Nooks and Corners of Old New York Part 12

[Sidenote: Old House of Refuge Wall]

The House of Refuge in Madison Square was, after the fire in 1839, rebuilt on the block bounded by Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Streets, First Avenue and the East River. It was surrounded by a high wall, a section of which is still standing on the north side of Twenty-third Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A. The river at that time extended west to beyond the Avenue A line. The old gateway is there yet, and is used now as the entrance to a coal-yard. Some of the barred windows of the wall can still be seen. In 1854 the inmates were removed to Randall's Island, and were placed in charge of the State.

[Sidenote: Bellevue Hospital]

Bellevue Hospital has occupied its present site; at the foot of East Twenty-sixth Street, since about 1810. The hospital really had its beginning in 1736, in the buildings of the Public Work-house and House of Correction in City Hall Park. There were six beds there, in charge of the medical officer, Dr. John Van Beuren. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, yellow fever patients were sent to a building known as Belle Vue, on the Belle Vue Farm, close by the present hospital buildings. In about 1810 it was decided to establish a new almshouse, penitentiary and hospital on the Belle Vue Farm. Work on this was completed in 1816. The almshouse building was three stories high, surmounted by a cupola, and having a north and south wing each one hundred feet long. This original structure stands to-day, and is part of the present hospital building, other branches having been added to it from time to time. The water line, at that time, was within half a block of where First Avenue is now.

In 1848 the Almshouse section of the inst.i.tution was transferred to Blackwell's Island. The ambulance service was started in 1869, and was the first service of its kind in the world.

[Sidenote: Bull's Head Village]

Bull's Head Village was located in the district now included within Twenty-third and Twenty-seventh Streets, Fourth and Second Avenues. It became a centre of importance in 1826, when the old Bull's Head Tavern was moved from its early home on the Bowery, near Bayard Street, to the point which is now marked by Twenty-sixth Street and Third Avenue. It continued to be the headquarters of drovers and stockmen. As at that time there was no bank north of the City Hall Park, the Bull's Head Tavern served as inn, bank and general business emporium for the locality. For more than twenty years this district was the great cattle market of the city. As business increased, stores and business houses were erected, until, toward the year 1850, the cattle mart, which was the source of all business, was crowded out. It was moved up-town to the neighborhood of Forty-second Street; later to Ninety-fourth Street, and in the early 80's to the Jersey sh.o.r.e. The most celebrated person connected with the management of the Bull's Head Tavern was Daniel Drew.

He afterwards operated in Wall Street, became a director of the New York and Erie Railroad upon its completion in 1851, and acc.u.mulated a fortune by speculation.

[Sidenote: Peter Cooper's House]

At Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue, on the southeast corner, the house numbered 399-401, stands the old "Cooper Mansion," in which Peter Cooper lived. It was formerly on the site where the Bible House is now, at the corner of Eighth Street and Fourth Avenue. Peter Cooper himself superintended the removal of the house in 1820, and directed its establishment on the new site so that it should be reconstructed in a manner that should absolutely preserve its original form. Now it presents an insignificant appearance crowded about by modern structures, and it is occupied by a restaurant.

This corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Avenue was directly on the line of the Boston Post Road. Just at that point the Middle Road ran from it, and extended in a direct line to Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Little Church around the Corner]

[Sidenote: Little Church Around the Corner]

The Little Church Around the Corner, a low, rambling structure, seemingly all angles and corners, is on the north side of Twenty-ninth Street, midway of the block between Fifth and Madison Avenues. It is the Episcopal Church of The Transfiguration. Its picturesque t.i.tle was bestowed upon it in 1871, when Joseph Holland, an English actor, the father of E. M. and Joseph Holland, the players known to the present generation, died. Joseph Jefferson, when arranging for the funeral, went to a church which stood then at Madison Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, to arrange for the services. The minister said that his congregation would object to an actor being buried from their church, adding: "But there is a little church around the corner where they have such funerals." Mr. Jefferson, astonished that such petty and unjust distinctions should be persisted in even in the face of death, exclaimed: "All honor to that Little Church Around the Corner!" From that time until the present day, "The Little Church Around the Corner"

has been the religious refuge of theatrical folk. For twenty-six years of that time, and until his death, the Rev. Dr. George H. Houghton, who conducted the services over the remains of actor Holland, was the firm friend of the people of the stage in times of trouble, of sickness and of death.

