Part 3

Adrian Block was one of the earliest fur traders to visit the island after Henry Hudson returned to Holland with the news of his discovery. The "Tiger" took fire in the night while anchored in the bay, and Block and his crew reached the shore with difficulty. They were the only white men on the island. Immediately they set about building a new vessel, which was named the "Restless."

Next door, at No. 39, President Washington lived in the Macomb's Mansion, moving there from the Franklin House in 1790. Subsequently the house became a hotel.

[Sidenote: Tin Pot Alley]

There is a rift in the walls between the tall buildings at No. 55 Broadway, near Rector Street, a cemented way that is neither alley nor street. It was a green lane before New Amsterdam became New York, and for a hundred years has been called Tin Pot Alley. With the growth of the city the little lane came near being crowded out, and the name, not being of proper dignity, would be forgotten but for a terra cotta tablet fixed in a building at its entrance. This was placed there by Rev. Morgan Dix, the pastor of Trinity Church.

At the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector Street, where a sky-scraper is now, Grace Church once stood with a graveyard about it. The church was completed in 1808, and was there until 1846, when the present structure was erected at Broadway and Tenth Street. Upon the Rector Street site, the Trinity Lutheran Church, a log structure, was built in 1671. It was rebuilt in 1741, and was burned in the great fire of 1776.

[Sidenote: Trinity Churchyard]

Trinity churchyard is part of a large tract of land, granted to the Trinity Corporation in 1705, that was once the Queen's Farm.

[Sidenote: Annetje Jans's Farm]

In 1635 there were a number of bouweries or farms above the Fort. The nearest--one extending about to where Warren Street is--was set apart for the Dutch West India Company, and called the Company's Farm. Above this was another, bounded approximately by what are now Warren and Charlton Streets, west of Broadway. This last was given by the company, in 1635, to Roelof Jansz (contraction of Jannsen), a Dutch colonist. He died the following year, and the farm became the property of his wife, Annetje Jans. (In the feminine, the z being omitted, the form became Jans.) The farm was sold to Francis Lovelace, the English Governor, in 1670, and he added it to the company's farm, and it became thereafter the Duke's Farm. In 1674 it became the King's Farm. When Queen Anne began her reign it became the Queen's Farm, and it was she who granted it to Trinity, making it the Church Farm.

In 1731, which was sixty-one years after the Annetje Jans's farm was sold to Governor Lovelace, the descendants of Annetje Jans for the first time decided that they had yet some interest in the farm, and made an unsuccessful protest. From time to time since protests in the form of lawsuits have been made, but no court has sustained the claims.

The city's growth was retarded by church ownership of land, as no one wanted to build on leasehold property. It was not until the greater part of available land on the east side of the island was built upon that the church property was made use of on the only terms it could be had. Not until 1803 were the streets from Warren to Canal laid out.

Trinity Church was built in 1697. For years before, however, there had been a burying-ground beyond the city and the city's wall that became the Trinity graveyard of to-day. The waving grass extended to a bold bluff overlooking Hudson River, which was about where Greenwich Street now is. Through the bluff a street was cut, its passage being still plainly to be seen in the high wall on the Trinity Place side of the graveyard.

[Sidenote: Oldest Grave In Trinity Churchyard]

The oldest grave of which there is a record is in the northern section of the churchyard, on the left of the first path. It is that of a child, and is marked with a sandstone slab, with a skull, cross-bones and winged hour-glass cut in relief on the back, the inscription on the front reading:

W. C. HEAR . LYES . THE . BODY OF . RICHARD . CHVRCH ER . SON . OF . WILLIA M . CHVRCHER . WHO . DIED . THE . 5 OF . APRIL 1681 . OF . AGE 5 YEARS AND . 5 . MONTHS

The records tell nothing of the Churcher family.

Within a few feet of this stone is another that countless eyes have looked at through the iron fence from Broadway, which says:

HA, SYDNEY, SYDNEY! LYEST THOU HERE? I HERE LYE, 'TIL TIME IS FLOWN TO ITS EXTREMITY.

