Nooks and Corners of Old New York

Fort Amsterdam

On the centre building of the row which faces bowling Green Park on the south there is a tablet bearing the words:

THE SITE OF FORT AMSTERDAM,

BUILT IN 1626.

WITHIN THE FORTIFICATIONS

WAS ERECTED THE FIRST

SUBSTANTIAL CHURCH EDIFICE

ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN.

IN 1787 THE FORT

WAS DEMOLISHED

AND THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE

BUILT UPON THIS SITE

Dutch West India Co.

This was the starting-point of the settlement which gradually became New York. In 1614 a stockade, called Fort Manhattan, was built as a temporary place of shelter for representatives of the United New Netherland Co., which had been formed to trade with the Indians. This company was replaced by the Dutch West India Co., with chartered rights to trade on the American coast, and the first step towards the forming of a permanent settlement was the building of Fort Amsterdam on the site of the stockade.

In 1664 New Amsterdam passed into British possession and became New York, while Fort Amsterdam became Fort James. Under Queen Anne it was Fort George, remaining so until demolished in 1787.

On the Fort's site was built the Government House, intended for Washington and the Presidents who should follow him. But none ever occupied it as the seat of government was removed to Philadelphia before the house was completed. After 1801 it became an office building, and was was demolished in 1815 to make room for the present structures.

Bowling Green

The tiny patch of grass at the starting-point of Broadway, now called Bowling Green Park, was originally the centre of sports for colonists, and has been the scene of many stirring events. The iron railing which now surrounds it was set up in 1771, having been imported from England to enclose a lead equestrian statue of King George III. On the posts of the fence were representations of heads of members of the Royal family. In 1776, during the Revolution, the statue was dragged down and molded into bullets, and where the iron heads were knocked from the posts the fracture can still be seen.

The Battery

When the English took possession of the city, in 1664, the Fort being regarded as useless, it was decided to build a Battery to protect the newly acquired possession. Thus the idea of the Battery was conceived, although the work was not actually carried out until 1684.

Beyond the Fort there was a fringe of land with the water reaching to a point within a line drawn from Water and Whitehall Streets to Greenwich Street. Sixty years after the Battery was built fifty guns were added, it having been lightly armed up to that time.

The Battery was demolished about the same time as the Fort. The land on which it stood became a small park, retaining the name of the Battery, and was gradually added to until it became the Battery Park of to-day.

Castle Garden

A small island, two hundred feet off the Battery, to which it was connected by a drawbridge, was fortified in 1811 and called Fort Clinton. The armament was twenty-eight 32-pounders, none of which was ever fired at an enemy. In 1822 the island was ceded back to the city by the Federal Government-when the military headquarters were transferred to Governor's Island-and became a place of amusement under the name of Castle Garden. It was the first real home of opera in America. General Lafayette was received there in 1824, and there Samuel F. B. Morse first demonstrated the possibility of controlling an electric current in 1835. Jenny Lind, under the management of P. T. Barnum, appeared there in 1850. In 1855 it became a depot for the reception of immigrants; in 1890 the offices were removed to Ellis Island, and in 1896, after many postponements, Castle Garden was opened as a public aquarium.

State Street

State Street, facing the Battery, during the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, was the fashionable quarter of the city, and on it were the homes of the wealthy. Several of the old houses still survive. No. 7, now a home for immigrant Irish girls, was the most conspicuous on the street, and is in about its original state. At No. 9 lived John Morton, called the "rebel banker" by the British, because he loaned large sums to the Continental Congress. His son, General Jacob Morton, occupied the mansion after his marriage in 1791, and commanded the militia. Long after he became too infirm to actually command, from the balcony of his home he reviewed on the Battery parade grounds the Tompkins Blues and the Light Guards. The veterans of these commands, by legislative enactment in 1868, were incorporated as the "Old Guard."

The "Stadhuis"

On the building at 4 and 6 Pearl Street, corner State Street, is a tablet which reads:

1636 1897

ON THIS SITE STOOD THE "STADHUIS"

OF NEW AMSTERDAM--ERECTED 1636

THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE IN LOVING MEMORY

OF THE FIRST DUTCH SETTLERS BY THE

HOLLAND DAMES OF THE NEW

NETHERLANDS AND THE

KNIGHTS OF THE LEGION OF THE CROWN

LAVINIA

KONIGIN

It was set up October 7, 1897, and marks the supposed site of the first City Hall. What is claimed by most authorities to be the real site is at Pearl Street, opposite Coenties Slip.

Whitehall Street was one of the earliest thoroughfares of the city, and was originally the open space left on the land side of the Fort.

