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 56
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Term.
Killed.
Wounded.
Died.
Remarka.
(Infantry.) Third Excelsior.
72
man
July-Oct., '61
June 29, '65. . 3 yrs. 153 403 76 reorg. '64
Fifth Excelsior.
74
Graham ..
June-Oct., '61
June-Aug.'64
70 125 301
Cameron High- landers
78
Col. D. Ull- man
Oct.,'61, April, '62 July 12, '64 ..
75 trans. '64 58 121
Cameron Rifle Highlanders ..
(Vet.)
79
MeK. Elliott May 29, '61
July 14, '65 ..
83
ninth
Militia
Second Militia.
82
Tompkins . May-June, '61
June 25, '64 ..
178 399 93
Ninth Militia. Fifth Reg't Irish Brigade.
83
Stiles . .
June 8, '61
June 23, '64 ..
164 390 91
Hancock Guard.
(Vet.)
90
Morgan.
Sept .- Dec., '61
Feb. 9, '66
65 87 190
Warren Rifles. Union
Coast
..
99
Wardrop
June-Oct., '61.
July 15, '65
39
80 164
.. '64
Van Buren
..
102
Col. T. B. Van Buren
Nov.,'61, April, '62 July 21, '65 ..
74 249
82
*65
Seward Infantry
103
Egloffstein. Nov., '61, Mar., '62 Dec. 7, '65 Col. E. Peiss- ner
Sept. 4, '62
June 7, '65.
77 184
94
NationalVolun- teers
127
ney
Sept. 8, '62.
June 30, '65
35 105
95
First Metropoli- tan Guard.
131
Turnbull .. Sept. 6, '62.
July 26, '65 . .
84 161 110
pire Brigade
132
Claassen ... Oct. 4, '62.
June 25, '65.
14
26 160
Second Metro- politan Guard
133
Currie .. ..
Sept. 24, '62.
June 6, '65.
45
93
79
Stanton Legion.
145
Col. W. A. Allen . .
Sept. 11, '62
Dec. 9, '63
15
38
35
tinued " ('63
Fifth Irish Le- gion ..
155
MeEvily
Nov. 17, '62
June 15, '65 ..
115 245
74
Third Metropoli- tan Guard
162
dict
Aug .- Oct., '62
Oct. 12, '65 ..
70 129 154
Third Empire Brigade.
163.
Braulich. ..
Oct. 10, '62.
Jan. 20, '63 ..
18
38
8 trans. '63
Seo'd Batt. Dur- yea Zouaves ..
165.
Col.H.D. Hull Aug .- Dec., '62.
Sept. 1, '65 ...
46 105 81
Fourth
Irish
170
Dermott. ..
Oct.7, '62 .
July 15, '65 .
130 241 99
Fourth Metro- politan Guard.
173.
Morton ....
Nov. 10,'62
Oct. 18, '65
..
51 128 128
Fifth Metropoli- tan Guard
175.
Col. T. Par- melee . .
Nov. 13, '62
Feb. 9, '64
23
36
60
( consol- - idated L'64
Tronsides
176.
Col. M. Hoyt. Dec. 22, '62
April 27, '66
33 59 148
Sixty-ninth N.
182
phy
Nov. 17, '62
July 15, '65 .
87 203
53
A
190
Peterson ..
April 7, '65
May 4, '65
1
A & B 191
Col. L. von Gilsa
March 30, '65
May 3, '65
Indepen. Corps
Lt .- Col. F.
Confort ...
April 18, '62
Jan. 30, '64
9 18 52
U. S. Colored Troops
20
Bartram
Feb. 9, '64
Oct. 7, '65
1
284
U. S. Colored
26
man .
Feb. 27, '64.
Aug. 28, '65 ..
30
115
U. 8. Colored Troops
31
Ward
Nov. 14, '64.
Nov. 7, '65.
57
126
.. ..
Col. G. H.
Biddle ..
Nov., '61, Mar., '62 July 16, '65.
119 381 136
.. *65
95
Col.
J. 8.
Col. Meagher Sept., '61, Jan., '62 June 30, '65 ..
150 395 71 reorg. '64
88
Col.
J. W.
Col. F.W.Von
..
65 113 103
119
Col. W. Gur-
Col. C. S.
Col. w. W.
Col. L. Bene-
Col. F. H.
Col. P. Mc-
Col. E. Weh-
June 20, '63
April 20, '66
18
45 192
G. Art
178
ler
Col. M. Mur-
Capt. C. S.
Col. N. B.
Col. W. Silli-
Troops
Col. H. C.
