USA > New York > New York City > The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, Volume III > Part 40
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Sept. 26, 1814.
Jacob Brown
Oct. 10, 1814.
Governor George Clinton
Sept. 30, 1743.
Charles Stewart
.June 5, 1815.
Captain John Burgiss +
June 28, 1748.
Andrew Jackson.
Feb. 23, 1819.
Honorable William Shirley
. Aug. 11, 1748.
George Washington de La Fayette. . Aug. 18, 1824.
Sir Danvers Osborn
.Oct. 10, 1753.
Martin Van Buren
Mar. 23, 1829.
Sir Charles Hardy
Sept. 10, 1755.
Daniel T. Paterson June 27, 1832.
Winfield Scott April 23, 1847. =
..
Governor Henry Moore Nov. 21, 1765.
Matthew C. Perry
.July 24, 1848.
William Davis5 June 10, 1766.
Frederick Jerome 7
Sept. 18, 1848.
The Earl of Dunmore .Nov. 13, 1770.
David Cook
.Jan. 4, 1850.
Governor William Tryon
July 18, 1771.
Robert Creighton
.Jan. 19, 1854. ..
General Thomas Gage.
.June 7, 1773.
Edwin J. Low 8
Robert Anderson
April 22, 1861.
George Clinton.
Sept. 22, 1784.
Thurlow Weed
July 7, 1862.
John Jay
Oct. 4, 1784.
David G. Farragut
Aug. 17, 1864.
Baron Steuben.
. Oct. 11, 1784.
Andrew Johnson.
Aug. 27, 1866.
EDITOR.
1 For capturing a pirate vessel.
: For driving away pirates from New England waters.
3 Freeman was the son-in-law of Governor Cosby.
4 For capturing a privateer.
5 For having presented a portrait of William Pitt to the common council.
6 An engineer officer who came to this country with Lafayette and served with distinction in the
army, afterward drawing the plan of the city of Washington.
7 A common seaman who had displayed great heroism during a shipwreck, and had saved many lives.
8 This and the two preceding persons were cap- tains of vessels, who had been the means of res- cuing hundreds of shipwrecked people at sea, at great risk to themselves.
..
Andrew Hamilton, of Philadelphia. . Sept. 29, 1735. Daniel Horsmanden .Jan. 17, 1736.
Alexander Macomb
Nov. 21, 1814.
General Jeffrey Amherst. Nov. 27, 1760.
Governor Robert Monckton
. Oct. 31, 1761.
Zachary Taylor
Marquis de La Fayette
Sept. 14, 1784.
Stephen Decatur
CHAPTER X
TEN YEARS OF MUNICIPAL VIGOR 1837-1847
N March 4, 1837, beneath a cloudless sky, President Van Buren read his inaugural address to the thousands assem- bled before the Capitol at Washington. On the 15th of the same month, Daniel Webster visited the city of New- York, to receive an ovation from the Whigs of the metropolis for his opposition to the principles which had again triumphed in Martin Van Buren's election. Webster traveled from Philadelphia to Perth Amboy by the newly opened Camden and Am- boy Railway. A commit- tee of New-York's most prominent Whigs, appoint- ed to make arrangements for his reception, met him on his arrival at Perth Am- boy, where he was taken on board the steamer char- tered by the committee and conveyed to New-York city. An immense concourse of people assembled at the Battery to greet the "De- fender of the Constitution." Upon landing he was placed in a barouche with David W. J. With B. Ogden, Philip Hone, and Peter Stagg, and driven to the American Hotel, amid the cheers of the throngs which lined his route from the Battery to the hotel. In the evening between four thousand and five thousand persons, chiefly Whigs, were gathered in Niblo's Saloon to hear the great orator upon the issues of the time - the National Bank and the
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TEN YEARS OF MUNICIPAL VIGOR
methods of Jackson and of his successor. On the following day a public reception was tendered him in the City Hall.
