Nooks and Corners of Old New York Part 10

[Sidenote: Burdell Murder]

No. 31 Bond Street was the scene of a celebrated murder. The house is torn down now, but it was identical with the one which now stands at No.

29. On January 3, 1857, Dr. Harvey Burdell, a dentist, was literally butchered there, being stabbed fifteen times. A portion of the house had been occupied by a widow named Cunningham, and her two daughters. After the murder, Mrs. Cunningham claimed a widow's share of the Doctor's estate, on the ground that she had been married to him some months before. This claim started an investigation, which resulted in Mrs.

Cunningham's being suspected of the crime, arrested, tried and acquitted. Soon after her acquittal, she attempted to secure control of the entire Burdell estate, by claiming that she had given birth to an heir to the property. The scheme failed, for the physician through whom she obtained a new-born child from Bellevue Hospital, disclosed the plot to District Attorney A. Oakey Hall. The woman and her daughters left the city suddenly, and were not heard of again. The mystery of the murder was never solved.

The part of Houston Street east of the Bowery was, prior to November, 1833, called North Street. At the time the change in names was made the street was raised. Between Broadway and the Bowery had been a wet tract of land many feet below the grade. In 1844 the street was extended from Lewis Street to the East River.

The Bleecker Street Bank, which was just east of Broadway, on the north side of Bleecker Street, was moved in October, 1897, to Twenty-first Street and Fourth Avenue, and called The Bank for Savings. It had originally been in the New York Inst.i.tute Building in City Hall Park.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Entrance to Marble Cemetery]

[Sidenote: Marble Cemetery]

In the heart of the block inclosed by the Bowery, Second Avenue, Second and Third Streets, is a hidden graveyard. It is the New York Marble Cemetery, and so completely has it been forgotten that its name no longer appears in the City Directory. On four sides it is hemmed about by tenements and business buildings, so that one could walk past it for a lifetime without knowing that it was there. On the Second Avenue side, the entrance is formed by a narrow pa.s.sage between houses, which is closed by an iron gateway. But the gate is always locked, and at the opposite end of the pa.s.sage is another gate of wood set in a brick wall, so high that nothing but the tops of trees can be seen beyond it.

From the upper rear windows of the neighboring tenements a view of the place can be had. It is a wild spot, four hundred feet by one hundred, covered by a tangled growth of bushes and weeds, crossed by neglected paths, and enclosed by a wall seventeen feet high. There is no sign of a tombstone. In the southwest corner is a deadhouse of rough hewn stone.

On the south wall the names of vault owners are chiseled. Among these were some of the best known New Yorkers fifty years ago. The records of the city show that this land was owned by Henry Eckford and Marion, his wife. They deeded it to Anthony Dey and George W. Strong when the cemetery corporation was organized, July 30, 1830. There were one hundred and fifty-six vaults, and fifteen hundred persons were buried there. This cemetery is forgotten almost as completely as its own dead, and its memories do not molest the dwellers in the surrounding tenements who overlook it from their rear windows, and use it as a sort of dumping-ground for all useless things that can readily be thrown into it.

[Sidenote: The Second Marble Cemetery]

There is another Marble Cemetery which historians sometimes confuse with this hidden graveyard, namely, one on Second Street, between First and Second Avenues. Some of the larger merchants of the city bought the ground in 1832, and created the New York City Marble Cemetery. Among the original owners was Robert Lenox. When he died, in 1839, his body was placed in a vault of the First Presbyterian Church at 16 Wall Street.

When that church was removed to Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street the remains of Lenox with others were removed to this Marble Cemetery. The body of President James Monroe was first interred here, but was removed in 1859 to Virginia. Thomas Addis Emmet, the famous jurist, is also buried here. One of the most conspicuous monuments in St. Paul's churchyard, the shaft at the right of the church, was erected to the memory of Emmet. A large column on the other side of the church preserves the memory of another man whose body does not lie in the churchyard, for William James Macneven was interred in the burying-ground of the Riker family at Bowery Bay, L. I.