[Sidenote: Lich Gate]

The lich gate at the entrance of the church is unique in this country, and is considered the most elaborate now in existence anywhere. It was erected in 1895, at a cost of $4,000.

The congregation worshipped first in a house at No. 48 East Twenty-fourth Street, in 1850. The present building was opened in 1856.

Lester Wallack was buried from this church, as were Dion Boucicault, Edwin Booth, and a host of others. In the church is a memorial window to the memory of Edwin Booth, which was unveiled in 1898. It represents a mediaeval histrionic student, his gaze fixed on a mask in his hand. Below the figure is the favorite quotation of Booth, from "Henry II": "As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; a man that fortune's buffets and rewards has taken with equal thanks." And the further inscription: "To the glory of G.o.d and in loving memory of Edwin Booth this window has been placed here by 'The Players.'"

At Lexington Avenue and Thirtieth Street is the First Moravian Church, which has occupied the building since 1869. This congregation was established in 1749. In 1751 their first church was built at No. 108 Fair (now Fulton) Street. In 1829 a second house was erected on the same site. In 1849 a new building was erected at the southwest corner of Houston and Mott Streets. This property was sold in 1865, and the congregation then worshipped in the Medical College Hall, at the northwest corner of Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, until the purchase of the present building from the Episcopalians. It was erected by the Baptists in 1825.

[Sidenote: Brick Presbyterian Church]

At Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street is the Brick Presbyterian Church, which stood at the junction of Park Row and Na.s.sau Street until 1858, when the present structure was erected. The locality was a very different one then, and the square quaintness of the church looks out of place amid its present modern surroundings. There is an air of solitude about it, as though it mourned faithfully for the green fields that shed peace and quietness about its walls when it was first built there.

It is related of William C. H. Waddell, who, in 1845, built a residence on the same site, that when he went to look at the plot, with a view to purchase, his wife waited for him near by, under the shade of an apple tree. The ground there was high above the city grade.

[Sidenote: Bryant Park]

The ground between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Fortieth and Forty-second Streets, now occupied by Bryant Park and the old reservoir, was purchased by the city in 1822, and in 1823 a Potter's Field was established there, the one in Washington Square having been abandoned in its favor. The reservoir, of Egyptian architecture, was finished in 1842. Its cost was about $500,000. On July 5th water was introduced into it through the new Croton aqueduct, with appropriate ceremonies. The water is brought from the Croton lakes, forty-five miles above the city, through conduits of solid masonry. The first conduit, which was begun in 1835, is carried across the Harlem River through the High Bridge, which was erected especially to accommodate it. At the time the reservoir was put in use the locality was at the northern limits of the city. On Sundays and holidays people went on journeys to the reservoir, and from the promenades at the top of the structure had a good view from river to river, and of the city to the south. The reservoir has not been in use for many years.

The park was called Reservoir Square until 1884, when the name was changed to Bryant Park.

[Sidenote: A World's Fair]

On July 4, 1853, a World's Fair, in imitation of the Crystal Palace, near London, was opened in Reservoir Square, when President Pierce made an address. The fair was intended to set forth the products of the world, but it attracted but little attention outside the city. It was opened as a permanent exposition on May 14, 1854, but proved a failure.

One of the attractions was a tower 280 feet high, which stood just north of the present line of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. In August, 1856, it was burned, and as a great pillar of flame it attracted more attention than ever before. The exposition buildings and their contents were in the hands of a receiver when they were destroyed by fire October 5, 1858.

Bryant Park has been selected as the site for the future home of the consolidated Tilden, Astor and Lenox Libraries.

[Sidenote: Murray Hill]

Murray Hill derives its name from the possessions of Robert Murray, whose house, Inclenberg, stood at the corner of what is now Thirty-sixth Street and Park Avenue, on a farm which lay between the present Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) and the Boston Post Road (the present Third Avenue). The house was destroyed by fire in 1834. On September 15, 1776, after the defeat on Long Island, the Americans were marching northward from the lower end of the island, when the British, marching toward the west, reached the Murray House. There the officers were well entertained by the Murrays, who, at the same time, managed to get word to the American Army: the latter hurried on and joined Washington at about Forty-third Street and Broadway, before the English suspected that they were anywhere within reach.

