USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 34
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the work done at Packer that her graduates are admitted to the junior or sophomore classes of these institutions upon the mere diplo- ma, without further examination. Its corps of teachers numbers as high as fifty-three, of which forty-six are women. At the opening in 1854 the pupils counted three hundred; recently the figure stood be- tween seven hundred and fifty and eight hundred.
By Mrs. Packer's munificence, induced by the disaster of the fire, the single host became a double one-the trustees of the " de- "cor- porated Female Academy establishing themselves at once as trus- tees for a school of a similiar character for boys. Thus originated the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. It was opened in 1855, and met with the most gratifying success from the beginning. In 1869 it was allowed to confer the degree of Bachelor of Science, because its course was so largely devoted to scientific studies. In 1880 the increasing number of attend- ants compelled a considerable enlargement of the building, and a wing was added on the east side. which was supple- mented by a west wing in 1885. In 1882 an entirely new labora- tory was added, provided with all the more modern appliances, while the important accession of an astronomical observatory was realized in 1887. Two years later the humble boys' scientific school was formally and offi- cially given the style of the Polytechnic Institute of Brook- REV. DR. RICHARD S. STORRS. lyn, and in 1890 all the powers of a college were conferred upon it. There were no less than eight hundred students in attendance then, and ever more pressing for admission. Hence a new and large build- ing was erected in 1891, of the beautiful Romanesque order of archi- tecture, at a cost of $350,000, fronting one hundred and seventeen feet on Livingston Street, with a depth of one hundred feet.
Mention must also be made of another collegiate institution within the bounds of Brooklyn -- the Adelphi Academy, later Adelphi Col- lege. The feature which distinguishes this school from Packer and Polytechnic, is that pupils of both sexes are admitted to it. Its name is derived from the fact that it originated in a private school started by two teachers who had been connected with the Polytechnic, at 336 Adelphi Street, in February, 1863. They soon sold out, however, to
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Mr. J. Lockwood, who opened the school in September with eleven pupils. Their numbers grew apace, reaching three hundred in 1867, meantime Nos. 338 and 340 having been added to the house first occu- pied. In the latter year the cornerstone of the present building was laid on Lafayette Avenue. A new impulse was given to the enterprise in 1886, when Mr. Charles Pratt gave $160,000 for a new building. This was erected on the corner of St. James Place and Clifton Place, and connected with the other building fronting on Lafayette Avenue. About the same time collegiate privileges were acquired, before this the young people having been merely prepared for other colleges. In the way of university advantages, Brooklyn as a city rejoiced only in a school for physicians. The Long Island Medical College was or- ganized in 1860, the first full course of lectures being then given. Twenty-one students graduated the next year. The old Perry Man- sion on Henry Street was first utilized as it was, and afforded suffi- cient accommodations. But now the whole front of the block be- tween Pacific and Amity streets is occupied by a group of buildings, in use both for the instruction of classes and as hospitals for the sick. On the opposite side of the street on Henry stands the Hoagland Lab- oratory, erected by the mumificence of Dr. C. N. Hoagland, who also gave sufficient funds for the maintenance of the laboratory. Last of all a large edifice was erected on the corner of Amity and Henry, the gift of the widow of Henry D. Polhemus, who was for twenty-three years a member of the Board of Regents. With perhaps pardonable partiality it is the conviction of many Brooklyn men that "these combined buildings and the facilities for teaching the art of medicine which they afford, in the hands of the scientific body of men who compose its faculty and managers, provide a teaching plant unsur- passed by any in the country." It may be just possible, however, that a diploma from another institution of a similar kind in the great City of New York would be of more service in distant parts of the United States, or even in Europe, than one from the Long Island College Hospital, however excellent that may be. At any rate, Brooklyn has reason to congratulate itself on this one more evidence of a higher life.