Col. J. Fair-
Lieut .- Col. S.
Seventy- 116 277
Col. G. W. B.
Col. D. W.
Guard ...
Light Infantry
See'd Reg't Em-
Col. P. J.
Col. L. D. H.
("discon-
Legion. .
Col. C. B.
Light Inf.
Col. C. K.
CHAPTER XIV
RECOVERY FROM WAR-TWEED RING-SPECULATION AND REACTION 1865-1878
HE civil war ended, the city of New-York, in common with the rest of the country, turned to the arts of peace. The immense national army, no inconsiderable part of which it had itself furnished, was quietly disbanded, notwith- standing the forebodings of prophets from abroad, who feared lest the men who had swept through the Shenandoah with Sheridan, or foraged across Georgia with Sherman, and the legions led by Grant and Meade through the Wilderness, would never take kindly again to peaceful trades. New-York, which should have been the chief suf- ferer, had any one suffered at all in this regard, had continued evi- dence that the men who sacked her houses in 1863, and not those who defended them, were the only dangerous element in the city's population. The town, which Southern authorities were fond of rep- resenting as in the throes of dissolution, with idle ships rotting at her docks, and grass growing knee deep in her streets, had never really felt the burden of the war, or at any rate had never realized that she was feeling it.
But though New-York had not gone backward during the war, she had failed to advance. There was no grass in her streets, but the grass and trees of the immediate suburbs had not given place to pave- ments and brick walls to any great extent. Before the war the bet- ter class of dwellings - those adapted for the occupancy of well-to-do families - had been increasing at the rate of 500 to 800 a year; dur- ing 1861-1865 not more than one tenth of this number had been built annually, on an average. The population of the city had actually de- creased, or at least had appeared to do so. The demand for vacant lots subsided to almost nothing, and the prices charged for houses in- creased proportionately -a natural result of the high price of labor. The consequence was that at the close of the war there was a direct inducement to building enterprises; and as soon as the country had finished the gigantic task which it had for four years been struggling to accomplish, capital was not slow to find its way into such channels.
518
ยท
1
519
RECOVERY FROM WAR -TWEED RING
The city stretched her limbs anew, and began that progress which, in a quarter of a century more, transformed her from a straggling provincial town into a metropolis. Three potent factors in that transformation were the introduction of the electric light, the use of elevators, and the achievement of rapid transit, or rather the con- tinued struggles toward rapid transit, the desired end receding as the means for attaining it proved successively inadequate. In order fully to appreciate the power of these factors, all of which made their full influence felt within the period covered by this chapter, we have first to remem- ber what the New-York of 1865 was. Above Forty-second street it could scarcely be said to exist, being only a dreary waste of unpaved and ungraded streets, diversified by rocky eminences crowned with squatters' shanties. Rail- way passengers from the north still left their trains at Twenty-seventh and Thirtieth streets. Street railways were comparatively few, and there was no speedy and comfortable way of getting from one end of the city to the other. Below Eighty-sixth street there were, in P. Wilsong 1865, 25,261 vacant lots. The grading of Madison Avenue was still in progress, and the state of the city as regards transit facilities is set forth in a striking way by the hopeful language in which a pamphlet of that day speaks of the new street as likely to "prepare the way for an extension of the Fourth Avenue railroad," and thus give new access to the park. Unable to get any- where on Manhattan Island, people sought the suburbs, and rapidly built up southern Connecticut and eastern New Jersey, with Long Isl- and and Staten Island. In 1866 Dr. Samuel Osgood, in an address before the New-York Historical Society, said : "The city is distressed by prosperity, and is like an overgrown boy whose clothes are too small for his limbs, and who waits in half-nakedness for his fitting garments. ... The scarcity of houses, and the costs of rent, living, and taxation, are grievous, and driving a large portion of our middling class into the country."
The rapid spread of the city, which now began, was in some in-
1 Dr. Peter Wilson was born in Scotland, No- vember 23, 1746, and was educated at the Univer- sity of Aberdeen. Removing to New-York city in 1763, he became principal of an academy at Hack- ensack, N. J., where his house is still to be seen. In 1775, he entered into politics with great interest, serving six years in the legislature of New Jersey,
and being selected to revise the laws of that State. In 1789 he became professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia College, remaining until 1820, when he was retired with a pension. He was the author of several text-books on Greek and Latin prosody, and edited Sallust, Longinus, and the Greek Testa- ment. His death occurred Aug. 1, 1825. EDITOR.
