America.
Volume III.
by Joel Cook.
HENDRICK HUDSON.
The redoubtable navigator for the Dutch East India Company, Hendrick Hudson, after exploring Delaware Bay, sailed along the New Jersey coast and entered Sandy Hook, discovering, on September 11, 1609, the Hudson River. There is a vague tradition that the first European who saw the magnificent harbor of New York was the Florentine, Verrazani, who came as early as 1524. Hudson was searching for the "Northwest Pa.s.sage," and when he steered his little ship, the "Half Moon," into the great river, with its swelling tide of salt water, was sure he had found the long-sought route to the Indies. He explored it as far up as the present site of Albany, creating a sensation among the Indians, who flocked to the sh.o.r.es to see the "great white bird," as they called the "Half Moon," because of its wide-spreading sails. He traded with them for tobacco and furs, finding the Lenni Lenapes on the western bank and the Mohicans on the eastern side, and to impress them with his prowess, put them in a great fright by shooting off his cannon. Upon returning from Albany, the Indians gave him a feast on an island, breaking their arrows in token that they meant no treachery.
Hudson had a goodly store of seductive "schnapps," and offered them some in return for their hospitality. They examined it closely, smelt it, but pa.s.sed it along without tasting. Finally one, somewhat bolder, partook, and drinking a good deal, fell in a drunken stupor for several hours. When finally aroused he said the Dutchmen had the strongest water he had ever tasted, and the other Indians then became eager to try the fire-water too, and soon they were all under its influence, and thus became firm friends of the Dutch.
The scene of this great carousal is said to have been the island where is now the city of New York. The Indian word Man-a-tey means "the island," and from this they named the place Man-a-hat-ta-nink, the "island of general intoxication." Ticknor, in his guide-book, gravely tells us that "from the scene of wa.s.sail and merriment which followed the meeting of the sailors and the Indians, the latter called the island Manhattan, "the place where they all got drunk." Thus, at the beginning, this noted locality acquired a reputation which many attest as existing with undiminished l.u.s.tre in maturer years. By way of variety in this connection, it may be related that Washington Irving, in Knickerbocker"s veritable history of New York, has this to say: "The name most current at the present day, and which is likewise countenanced by the great historian Vander-Donck, is Manhattan, which is said to have originated in a custom among the squaws, in the early settlement, of wearing men"s hats, as is still done among many tribes.
"Hence," as we are told by an old Governor, who was somewhat of a wag, and flourished almost a century since, and had paid a visit to the wits of Philadelphia, "hence arose the appellation of man-hat-on, first given to the Indians, and afterwards to the island"--a stupid joke, but well enough for a Governor." Irving continues: "There is another, founded on still more ancient and indisputable authority, which I particularly delight in, seeing it is at once poetical, melodious and significant, and this is recorded in the before-mentioned voyage of the great Hudson, written by Master Juet, who clearly and correctly calls it Manna-hatta, that is to say, the island of Manna, or, in other words, "a land flowing with milk and honey.""
NEW AMSTERDAM AND ITS HARBOR.
About five years elapsed after Hudson"s discovery before a colony was firmly fixed on Manhattan Island, which, when fairly started in 1614, was a little palisade fort and four small log houses. The Dutch called their possessions the Niew Netherlands, named the colony Nieu Amsterdam, and the land across the East River was known as Na.s.sau, the earliest name of Long Island. Hudson was so impressed with the Highlands and the Catskills, which he pa.s.sed in exploring the river, that he named it the "River of the Mountains," but this was changed by the Dutch to Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice of Na.s.sau. The Indians along the banks called the river Shatemuc and Cahohatatea. The English, shortly after the discovery, began calling it the Hudson River, but later, it was generally styled the North River to distinguish it from the Delaware or South River; and North River is the name now generally used in New York. The Manhattan colony was of slow growth, and the first Dutch Governor sent out was a Westphalian, Peter Minuit, a thrifty old fellow, who, by again making good use of "schnapps," bought the whole of Manhattan Island in 1626 from the Indians for beads and trinkets valued at sixty guilders, about $25.
There were a thousand people there in 1644, making the original Dutch aristocracy of the "Knickerbockers," this name being adapted later from Irving, and they impressed their peculiarities upon the early city; but their descendants have largely given place to a newer aristocracy of wealth and an army of immigrants from all races. The last Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, arrived in 1647, and for protection the colonists had then built a fence across the island along what is now the line of Wall Street. An Indian scare a few years later caused this to be replaced with a wall of cedar palisades, and it ultimately developed into the city wall. Thus enclosed, the Mayor of New Amsterdam was required to walk around the walls every morning at sunrise, unlock the gates and give the keys to the commander of the fort down at the Battery. When the Duke of York"s English expedition came over in 1664 and overturned the government of old Stuyvesant, surnamed "Peter the Headstrong," and his Knickerbockers, at the same time changing the city"s name to New York, it had three hundred and eighty-four houses, and in 1700 the population had increased to about six thousand. The first English Governor was Sir Edmund Andros.