We can not dismiss the subject of educational institutions as an evidence of such in Brooklyn, however, without some account of the Pratt Institute. Modeled after that pride and boast of New York, the Cooper Institute. it has really a much wider range, resem- bling more closely the art schools of Keswick and South Kensington, the technical schools of Whitechapel Guild, or the Handicraft School of Birmingham, in England. Yet again, it has so many features that are entirely original that the Pratt Institute mitst be reckoned as the most important school of its kind in the United States, if not in the world. It was founded, like the Cooper Institute, by a man of plain antecedents, who had risen from poverty to great affinence. This was
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Mr. Charles Pratt, a manufacturer, or refiner, of oil, on an immense scale. The land for the projected institute was bought in 1884, and work begun on the building the next year. A charter was secured in 1887. Mr. Pratt had had the scheme in his mind for about twenty-five years, his purpose being " to afford such instruction as shall enable men and women to support themselves by applied knowledge and skilled handicraft in various industries." To accommodate those al- ready engaged in earning a livelihood, many of the classes are held in the evening. Neither is it forgotten that people of that class have self-respect; to save their feelings as mere recipients of charity, and also to insure earnestness and regularity in their work, charges are made from $2 to $30 a term for certain courses. The Pratt Institute has now become a familiar landmark of Brooklyn. It stands on Ryerson Street, between DeKalb and Willoughby avenues, the build- ings reaching back to Grand Avenue, where thousands pass them every day in the elevated railway cars. The main building is of brick and terra cotta, one hundred feet wide and fifty deep, with a wing attached measuring thirty-seven feet by fifty. The height is six stor- ies. On the first floor is the library, which has space for 30,000 volumes; the actual number now collected is 20,000. Any resident of Brooklyn over fourteen years of age may on application, with proper reference, have the privilege of using the books, drawing them out for home-reading. The curriculum embraces classes in ethics, in the problems of social and political life, and some other branches of a more abstract utility. But the main effort is directed toward arts and occupations of practical business and wage-earning existence. Domestic science is pursued with great assiduity; dressmaking, mil- linery, and art needlework being taught; there are three courses in cookery, with twelve lessons in each, and the fruits of that labor are used in furnishing luncheons in two restaurants, one on the floor of the cooking-school, and one in the basement. The commercial course includes bookkeeping, shorthand, and typewriting. Painting and free-haud drawing are taught, also designing, wood-carving. clay-modeling. One of the recent additions has been a new art- building, which contains a large auditorium, a museum, an art-de- partment for exhibitions. The library is to be transferred to this also. The buildings set apart for the mechanic arts cover a space of two hundred and forty-seven feet by ninety-five, and are from one to three stories high. These contain dynamos for lighting and engines for heating, as well as for furnishing power to the shops. The Mechanics' Arts Course is arranged to cover three years, and there are forges and anvils for classes of twenty-five pupils at once. The foundry has a twenty-inch cupola, brass and white metal furnaces, and a core oven: while there are engines, lathes, drilling machines, planers, and all such appurtenances galore. Art castings
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in iron and bronze are made a specialty. The building trades also receive a due share of attention, there being classes in bricklaying and building of frame houses. Plumbing is taught with particular thoroughness, and it includes a course in sanitary engineering, with accommodations for fifty-four pupils. Not only are the young people in these various ways taught how to earn money, but there is also a department teaching them how to use it and care for it. This is done through what is called the " Pratt Institute Thrift Association," which has an investment branch and a loan branch. In 1891 the Froebel Academy on Lafayette Avenue, opposite Tompkins Square, was purchased from the association of ladies and gentlemen who had started a kindergarten there, and thus that work was taken up also by the Institute. In addition to all that has been mentioned, in- struction in music is also given, and a school in library work has been organized. At the end of four years a report was able to announce that 3,232 students had attended the various classes. The endowment fund provided for the Institute amounts to two millions of dollars, and the resources of various kinds it can draw from run up to $835,- 000 more. These figures, of course, put quite into the shade the munificent donation of $600,000 wherewith Cooper Institute was founded, although doubtless the sums subsequently given by Mr. Cooper in maintaining his work amount to much more.