The Murray Farm extended down to Kip's Bay at Thirty-sixth Street. The Kip mansion was the oldest house on the Island of Manhattan when it was torn down in 1851. Where it stood, at the crossing of Thirty-fifth Street and Second Avenue, there is now not a trace. Jacob Kip built the house in 1655, of brick which he imported from Holland. The locality between the Murray Hill Farm and the river, that is, east of what is now Third Avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, was called Kipsborough in Revolutionary times.

[Sidenote: Turtle Bay]

The British forces landed, on the day of the stop at the Murray House, in Turtle Bay, that portion of the East River between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh Streets. It was a safe harbor and a convenient one.

Overlooking the bay, on a great bluff at the present Forty-first Street, was the summer home of Francis Bayard Winthrop. He owned the Turtle Bay Farm. The bluff is there yet, and subsequent cutting through of the streets has left it in appearance like a small mountain peak. Winthrop's house is gone, and in its place is Corcoran's Roost, far up on the height, whose grim wall of stone on the Fortieth Street side at First Avenue became in modern times the trysting-place for members of the "Rag Gang."

[Sidenote: The Elgin Garden]

Forty-seventh and Forty-ninth Streets, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, enclose the tract formerly known as the Elgin Garden. This was a botanical garden founded by David Hosack, M. D., in 1801, when he was Professor of Botany in Columbia College. In 1814 the land was purchased by the State from Dr. Hosack and given to Columbia College, in consideration of lands which had been owned by the College but ceded to New Hampshire after the settlement of the boundary dispute. The ground is still owned by Columbia University.

The block east of Madison Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets, was occupied in 1857 by Columbia College, when the latter moved from its down-town site at Church and Murray Streets. The College occupied the building which had been erected in 1817 by the founders of the Inst.i.tute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb--the first asylum for mutes in the United States. The original intention had been to erect the college buildings on a portion of the Elgin Garden property, but the expense involved was found to be too great. The asylum property, consisting of twenty lots and the buildings, was purchased in 1856.

Subsequently the remainder of the block was also bought up.

[Sidenote: St. Patrick's Cathedral]

At Fiftieth Street and Fifth Avenue is St. Patrick's Cathedral, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1858. The entire block on which it stands was, the preceding year, given to the Roman Catholics for a nominal sum--one dollar--by the city.

The Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in the adjoining block, on Fifth Avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty-second Streets, was organized in 1825, but not incorporated until 1852, when the present buildings were erected.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Milestone 3rd Ave. near 47th St.]

[Sidenote: Four Mile Stone]

There is still standing, in Third Avenue, just above Fifty-seventh Street, a milestone. It was once on the Post Road, four miles from Federal Hall in Wall Street.

Close by Fiftieth Street and Third Avenue, a Potter's Field was established about 1835. Near it was a spring of exceptionally pure water. This water was carried away in carts and supplied to the city.

Even after the introduction of Croton water the water from this spring commanded a price of two cents a pail from many who were strongly prejudiced against water that had been supplied through pipes.

[Sidenote: Beekman House]

Memories of Nathan Hale, the Martyr Spy of the Revolution, hover about the neighborhood of Fifty-first Street and First Avenue. The Beekman House stood just west of the Avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty-second Streets, on the site where Grammar School No. 135 is now.

It was in a room of this house that Major Andre slept, and in the morning pa.s.sed out to dishonor; and it was in a greenhouse on these grounds that Nathan Hale pa.s.sed the last of his nights upon earth. The house was built in 1763 by a descendant of the William Beekman who came from Holland in 1647 with Peter Stuyvesant. During the Revolution it was the headquarters of General Charles Clinton and Sir William Howe. It stood until 1874, by which time it had degenerated into a crumbling tenement, and was demolished when it threatened to fall of natural decay.

[Sidenote: An Old Shot Tower]

A very few steps from the East River, at Fifty-third Street, stands an old brick shot tower; a lonely and neglected sentinel now, but still proudly looking skyward and bearing witness to its former usefulness. It was built in 1821 by a Mr. Youle. On October 9th it was nearing completion when it collapsed. It was at once rebuilt, and, as has been said, still stands. In 1827 Mr. Youle advertised the sale of the lots near the tower, and designated the location as being "close by the Old Post Road near the four mile stone."

[Sidenote: The De Voor Farm]