Part 5

That part of Greenwich Village that was transformed from fields into a town in a few days, during the yellow fever scare of 1822, centered at the point where West Eleventh Street crosses West Fourth Street. At this juncture was a cornfield on which, in two days, a hotel capable of accommodating three hundred guests was built. At the same time a hundred other houses sprang up, as if by magic, on all sides.

[Sidenote: Bank Street]

Bank Street was named in 1799. The year previous a clerk in the Bank of New York on Wall Street was one of the earliest victims of yellow fever, and the officials decided to take precautions in case of the bank being quarantined at a future time. Eight lots were purchased on a then nameless lane in Greenwich Village. The bank was erected there, and gave the lane the name of Bank Street.

[Sidenote: Washington Square]

Washington Square was once a Potter's Field. A meadow was purchased by the city for this purpose in 1789, and the pauper graveyard was established about where the Washington Arch is now.

Manetta Creek, coming from the north, flowed to the west of the arch site, crossed to what is now the western portion of the Square, ran through the present Minetta Street and on to the river. In 1795, during a yellow fever epidemic, the field was used as a common graveyard. In 1797 the pauper graveyard which had been in the present Madison Square, was abandoned in favor of this one. There was a gallows on the ground and criminals were executed and interred on the spot as late as 1822.

In 1823 the Potter's Field was abandoned and removed to the present Bryant Park at Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue. In 1827, three and one half acres of ground were added to the plot and the present Washington Square was opened.

[Sidenote: Obelisk Lane]

Past the pauper graveyard ran an inland road to Greenwich Village. This extended from the Post Road (now the Bowery) at the present Astor Place near Cooper Union, continued in a direct line to about the position of the Washington Arch, and from that point to the present Eighth Avenue just above Fifteenth Street. This road, established through the fields in 1768, was called Greenwich Lane. It was also known as Monument Lane and Obelisk Lane. A small section of it still exists in Astor Place from Bowery to Broadway. A larger section is Greenwich Avenue from Eighth to Fourteenth Streets. Monument Lane took its name from a monument at Fifteenth Street where the road ended, which had been erected to the memory of General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. The monument disappeared in a mysterious way during the British occupation. It is thought to have been destroyed by soldiers.

[Sidenote: Graveyard In a Side Street]

A few feet east of Sixth Avenue, on the south side of Eleventh Street, is a brick wall and railing, behind which can be seen several battered tombstones in a triangular plot of ground. This is all that is left of a Jewish graveyard established almost a century ago.

Milligan's Lane was the continuation of Amos (now West Tenth) Street, from Greenwich Avenue to Twelfth Street where it joined the Union Road. This lane struck the line of Sixth Avenue where Eleventh Street is now. At the southwest corner of this junction the course of the lane can be seen yet in the peculiar angle of the side wall of a building there, and in a similar angle of other houses near by. Close by this corner the second graveyard of Shearith Israel Synagogue was established early in this century. It took the place of the Beth Haim, or Place of Rest, down town, a remnant of which is to be seen in New Bowery off Chatham Square.

[Sidenote: Milligan's Lane]

The Eleventh Street graveyard, established in the midst of green fields, fronted on Milligan's Lane and extended back 110 feet. When Eleventh Street was cut through under the conditions of the City Plan, in 1830, it passed directly through the graveyard, cutting it away so that only the tiny portion now there was left. At that time a new place of burial was opened in Twenty-first Street west of Sixth Avenue.

[Sidenote: Union Road]

At a point just behind the house numbered 23 Eleventh Street, midway of the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Union Road had its starting-point. It was a short road, forming a direct communicating line between Skinner and Southampton Roads. Skinner Road, running from Hudson River along the line of the present Christopher Street, ended where Union Road began; and Union Road met Southampton at what is now the corner of Fifteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. This point was also the junction of Southampton and Great Kiln Roads.

Evidences of the Union Road are still to be seen in Twelfth Street, at the projecting angle of the houses numbered 43 and 45. It was just at this point that Milligan's Lane ended. On Thirteenth Street, the course of Union Road is shown by the slanting wall of a big business building, numbered 36.