520
HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
stances attended with lack of judgment. Early in 1867 St. John's Park, in the lower part of the city, was sold to the Hudson River Railroad, which built thereon a huge freight-station; and, by the same short-sighted policy, part of the City Hall Park was given up three years later for the new post-office. After that time, however, popular feeling against blocking up the city's breathing-spaces-even now lamentably few-grew so strong that the demolition of houses to make a new park became much more probable than the occupation of a park by a building. St. John's Park, with its noble trees, had formed a part of the celebrated Anneke Jans estate, and but a few years before its disappearance was a fashionable residence quarter. Some of the old inhabitants, notably the great engineer John Erics- son, retained their homes there long after the rumble and bustle of countless freight-trains had replaced green grass and gravel walks. An- other spot of greenery, the yard of the old New- York Hospital, at Broad- way and Pearl Street, whose elms had stood since the place was far out in the country, not VAUXHALL GARDEN. 1 long afterward met the same fate. But these numerous changes were only instances of the wonderful mania for building which was now under full headway, and which has continued, with now and then a short pause, ever since, making fortunes over and over again, and changing the character of whole districts more than once in a few decades. This mania was doubtless aided by the reckless speculations of the Tweed Ring, which was just then coming into power, and the story of whose deeds will soon follow in this chapter. But it had its roots deeper than this. Its cause must be sought in the natural growth of a great commercial metropolis, which, though it may seem almost uncanny in its rapidity, yet has nothing of the mushroom about it, but is most solid and substantial.
Accompanying this activity in real estate, there was a like activity in all kinds of speculation. Swindling became rife, and the exchanges rang with the contests of rival speculators for the control of whole
1 Vauxhall Garden was founded in 1799 by a Frenchman named Delacroix, and was situated just east of Broadway, between Fourth street and Astor Place. It was an extensive garden, laid out with much taste ; handsome gravel walks abounded, adorned with trees and shrubs, busts and statues. An orchestra furnished agreeable music in the
summer evenings, refreshment-tables were sup- plied, and buildings in which dramatic enter- tainments were given. Fireworks and balloon ascensions were added to the attractions of the garden, and it remained a popular summer resort until 1826, when Lafayette Place, named after the French marquis, was opened through it. EDITOR
521
RECOVERY FROM WAR -TWEED RING
railroad systems, to obtain possession of which they did not scruple to use as their tools the venal politicians and corrupt judges who were just then coming into prominence. The politicians, on the other hand, were not slow to turn the speculative fever to account for their own purposes. The corrupt ring which then controlled the city gov- ernment planned improvements on a vast scale, that increased mu- nicipal expenditures might give them greater opportunity for plun- der. In many cases these were of great benefit to the city, though attained at a huge cost not only in money, but in the loss of munici- pal honor. Among other public works, the Boulevard was laid out from the southwest corner of Central Park to Tubby Hook, St. Nich- olas Avenue was created, Seventh Avenue broadened, and Broadway widened from Thirty-fourth street to the park. After the height of the speculative fever, which was reached about 1869, it declined till the panic of 1873, which must be treated of subsequently.
The new streets thus added monthly to the city were in general improperly paved,-a fault which has been rectified slowly where it has been rectified at all,-and they were also inadequately policed and lighted. Mention has been made of the electric light as a potent factor in changing the character of the city. It was not introduced till a decade later than the period of which we write. How great its influence has been, however, can scarcely be realized. Some faint idea of how much the city owes to it can perhaps be obtained by reference to the following extract from a magazine writer of this period, de- scribing "The Bowery at Night."1 "One night, for instance, in the merry month of May of this year, a gang of about a dozen armed ruffians boarded a Third Avenue horse-car somewhere in these lati- tudes, knocked down the conductor with a slung-shot, robbed and otherwise maltreated several of the passengers, and got clear away before the first policeman had made his appearance. Such incidents are by no means uncommon in the Bowery and its purlieus at night."
When one realizes that such a crime would be impossible in a street with an electric light at every shop-front, he cannot help thinking of Macaulay's picture of the changes wrought in London since the days of the link-boy, and wondering what will be the next advance toward turning night into day, and pursuing crime and criminals still further into outer darkness.
