USA > New York > Bronx County > The Bronx and its people; a history, 1609-1927, Volume II > Part 42
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on Westchester Avenue, between the Bronx River and Sound View Avenue, for $2,000,000. During 1925 and 1926 large areas in West- chester, Unionport, Williamsbridge, and Wakefield, went under the ham- mer for building purposes.
West Bronx, prior to 1920, had great stretches of vacant land without street improvements, though the system of fixed streets had been ex- tended to them as far as was possible and a final map of the region was in process of elaboration. It was by this survey indeed that the subdividing of the territory was made quickly possible, so that in the years that have intervened the undeveloped region has been committed to the spade-work of builders and a large part of it has been made the seat of an interesting variety of structures. The vacant lands that still exist in 1926 have remained vacant for the most part because of the zoning ordinances which restrict certain areas for residence purposes and other areas for business establishments. In The Bronx, as else- where, the zoning restrictions, while delaying development, have led to a marked increase in the price of property, and made imperative more costly types of buildings.
In the zoning plan the arteries of traffic extending in easterly and westerly directions to the subway stations on Jerome Avenue have been designated as business highways. It is along these thoroughfares that some of the finest of the stores in the borough have been built. Elaborate structures have been erected on plans that admit of enlarge- ment as the purchasing population expands. In the vicinity of these mercantile centres great apartment houses and substantial family dwell- ings have in recent years been constructed.
Real estate in The Bronx dwells more in the future than in the past. With an area of forty-two square miles and a population exceeding that of every city in America save six, and yet manifestly the mere nucleus to a growth of which the limits cannot be seen, and with the American mainland to expand in, the first brilliant chapter alone may be said to have been written.
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CHAPTER XXV MERCANTILE INTERESTS
Prior to its annexation to New York City in 1874, the section which then comprised The Bronx lying west of the Bronx River covered an area of but 12,317 acres and consisted of fifty-two sparsely settled vil- lages and hamlets with an approximate population of 33,000. In 1895 the territory east of the Bronx River, comprising 14,500 acres, was an- nexed to the borough, making a total of 26,817 acres in all, or forty-two square miles of territory. Since the borough's annexation to New York City, following which it became familiarly known as the "North Side," its growth, as has been frequently indicated, has been greatly accelerated. As a consequence of the borough's great development, organizations of various kinds intended to promote its interests and the interests of the individuals who composed them, sprang into existence. Prom- inent among these were organizations like the North Side Board of Trade and the Taxpayers Alliance of the Borough of The Bronx. The North Side Board of Trade was organized on March 6, 1894. At the time of its formation the population of The Bronx was about 90,000, but its influence was soon manifested and it has since been an important factor in the local commercial development. With the consolidation of the Greater City, its growth was steady and continuous, and in time it became one of the most influential bodies in the upper section of Greater New York. On October 28, 1911, the cornerstone of the new North Side Board of Trade building, situated at Third and Lincoln avenues and East One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Street, was laid by Mayor Gaynor. The Taxpayers Alliance was founded in 1894, shortly after the establishment of local self-government in The Bronx, and it owed its formation to the Twenty-Third Ward Property Owners Association, later known as The Bronx County Property Owners As- sociation. The purpose of this body was to cooperate with other local improvement associations, believing that by so cooperating it could do more good than by working independently. Through the efforts of Joseph A. Goulden, one of the vice-presidents of the North Side Board of Trade, a meeting was arranged at the Fordham Club, on the evening of December 15, 1894, to which representatives from all other local as- sociations, were invited. The consolidation plan met with instant favor, and as a result the Taxpayers Alliance of the Borough of The Bronx was launched, with Colonel Goulden as its first president. There were six original associations forming this alliance, namely :
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The Twenty-Third Ward Property Owners Association; The Ford- ham Club; The West Farms Local Improvement Association; The Property Owners Association; Vyse Estate and Vicinity; The Fox Estate Property Owners Association.