The city which Webster visited in 1837 had few of the features of the metropolis of to-day. It had then a population of about 300,000, the census taken by the mayor's marshals in 1835 showing upward of 270,000. Near the Battery, at which the great Whig statesman disembarked, stood Castle Garden, then situated upon an insular mound of earth, ap- proached from the Bat- tery by a bridge. This historic structure, ori- ginally Castle Clinton, had in 1822 been ceded by the United States to the city, at which date it received its present name. For years after the cession it was rented as a place of amuse- ment, and distinguished singers, among whom may be enumerated Madame Malibran and Madame Grisi, have here delighted thousands of old New-Yorkers. As he BUNKER'S MANSION HOUSE, BROADWAY.1 rode up Broadway, the visitor may have had pointed out to him the house, long since razed, where Sir Henry Clinton had his headquarters during the Revolutionary War, but at this time the home of Edward Prime, of the banking-house of Prime, Ward & King, whom Webster doubtless met, and whose firm was destined to play an important part in the impending financial crisis of 1837. Nor could the successful advocate in the great case of Gibbons v. Ogden have failed to notice the adjoining house, once the home of Robert Fulton, with whose invention one of his most brilliant legal triumphs was associated. In the brick row then fronting Bowling Green lived Stephen Whitney, perhaps the wealthiest man of the city, and Jacob Hone, who, with his brother Philip, had amassed a fortune as an auctioneer. The house where Washington Irving once
1 Bunker's Mansion House, a famous hotel, was situated at No. 39 Broadway, and was a large double-brick house, erected in 1786 by General Alexander Macomb as a residence for himself. It was a most comfortable and well-conducted hotel, and was patronized largely by Southern families. Bunker, who was noted for his affability to his
customers, grew rich rapidly, and eventually sold the property and retired from business. Moulton, in his " History of New-York," says, according to tradition, that this house stood on the site of the first erection of any kind by the Dutch on Man- hattan Island. This consisted of a small redoubt, built in 1615. EDITOR.
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
resided was within sight, near the corner of State and Bridge streets, while No. 17 Whitehall street was still the home of his brother-in-law, the distinguished author of "The Backwoodsman," James K. Paul- ding, soon to be called to a place in Van Buren's cabinet as secretary of the navy. Numerous private residences were to be found upon Broadway below and above Wall street. About this marvelous thor- oughfare-for such Broadway was even then-banks were not more thickly clustered than churches. Grace Church stood on the corner of Rector street and Broadway; and at No. 11 Wall street, the old Presbyterian church, in which wor- shiped the society that, in 1844, built the church on Fifth Avenue, between Eleventh and Twelfth streets. Near Grace Church stood Trinity, but not the Trinity fa- miliar to the present generation. The Trinity of 1837, which was not the original edifice, but the third church upon this site, was com- pleted in 1788, and was now near- ing its end. In 1839 it was taken DUTCH CHURCH IN GARDEN STREET.1 down, and it was replaced in 1846 by the present noble structure. As the mention of the second temple would to the Jew have suggested the more splendid glory of the de- parted temple of Solomon, so the second Trinity recalls the former church, built in 1696, as the old historian records it, "very pleasantly upon the banks of the Hudson River," for the beach upon which the waters of the river once broke is now covered by gravestones. In Wall street, upon the site of the old Federal Hall, were reared the outlines of an unfinished structure, designed for the custom-house, and for many years occupied as such, but now the subtreasury. The old Merchants' Exchange, erected between 1825 and 1827 by the Mer- chants' Exchange Company, which was incorporated in 1823, with a capital of $1,000,000, had been destroyed in the great fire of Decem- ber, 1835, together with Ball Hughes's celebrated statue of Hamilton, which stood in the rotunda, and to save which most heroic efforts were made. The present Merchants' Exchange was begun in 1836, but was not finished until 1842. Upon a later visit, in 1842, Mr. Webster found it still incomplete. On the east side of Nassau street, between Cedar and Liberty, stood the Middle Dutch Church, an object familiar
1 The Garden Street Church (afterward called the South Church) was built in 1693, in Garden street, now Exchange Place. The original edifice
was of wood, and was octagonal ; it was altered in 1776, and in 1807 was rebuilt of stone, as shown in the above illustration. EDITOR
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TEN YEARS OF MUNICIPAL VIGOR
until 1882. Erected in 1729, it was for many years consecrated to the service of the God for the privilege of worshiping whom the Puritans of Holland so long and triumphantly withstood the armies of Alva and his son. The transfer of the government of Peter Stuyvesant's city to the Duke of York produced no change in its sacred character; but, during the Revolutionary days, it was used by the British as a place for the confinement of American soldiers.1 Peace being restored, religious worship was resumed and continued until 1845, when the building was leased to the United States and converted into a post- office; for the merchants of that day had successfully objected to a post-office as far up-town as the City Hall. The old South Dutch Church had been consumed in the great fire of 1835, but the North Dutch Church, erected upon the northwest corner of Fulton and Wil- liam streets, was, like St. George's Chapel in Beekman street, a famil- iar object until within a few years past.