It is the grave of a merchant--once an officer of the British army--Sydney Breese, who wrote his epitaph and directed that it be placed on his tombstone. He died in 1767.

[Sidenote: Grave of Charlotte Temple]

On the opposite side of the path, nearer to Broadway, is a marble slab lying flat on the ground and each year sinking deeper into the earth. It was placed there by one of the sextons of Trinity more than a century ago, in memory of Charlotte Temple.

Close by the porch of the north entrance to the church is the stone that marks the grave of William Bradford, who set up the first printing-press in the colony and was printer to the Colonial Government for fifty years. He was ninety-two years old when he died in 1752. The original stone was crumbling to decay when, in 1863, the Vestry of Trinity Church replaced it by the present stone, renewing the original inscription (see page 14).

[Sidenote: Martyr's Monument]

The tall freestone Gothic shaft, the only monumental pile in the northern section of the churchyard, serves to commemorate the unknown dead of the Revolution. Trinity Church with all its records, together with a large section of the western part of the city, was burned in 1776 when the British army occupied the city. During the next seven years the only burials in the graveyard were the American prisoners from the Provost Jail in The Commons and the other crowded prisons of the city, who were interred at night and without ceremony. No record was kept of who the dead were.

[Sidenote: A Churchyard Cryptograph]

Close to the Martyrs' Monument is a stone so near the fence that its inscription can be read from Broadway:

HERE LIES DEPOSITED THE BODY OF JAMES LEESON, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE ON THE 28TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1794, AGED 38 YEARS.

And above the inscription are cut these curious characters:

It is a cryptograph, but a simple one, familiar to school children. In its solution three diagrams are drawn and lettered thus:

The lines which enclose the letters are separated from the design, and each section used instead of the letters. For example, the letters A, B, C, become:

The second series begins with K, because the I sign is also used for J. The letters of the three series are distinguished by dots; one dot being placed with the lines of the first series; two dots with the second, but none with the third. If this be tried, any one can readily decipher the meaning of the cryptograph, and read "REMEMBER DEATH."

Close to the north door of the church are interred the remains of Lady Cornbury, who could call England's Queen Anne cousin. She was the wife of Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who was Governor of New York in 1702. He was a grandson of the Earl of Clarendon, Prime Minister of Charles II; and son of that Earl of Clarendon who was brother-in-law of James II. So Lady Cornbury was first cousin of Queen Anne. She was Baroness of Clifton in her own right, and a gracious lady. She died in 1706.

[Sidenote: Alexander Hamilton's Tomb]

The tomb of Alexander Hamilton, patriot, soldier and statesman, stands conspicuously in the southern half of the churchyard, about forty feet from Broadway and ten feet from the iron railing on Rector Street.

In the same part of the churchyard are interred the remains of Philip, eldest son of Alexander Hamilton. The son in 1801 fell in a duel with George L. Eacker, a young lawyer, when the two disagreed over a political matter. Three years later Eacker died and was buried in St. Paul's churchyard, and the same year Alexander Hamilton fell before the duelling pistol of Aaron Burr.

[Sidenote: Last Friend Of Aaron Burr]

Close by Hamilton's tomb, a slab almost buried in the earth bears the inscription "Matthew L. Davis' Sepulchre." Strange that this "last friend that Aaron Burr possessed on earth" should rest in death so close to his friend's great enemy. He went to the Jersey shore in a row-boat with Burr on the day the duel was fought with Hamilton, and stood not far away with Dr. Hosack to await the outcome. He was imprisoned for refusing to testify before the Coroner. Afterwards he wrote a life of Burr. He was a merchant, with a store at 49 Stone Street, and was highly respected.