The Beaver's Path

Beaver Street was first called the Beaver's Path. It was a ditch, on either side of which was a path. When houses were built along these paths they were improved by a rough pavement. At the end of the Beaver's Path, close to where Broad Street is now, was a swamp, which, before the pavements were made, had been reclaimed and was known as the Sheep Pasture.

Petticoat Lane

Marketfield Street, whose length is less than a block, opens into Broad Street at No. 72, a few feet from Beaver Street. This is one of the lost thoroughfares of the city. Almost as old as the city itself, it once extended past the Fort and continued to the river in what is now Battery Place. It was then called Petticoat Lane. The first French Huguenot church was built on it in 1688. Now the Produce Exchange cuts the street off short and covers the site of the church.

Broad Street

Through Broad Street, when the town was New Amsterdam, a narrow, ill-smelling inlet extended to about the present Beaver Street, then narrowed to a ditch close to Wall Street. The water-front was then at Pearl Street. Several bridges crossed the inlet, the largest at the point where Stone Street is. Another gave Bridge Street its name. In 1660 the ways on either side were paved, and soon became a market-place for citizens who traded with farmers for their products, and with the Indians who navigated the inlet in their canoes. The locality has ever since been a centre of exchange. When the inlet was finally filled in it left the present "Broad" Street.

Where Beaver Street crosses this thoroughfare, on the northwest corner, is a tablet:

TO COMMEMORATE THE GALLANT AND PATRIOTIC

ACT OF MARINUS WILLETT IN HERE SEIZING

JUNE 6, 1775, FROM THE BRITISH FORCES THE

MUSKETS WITH WHICH HE ARMED HIS

TROOPS. THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY

THE SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE

REVOLUTION, NEW YORK, NOV. 12, 1892

On one side of the tablet is a bas-relief of the scene showing the patriots stopping the ammunition wagons.

Fraunces' Tavern

Fraunces' Tavern, standing at the southeast corner of Broad and Pearl Streets, is much the same outwardly as it was when built in 1700, except that it has two added stories. Etienne De Lancey, a Huguenot nobleman, built it as his homestead and occupied it for a quarter of a century. It became a tavern under the direction of Samuel Fraunces in 1762. It was Washington's headquarters in 1776, and in 1783 he delivered there his farewell address to his generals.

Pearl Street

Pearl Street was one of the two early roads leading from the Fort. It lay along the water front, and extended to a ferry where Peck Slip is now. The road afterwards became Great Queen Street, and was lined with shops of store-keepers who sought the Long Island trade. The other road in time became Broadway.

On a building at 73 Pearl Street, facing Coenties Slip, is a tablet which reads:

THE SITE OF THE

FIRST DUTCH HOUSE OF ENTERTAINMENT

ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN

LATER THE SITE OF THE OLD "STADT HUYS"

OR CITY HALL

THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE BY

THE HOLLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

SEPTEMBER, 1890

The First City Hall

This is the site of the first City Hall of New Amsterdam, built 1642. It stood by the waterside, for beyond Water Street all the land has been reclaimed. There was a court room and a prison in the building. Before it, where the pillars of the elevated road are now, was a cage and a whipping-post. There was also the public "Well of William Cox."

Beside the house ran a lane. It is there yet, still called Coenties Lane as in the days of old. But it is no longer green. Now it is narrow, paved, and almost lost between tall buildings.

Opposite Coenties Lane is Coenties Slip, which was an inlet in the days of the Stadt Huys. The land about was owned by Conraet Ten Eyck, who was nicknamed Coentje. This in time became Coonchy and was finally vulgarized to "Quincy." The filling in of this waterway began in 1835 and the slip is now buried beneath Jeanette Park. The filled-in slip accounts for the width of the street. For the same reason there is considerable width at Wall, Maiden Lane and other streets leading to the water front.

First Printing Press in the Colony

At 81 Pearl Street, close by Coenties Slip, the first printing-press was set up by William Bradford, after he was appointed Public Printer in 1693. A tablet marks the site, with the inscription:

ON THIS SITE

WILLIAM BRADFORD

APPOINTED

PUBLIC PRINTER

APRIL 10, A. D. 1693

ESTABLISHED THE FIRST

PRINTING PRESS

IN THE

COLONY OF NEW YORK

ERECTED BY THE

NEW YORK

HISTORICAL SOCIETY

APRIL 10, A. D. 1893

IN COMMEMORATION OF

THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY

OF THE INTRODUCTION

OF PRINTING IN

NEW YORK

Fire of 1835

Across the way, on a warehouse at 88 Pearl Street, is a marble tablet of unique design, to commemorate the great fire of 1835, which started in Merchant Street, burned for nineteen hours, extended over fifty acres and consumed 402 buildings.