Striking as the spread of the city toward all sides was at this time, its growth upward was still more surprising. The New-York of 1865 was a low city. Houses of three and four stories were spread over square miles of its territory. The Astor House was pointed out as a mammoth structure, and a six-story building was a towering wonder. Trinity steeple, as viewed from the water-front, seemed to soar above
1 Charles Dawson Shanly, "The Atlantic Monthly," November, 1887.
522
HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
the city, where now it is almost unnoticeable amid vast structures of ten, twelve, and even eighteen stories. The overcrowding in the lower end of Manhattan Island soon made land so expensive that it became cheaper to build up into the air than to spread over the ground. The opposite conditions are well shown in Philadelphia, where the exis- tence of unlimited room for growth on all sides has made growth into the air unnecessary. On the other hand, the influence of even a slight barrier in this direction is exemplified in Chicago, where a narrow river on two sides of the business portion of the town, and Lake Michigan on the third, have caused the erection of buildings that seem almost ab- surdly as well as dangerously high.
This growth skyward, however, inevitable as it seems to have been, could never have taken place had it not been for the invention and development of the elevator,-the verti- cal railway, as it has been called,-which has made the tenth story as accessible as the sec- ond. One of the first elevators in the city, TONTINE COFFEE HOUSE.1 that in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, was in effect a nut on a huge screw, whose revolution sent it slowly up or down. From this to the modern swift service was a long step, but it was quickly made, and no doubt the need for tall buildings in the overcrowded city acted in its turn as a stimulus to invention in this line. To the same causes must be attributed the wide adoption in New-York of the continental custom of living in apartments or flats, which began about the same time. In 1865, the author of an anony- mous pamphlet on the advantages of New-York as a place of resi- deuce wrote that "the Parisian plan of dividing a large building into many suites of apartments is now receiving attention." The first of these, which were known as French flats, were opened on the west side at this time; but the first large apartment-houses were the two Stuyvesant buildings, one of which, on Eighteenth street, was opened in the autumn of 1870, and the other, on Thirteenth street, in the spring of 1871. The plan grew rapidly in favor, and as soon after
1 In 1790 the Tontine Association was organized by the merchants of New-York, with the object of providing suitable quarters for a commercial center or exchange. As an outcome of this action, the Tontine Coffee House, situated on the corner of Wall and Water streets, was begun in 1792, opened 11: 1794, and incorporated the same year. The shares were $200 each ; and the privilege was given to rach subscriber to name a person for each share tuld by him, during whose lifetime he or she was to Is entitled to receive a pro-rata proportion of
the net profits from the investment of the fund. It was also stipulated that when the number of nominees should be reduced to seven by death. the property was to be conveyed to the survivors in fee simple. In accordance with this agreement. the property was divided in 1876, the surviving nominees being William Bayard, Gouverneur Kemble, Robert Benson, Jr., Daniel Hoffman, Horatio G. Stevens, Mrs. John A. King, and Mrs. William P. Campbell. EDITOR.
523
RECOVERY FROM WAR -TWEED RING
this as 1873 the building bureau issued on an average fifteen permits a month for the building of apartment-houses or the remodeling of old houses to serve their purpose. Great piles of buildings sprang up on every side. The mania for living in suites of rooms was re- garded by many as a fashion likely to be short-lived, and financial ruin was predicted for those who had invested their money in apart- ment-houses; but the event showed that the demand was founded on a real need springing from the situation and surroundings of the city, as is shown again by the almost entire absence of apartment-houses in neighboring towns, or by the failure of those that have been erected.
But this growth upward could not take the place of a growth out- ward, though it could modify it in a measure, and the city had soon outstripped its primitive means of transportation. That the citizens of New-York were not ignorant of her needs was shown by the great number of schemes for better communication which early began to take form. The winter of 1866-7 will long be remem- bered as one of the coldest in the his- tory of New-York. Ice of such thick- ness formed on the East River that hundreds of persons crossed between Brooklyn and New-York, and the ob- struction to ferry traffic was so marked that a great impetus was given to pro- jects for bridging this important water- way. The legislature of 1866-7, with a view of having enough, passed no less than three East River bridge bills; the public attention, owing in part no doubt to the fact just mentioned, being fixed at first rather on the necessity for better con- nection with Long Island than on its own upper districts. Of these bills, the one incorporating the New-York Bridge Company was passed on April 16, 1867, and in the autumn of the same year a chief engineer was chosen in the person of John A. Roebling, who had just demon- strated anew the practicability of the suspension-bridge on a large scale by building the great Cincinnati and Cohington bridge, and who had previously built the Niagara bridge-the first of its type capable of bearing the weight of railway trains. He at once drew plans for the largest suspension-bridge in the world, which, on March 3, 1869, was declared by Congress to be a lawful structure, and on June 21 was approved by the secretary of war. The first caisson to be used in building was contracted for in November following, launched on March 19, 1870, and towed to Brooklyn in May. The engineer did
524
HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
not live to see the beginning of his work; his death-the result of an accidental injury sustained while he was making observations-o- curring on July 22, 1869. The work was continued by his son, Wash- ington A. Roebling, who carried it forward to completion. The first stone was laid on June 15, but the first tower was not completed till five years later. The history of the structure belongs to a later period, but it should not be forgotten that its inception was the first practical step toward better communication between New-York and its suburbs. In 1875, by an act of the legislature authorizing the cities of New-York and Brooklyn to raise $8,000,000 for its comple- tion, the bridge became a public structure.