[Sidenote: Tomb of Capt. James Lawrence]

Within a few steps of Broadway, at the southern entrance to the church, is the tomb of Captain James Lawrence, U. S. N., who was killed on board the frigate Chesapeake during the engagement with H. B. M. frigate "Shannon." His dying words, "Don't give up the ship!" are now known to every school-boy. The handsome mausoleum close by the church door, and the surrounding eight cannon, first attract the eye. These cannon, selected from arms captured from the English in the War of 1812, are buried deep, according to the directions of the Vestry of Trinity, in order that the national insignia, and the inscription telling of the place and time of capture, might be hidden and no evidence of triumph paraded in that place--where all are equal, where peace reigns and enmity is unknown. The monument was erected August 22, 1844. Before that the remains of Captain Lawrence had been interred in the southwest corner of the churchyard, beneath a shaft of white marble. This first resting-place was selected in September, 1813, when the body was brought to the city and interred, after being carried in funeral procession from the Battery.

"D. Contant" is the inscription on the first vault at the south entrance, one of the first victims of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to be buried in the city. There are many Huguenot memorials in the churchyard, the oddest being a tombstone with a Latin inscription telling that Withamus de Marisco, who died in 1765, was "most noble on the side of his father's mother."

[Sidenote: Cresap, the Indian Fighter]

At the rear of the church, to the north, is a small headstone:

IN MEMORY OF MICHAEL CRESAP FIRST CAPTAIN OF THE RIFLE BATTALIONS AND SON OF COLONEL THOMAS CRESAP WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE OCT. 18, A. D. 1775.

His father had been a friend and neighbor of Washington in Virginia, and he himself was a brilliant Indian fighter on the frontier of his native State. It was the men under his command who, unordered, exterminated the family of Logan, the Indian chief, "the friend of the white man." Many a boy, who in school declaimed, unthinkingly, "Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one!" grown to manhood, cannot but look with interest on the grave of Logan's foe. Tradition has been kind to Cresap's memory, insisting that his heart broke over the accusation of responsibility for the death of Logan's family.

There is another slab, close by the grave of Captain Cresap, which tells:

"HERE LIETH YE BODY OF SUSANNAH NEAN, WIFE OF ELIAS NEAN, BORN IN YE CITY OF ROCHELLE, IN FRANCE, IN YE YEAR 1660, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 25 DAY OF DECEMBER, 1720, AGE 60 YEARS." "HERE LIETH ENTERRED YE BODY OF ELIAS NEAN, CATECHIST IN NEW YORK, BORN IN SOUBISE, IN YE PROVINCE OF CAENTONGE IN FRANCE IN YE YEAR 1662, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 8 DAY OF SEPTEMBER 1722 AGED 60 YEARS." "THIS INSCRIPTION WAS RESTORED BY ORDER OF THEIR DESCENDANT OF THE 6TH GENERATION, ELIZABETH CHAMPLIN PERRY, WIDOW OF THE LATE COM'R O. H. PERRY, OF THE U. S. NAVY, MAY, ANNO DOMINI, 1846."

But the stone does not tell that the Huguenot refugee was for many years a vestryman of Trinity Church, and that among his descendants are the Belmonts and a dozen distinguished families. Before coming to America, Elias Nean was condemned to the galleys in France because he refused to renounce the reformed religion.

[Sidenote: Where Gov De Lancy Was buried]

Beneath the middle aisle in the church lie the bones of the eldest son of Stephen (Etienne) De Lancey--James De Lancey. He was Chief Justice of the Colony of New York in 1733, and Lieutenant-Governor in 1753. He died suddenly in 1760 at his country house which was at the present northwest corner of Delancey and Chrystie Streets. A lane led from the house to the Bowery.

[Sidenote: Home of The De Lanceys]

Thames Street is as narrow now as it was one hundred and fifty years ago, when it was a carriageway that led to the stables of Etienne De Lancey. The Huguenot nobleman left his Broad Street house for the new home he had built at Broadway and Cedar Street in 1730. In 1741, at his death, it became the property of his son, James, the Lieutenant-Governor. It was the most imposing house in the town, elegantly decorated, encircled by broad balconies, with an uninterrupted garden extending to the river at the back.

After the death of Lieutenant-Governor De Lancey in 1760, the house became a hotel, and was known under many names. It was a favorite place for British officers during the Revolution, and in 1789 was the scene of the first "inauguration ball" in honor of President Washington.