We began our account of New York's higher life with a review of her libraries. The libraries of Brooklyn also furnish interesting his- tory. Thompson tells us that the Apprentices' Library Association was formed as long ago as 1824, and that the cornerstone of its build- ing was laid by no less a person than Lafayette, who was then on a visit to the nation. This doubly interesting event took place on July 4, 1825, and was described at length in the Eagle of July 3, 1858, by its editor, the famous poet, Walt Whitman, who was an eyewitness of the ceremony at the tender age of six. He says: " The greater part of the show consisted of the Sunday and other schools. The day was a remarkably beautiful one. The boys and girls of Brooklyn were marshaled at the old ferry in two lines, facing inward, with a wide space between. Lafayette came over in a carriage from New York and passed slowly through the lines. The whole thing was old- fashioned, quiet, natural, and without cost, or at the expense of a few dollars only. After Lafayette had passed through the lines, the peo- ple who had congregated in large numbers (women and girls as nu- merous as men), proceeded in groups to the site of the new build- ing. The children and some of the citizens formed a procession and marched from the ferry to the same spot. Arriving there we recol- lect there was some delay in placing the children where they could see and hear the performances. Heaps of building materials, stone, etc., obstructed the place. Several gentlemen helped in handing the
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children down to stand on convenient spots, in the lately excavated basement; among the rest Lafayette himself assisted. The writer well recollects the pride he felt in being one of those who happened to be taken in Lafayette's arms and passed down." Before this the library had been stored in a frame building at 143 Fulton Street, belonging to a Mrs. Suydam, who charged but a nominal rent. Yet the enter- prise was commenced under difficulties, and the community was hard- ly ripe for it. For more than twenty years no money could be ob- tained for the purchase of books. Donations in books, pamphlets, and papers were solicited from house to house, and collected by each so-
IN MEMORIAM
HENRY WARD.BEECHER
FIRST . PASTOR ยท OF 1847
PLYMOUTH: CHURCH 1887
CONCERTEN THEO
THE GREA
TABLET IN PLYMOUTH CHURCH.
licitor, two days after notice, in a wheelbarrow. In 1844 the first pur- chase of books was made, at the magnificent figure of $155.40. The building erected with so much eclat in 1825 was sold to the city for $11,000 in 1836, as the library had fallen into almost total disuse, and its promoters and patrons had either died or moved away. The books were transferred to the Brooklyn Lyceum, whence in turn they passed over to the Brooklyn Institute. The building was utilized by the city for public offices and the holding of courts, pending the erection of that ambitious City Hall, which never materialized.
The Brooklyn City Library was incorporated in 1839. We find
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among the names of its charter members that of Henry C. Murphy, so constantly identified with those works of love which were calcu- lated to bless and elevate the citizens of Brooklyn. It was planned on the lines of the Society Library of New York, each subscriber being entitled to one share for every $25 paid by him. The library gathered about 3,000 volumes, but there was no great call for them, and gradu- ally the books were transferred from the care of one society to another, until finally they were divided between the Apprentices' Library and Long Island Historical Society. Its name only is of interest to us now, for the Brooklyn City Library is a very vigorous and successful affair, but in no way the direct successor of its former namesake. Its history makes us acquainted with the " Mercantile Library Associa- tion " of Brooklyn. This was the result of a discussion invited at a meeting of about twenty gentlemen at the Athenaeum in October, 1857. A call was issued signed by about six hundred people, and a public meeting was held in November, at which a large number of citizens were present, and nearly thirteen hundred dollars were pledged. The organization was therefore fully effected, and work be- gun in the building of the Athenaeum, which was offered rent free for five years, with the use of its library and reading-room, as well as of other rooms for classes, debating societies, public lectures, and board meetings. The Athenaeum library was united with the other, and $800 annually pledged for adding new books. Under these favor- able auspices the rooms were opened to members and the public in May, 1858. By January, 1859, the number of books had increased to 11,400. The number of volumes taken out during the eight months then elapsed was over twenty thousand, by 1,350 different indi- viduals. A course of four lectures given gratuitously by such eminent speakers as Beecher, Storrs, Chapin, and Curtis realized a handsome return for the Association. In 1864 a subscription was inaugurated for the erection of a building of its own, the five years of free rent having expired. Ground was bought on Montague Street the same year, but building was not begun until 1867, and on January 18, 1869, the new library was opened to the public. The cost of it was $227,000; fronting seventy-five feet on Montague Street, it has a height of three stories, and with the prevalence of the pointed arch in windows and doorways, indicates the Gothic style. In 1892 the library possessed 113,251 volumes. Its name was changed to the " Brooklyn Library " when it went into its new quarters, and by this it has become familiar and endeared to all those who rejoice to observe in Brooklyn people a devotion to the pursuit of intellectual advancement.
