet a city by many years, resolved at one of its meetings that the officials be author- ized to appropriate all of one acre of land to be devoted to the purposes of a public burying-place. Here, in this "God's acre," it was intended that "the rude forefathers of the hamlet " should sleep, " each in his narrow cell forever laid "; but, unfor- tunately, the resolution of the town meeting was not carried into exe- cution. There was in the city, when so first constituted, the bury- ing-ground of the old Dutch Church, only recently made to bear one of the greatest emporiums of trade and traffic, on Fulton Street, between Lawrence and Duffield; and there was also the St. Ann's, on Fulton
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Street, nearly opposite Clinton. But something on a grander seale was contemplated in 1838. Then the Greenwood Cemetery Company was incorporated, with a capital of $300,000, and the privilege of purchasing two hundred acres of land. The site selected was upon the historie hills of Gowanus, where Stirling and his Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland regiments had made so brave a stand against the British in 1776. Battle Hill, one of these figuring particularly in accounts of the Battle of Long Island, was part of the land finally purchased. The purchase was attended with some difficulty; the old settlers of Gowanus had not accustomed themselves to a wide outlook, and that Boston had its Mount Auburn was no argument for themthat so enormous an extent of territory could be necessary for burying the dead, and it was 1842 before the two hundred acres were fully secured. Purchases since that of adjoining sections, some of which lay over the line in Flatbush, have brought the present dimensions of the cemetery up to over four hundred acres. Its location was superb, the view from its many elevated points, indeed, from its entire surface lying upon the slope of the lofty hills, embracing the wide expanse of the Upper Bay, and all its surrounding and diversified shores. The first person was buried there on September 5, 1840. At a distance of three miles from Fulton Ferry, it was secluded enough for its sad purposes, while not too far to serve as the burial-ground for New York as well as Brooklyn. The two hundred acres appeared an extrava- gant dimension in those early days; but now there is danger that more than twice the extent will soon be more than filled. Its natural beauty was deftly aided by the hand of art, so that within its precincts as little as possible of the clamorous outside world was permitted to intrude upon the eye. Yet the ear can not be deaf to the intru- sion of the living city upon the former seclusion of this city of the dead. An elevated railway runs its thundering trains every few min- utes along the whole length of its front on Fifth Avenue, and the clanging trolley car keeps up a good second below the other, besides running along one or two other sides of it. It is all the more piquant, therefore, to read what was fondly thought of its probable security from such rude invasions in the first years of Greenwood's creation. " The general elevation and unevenness of the ground all mark it as a spot unlikely to be coveted by the spirit of improvement, and, there- fore, may reasonably be expected to remain undisturbed for ages yet to come." We are too familiar with the famous cemetery in its latest development to need more than an allusion to its costly and magnifi- cent monuments, as well as to the attractions of its landscapes and prospects. It will therefore be of particular interest to transport our- selves to the first few years that followed its inception, and look upon it through the eyes of a contemporary in 1845. Even then with great enthusiasm could the historian Prime say of it: " It is impossible to convey to the mind of a stranger a correct idea of the appropriateness,
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