The house was torn down in 1793. In 1806 the City Hotel was erected on its site and became the most fashionable in town. It was removed in 1850 and a line of shops set up. In 1889 the present buildings were erected.

A tablet on the building at 113 Broadway, corner of Cedar Street, marks the site, reading:

THE SITE OF LIEUT. GOVE. DE LANCEY'S HOUSE, LATER THE CITY HOTEL. IT WAS HERE THAT THE NON-IMPORTATION AGREEMENT, IN OPPOSITION TO THE STAMP ACT, WAS SIGNED, OCT. 15TH, 1766. THE TAVERN HAD MANY PROPRIETORS BY WHOSE NAMES IT WAS SUCCESSIVELY CALLED. IT WAS ALSO KNOWN AS THE PROVINCE ARMS, THE CITY ARMS AND BURNS COFFEE HOUSE OR TAVERN.

Opposite Liberty (then Crown) Street, in the centre of Broadway, there stood in 1789 a detached building 42 x 25 feet. It was the "up-town market," patronized by the wealthy, who did their own marketing in those days, their black slaves carrying the purchases home.

[Sidenote: Washington Market]

Washington Market, at the foot of Fulton Street, was built in 1833. The water washed the western side of it then, and ships sailed to it to deliver their freight. Since then the water has been crowded back year by year with the growing demand for land. In its early days it was variously called Country Market, Fish Market and Exterior Market.

[Sidenote: St. Paul's Chapel]

At the outskirts of the city, in a field that the same year had been sown with wheat, the cornerstone of St. Paul's Chapel was laid on May 14, 1764. The church was opened two years later, and the steeple added in 1794. It fronted the river which came up then as far as to where Greenwich Street is now, and a grassy lawn sloped down to a beach of pebbles. During the days of English occupancy, Major André, Lord Howe and Sir Guy Carleton worshipped there. Another who attended services there was the English midshipman who afterwards became William IV.

[Sidenote: The Washington Pew in St. Paul's]

President Washington, on the day of his inauguration, marched at the head of the representative men of the new nation to attend service in St. Paul's, and thereafter attended regularly. The pew he occupied has been preserved and is still to be seen next the north wall, midway between the chancel and the vestry room. Directly opposite is the pew occupied at the same period by Governor George Clinton.

Back of the chancel is the monument to Major-General Richard Montgomery, who fell before Quebec in 1775, crying, "Men of New York, you will not fail to follow where your general leads!" Congress decided on the monument, and Benjamin Franklin bought it in France for 300 guineas. A privateer bringing it to this country was captured by a British gunboat, which in turn was taken, and the monument, arriving safe here, was set in place. The body was removed from its first resting-place in Quebec, and interred close beside the monument in 1818.

In the burying-ground, which has been beside the church since it was built, are the monuments of men whose names are associated with the city's history: Dr. William James Macneven, who raised chemistry to a science; Thomas Addis Emmet, an eminent jurist and brother of Robert Emmet; Christopher Collis, who established the first water works in the city, and who first conceived the idea of constructing the Erie Canal; and a host of others.

[Sidenote: The Actor Cooke's Grave]

The tomb of George Frederick Cooke, the tragedian, is conspicuous in the centre of the yard, facing the main door of the church. Cooke was born in England in 1756, and died in New York in 1812. Early in life he was a printer's apprentice. By 1800 he had taken high rank among tragic actors.

The grave of George L. Eacker, who killed the eldest son of Alexander Hamilton in a duel, is near the Vesey Street railing.

[Sidenote: Astor House]

The Astor House, occupying the Broadway block between Vesey and Barclay Streets, was opened in 1836 by Boyden, a hotel keeper of Boston. This site had been part of the Church Farm, and as early as 1729, when there were only a few scattered farm houses on the island above what is now Liberty Street, there was a farm house on the Astor House site; and from there extended, on the Broadway line, a rope-walk. Prior to the erection of the hotel in 1830, the site for the most part had been occupied by the homes of John Jacob Astor, John G. Coster and David Lydig. On a part of the site, at 221 Broadway, in 1817, M. Paff, popularly known as "Old Paff," kept a bric-à-brac store. He dealt especially in paintings, having the reputation of buying worthless and old ones and "restoring" them into masterpieces. His was the noted curiosity-shop of the period.