In Second Street, between Avenue A and First Avenue, stood a Methodist church, and beside it a graveyard, until 1840; when the building was turned into a public school. There were fifteen hundred bodies in the yard, but they were not removed to Evergreen Cemetery until 1860. Only fifteen bodies were claimed by relatives. One man who applied for his father's body refused that offered him, claiming that the skull was too small, and that some mistake had been made in disinterment.

Second Street Methodist Episcopal Church, between Avenues C and D, was built in 1832, the congregation having previously worshipped in private houses in the vicinity. At one time this was the most prominent and wealthiest church on the eastern side of the city.

[Sidenote: Bouwerie Village]

The Bouwerie Village was another of the little settlements--once a busy spot, but now so effaced that every outline of its existence is blotted out. It centred about the site of the present St. Mark's Church, Second Avenue and Tenth Street. In 1651, when Peter Stuyvesant, the last of the Dutch Governors, had ruled four years, he purchased the Great Bouwerie, a tract of land extending two miles along the river north of what is now Grand Street, taking in a section of the present Bowery and Third Avenue. As there was, from time to time, trouble with the Indians, the Governor ordered the dwellers on his bouwerie, as well as those on adjoining bouweries, to form a village and gather there for mutual protection at the first sign of an outbreak. Very soon the settlement included a blacksmith's shop, a tavern and a dozen houses. In this way the Bouwerie Village was started. Peter Stuyvesant in time built a chapel, and in it Herma.n.u.s Van Hoboken, the schoolmaster, after whom the city of Hoboken is named, preached. Years after the founding of the village, when New Amsterdam had become New York, and when the old Governor had returned from Holland, where he had, before the States-General, fought for vindication in so readily giving up the province to the English, Stuyvesant returned to end his days in the Bouwerie Village. He died there at the age of eighty, and was buried in the graveyard of the Bouwerie Church. St. Mark's Church, at Tenth Street and Second Avenue, stands on the site of the old church, and a memorial stone to Peter Stuyvesant is still to be seen under the porch. It reads:

[Sidenote: Grave of Peter Stuyvesant]

IN THIS VAULT LIES BURIED PETRUS STUYVESANT, LATE CAPTAIN-GENERAL AND GOVERNOR IN CHIEF OF AMSTERDAM IN NEW NETHERLAND NOW CALLED NEW YORK AND THE DUTCH WEST INDIES, DIED IN A. D. 1671/2 AGED 80 YEARS.

When Judith, the widow of Peter Stuyvesant, died, in 1692, she left the church in which the old Governor had worshipped to the Dutch Reformed Church. A condition was that the Stuyvesant vault should be forever protected. By 1793 the church had fallen into decay. Then another Peter Stuyvesant, great-grandson of the Dutch Governor, who was a vestryman of Trinity Church, gave the site and surrounding lots, together with $2,000, and the Trinity Corporation added $12,500, and erected the present St. Mark's Church. The cornerstone was laid in 1795 and the building completed in 1799. It had no steeple until 1829, when that portion was added. In 1858 the porch was added. In the churchyard were buried the remains of Mayor Philip Hone and of Governor Daniel D.

Tompkins. It was here that the body of Alexander T. Stewart rested until stolen. Close by the church was the mansion of Governor Stuyvesant. It was an imposing structure for those days, built of tiny bricks brought from Holland. A fire destroyed the house at the time of the Revolution.

When Peter Stuyvesant returned from Holland he brought with him a pear tree, which he planted in a garden near his Bouwerie Village house. This tree flourished for more than two hundred years. At Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue, on the house at the northeast corner, is a tablet inscribed:

ON THIS CORNER GREW PETRUS STUYVESANT'S PEAR TREE * * * * *

RECALLED TO HOLLAND IN 1664, ON HIS RETURN HE BROUGHT THE PEAR TREE AND PLANTED IT AS HIS MEMORIAL, "BY WHICH," SAID HE, "MY NAME MAY BE REMEMBERED."

THE PEAR TREE FLOURISHED AND BORE FRUIT FOR OVER TWO HUNDRED YEARS.

THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE BY THE HOLLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK SEPTEMBER, 1890.

[Sidenote: First Sunday School]

In 1785 half a dozen persons in the First Bouwerie Village, then scattering to the school east from the site of Cooper Union, met at the "Two Mile Stone"--so called from being two miles from Federal Hall--in the upper room of John Coutant's house, on the site where Cooper Inst.i.tute stands now. The room was used as a shoe store during the week.

Here, on Sundays, ministers from the John Street Church instructed converts. Peter Cooper, who was a member of the church, a few years later conceived the idea of connecting the school with the church. The organization was perfected, and he was chosen Superintendent of this, the first Sunday School of New York.

[Sidenote: Bowery Village Church]

The quarters becoming cramped, in 1795 the congregation moved to a two-story building a block away, on Nicholas William Street. This street, long since blotted out, extended from what is now Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street, across the Cooper Inst.i.tute site and part of the adjoining block, to Eighth (now St. Mark's Place), midway of the block between Third and Second Avenues. The street was named after Nicholas William Stuyvesant. When the old John Street Church was taken down, in 1817, the timber from it was used to erect a church next to the Sunday School (called the Academy). This church was called the Bowery Village Church. In 1830, the Bowery Village Church having been wiped out by the advancing streets of the City Plan, Nicholas William Street went with it, and a church was then established a short distance to the east, on the line of what is now Seventh Street, north side, and this became the Seventh Street Church. In 1837 persons living near by who objected to the church revivals presented the trustees with two lots, nearer Third Avenue. There a new church was built, which still stands.

[Sidenote: Second Vauxhall Garden]

Vauxhall Garden occupied (according to the present designation of the streets) the s.p.a.ce south of Astor Place, between Fourth Avenue and Broadway, to the line of Fifth Street. Fourth Avenue was then Bowery Road, and the main entrance to the Garden was on that side, opposite the present Sixth Street. At Broadway the Garden narrowed down to a V shape.

On this ground, for many years, John Sperry, a Swiss, cultivated fruits and flowers, and when he had grown old he sold his estate, in 1799, to John Jacob Astor. The latter leased it to a Frenchman named Delacroix, who had previously conducted the Vauxhall Garden on the Bayard Estate, close by the present Warren and Greenwich Streets. During the next eight years Delacroix transformed his newly-acquired possession into a pleasure garden, by erecting a small theatre and summer-house, and by setting out tables and seats under the trees on the grounds, and booths with benches around the inside close up to the high board fence that enclosed the Garden. He called the place Vauxhall, thereby causing some confusion to historians, who often confound this Garden with the earlier one of the same name. This last Vauxhall was situated a mile out of town on the Bowery Road. It was an attractive retreat, and the tableaux were so fine, the ballets so ingenius and the singing of such excellence, that the resort became immensely popular, and remained so continuously until the Garden was swept out of existence in 1855. Admission to the grounds was free, and to the theatre two shillings. In its last years it was a favorite place for the holding of large public meetings.

[Sidenote: Cooper Union]

Cooper Union, at the upper end of the Bowery, was built in 1854. Peter Cooper, merchant and philanthropist, made the object of his life the establishment of an inst.i.tution designed especially to give the working cla.s.ses opportunity for self-education better than the existing inst.i.tutions afforded. His store was on the site of the present building, which he founded. By a deed executed in 1859 the inst.i.tution, with its incomes, he devoted to the instruction and improvement of the people of the United States forever. The inst.i.tution has been taxed to its full capacity since its inception. From time to time it has been enriched by gifts from Mr. Cooper's heirs and friends. The statue of Peter Cooper, in the little park in front of the building, was unveiled May 28th, 1897. It is the work of Augustus St. Gaudens, once a pupil in the Inst.i.tute.

On a part of the site of Cooper Union, at the east side of what was then the Bowery, and what is now Fourth Avenue, stood a house which was said to have been haunted. It was demolished to make way for Cooper Union.

No permanent tenant, it is said, had occupied it for sixty years. It was a peaked-roofed brick structure, two stories high.