[Sidenote: First Presbyterian Church]

In Twelfth Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, is the First Reformed Presbyterian Church. The congregation was started as a praying society in 1790 at the house of John Agnew at No. 9 Peck Slip. In 1798 the congregation worshipped in a school house in Cedar Street. They soon after built their first church at Nos. 39 and 41 Chambers Street, where the American News Company building is now. It was a frame building, and was succeeded in 1818 by a brick building on the same site. In 1834 a new church was erected at Prince and Marion Streets. The foundation for the present church was laid in 1848, and the church occupied it in the following year.

[Sidenote: Society Library]

The New York Society Library, at 107 University Place, near Fourteenth Street, claims to be the oldest institution of its kind in America. It is certainly the most interesting in historical associations, richness of old literature and art works. It is the direct outcome of the library established in 1700, with quarters in the City Hall, in Wall Street, by Richard, Earl of Bellomont, the Governor of New York.

In 1754 an association was incorporated for carrying on a library, and their collection, added to the library already in existence, was called the City Library. The Board of Trustees consisted of the most prominent men in the city. In 1772 a charter was granted by George III, under the name of the New York Society Library.

During the Revolutionary War the books became spoil for British soldiers. Many were destroyed and many sold. After the war the remains of the library were gathered from various parts of the city and again collected in the City Hall. In 1784 the members of the Federal Congress deliberated in the library rooms. In 1795 the library was moved to Nassau Street, opposite the Middle Dutch Church; in 1836 to Chambers Street; in 1841 to Broadway and Leonard Street; in 1853 to the Bible House, and in 1856 to the present building.

[Sidenote: Great Kiln Road]

At the point that is now Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street, then intersected by the Union Road, the Great Kiln Road ended. Its continuation was called Southampton Road. From that point it continued to Nineteenth Street, east of Sixth Avenue, and then parallel with Sixth Avenue to Love Lane, the present Twenty-first Street.

The line of this road, where it joined the Great Kiln Road, is still clearly shown in the oblique side wall of the house at the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street. Here, also, it has a marked effect on the east wall of St. Joseph's Home for the Aged. The first-mentioned house, with the cutting through of the streets, has been left one of those queer triangular buildings, with full front and running to a point in the rear.

[Sidenote: Weavers' Row]

When the road reached what is now Sixteenth Street, a third of a block east of Seventh Avenue, it passed through the block in a sweeping curve to the present corner of Seventeenth Street and Sixth Avenue. The evidence of its passage is still to be seen in the tiny wooden houses buried in the centre of the block, which are remnants of a row called Paisley Place, or Weavers' Row. This row was built during the yellow-fever agitation of 1822, and was occupied by Scotch weavers who operated their hand machines there.

The road took its name from Sir Peter Warren's second daughter, who married Charles Fitzroy, who later became the Baron Southampton.

[Sidenote: Graveyard Behind a Store]

In Twenty-first Street, a little west of Sixth Avenue, is the unused though not uncared-for graveyard of the Shearith Israel Synagogue. The graveyard cannot be seen from the street, but from the rear windows of a nearby dry-goods store a glimpse can be had of the ivy-covered receiving-vault and the time-grayed tombstones.

When this "Place of Rest" was established the locality was all green fields. The graveyard had been forced from further down town by the cutting through of Eleventh Street in 1830. Interments were made in this spot until 1852, when the cemetery was removed to Cypress Hills, L. I., the Common Council having in that year prohibited burials within the city limits. But though there were no burials, the congregation have persistently refused to sell this plot, just as they have the earlier plots, the remains of which are off Chatham Square and in Eleventh Street, near Sixth Avenue.

[Sidenote: Love Lane]

Abingdon Road in the latter years of its existence was commonly called Love Lane, and more than a century ago followed close on the line of the present Twenty-first Street from what is now Broadway to Eighth Avenue. It was the northern limit of a tract of land given by the city to Admiral Sir Peter Warren in recognition of his services at the capture of Louisburg.