The city, in 1837, and for several years afterward, was in a state of chaos, owing to the extent of building operations. New structures of brick or stone were replacing the old wooden architecture, or rising from the ruins caused by the fire of 1835. As the "Mirror" said, it reminded the observer of the famous city of Dido, where Æneas witnessed the incessant activity of the masons and architects of Tyre. The exodus of the wealthy from the lower parts of the city, within a few years to become general, had hardly yet commenced. Park Place, Murray, Warren, Chambers, Franklin, and White streets, and upon the east side East Broadway, were, besides Broadway, the chief abodes of fashion. A few elegant mansions had been built about University Square, or in lower Fifth Avenue. The City Park em- braced the land upon which the post-office now stands, and was cov- ered with ample shade-trees. To the west of the City Hall, then considered one of the finest public buildings in New-York, was the old jail or bridewell. The new City Hall, the brownstone building to the east of the present county court-house, was at this time, and for many years afterward, occupied by the justices of the United States District and Circuit Courts, and by the justices of the Marine. Court and Common Pleas. The Hall of Records has been so many times altered that our modern busy man forgets its transformations, although he deplores its ugliness; but the old building merits atten- tion, not only for the records it contains, but for the record of which it is the witness. At one time the headquarters of the infamous Cun- ningham, in which so many gallant patriots were confined during the occupation of the city by the British, the building in 1830 became the
1 It was in this church that the semi-centennial celebration of Washington's inauguration took place on April 30, 1839, under the auspices of the New-York Historical Society. The orator of the
occasion was the venerable John Quincy Adams, then seventy-two years of age. The ceremonies at the church were followed by a grand dinner at the City Hotel.
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
depository of the county records, and in the year 1832 was used as a cholera hospital. Later again it was renovated and remodeled, a new facade with Ionic columns erected, and in the days of which we write it was one of the landmarks of the city.
New-York was at this time deficient in public parks. Bowling Green was an inclosure sacred to the aristocrats who dwelt near it; St. John's Park, or Hudson Square, with its fine trees, was also main- tained in trim state for the exclusive use of the occupants of the sur- rounding mansions. The houses about this park were English in their architecture, usually double, and of two stories in height, with fronts of yellowish brick, contrasted with brownstone porticos and trimmings. An air of elegant uniformity pervaded this neighbor- hood, and "the continuous long lines of iron palisades both around the square and before the area of every house, and up the several door-steps," said a writer of the time, "give a peculiar aspect of European style and magnificence." With the exception of Vauxhall Park, . the Battery was the only popular pleasure-ground. Vauxhall Gardens, the "favorite resort of the democratic masses," occupied a large part of the block bounded by Fourth Avenue, Fourth street, La- fayette Place, and Astor Place, in- cluding the site of the Astor Li- John HenryHobart. brary. Washington Square was then the parade-ground, upon which the militia was reviewed. It had pre- viously been used as the Potter's Field. Union Square was well out of town. Gramercy Park, which owes its existence to the munificence of the late Samuel B. Ruggles, although designed before 1837, was not laid out or improved until about 1840. One of the attractions of this square, in its early days, was a fountain erected at a cost of $3000.
Washington Hall, erected by the Federalists in their palmy days, was situated where the Stewart marble building now stands. Stew- art's Chambers-street store was not opened until 1845. On the east side of Broadway was the Masonic Hall, long deemed, next to the Merchants' Exchange, the finest structure in the city. Columbia Col- lege was then in College Place, and the University of the City of New- York had not yet removed to its new building upon Washington Square. The New-York Society Library occupied rooms in the Mechanics'
-
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TEN YEARS OF MUNICIPAL VIGOR
Society building in Chambers street, awaiting the completion of its new home on the corner of Broadway and Leonard street. The Mercantile Library was at Clinton Hall, which was then situated on the southwest corner of Nas- sau and Beekman streets, the site lately occupied by the Nassau Bank, now by Temple Court. In this hall at that day, and for several years later, the young National Academy of Design exhibited the pictures of Allston, Ing- ham, Morse, and West, while at the more ample galleries of the American Art Union, at No. 497 Broadway, might THE BEVERLY ROBINSON HOUSE. 1 have been seen about this period "The Passing of a Summer Shower" by Durand, or Leutze's "Landing of Columbus."