Directly through the block from this point is Cuyler's Alley, a narrow way between the houses running off Water Street. Although it is a hundred years old the only incident connected with its existence that has crept into the city's history, is a murder. In 1823, a Boston merchant was waylaid and murdered for his money, and was dragged through this street for final disposition in the river, but the murderer made so much noise in his work that the constable heard him and came upon the abandoned corpse.

Stone Street

Through a pretty garden at the back of the Stadt Huys, Stone Street was reached. It was the first street to be laid with cobble-stones (1657), and so came by its name, which originally had been Brouwer Street.

Delmonico's establishment at Beaver and William Streets is on the site of the second of the Delmonico restaurants. (See Fulton and William Streets.)

Flat and Barrack Hill

Exchange Place took its name from the Merchants' Exchange, which was completed in William Street, fronting on Wall, in 1827 (the present Custom House). Before that date it had been called Garden Street. From Hanover to Broad Street was a famous place for boys to coast in winter, and the grade was called "Flat and Barrack Hill." Scarcely more than an alley now, the street was even narrower once and was given its present width in 1832.

Wall Street

Wall Street came by its name naturally, for it was a walled street once. When war broke out between England and Holland in 1653, Governor Peter Stuyvesant built the wall along the line of the present street, from river to river. His object was to form a barrier that should enclose the city. It was a wall of wood, twelve feet high, with a sloping breastwork inside. After the wall was removed in 1699, the street came to be a chief business thoroughfare.

Federal Hall

A new City Hall, to replace the Stadt Huys, was built in 1699, at Nassau Street, on the site of the present Sub-Treasury building. In front of the building was the cage for criminals, stocks and whipping-post. When independence was declared, this building was converted into a capitol and was called Federal Hall. The Declaration of Independence was read from the steps in 1776. President Washington was inaugurated there in 1789. The wide strip of pavement on the west side of Nassau Street at Wall Street bears evidence of the former existence of Federal Hall. The latter extended across to the western house line of the present Nassau Street, and so closed the thoroughfare that a passage-way led around the building to Nassau Street. When the Sub-Treasury was built in 1836, on the site of Federal Hall, Nassau Street was opened to Wall, and the little passage-way was left to form the wide pavement of to-day.

Where Alexander Hamilton Lived

Alexander Hamilton, in 1789, lived in a house on the south side of Wall Street at Broad. His slayer, Aaron Burr, then lived back of Federal Hall in Nassau Street.

The Custom House at William Street and Wall was completed in 1842. At this same corner once stood a statue of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. In 1776, during the Revolution, the statue was pulled down by British soldiers, the head cut off and the remainder dragged in the mud. The people petitioned the Assembly in 1766 to erect the statue to Pitt, as a recognition of his zealous defence of the American colonies and his efforts in securing the repeal of the Stamp Act. At the same time provision was made for the erection of the equestrian statue of George III in Bowling Green. The statue of Pitt was of marble, and was erected in 1770.

Tontine Coffee House

The Tontine Building at the northwest corner of Wall and Water Streets marks the site of the Tontine Coffee House, a celebrated house for the interchange of goods and of ideas, and a political centre. It was a prominent institution in the city, resorted to by the wealthy and influential. The building was erected in 1794, and conducted by the Tontine Society of two hundred and three members, each holding a $200 share. Under their plan all property was to revert to seven survivors of the original subscribers. The division was made in 1876.

Meal Market

Close to where the coffee house was built later, a market was set up in the middle of Wall Street in 1709, and being the public market for the sale of corn and meal was called the "Meal Market." Cut meat was not sold there until 1740. In 1731 this market became the only public place for the sale and hiring of slaves.

Trinity Church has stood at the head of Wall Street since 1697. Before 1779 the street was filled with tall trees, but during the intensely cold winter of that year most of them were cut down and used for kindling.

The ferry wharf has been at the foot of the street since 1694, when the water came up as far as Pearl Street. It was here that Washington landed, coming from Elizabethport after his journey from Virginia, April 23, 1789, to be inaugurated.

The United States Hotel, Fulton, between Water and Pearl Streets, was built in 1823 as Holt's Hotel. It was the headquarters for captains of whaling ships and merchants. A semaphore, or marine telegraph, was on the cupola, the windmill-like arms of which served to indicate the arrival of vessels.

Middle Dutch Church

On the building at the northeast corner of Nassau and Cedar Streets is a tablet reading:

HERE STOOD

THE MIDDLE DUTCH CHURCH

DEDICATED A. D. 1729

MADE A BRITISH MILITARY PRISON 1776

RESTORED 1790

OCCUPIED AS THE UNITED STATES POST-OFFICE