The combined membership of these six organizations numbered about six hundred. In a few years the alliance had thirty-seven local asso- ciations affiliated with it, and a membership of eight thousand. The list of associations were then made up as follows:
The Twenty-Third Taxpayers Association; The Fordham Club; The Belmont Association; The Unionport Association; The West Mor- risania Club; The West Farms Association; The Woodlawn Associa- tion; The Westchester Association; The Bedford Park Association; The City Island Association; The Van Nest Association; The West- chester Improvement Company; The Borough Club; The Casanova Association ; The Springhurst Association; The Fordham Association ; The Morris Heights Association; The Tremont Association; The Wil- liamsbridge Improvement Association; The Wakefield Association ; The Vyse Estate Association; The Mapes Estate Association; The East Morrisania Property Owners Association; The East Tremont Tax- payers Association ; The Kingsbridge Association; The Throgg's Neck Association ; The Protective Association, Mapes Estate; The Riverside Association; The Spuyten Duyvil Association; The Fox Estate and Vicinity Association; The Claremont Heights Property Owners As- sociation; the City Island Board of Trade; The Highbridge Taxpayers Association; The Tax and Rentpayers Alliance of Wakefield; The Mosholu Parkway North Association; The Van Cortlandt Association.
Commercial Background - These two organizations have figured prominently in recent years in the mercantile interests of The Bronx, but those interests have behind them an historic background that goes back to transactions as remote as the establishment of New York itself. Let us take a glance at the historic development of that trade and commerce of which New York and The Bronx are the great modern products. From its birth New York has been a trading city. It was conceived in that idea, and it always been true to the purpose of its origin. It has been told how the charter of the West India Company was obtained from the States General of the Netherlands in 1621, and it has been shown that among the powers it bestowed was included the raising of fleets for predatory warfare. Never was the adage "As the twig is bent so is the tree inclined" better exemplified than in the taste thus early grafted on the Manhattan settlement for privateering and its natural corollary, smuggling ; or to use the gentler term applied to it, "illicit trade." In granting this privilege, which was tantamount to being called a "roving commission," the States General reserved a share
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of the treasures that should be captured. As a further privilege they exempted all exportations of Holland manufactures made by the com- pany, and all importations received by it of American products, from all duties for eight years.
One of the first acts of Peter Minuit, the first director-general of New Netherlands, on his arrival in 1626, was one of trade. He pur- chased a tract of twenty-two thousand acres on Manhattan Island from the Indian owners or holders for the sum of sixty guilders, or twenty-four dollars. The first commercial transaction was that related in the sale to the Pilgrims of the New Plymouth Colony of some strings of wampum-the sole currency of the Indians over the vast surface of the country before the arrival of the white man either at Plymouth Rock or on the Island of Manhattan. Furs were the first article of export. During the administration of Walter Van Twiller, the exports to the old country reached the sum of 134,953 florins ($53,981), the value of 14,891 beavers and 1,413 otters. Smuggling even then began to make such in-roads on the revenues of the West India Company that the Chamber of Accounts reported in 1644 a net loss to its treasury of over five hundred and fifty thousand guilders. Yet in the previous year two Spanish prizes were brought in with tobacco, sugar, and ebony from Cuba by a privateer owned by a New Amsterdam company. The little fleet which brought over Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took a Spanish prize on the voyage, and about the first thing the doughty governor did on his arrival was to order the two men-of-war then on the station "to go to sea and cruise" against the Spaniards. Not until 1642 was trade with foreign countries permitted to New Amster- dam merchants on their own account. In 1651 a discrimination of sixteen per cent duty was ordered on all imports from the English- American colonies into New Amsterdam, while goods exported thence to the same colonies were exempt from all duties. In 1655 an ordinance settled the values of wampum, which was the only money of the settle- ment and a legal tender, and so remained until 1656, when Stuyvesant conceived the idea of making beaver-skins a currency, and so declared them by an ordinance of 1657. Their money value was eight florins ($3.20).