The hotels of the city were few in number, and, considering its size, the accommodations which the town could furnish to travelers were far from adequate. The City Hotel-according to Dayton, "without an equal in the United States"-held the first place; but the recently erected Astor House soon rose to a position of primacy, and here were given many great dinners, notably those to the Prince de Joinville and Lord Ashburton. The Irving House was on the corner of Chambers street and Broadway; the American House at 135 Fulton street; in Broad street was the Exchange Hotel; in Park Row, Lovejoy's; in Nas- sau street, Tammany Hall, although then the headquarters of the Loco- focos, as the Whigs of the time were fond of styling all Democrats, dispensed hospitality upon the European plan. The elder Delmonico
1 The Beverly Robinson House was situated on the east bank of the Hudson, nearly opposite West Point, and was erected about 1750 by Colonel Beverly Robinson, whose father, John Robinson, was president of the colony of Virginia after the retirement of Governor Gooch. Its grounds, comprising a thousand acres, came to him through his marriage with Susanna, daughter of Frederick Philipse, the second proprietor of the manor, and sister of Mrs. Roger Morris. Colonel Robinson served with distinction as a major in the British army, under Wolfe, at the storming of Quebec. Opposed to the separation of the colonies from England, he removed to New-York, raised the Loyal American Regiment, and became its colonel. He played a conspicuous part in behalf of the royalists in many important matters, and his home on the Hudson was Arnold's headquarters while planning his treachery with Andre, in which Colonel Robinson was concerned. At the close of the war, his large estates, including "Beverly," VOL. III .- 24.
were confiscated and sold. The old mansion was replete with memories of colonial days. Wash- ington made use of it continually ; Putnam had his headquarters there also, as did other generals of the American army. It was for a long time in the possession of the Arden family, and was pur- chased about 1873 by Hamilton Fish, who pro- served it unaltered until its destruction by fire, March 17, 1892. For many years the old mansion was the residence of a member of his family. It was pleasantly situated near the foot of Sugar- Loaf Mountain, named by the first Dutch settlers Suiker Brood Berg, also the property of Mr. Fish, who writes to the Editor, under date of August 2, 1892: "The name is of ancient date, derived, as I have long since understood, from its shape, pre- senting on approach from the south by the river the pointed shape of the old-fashioned loaves of sugar. more familiar to those who (like me) num- ber their years at eighty-four, than to the younger generation."
1
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
and his rival, Guerin,-now but a name,-had just settled in the city; but the famous restaurant-keeper was Windust, whose basement in Park Row, not far from the Park Theater, was the resort of literary and theatrical people, among whom Thomas A. Cooper, Edmund Kean, Junius Brutus Booth, the Wallacks, and the Kembles were the most noted. After the curtain had fallen for the evening, hosts of auditors visited Windust's to catch a nearer glimpse of the celebrities of the stage. Before 1837, Windust, having become rich in the humble basement where wits and players long assembled, moved to more am- bitious quarters, and opened the famous Atheneum, at the corner
hnallikes
of Broadway and Leonard street, in the very heart of
fashion. But the patronage which reminds us of the London coffee-houses in the days of Johnson and Goldsmith, and which had made Windust rich and famous, did not follow him in his new venture, and before many years the Atheneum was closed.
"Last week," said the " Mirror " in September, 1837, " was a memora- ble one, for it was the first occasion in Gotham when eight theaters were in operation at the same time." Among the theaters of the day the Park easily held the first place, and was the " old Drury " of New- York. Its site was at No. 21 Park Row. Here, during this decade, could have been heard Ellen Tree (who visited America in 1836), Mr. and Mrs. Keeley, Charles Kemble, the Keans, Tyrone Power, Conway, Macready, and the Ravel family. Here was first publicly sung Payne's "Home, Sweet Home." Fannie Elssler, who visited New- York in 1840, here acquainted the staid Knickerbockers with the ballet, and her dancing in " la Tarentule " and in "la Sylphide" capti- vated audiences little accustomed to the pas seul. Henry Clay, upon one of his visits to the city, is said to have enjoyed one of these ballets. At the National,' Charles Kean played Hamlet, Macbeth, and Claude Melnotte; and Forrest, Lear and Richelieu, besides whom were other histrionic celebrities at the Franklin, the Broadway, or Euterpean Hall. The dramatic taste of the metropolis was never purer, nor the acting superior.
One of the most famous theaters of the time - famous not so much as a dramatic success as because of its site- was Richmond Hill, located on the corner of Varick and Charlton streets. The theater consisted of the old mansion-house of Aaron Burr with the addition of a building constructed in its rear, and at its opening a prize was offered for the best dedicatory poem. The judges assembled in one of the old rooms where in Burr's days had gathered Talleyrand, the philosopher Volney, and other celebrities of the time. Gulian C.