From this road, when the Warren estate was divided among the daughters of the Admiral, two roads, the Southampton and the Warren, were opened through this upper part of the estate.

The name Love Lane was given to the road in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and was retained until it was swallowed up in Twenty-first Street. This last was ordered opened in 1827, but was not actually opened until some years later. There is no record to show where the name came from. The generally accepted idea is that being a quiet and little traveled spot, it was looked upon as a lane where happy couples might drive, far from the city, and amid green fields and stately trees confide the story of their loves. It was the longest drive from the town, by way of the Post Road, Bloomingdale Road and so across the west to Southampton, Great Kiln roads, through Greenwich Village and by the river road back to town.

The road originally took its name from the oldest daughter of Admiral Warren, who married the Earl of Abingdon.

There are still traces of Love Lane in Twenty-first Street. The two houses numbered 25 and 27 stood on the road. The houses 51, 53 and 55, small and odd appearing, are more closely identified with the lane. When built, these houses were conspicuous and alone, at the junction where Southampton Road from Greenwich Village ran into Love Lane. They are thought to have been a single house serving as a tavern.

Close by, at the northeast corner of Twenty-first Street and Sixth Avenue, the house with the gable roof is one that also stood on the old road, though built at a later date than the three next to it.

The road ended for many years about on the line with the present Eighth Avenue, where it ran into the Fitzroy Road. Some years previous to the laying out of the streets under the City Plan in 1811, Love Lane was continued to Hudson River. Before it reached the river it was crossed, a little east of Seventh Avenue, by the Warren Road, although there is no trace of the crossing now.

[Sidenote: Chelsea Village]

Although Chelsea Village was long ago swallowed up by the city, and its boundaries blotted out by the rectangular lines of the plan under which the streets were mapped out in 1811, there is still a suggestion of it in the green lawns and gray buildings of the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which occupies the block between Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets, Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

Chelsea got its name in 1750, when Captain Thomas Clarke, an old soldier, gave the name to his country seat, in remembrance of the English home for invalided soldiers. It was between two and three miles from the city, a stretch of country land along the Hudson River with not another house anywhere near it. The house stood, as streets are now, at the south side of Twenty-third Street, about two hundred feet west of Ninth Avenue, on a hill that sloped to the river. The captain had hoped to die in his retreat, but his home was burned to the ground during his severe illness, and he died in the home of his nearest neighbor. Soon after his death the house was rebuilt by his widow, Mrs. Mollie Clarke. The latter dying in 1802, a portion of the estate with the house went to Bishop Benjamin Moore, who had married Mrs. Clarke's daughter, Charity. It passed from him in 1813 to his son, Clement C. Moore. The latter reconstructed the house, and it stood until 1850.

Clement C. Moore's estate was included within the present lines of Eighth Avenue, Nineteenth to Twenty-fourth Streets and Hudson River. These are approximately the bounds of Chelsea Village which grew up around the old Chelsea homestead. It came to be a thriving village, conveniently reached by the road to Greenwich and then by Fitzroy Road; or by the Bowery Road, Bloomingdale, and then along Love Lane.

[Sidenote: London Terrace]

In 1831 the streets were cut through and the village thereafter grew up on the projected lines of the City Plan. It was for this reason that Chelsea, when the city reached it, was merged into it so perfectly that there is not an imperfect street line to tell where the village had been and where the city joined it. There are houses of the old village still standing; notably those still called the Chelsea Cottages in Twenty-fourth Street west of Ninth Avenue, and the row called the London Terrace in Twenty-third Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

The block on which the General Theological Seminary stands was given to the institution by Clement C. Moore, and was long called Chelsea Square. The cornerstone of the East Building was laid in 1825, and of the West Building, which still stands, in 1835.

It was this Clement C. Moore, living quietly in the village that had grown up around him, who wrote the child's poem which will be remembered longer than its writer--"'Twas the Night before Christmas."