From libraries the transition is a natural one to those who write books. Brooklyn has been the home of a few of those whose fame has gone throughout the land. Not to speak of the clergymen who are also known as authors: Storrs, Beecher, Chadwick, Cuyler, Tal-
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mage, Abbott, and many more, we mean more particularly those whose sphere was literature exclusively. Perhaps the most widely known name among these is Marion Harland (Mrs. E. P. Terhune), whose home was.in the city during several years that her husband was pastor of prominent churches there. Another, whose fame began when he was a resident elsewhere, is Will Carleton, now for many years a loyal and affectionate denizen of Brooklyn. It is true some crities have a way of sneering at his productions, and find them a butt for the exercise of their wit. But true feeling, genuine pathos, and homely humor are by no means absent from his pages, and keep them the cherished possession of many a home, although, perhaps, the vein that he possesses is worked a little threadbare, and the method of stringing the pieces together is hardly as happy as Chaucer's. Yet we can not say that Longfellow displayed much more artistic inge- nuity in amalgamating the stories of the " Wayside Inn." A dear personal friend of Marion Harland and a next door neighbor, was Mrs. Margaret Sangster, the author of "Poems of the Household " and other collections of short pieces, which display genuine lyric power, exquisite home feeling, and a pronounced grace in versifying. It is a curious fact that these three writers, so well known to the American reading public, all lived for some years on the same block on Greene Avenue, between Bedford and Nostrand avenues. Two more female writers must be mentioned, whose homes were in Brook- lyn, Helen Campbell and Anna Katharine Green. The latter had tried her hand at various stories without much success, after which she attained extensive fame by detective stories, such as the " Leav- enworth Case," and others. Brooklyn may also proudly reckon among her residents two authors who are her own from boyhood up, having attended the Polytechnic Institute at the beginning of their educa- tion, and still doing their work in their Brooklyn home. Their home is one, for they are brothers, Worthington C. Ford and Paul Leicester Ford. The former had so distinguished himself by statistic studies and writings that he was placed at the head of the Bureau of Sta- tistics at Washington, D. C., by President Cleveland. In that position he more than fulfilled the expectations raised by his former work. When he was dismissed the other day to suit the disgraceful exigen- cies of political life, a cry of indignation went up on every side from the most respectable journals of the land. One spoke of Mr. Ford as " a statistician of severe training, of long experience, of entire impar- tiality, of great skill and sagacity, and his reputation is as high in other lands as at home. He has made the Bureau of Statistics au- thoritative. He has served with perfect fairness under Republican as under Democratic administrations, and his service has been of the greatest value to the Government and to business men. He com- mands and deserves the implicit confidence of all who know him
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and his work." But all this merit does not avail against the word of a man who puts a President in office, and when that word involves the removal of so excellent an official from a position requiring just the qualities and training of Mr. Ford, it is supreme against every other consideration, unless the President is made of very stern stuff indeed. So the removal was made, " an act," as the same journal well characterizes it, " so despicable that it is not easy to describe it ade- quately." Thus Mr. Ford retired to Brooklyn to continue his useful line of labor in a more private capacity. It is not necessary to say for what his brother Paul Leicester Ford has become famous. First there was " Peter Stirling," published in 1894, and gradually winning its astonishing popularity during the next year, so that now it is one of the six best selling books on the market. Next there was the " Story of an Untold Love," almost equally successful. Then came "The True George Washington," setting forth popularly the Father of his country in historical, not fictional, form, and the best-bought book of history that has appeared recently. Mr. Ford's work had always lain in the direction of historical study, especially of Revolutionary times. Other branches of investigation in which he and his brother engage jointly are genealogy, and the history of editions of American books. Yet it is well known that " Peter Stirling " deals with no his- toric situations back in the Revolution, but with the problems or amenities of practical politics going on among the men of this gen- eration. Much conjecture was aroused as to who was meant by the hero. The author himself, in a conversation recently published, said : " I don't blame people for thinking that Peter Stirling is Grover Cleveland, for really there are many points of resemblance. But the fact is that Peter Stirling is no one in particular. He grew out of my political experiences right here in the First Ward of Brooklyn some years ago." This interesting pair of brothers, so eminent in literary pursuits, live on Clark Street, Brooklyn Heights. A description of the workshop where their labors are performed will not be out of place, and will add to the pride Brooklyn may well feel in the fact that there are those in her midst who have carried devotion to the higher life of the intellect to so great a height. A visitor writes : " The house itself is curious enough, with its broad drawing-rooms on the second floor, its plain unassuming front, and its general air of a dwelling of half a century ago. But the library is by far the crowning feature. It is a great, almost square, apartment, a room 50 by 60 feet, made by building over the entire yard of the old Ford home. A huge square skylight in its center pours in a flood of sun- light, and several side windows add to the illumination. Along the four walls, in a line that is practically unbroken, stretch lengths of high bookcases, their bases honeycombed with shallow, broad, and deep pasteboard boxes containing rare autographs, pamphlets, and
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memoranda of the greatest value. Here, below, and elsewhere about the house, for the library shelves have overflowed, are at least 100,000 volumes and pamphlets, a collection unequaled in its field, - that of Americana." Mr. Paul Leicester Ford is still very young, scarcely thirty-three. Ill-health in his boyhood days forbade his going to school, but his brother attended the Polytechnic Institute. The great library, however, was already in existence, having been begun by their father, and the younger Ford was left to roam at will among its treas- ures, with the excellent results that have made him a famous littera- teur and a historian of profound learning and vast erudition in the very heyday of young manhood.
There are two other literary institutions, whose existence and pros- perity emphasize the general interest in intellectual pursuits which characterizes the people of Brooklyn. It has been our fortune to at- tend but one or two of the readings or lectures at the hall of the New York Historical Society. And it may be truly said that never at all the many such exercises which it was our privilege to attend in the Long Island Historical Society, was there seen so small a number of auditors. Their hall is much larger than the one in New York. Yet at no time did we see it less than half filled, no matter how " dry " the subject promised to be. And more than once, with a particularly fine treat before them, the demand for cards of admission distributed by members was such that the capacity of the hall was greatly ex- ceeded, and the lecture had to be transferred to the Academy of Music. The origin of the Society dates back only thirty-five years. In re- sponse to a call sent out by the Hon. Henry C. Murphy and several other gentlemen, some from Brooklyn, some from Kings, some from Queens, and some from Suffolk counties, a meeting was held March 3, 1863. At this the resolution was adopted to establish a Long Is- land Historical Society, whose object should be " to discover, procure, and preserve whatever may relate to general history, to the national, civil, ecclesiastical, and literary history of the United States, the State of New York, and more particularly of the counties, cities, towns, and villages of Long Island." The movement met with instant and marvelous success. The organization and incorporation took place that same spring. " Accommodations for a library," says Dr. Stiles, " were promptly secured in the Hamilton Building, corner of Court and Joralemon streets, contributions of books, pamphlets, etc., poured rapidly in, and the Society started upon a career of active use- fulness, hitherto unequaled by the history of any similar institution in the country." In the course of the years this extraordinary success warranted the bold project of erecting a handsome building of their own. This was done and the present familiar edifice erected on the corner of Pierrepont and Clinton streets. It was finished late in 1880, and formally opened to the public in January, 1881. On the ground
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