Nooks and Corners of Old New York Part 11

Next to this church, for many years, lived Madam Canda, who kept the most fashionable school for ladies of a generation ago. Her beautiful daughter was dashed from a carriage, and killed on her eighteenth birthday--the age at which she was to make her debut into society. The entire city mourned her loss.

[Sidenote: La Grange Terrace]

Soon after Lafayette Place was opened, La Grange Terrace was built. It was named after General Lafayette's home in France. The row is still prominent on the west side of the thoroughfare, and is known as Colonnade Row. A riot occurred at the time it was built, the masons of the city being aroused because the stone used in the structure was cut by the prisoners in Sing Sing prison.

John Jacob Astor lived on this street. He died March 29th, 1848, and was buried from the home of his son, William B. Astor, just south of the library building.

[Sidenote: Sailors' Snug Harbor]

A line drawn through Astor Place and continued to the Washington Arch in Washington Square, through Fifth Avenue to the neighborhood of Tenth Street, with Fourth Avenue as an eastern boundary, would roughly enclose what used to be the Eliot estate in the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was a farm of about twenty-one acres in 1790, when it was purchased for five thousand pounds from "Baron" Poelnitz, by Captain Robert Richard Randall, who had been a ship-master and a merchant.

Randall dying in 1801, bequeathed the farm for the founding of an asylum for superannuated sailors, together with the mansion house in which he had lived. The house stood, approximately, at the present northwest corner of Ninth Street and Broadway. It was the intention of Captain Randall that the Sailors' Snug Harbor should be built on the property, and the farming land used to raise all vegetables, fruit and grain necessary for the inmates. There were long years of litigation, however, for relatives contested the will. When the case was settled in 1831, the trustees had decided to lease the land, and to purchase the Staten Island property where the Asylum is now located. The estate, at the time of Captain Randall's death, yielded an annual income of $4,000. At present the income is about $400,000 a year. It is conceded that the property would have increased more rapidly in value had it been sold outright, instead of becoming leasehold property in perpetuity.

Many efforts have been made to cut through Eleventh Street from Fourth Avenue to Broadway. The first was in 1830, when the street was open on the lines of the City Plan. Hendrick Brevoort, whose farm adjoined the Sailors' Snug Harbor property, had a homestead directly in the line of the proposed street, between Fourth Avenue and Broadway. He resisted the attempted encroachment on his home so successfully that the street was not opened through that block. He was again similarly successful in 1849, when an ordinance was pa.s.sed for the removal of his house and the opening of the street.

[Sidenote: Grace Church]

Grace Church, at Tenth Street and Broadway, was completed in 1846.

Previous to that date it had been on the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector Street, opposite Trinity Church.

There is a reason for the sudden bend in Broadway at Tenth Street, close by Grace Church. The Bowery Lane, which is now Fourth Avenue, curved in pa.s.sing through what is now Union Square until, at the line of the present Seventeenth Street it turned and took a direct course north and was from thereon called the Bloomingdale Road. This road to Bloomingdale was opened long before Broadway, and it was in order to let the latter connect as directly as possible with the straight road north that the direction of Broadway was changed about 1806 by the Tenth Street bend and a junction effected with the other road at the Seventeenth Street line.

At Thirteenth Street and Fourth Avenue there was constructed in 1834 a tank which was intended to furnish water for extinguishing fires. It had a capacity of 230,000 gallons, and was one hundred feet above tide water. Water was forced into it by a 12-horse power engine from a well and conducting galleries at the present Tenth Street and Sixth Avenue, on the site of the Jefferson Market Prison.

[Sidenote: Wallack's Theatre]

In 1861 James W. Wallack moved from Wallack's Lyceum at Broome Street, and occupied the new Wallack's, now the Star Theatre, at Thirteenth Street and Broadway. His last appearance was when he made a little speech at the close of the season of 1862. He died in 1864.

[Sidenote: Union Square]

Union Square was provided for in the City Plan, under the name of Union Place. The Commissioners decided that the Place was necessary, as an opening for fresh air would be needed when the city should be built up.

Furthermore, the union of so many roads intersecting at that point required s.p.a.ce for convenience; and if the roads were continued without interruption the land would be divided into such small portions as to be valueless for building purposes.

The fountain in the square was operated for the first time in 1842, on the occasion of the great Croton Water celebration.

The bronze equestrian statue of Washington was erected in the square close by where the citizens had received the Commander of the Army when he entered the city on Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783. The statue is the work of Henry K. Brown. The dedication occurred on July 4, 1856, and was an imposing ceremony. Rev. George W. Bethune delivered an oration, and there was a military parade.

[Sidenote: Academy of Music]

The Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, was built in 1854 by a number of citizens who desired a permanent home for opera.

On October 2nd of that year, Hackett took his company, headed by Grisi and Matio, there, the weather being too cold to continue the season at Castle Garden. The building was burned in 1866 and rebuilt in 1868.

In Third Avenue, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets, is an old milestone which marked the third mile from Federal Hall on the Post Road.

The Friends' Meeting House, at East Sixteenth Street and Rutherford Place, has existed since 1860. In 1775 it was in Pearl Street, near Franklin Square. In 1824 it was taken down and rebuilt in 1826 in Rose Street, near Pearl.

[Sidenote: St. George's Church]

St. George's (Episcopal) Church, at Rutherford Place and Sixteenth Street, was built in 1845. The church was organized in 1752, and before occupying the present site was in Beekman Street.

Early in the century a stream of water ran from Stuyvesant's Pond, close by what is now Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue, to First Avenue and Nineteenth Street, having an outlet into the East River at about Sixteenth Street. In winter this furnished an excellent skating-ground.