After the English occupation of New Netherland the regular reports to the home government render the study of the commercial relations satisfactory. A request of Stuyvesant himself to the Duke of York in 1667 informs us as to the status of the Hollanders under the new régime. "Beaver, the most desirable commodity for Europe, hath always been purchased from the Indians by the commodities brought from Holland, as Camper, Duffles, Hatchetts, and other iron works made up at Utrick (Utrecht) and much esteemed by the Natives, asks for two such vessels, the Crosse Heart of 200 toun, the Indian of 120
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to go from Holland to N. Y." A note attached to this document reads : "Granted for seven years on Colonel Nichols's pass emitted to three ships." This was in accordance with the stipulations in the surrender, August 29, 1664: "It is consented that any people may come from ye Netherlands and plantations in this country and that Dutch vessels may freely come hither, any of ye Dutch may freely return home or send any merchandize home in vessels of their own country." Upon the petition of the common council of New York, this permission was withdrawn. Though the town had changed its name, its population was as yet unchanged; in the words of the petition, "the inhabitants being for the most part Dutch born." The English had long coveted the fur trade up the Hudson River. There was the incident of the ship "William," sent out by a company of London merchants in 1633. She sailed up to Fort Orange, now Albany, and took on board a load of peltries, which the Dutch soldiers from Fort Amsterdam made them discharge. Now that the English were in possession they continued the old exclusion. "No foreign vessel," wrote the duke's agent, 1675- 76, "is permitted to pass up the river and sell at Albany." And he complained to Andros that the Bostonians and other strangers were allowed to send small vessels to Esopus (Kingston) and Albany. Andros showed liberality in allowing free access to the Indian tribes up the river. The city wharf was improved that year and the contract with the builders was for payment in "beaver pay," one-half of which was in "ready wampum." This is a late date for the use of wampum in a bargain between whites, though it no doubt lasted much longer in the trade with the Indians, both Iroquois and Huron tribes. Rhode Island was the last of the New England colonies to give it up; but in 1662 the General Assembly of that colony, considering that "wam- pumpeage is fallen too low a rate and it cannot be judged that it is but a commodity and that it is unreasonable that it should be forced upon any man," ordered that all public fines should be paid in current pay according to merchants pay, and repealed all former laws. Black peage had fallen in 1649 to "four a penny."
Flour was the chief staple even of the Dutch settlement. . In the earliest known map (1661), a town windmill for the manufacture is shown within the limits of the present Battery Park. But the product was limited, and Andros in 1675 found it necessary to fix the price for winter wheat at 5s. 6d. per bushel, summer wheat at 2s. 6d., and Indian corn at 2s. 6d. As the French pushed their trade along the Great Lakes and far into the interior, and gradually grasped the fur trade, flour became more and more a necessary article of export. Andros, in his report to the Council of Plantations in 1678, says :
"Our principal places of trade are New York and Southampton, except Albany for the Indians. Produce is land provisions of all sorts as of wheate (exported
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yearly about sixty thousand bushels), pease, beef, pork, and some Refuse fish, Tobacco, beavers, peltry, or furs from the Indians, Deale and oak timbers, planks, pipe staves, lumber, horses and pitch and tarr lately begun to be made com- moditys imported are all sorts of English manufacture for Christians and blanketts Duffels etc., for Indians about fifty thousand pounds yearly. Pemaquid affors merchantable ships and masts. Our merchants are not many but most inhabitants and planters are about two thousand able to bear arms, old inhabitants of the place or of England, Except in and neere New Yorke of Dutch extraction and some few of all having but few servants much wanted and but very few slaves- a merchant worth one thousand or five hundred pounds is accompted a good sub- stantial merchant and a planter worth half that in movables is accompted rich- with all the Estates may be valued at about £150,000. There may lately have trade to ye Colony in a yeare about ten to fifteen ships or vessels of which together 100 touns each English, New England and our own built of which five small ships and a Ketch now belonging to New York four of them built there. No privateers on the coast." And again: "imported European goods of all sorts chiefly woven and other English manufactures and linings, some wines from Fyall and Madeira; and a Barbadoes and West India trade from whence chiefly comes rum. The Acts of Trade and Navigation are sayed and is generally believed not to be observed in the Colonies as they ought, there being no Custom Houses." But the Governor of Massachusetts gives clearings certificates and passes for every particular thing from thence to New York.