1 The National, originally designed for an opera- being in September, 1839, the second in May. 1841. house, was at Church and Leonard streets. It ' Its manager. James W. Wallack, was a well-known was twice consumed by fire, the first occasion personage in the society of that day.
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TEN YEARS OF MUNICIPAL VIGOR
Verplanck read the successful poem and broke the seal of the envelope containing the name of the successful competitor -Fitz-Greene Hal- leck. But Richmond Hill was too far out of town for those days; its fall was inevitable, and it was closed in 1842.
In the whole history of the Park Theater it never held a wealthier or more fashionable assemblage than on the evening of St. Valentine's day1 in 1842, when the leading society people of New-York held a ball in honor of Charles Dickens. The "Boz" ball was the talk of the town during January and February. On the evening of January 26, at a meeting at the Astor House, resolu- tions to arrange for a public ball in the novelist's honor were passed, and a committee appointed, including among its members Robert H. Mor- ris, Philip Hone, James Watson Webb, Justice Thomas J. Oakley, John W. Edmonds, Alexander W. Bradford, Charles W. Sandford, and William H. Appleton, who, not long previously, had opened in London, England, a branch establishment of SamuelJones' the firm of D. Appleton & Co. Ex- Mayor Hone was selected to address the letter of invitation to Mr. Dickens, who was then at Boston. The committee recommended that the ball should be given at the Park, the inside of which should be so transformed as to represent a magnificent saloon; the auditorium to be decorated with flowers, garlands, draperies, and trophies emblemati- cal of the different States of the Union; the floor to extend from the front of the boxes to the rear of the house, where, on an elevated stage, were to be represented in tableaux various interesting scenes from Dickens's works. The programme of the committee was strictly carried out. The decorations and ornaments were all, as Mr. Hone said, "Pickwickian." Before a temporary stage was hung a drop- curtain upon which Pickwick and his friends and Sam Weller were depicted. Behind this curtain were represented groups of persons illustrating incidents in "Pickwick," "Nicholas Nickleby," "Oliver
1 " Within the last few years the observance of this festival [St. Valentine's day] has been extend- ing in New-York, and it has now become quite a showy affair; forty thousand valentines pass through the course of the day. To-night [February 14, 1844] a club of bachelors, according to annual custom, give the ladies a hall at the Astor House." Letters from New-York, by Lydia Maria Child.
2 Samuel Jones was born July 26, 1734. He studied law with Judge William Smith, and became recorder of New-York in 1789. Dr. David Hosack said of him: "Common consent has indeed as- signed him the highest attainments in jurispru- dence, and the appellation of father of the New- York bar." He was the father of the chancellor. and died November 21, 1819. EDITOR.
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Twist," " The Old Curiosity Shop," "Barnaby Rudge," and others of Dickens's then published works. The intervals of the dancing were enlivened with the tableaux and with refreshments. The guests, who numbered nearly twenty-five hundred, were the exponents of the wealth and aristocracy of the town. Had it been possible to raise the curtain of futurity and to add to the stage tableaux the pictures of New-York life shortly to be presented in "Martin Chuzzlewit,"' there would have been a speedy end to the honors shown the guest of the evening. A few days later a dinner to the novelist, attended Eliz Jaar by more than two hundred ladies and gentle- men, was given at the City Hotel. It is an interesting fact that Washington Irving, who with other authors of the day was present on this occasion, was almost as much of a "lion" as Dickens. To Irving's affluent literary honors had recently been added his appointment as minister to Spain, upon the nomination of President Tyler.2
At few of the many brilliant entertainments for which these years were notable was gas, which was a recent introduction, used to illu- minate the drawing-rooms. The New-York Gas-light Company had been incorporated in 1823, with permission to lay its pipes below Canal and Grand streets, at which time the business and residential parts of the city were south of this line. In 1830 the Manhattan Gas- light Company was organized to supply the illuminant to the upper wards, but for many years lamps supplied with sperm-oil, or candles, were employed, especially in the more democratic households.
It was estimated that New-York then had about one hundred and fifty churches, of which not more than six were Roman Catholic. Before 1850 the churches had increased in number to two hundred and thirty-nine, and the number of Roman Catholic churches had been trebled. In the early part of this decade most of the churches were far down-town. Their migration up-town at this period is significant of the change then occurring in the center of popula- tion. Besides those already enumerated, the chief churches were St. George's Chapel in Beekman street, St. Paul's and St. John's chapels, Christ Church in Ann street, and the old Brick Church, which, with its adjoining grounds, occupied the site upon which the "Times " and the Potter buildings now stand.
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