It should be noted that the elder Roebling had suggested a plan for an East River bridge as early as 1857, on the general lines of the one finally built, and that nearly half a century before, in 1811, one Thomas Pope, an architect, proposed to build between the two cities what he called a "flying pendant lever bridge," with a single span of 1800 feet, which was pronounced perfectly feasible by seventeen leading ship-builders of that period.
In 1867 a curious adjunct to rapid transit made its appearance, in the shape of the once celebrated but short-lived Loew bridge across Broadway at Fulton street,-so named from its sponsor, Alderman Charles E. Loew. It was hailed, on its completion in May of that year, as the first step toward relief for the crowded lower streets of the island; but pedestrians preferred to struggle on the ground rather than mount to the air, and in the following year it was taken down.
Meanwhile tentative efforts toward rapid transit had begun. Be- tween 1868 and 1870 two underground roads were chartered, but neither was built, though one of them, the so-called Beach pneu- matic road, constructed a sample section which was opened for pub- lic exhibition on April 26, 1870. The tunnel, which extended beneath Broadway from Warren street nearly to Murray street, had been excavated by a shield forced forward by hydraulic rams, on a prin- ciple similar to that adopted years afterward by the underground electric lines in London. It was eight feet in diameter, and the car, which fitted in it as a piston in its cylinder, was literally blown along by the action of powerful fans. The trial car seated eighteen persons, but the company promised, on the completion of its line, which was to run from the Battery to Harlem, to build cars one hundred feet long. Crowds of people visited the tunnel, but the road advanced no farther, and was finally abandoned.
Another more ambitious scheme was the arcade railway, to run in a long arcade, forming virtually a street with shops and sidewalks, just beneath the surface of the ground, the length of Broadway. This seemed at one time very likely to be built, but it succumbed to the
525
RECOVERY FROM WAR-TWEED RING
two enemies which every rapid-transit scheme has met-the expense of construction, and the determined opposition of property-holders along the proposed route. The same obstacles were fatal to the pro- jected viaduct railway, which it was proposed to build through private property, crossing the streets on massive bridges.
However, the germ of the future elevated-railway system had been built, and was modestly demonstrating the feasibility of rapid transit, though the lesson it taught bore no fruit for a decade. The much- derided Greenwich street elevated road was begun in 1866, and put in operation on July 2, 1867. It had but one track, and ran from Battery Place, through Greenwich street and Ninth Avenue, to Thir- tieth street. At first it was oper- ated by a cable, which was soon abandoned in favor of steam loco- motives. With all its disadvan- tages, it was no wonder that it did not become popular, and it remained chiefly a curiosity and THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN.1 the butt of good-natured ridicule till it was sold out by the sheriff in 1871. Its new management made a strong effort to push it northward, but legal obstacles beset them on all sides, thrown in their way by the strenuous opposition of the horse-railroads and of property-owners.
In the legislative session of 1871-2, two new roads were chartered, one of which, the Gilbert road (named from its projector, Dr. Rufus H. Gilbert), proposed to erect a pneumatic tube suspended from lofty arches, to be operated on the principle of the Beach road, mentioned above, and thus to be practically noiseless and completely out of sight. This being found impracticable, the company decided to build their proposed tube without a top, and construct a steam road in the trough thus left, whose sides would cut off the trains from the view of resi- dents and passers-by. Finally the trough was abandoned, and the plan became a project for a simple elevated steam road like that in Greenwich street. This change of plan was the cause of much op- position and renewed litigation.
Meanwhile, in 1875, the legislature passed the act known as the Husted Act, for the appointment of a commission to decide in the first
1 The National Academy of the Arts of Design was organized January 18, 1826, with Samuel F. B. Morse as its president. Its first exhibition was in May, 1826, on the second floor of a building at the corner of Reade street and Broadway, when one hundred and seventy-six pictures by living artists were exhibited. It occupied various rooms until
1866, when its present edifice at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third street was com- pleted. The architecture is Venetian Gothic ; the material gray and white marble and bluestone, and the cost of the site and building $237,000. It was built by popular subscription. Two exhibitions are held yearly, and instruction is free. EDITOR.
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