Governor Thomas Dongan, in 1686, is more specific, and shows a considerable advance in the trade of the port. "New York and Albany live wholly upon trade with the Indians, England and the West Indies. The returns for England are generally Beaver Peltry oil (whale oil), and tobacco when we can have it. To the West Indies we send flour bread, pease, pork, and sometimes horses; the return from thence for the most part is rum which pays the king a considerable excise, and some molasses which serves the people to make drink, and pays no custom. There are about nine or ten three mast vessels of about eighty or one hundred tons burthen, two or three ketches or barks of about forty tun, and about twenty sloops of twenty or five and twenty tun belonging to the government-all of which trade for England, Holland, and the West Indies, except six or seven sloops that use the river trade to Albany and that way. No product of Europe or the West Indies might be imported into this province unless it were directly from England or such part of the West Indies where such commodities were produced without paying as a custom to his Majesty, ten per cent." The growing importance of the flour trade is shown by the change in the arms of the province. The beaver had figured on the great seal since 1654, and the flour barrel was added in 1686-not for long, how- ever, as on the accession of the Duke of York to the throne as James the Second, the colonies were consolidated into a new dominion, and by the king's instructions to Andros, the viceroy, the seal of New York was broken in council, and the great seal of New England there- after used. Governor Dongan, by his management, secured in 1685,
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by the expedition of traders to the western Indians, a restoration of the channel of the fur trade to Albany, from which it had been diverted by the French governors of Canada. That year the Seneca Indians brought in ten thousand beaver-skins to Albany.
The English revolution of 1688, the overthrow of the Stuarts and the accession of William of Orange to the English throne, with the consequent Leisler troubles in the New York province, greatly deranged trade,-many of the principal merchants seeking refuge in New Jersey from the dangerous agitations of the town, which continued until the arrival of Governor Fletcher restored confidence and tranquillity to the city, and was not distasteful to the inhabitants; but commerce was by no means thriving. The beginning of King William's War (as the war with France which was proclaimed in the colonies in March, 1690, and continued until 1697, was called) was the signal for a descent of French privateers, seven of which swept the coast of New England from Cape Cod to New London in the May succeeding, and each year thereafter hung about the entire Atlantic coast line in May, June and July. In November, 1694, Fletcher advised the Board of Trade: "The trade of this place to the West Indies has much declined, our merchants fall upon new inventions to trade to New Foundland, if the King's ships were permitted to convey our vessels thither." The king's revenue from the customs of that time was £1,000 per annum, "more than sufficient in time of peace for the public charge of the country." Whatever his faults may have been, Governor Fletcher has the credit of having established many excellent institutions; among others the first exchange for the daily meeting of merchants for trade, which was ordered to be on the Long Bridge at the foot of Broad Street.
Privateering was always found to be a two edged sword; limitations of truce and treaty stipulations were soon disregarded in the eager pursuit of easily gotten wealth. Always practiced in New York, it became a recognized profession, and nearly every merchant of conse- quence had an interest, not only in one, but in many ventures. In the time of King William's War, under Fletcher's administration, it passed all bounds of decency. The capture of the "Great Mogul" with its offer- ings to Mecca, in 1695, was the crisis of its existence. The depredations of Captain Kidd, who was employed by Lord Bellomont, Robert Living- ston and others, to suppress piracy, are well known. They occurred in 1697. In 1697 the instructions to the Earl of Bellomont were precise, "to suffer not the adjoining Colonies to endeavor to obstruct the trade of New York and Albany," and "not to suffer any innovations within the River of New York; nor any goods to pass up the same but what shall have paid the duties at New York"; and he was further directed "to give all due encouragement and invitation to merchants and others who shall bring trade into the said province or any way contribute to
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the advantage thereof, in particular to the Royal African Company of England." This was a slave-trading company ; England found she could not get negroes fast enough by her licensed companies, and now opened the trade to all comers, with its consequent unrestrained barbarities that are still living memories.