[Sidenote: Gramercy Park]

Gramercy Park, at Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets and Lexington Avenue, was originally part of the Gramercy Farm. In 1831 it was given by Samuel B. Ruggles to be used exclusively by the owners of lots fronting on it. It was laid out and improved in 1840. In the pavement, in front of the park gate on the west side, is a stone bearing this inscription:

GRAMERCY PARK FOUNDED BY SAMUEL B. RUGGLES 1831 COMMEMORATED BY THIS TABLET IMBEDDED IN THE GRAMERCY FARM BY JOHN RUGGLES STRONG.

1875.

[Sidenote: Madison Square]

There was no evidence during the last part of the eighteenth century that the town would ever creep up to and beyond the point where Twenty-third Street crosses Broadway. This point was the junction of the Post Road to Boston and the Bloomingdale Road. The latter was the fashionable out-of-town driveway, and it followed the course that Broadway and the Boulevard take now. The Post Road extended to the northeast. At this point, in 1794, a Potter's Field was established.

There were many complaints at its being located there, where pauper funerals clashed with the vehicles of the well-to-do, and there was much rejoicing three years later, when the burying-ground was removed to the spot that is now Washington Square.

[Sidenote: a.r.s.enal in Madison Square]

In 1797 was built, where the burying-ground had been, an a.r.s.enal which extended from Twenty-fourth Street and over the site of the Worth Monument.

In the City Plan, completed in 1811, provision was made for a parade-ground to extend from Twenty-third to Thirty-fourth Streets, and Seventh to Third Avenue. The Commissioners decided that such a s.p.a.ce was needed for military exercises, and where, in case of necessity, there could be a.s.sembled a force to defend the city. In 1814, the limits of the parade-ground were reduced to the s.p.a.ce between Twenty-third and Thirty-first Streets, Sixth and Fourth Avenues, and given the name of Madison Square.

[Sidenote: House of Refuge]

The a.r.s.enal in Madison Square was turned into a House of Refuge in 1824, and opened January 1, 1825. This was the result of the work of an a.s.sociation of citizens who formed a society to improve the condition of juvenile delinquents. The House of Refuge was burned in 1839, and another inst.i.tution built at the foot of Twenty-third Street the same year. A portion of the old outer wall of this last structure is still to be seen on the north side of Twenty-third Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A.

In 1845, at the suggestion of Mayor James Harper, Madison Square was reduced to its present limits and laid out as a public park. Up to this time a stream of water had crossed the square, fed by springs in the district about Sixth Avenue, between Twenty-first and Twenty-seventh Streets. It spread out into a pond in Madison Square, and emptied into the East River at Seventeenth Street. It was suggested that a street be created over its bed from Madison Avenue to the river. This was not carried out, and the stream was simply buried.

[Sidenote: Post Road]

The road which branched out of the Bloomingdale Road at Twenty-third Street, sometimes called the Boston Post Road, sometimes the Post Road, sometimes the Boston Turnpike, ran across the present Madison Square, striking Fourth Avenue at Twenty-ninth Street; went through Kipsborough which hugged the river between Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, swept past Turtle Bay at Forty-seventh Street and the East River, crossed Second Avenue at Fifty-second Street, recrossed at Sixty-third Street, reached the Third Avenue line at Sixty-fifth Street, and at Seventy-seventh Street crossed a small stream over the Kissing Bridge.

Then proceeded irregularly on this line to One Hundred and Thirtieth Street, where it struck the bridge over the Harlem River at Third Avenue. The road was closed in 1839.

The monument to Major-General William J. Worth, standing to the west of Madison Square, was dedicated November 25, 1857. General Worth was the main support of General Scott in the campaign of Mexico. His body was first interred in Greenwood Cemetery. On November 23rd the remains were taken to City Hall, where they lay in state for two days, then were taken, under military escort, and deposited beside the monument.

[Sidenote: Fifth Avenue Hotel]

For twenty years, or more, prior to 1853, the site of the present Fifth Avenue Hotel, at Twenty-third Street and Broadway, was occupied by a frame cottage with a peaked roof, and covered veranda reached by a flight of wooden stairs. This was the inn of Corporal Thompson, and a favorite stopping-place on the Bloomingdale Road. An enclosed lot, extending as far as the present Twenty-fourth Street, was used at certain times of the year for cattle exhibitions. In 1853 the cottage made way for Franconi's Hippodrome, a brick structure, two stories high, enclosing an open s.p.a.ce two hundred and twenty-five feet in diameter.

The performances given here were considered of great merit and received with much favor. In 1856 the Hippodrome was removed, and in 1858 the present Fifth Avenue Hotel was opened.

The Madison Square Presbyterian Church, at Madison Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street, was commenced in 1853, the earlier church of the congregation having been in Broome Street. It was opened December, 1854, with Rev. Dr. William Adams as pastor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: College of the City of New York]

[Sidenote: College of City of New York]

At the southeast corner of Twenty-third Street and Lexington Avenue, the College of the City of New York has stood since 1848, the opening exercises having taken place in 1849. In 1847 the Legislature pa.s.sed an Act authorizing the establishment of a free academy for the benefit of pupils who had been educated in the public schools of this city. The name Free Academy was given to the inst.i.tution, and under that name it was incorporated. It had the power to confer degrees and diplomas. In 1866 the name was changed to its present t.i.tle, and all the privileges and powers of a college were conferred upon it. In 1882 the college was thrown open to all young men, whether educated in the public schools of this city or not. In 1898 ground was set aside in the northern part of the city, overlooking the Hudson River, for the erection of modern buildings suitable to meet the growth of the college.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gate of Old House of Refuge]