III

III

[Sidenote: Oliver Street Baptist Church]

The Oliver Street Baptist Church was built on the northwest corner of Oliver and Henry Streets in 1795. It was rebuilt in 1800, and again in 1819. Later it was burned, and finally restored in 1843. The structure is now occupied by the Mariners' Temple, and the record of its burning is to be seen on a marble tablet on the front wall.

Oliver Street--that is, the two blocks from Chatham Square to Madison Street--was called Fayette Street before the name was changed to Oliver in 1825.

James Street was once St. James Street. The change was made prior to 1816.

Mariners' Church, at 46 Catherine Street, was erected in 1854, on the southeast corner of Madison Street. Prior to that, and as far back as 1819, it had been at 76 Roosevelt Street.

[Sidenote: Madison Street]

Banker Street having become a byword, because of the objectionable character of its inhabitants, the name was changed to Madison Street in 1826.

Between Jefferson and Clinton Streets, and south of Henry, was a pond, the only bit of water which, in early days, emptied into the East River between what afterward became Roosevelt Street and Houston Street. A wet meadow, rather than a distinct stream, extended from this pond to the river as an outlet. This became later the region of shipyards.

[Sidenote: Where Nathan Hale Was Hanged]

On what is now Cherry Street, between Clinton and Jefferson Streets, was the house of Col. Henry Rutgers, the Revolutionary patriot, and his farm extended from that point in all directions. On a tree of this farm Nathan Hale, the martyr spy of the Revolution, was hanged, September 22, 1776. On this same farm the Church of the Sea and Land, still standing with its three-foot walls, at Market and Henry Streets, was built in 1817.

In 1828, at the corner of Henry and Scammel Streets, was erected All Saints' Church (Episcopal). It still stands, now hemmed in by dwelling-houses. It is a low rock structure. A bit of green, a stunted tree and some shrubs still struggle through the bricks at the rear of the church, and can be seen through a tall iron railing from narrow Scammel Street. In 1825 the church occupied a chapel on Grand Street at the corner of Columbia.

[Sidenote: First Tenement House]

The first house designed especially for many tenants was built in 1833, in Water Street just east of Jackson, on which site is now included Corlears Hook Park. It was four stories in height, and arranged for one family on each floor. It was built by Thomas Price, and owned by James P. Allaire, whose noted engine works were close by in Cherry Street, between Walnut (now Jackson) and Corlears Street.

Where Grand and Pitt Streets cross is the top of a hill formerly known as Mount Pitt. On this hill the building occupied by the Mount Pitt Circus was built in 1826. It was burned in 1828.

At Grand, corner of Ridge Street, is the St. Mary's Church (Catholic), which was built in 1833, a rough stone structure with brick front and back. In 1826 it was in Sheriff, between Broome and Delancey Streets. It had the first Roman Catholic bell in the city. In 1831 the church was burned by a burglar, and the new structure was built in Grand Street.

Actual work on the pier for the new East River Bridge, at the foot of Delancey Street, was begun in the spring of 1897.

[Sidenote: Manhattan Island]

Much confusion has arisen, and still exists, in the designation of the territory under the names of Manhattan Island and Island of Manhattan. The two islands a hundred years ago were widely different bodies. They are joined now.

Manhattan Island was the name given to a little knoll of land which lay within the limits of what is now Third, Houston and Lewis Streets and the East River. At high tide the place was a veritable island. There seems to be still a suggestion of it in the low buildings which occupy the ground of the former island. About the ancient boundary, as though closing it in, are tall tenements and factory buildings. On the grounds of this old island the first recreation pier was built, in 1897, at the foot of Third Street.

The Island of Manhattan has always been the name applied to the land occupied by the old City of New York, now the Borough of Manhattan.

In the heart of the block surrounded by Rivington, Stanton, Goerck and Mangin Streets, there is still to be seen the remains of a slanting-roofed market, closed in by the houses which have been built about it. It was set up in 1827, and named Manhattan Market after the nearby island.