The preparation of flour for export was always a chief industry of the city and colony. In 1678 a monopoly was granted to a few leading citizens of bolting all the flour and baking all the bread for export, baked bread being in demand in the West Indies. The neighboring towns of the province protested, but Fletcher, at the instance of Mayor de Peyster and the common council, by his intervention with the king continued the privilege. In 1694 the privilege was abolished as "un- lawful by law." The common council petitioned for its restoration in 1696. This is a curious document. There is another equally quaint preserved in the English records; it speaks of "grain as the staple commoditie of the province of New York," and adds that "the citizens had no sooner perceived that there were greater quantities of wheat raised than could be consumed within the said province but they con- trived and invented the art of bolting, by which they converted the wheat into flour and made it a manufacture not only profitable to all the inhabitants of this province, by the encouragement of tillage and navigation, but likewise beneficial and commodious to all the planta- tions, and the improvement thereof is the true and only cause of the growth, strength, and increase of buildings within the same and the riches, plenty of money and rise of value of lands of other parts of the province and the livelihood of all the inhabitants of this city did chiefly depend thereon." The minutes of the common council record that the Supreme Court was of the opinion that the city of New York had the charter or privilege of bolting or packing flour. Of this, as stated, they were deprived by the Assembly in 1694. Governor Andros some- what mended matters by prohibiting the transportation of wheat, "that the same might be improved by the inhabitants of this City by bolting it into flour and to bake 'bisketts' for transportation." The writer of the document quoted complains that the city of New York, which had been called the "Granary of America," where more or less than 40,000 to 50,000 bushels were in store, suffered greatly in consequence of this legislation, and the supply fell off to scarce 1,000 bushels, in- sufficient for the supply of the inhabitants. The sketch closes with the remarkable statement that of the 983 houses then in New York, 600 depended on "bolting," while in the three counties of Kings, Queens, and Ulster there were not over thirty "bolters."
The condition of trade is well displayed in the petition of the mer- chants of New York, fifty-seven in number, to Governor Cornbury, on June 25, 1705. The petition reads that "the principal staple of the trade
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of this province is the manufacture of wheat, expended chiefly in the West Indies by the English, and in their trade with Spanish subjects upon the continent; that the returns made from England (excepting the small trade of peltry, which is now so diminished as to be scarce worth regarding) were heavy pieces of eight (the Portuguese johannes, a gold coin of the value of eight dollars), and other produce of the West Indies, which came to us in return for our said manufacture. That upon peace after the last war, the greatest part of the heavy money in this province was remitted to England. That since the breaking out of the present war between France and Spain, our manufactures have been of small value in the West Indies to our great impoverish- ment." The petition asked the suspension of the proclamation as to foreign coins issued by the order of the queen. The province would never have suffered under any reasonable management by the Lords of Trade. These men were repeatedly informed that, if encouraged, it could supply England with all manner of naval stores in abundance- pitch, tar, resin, turpentine, flax, hemp, masts, and timber of all kinds and sizes, and very good of their kind. Of the trade of the period, William Smith, the historian, gives a very gloomy account. "Though," he says, "a war was proclaimed by England on May 4, 1702, against France and Spain, yet as the two Nations had entered into a treaty of Neutrality with the French in Canada, this province, instead of being harassed on its borders by the enemy carried on a trade very advanta- geous to all those who were concerned in it."
Queen Anne's War was concluded by the Peace of Utrecht in March, 1713. One of its provisions was the "full liberty" of the subjects of France and England in America "of going and coming on account of trade." Queen Anne died in August, 1714, and an entire concord, for the first time in a long period, between the executive, Brigadier Robert Hunter, the governor, and the Assembly, seemed to indicate renewed prosperity ; but, unfortunately for the New York colonists, whose trade was chiefly in provisions, there was an exclusion of vessels from their coast. To make up for this, Hunter again urged on the Board of Trade, an increase in the use of the naval stores produced here ; and in support of his claims he gave a long list of the ships in this port, "almost all of which have been built here." It was at this period that William Walton established his shipyards on the East River. In 1719 the British. sugar-colonies demanded of Parliament a prohibition of all intercourse between the northern colonies and any tropical islands except the British though they did not hesitate to maintain an illicit trade with their French and Spanish neighbors. In 1720, Hunter reports that the trade, and consequently the extent of shipping and the number of mariners, had been gradually increasing. Tar had again come into request, and whale-oil and whale-bone were added to the outgoing cargoes to Eng-
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