[Sidenote: A House of Other Days]

Where Vesey and Greenwich Streets and West Broadway come together is a low, rough-hewn rock house. It has been used as a shoe store since the early part of the century. On its roof is a monster boot bearing the date of 1832, which took part in the Croton water parade and a dozen other celebrations. In pre-revolutionary days, when the ground where the building stands was all Hudson River, and the water extended as far as the present Greenwich Street, according to tradition, this was a lighthouse. There have been many changes in the outward appearance, but the foundation of solid rock is the same as when the waters swept around it.

[Sidenote: The Road To Greenwich]

Greenwich Street follows the line of a road which led from the city to Greenwich Village. This road was on the waterside. It was called Greenwich Road. South of Canal Street, west of Broadway, was a marshy tract known as Lispenard's Meadows. Over this swamp Greenwich Road crossed on a raised causeway. When the weather was bad for any length of time, the road became heavy and in places was covered by the strong tide from the river. At such times travel took an inland route, along the Post Road (now the Bowery) and by Obelisk Lane (now Astor Place and Greenwich Avenue).

[Sidenote: St. Peter's Church]

St. Peter's Church, at the southeast corner of Barclay and Church Streets, the home of the oldest Roman Catholic congregation in the city, was built in 1786, and rebuilt in 1838. The congregation was formed in 1783, although mass was celebrated in private houses before that for the few scattered Catholic families.

[Sidenote: Columbia College]

The two blocks included between Barclay and Murray Streets, West Broadway and Church Street, were occupied until 1857 by the buildings and grounds of Columbia College. That part of the Queen's Farm lying west of Broadway between the present Barclay and Murray Streets--a strip of land then in the outskirts of the city--in 1754 was given to the governors of King's College. During the Revolution the college suspended exercises, resuming in 1784 as Columbia College under an act passed by the Legislature of the State. In 1814, in consideration of lands before granted to the college which had been ceded to New Hampshire in settlement of the boundary, the college was granted by the State a tract of farming land known as the Hosack Botanical Garden. This is the twenty acres lying between Forty-seventh and Forty-ninth Streets, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. At that time the city extended but little above the City Hall Park, and this land was unprofitable and for many years of considerable expense to the college. By 1839 the city had crept past the college and the locality being built up the college grounds were cramped between the limits of two blocks. In 1854, Park Place was opened through the grounds of the college from Church Street to West Broadway (then called College Place). Until about 1816 the section of Park Place west of the college grounds was called Robinson Street. In 1857 the college was moved to Madison Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets, and in 1890 it was re-organized on a university basis.

[Sidenote: Chapel Place]

West Broadway was originally a lane which wound from far away Canal Street to the Chapel of Columbia College, and was called Chapel Place. Later it became College Place. In 1892 the street was widened south of Chambers Street, in order to relieve the great traffic from the north, and extended through the block from Barclay to Greenwich Street. Evidence of the former existence of the old street can be seen in the pillars of the elevated road on the west side of West Broadway at Murray Street, for these pillars, once on the sidewalk, are now several feet from it in the street.

[Sidenote: Bowling Green Garden And First Vauxhall]

In the vicinity of what is now Greenwich and Warren Streets, the Bowling Green Garden was established in the early part of the eighteenth century. It was a primitive forest, for there were no streets above Crown (now Liberty) Street on the west side, and none above Frankfort on the east. The land on which the Garden stood was a leasehold on the Church Farm. The place was given the name of the Vauxhall Garden before the middle of the same century, and for forty years thereafter was a fashionable resort and sought to be a copy of the Vauxhall in London. There was dancing and music, and groves dimly lighted where visitors could stroll, and where they might sit at tables and eat. By the time the city stretched past the locality, all that was left of the resort was what would now be called a low saloon, and its pretty garden had been sold for building lots. The second Vauxhall was off the Bowery, south of Astor Place.

[Sidenote: A. T. Stewart's Store]