[Sidenote: Bone Alley]

Work on the Hamilton Fish Park was begun in 1896, in the space bounded by Stanton, Houston, Pitt and Sheriff Streets, then divided into two blocks by Willett Street. This was a congested, tenement-house vicinity, where misery and poverty pervaded most of the dingy dwellings. In wiping out the two solidly built-up blocks, Bone Alley, well known in police history for a generation, was effaced. On the west side of Willett Street, midway of the block, Bone Alley had its start and extended sixty feet into the block--a twenty-five-foot space between tall tenements, running plump into a row of houses extending horizontal with it. When these houses were erected they each had long gardens, which were built upon when the land became too valuable to be spared for flower-beds or breathing-spots. In time they became the homes of rag-and bone-pickers, and thus the alley which led to them got its name, which it kept even after the rag-pickers and the law-breakers who succeeded them had been driven away by the police.

There was, forty years ago, a well of good, drinkable water at the point where Rivington and Columbia Streets now cross.

[Sidenote: "Mother Mandelbaum"]

The little frame house at the northwest corner or Rivington and Clinton Streets was the home of "Mother" Frederica Mandelbaum for many years, until she was driven from the city in 1884. This "Queen of the Crooks," receiver of stolen goods and friend of all the criminal class, compelled, in a sense, the admiration of the police, who for years battled in vain to outwit her cleverness. When the play, "The Two Orphans," was first produced, Mrs. Wilkins, as the "Frochard," copied the character of "Mother" Mandelbaum and gave a representation of the woman that all who knew the original recognized. Other plays were written, and also many stories, having her as a central figure. She died at Hamilton, Ontario, in 1894.

At the crossing of Rivington and Suffolk Streets was the source of Stuyvesant's Creek. From there, as the streets exist now, it crossed Stanton Street, near Clinton; Houston, at Sheriff; Second, near Houston; then wound around to the north of Manhattan Island, and emptied into the East River at Third Street.

[Sidenote: Allen Street Memorial Church]

In Rivington Street, between Ludlow and Orchard, is the Allen Street Memorial Church (M. E.), built in 1888. The original Church, which was built in 1810, is two blocks away, in Allen Street, between Delancey and Rivington Streets. It was rebuilt in 1836, and when the new Rivington Street structure was erected the old house was sold to a Jewish congregation, who still occupy it as a synagogue.

In Grand Street, between Essex and Ludlow Streets, the Essex Market was built in 1818. The court next to it, in Essex Street, was built in 1856.

[Sidenote: Mile Stone On the Bowery]

On the Bowery, opposite Rivington Street, is a milestone (one of three that yet remain) which formerly marked the distance from the City Hall, in Wall Street, on the Post Road. The land to the east of the Bowery belonged to James De Lancey, who was Chief Justice of the Colony in 1733, and in 1753 became Lieutenant-Governor. A lane led from the Bowery, close by the milestone, to his country house, which was at the present northwest corner of Delancey and Chrystie Streets. It was in this house that he died suddenly in 1760. James De Lancey was the eldest son of Etienne (Stephen) De Lancey, who built the house which afterwards was known as Fraunces' Tavern, and which still stands at Broad and Pearl Streets. He later built the homestead at Broadway and Cedar Street. Originally the name was "de Lanci." It became "de Lancy" in the seventeenth century, and was Anglicized in the eighteenth century to "De Lancey."

Where Grand Street crosses Mulberry was, until 1802, the family burial-vault of the Bayard family, it having been the custom of early settlers to bury their dead near their homesteads. The locality was called Bunker Hill.

[Sidenote: St. Patrick's Church]

St. Patrick's Church, enclosed now by the high wall at Mott and Prince Streets, was completed in 1815, the cornerstone having been laid in 1809. It was surrounded by meadows and great primitive trees. This region was so wild that in 1820 a fox was killed in the churchyard. In 1866 the interior of the church was destroyed by fire. It was at once reconstructed in its present form. Amongst others buried in the vaults are "Boss" John Kelly, Vicar-General Starr and Bishop Connelly, first resident bishop of New York.