Charles Hemstreet
Nooks & Corners of Old New York
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066205430
Table of Contents
The points of interest referred to in this book are to be found in the lower part of the Island of Manhattan.
Settlements having early been made in widely separated parts of the island, streets were laid out from each settlement as they were needed without regard to the city as a whole; with the result that as the city grew the streets lengthened and those of the various sections met at every conceivable angle. This resulted in a tangle detrimental to the city's interests, and in 1807 a Commission was appointed to devise a City Plan that should protect the interests of the whole community.
A glance at a city map will show the confusion of streets at the lower end of the island and the regularity brought about under the City Plan above Houston Street on the east, and Fourteenth Street on the west side.
The plan adopted by the Commission absolutely disregarded the natural topography of the island, and resulted in a city of straight lines and right angles.
NOOKS AND CORNERS
OF OLD NEW YORK
I
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.