The house of Peter Cooper was on the site of the present Bible House, at Eighth Street and Third Avenue. He removed in 1820 to Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue, and his dwelling may still be seen there.

[Sidenote: Astor Place]

Astor Place is part of old Greenwich Lane, which led from the Bowery Lane past the pauper cemetery, where Washington Square is now, over the sand hills where University Place now is, and took the line of the present Greenwich Avenue. This was also called Monument Lane, because of a monument to the memory of General Wolfe erected on the spot where the road ended, at the junction of Eighth Avenue and Fifteenth Street.

Astor Place, as far as Fifth Avenue, was called Art Street when it was changed from a road to a street. The continuation of Astor Place to the east, now Stuyvesant Street, was originally Stuyvesant Road, and extended to the river at about Fifteenth Street. It was also called Art when it became a street. On the south side of this thoroughfare, just west of Fourth Avenue, Charlotte Temple lived in a small stone house.

At the head of Lafayette Place, fronting on Astor Place, is a building used at this time as a German Theatre. It was built for Dr. Schroeder, once the favorite preacher of the city, of whom it was said that if anyone desired to know where Schroeder preached, he had only to follow the crowds on Sunday. But he became dissatisfied and left Trinity for a church of his own. He very soon gave up this church, and for a time the building was occupied by St. Ann's Roman Catholic congregation.

Afterward it became a theatre and failed to succeed.

The ground at the junction of Astor Place and Eighth Street was made a public square in 1836. In the midst of it may now be seen a statue of Samuel S. c.o.x.

[Sidenote: Scene of Forrest-Macready Riots]

Astor Place Opera House, at the junction of Eighth Street and Astor Place, where Clinton Hall stands now, was built in 1847. It was a handsome theatre for those days, and contained eighteen hundred seats.

It was opened on November 22nd with "Ernani." On May 7th, 1849, at this house occurred the first of the Macready riots. The bitter jealousy existing between William Charles Macready, the English actor, and Edwin Forrest, which had a.s.sumed the proportions of an international quarrel, so far as the two actors and their friends were concerned, was the cause. The admirers of Forrest sought, on this night, to prevent the performance of "Macbeth," and a riot ensued in which no particular damage was done. On May 10th, in response to a pet.i.tion signed by many prominent citizens, Macready again sought to play "Macbeth." An effort was made to keep all Forrest sympathizers from the house. Many, however, gained admission, and the performance was again frustrated. The ringleaders were arrested. A great crowd blocked Astor Place, and an a.s.sault upon the theatre was attempted. Macready escaped by a rear door.

The Seventh Regiment and a troop of cavalry cleared Eighth Street and reached Astor Place. The mob resisted. The Riot Act was read. That producing no effect, and the a.s.sault upon the building and the soldiers defending it becoming more violent each moment, the mob was fired upon.

Three volleys were fired. Thirty-four persons were killed and some hundred injured. Over one hundred soldiers and many policemen were also hurt.

On August 30th, 1852, the name of the house was changed to the New York Theatre, under the direction of Charles R. Thorne. In a month's time he gave up the venture and Frank Chanfrau took it up. He also abandoned it after a few weeks.

[Sidenote: Clinton Hall]

In 1854 the Opera House was reconstructed and occupied by the Mercantile Library. It was given the name of Clinton Hall, which had been the name of the library's first home in Beekman Street. This building in time gave way to the present Clinton Hall on the same site.

[Sidenote: Lafayette Place]

Lafayette Place was opened through the Vauxhall Garden in 1826.

The Astor Library, in Lafayette Place, was completed in 1853, and was opened in 1854. The site cost $25,000.

The Middle Dutch Reformed Church was built in Lafayette Place in 1839, at the northwest corner of Fourth Street after its removal from Na.s.sau and Cedar Streets. A new church was built at Seventh Street and Second Avenue in 1844. In the Lafayette Place building was a bell which had been cast in Holland in 1731, and which had first been used when the church was in Na.s.sau Street. It was the gift of Abraham de Peyster, and now hangs in the Reformed Church at Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street.