The remote sources of the Hudson River are in Hamilton and Ess.e.x Counties, in the Adirondacks, in northeastern New York State, the highest at four thousand feet elevation above the sea, the head streams being outlets for a large number of highland lakes. The river flows over three hundred miles to the sea, and has few tributaries, the largest being the Hoosac and the Mohawk. Its lower course is a long tidal estuary, the tidal head being at Troy, from whence the fall in level to the ocean is only about five feet. The estuary below Manhattan Island expands into the n.o.ble New York harbor, enclosed between Long Island on the east and Staten Island on the west, the latter being the Indian Aquehonga, meaning the "high sandy banks." The harbor entrance from the sea, at Sandy Hook, is eighteen miles below the city. Inside Sandy Hook is the lower bay, of triangular form, extending nine to twelve miles on each side, the Narrows, a deep channel about a mile wide at the northeastern angle, opening into the upper bay, which is an irregular oval, about eight by five miles. This extends northward into the Hudson River, westward into Newark Bay, and has the tidal strait of East River leading north to Long Island Sound, on the eastern side of Manhattan. Within the bays and rivers around New York there are over a hundred miles of available anchorage ground, and the Government is now making a channel to the sea through Sandy Hook bar, forty feet deep at low water.
ENTERING NEW YORK HARBOR.
The approach from the sea to Sandy Hook is first guided for the modern navigator by the flashing white light on Fire Island, a low sand-strip on the Long Island Coast; and then there rise in front the Highlands of the Navesink, on the Jersey Coast south of Sandy Hook, with a pair of twin lighthouses perched upon their green slopes. The Hook, a long strip of yellow sand enclosing the harbor, also has another lighthouse on its northern end. Here are the expanding works of a formidable fort defending the harbor entrance, and an artillery trial and proving ground. Behind the Navesink Highlands and the Hook, the Jersey sh.o.r.e of the lower bay stretches far back westward into Raritan Bay, thrust up into the land between New Jersey and Staten Island. The green hills of this island, crowned with villas, make the northwestern boundary of the bay. To the right hand of the Hook, and north of the entrance, is the sand strip of Coney Island, with its stretch of hotels and buildings, the popular seash.o.r.e resort of New York. Within the Hook is the lower Quarantine on the west bank of Romer Shoal, and over opposite is Gravesend Bay, behind Coney Island. The Narrows, where the Hudson has forced an outlet through a broken-down mountain range, is partly obstructed by an island reef of rocks. The hill-slopes, together with the island, are fortified, Forts Hamilton and Tompkins being on either hand, named after Alexander Hamilton and Daniel D.
Tompkins, the latter having been a Governor of New York and Vice-President of the United States. On the island is the little red sandstone Fort Lafayette, where many famous political prisoners were confined during the Civil War. Within the Narrows the upper bay spreads out, the high Staten Island hills, covered with n.o.ble mansions, rising on the left hand, while on the right are the hamlets on the lower sh.o.r.es of Long Island, with the distant tombs of Greenwood Cemetery behind. The villages of Clifton and Stapleton and the Quarantine Station are on Staten Island, Stapleton being the yachting headquarters. Bedloe"s and Ellis"s Islands are pa.s.sed, the latter being the landing-place of arriving emigrants, while on the former, now called Liberty Island, is the colossal Liberty Statue presented to the United States by France in commemoration of the Centenary of the Declaration of Independence in 1876. This statue, designed by Bartholdi and erected ten years later, is a female figure holding aloft a torch--"Liberty enlightening the world." It is made of copper and iron, and weighs two hundred and twenty-five tons. The statue is one hundred and fifty-one feet high, and stands on a granite pedestal one hundred and fifty-five feet high.
Over on the western side, behind these small islands, the Jersey sh.o.r.e recedes, and the strait making the boundary of Staten Island, which the Dutch named the Kill von Kull, stretches around behind that island to Arthur Kill and sundry railway coal-shipping ports on its banks, where the great coal roads come out from the Pennsylvania mines. Just in the entrance to East River is Governor"s Island, with an old-fashioned circular stone fort, called Castle William, and the more modern defensive work, Fort Columbus. On Governor"s Island is the United States Army headquarters. This old Castle William, with another very similar circular fort, then called Castle Clinton, on the Battery at the lower end of Manhattan Island, were the defensive works of New York in the eighteenth century. Castle Clinton is now an aquarium. Red Hook, the jutting point of Brooklyn, is opposite Governor"s Island, and above it the East River opens, the strait flowing between New York and Brooklyn, and connecting the harbor with Long Island Sound, twenty miles distant, beyond the famous "h.e.l.l Gate," once the terror of the mariner, but since improved by costly rock excavations which have made a deep and safe channel. Through the East River and h.e.l.l Gate flows the greater part of the Hudson River tidal current. Both the East and North Rivers are lined on either side for miles by piers crowded with shipping, and the tall towers and ponderous cables of the Brooklyn Bridge rise high above the East River, while behind the foliage-covered Battery Park stretches the metropolis, with its many huge buildings.
JERSEY CITY AND STATEN ISLAND.
Communipaw, the lower end of Jersey City, is opposite the Battery, and above it the Jersey City front on the Hudson River is occupied for miles by railway terminals, making a succession of piers, ferry-houses and grain elevators. Originally Jersey City was the sandy peninsula of Paulus Hook, a tongue of flat farming land stretching down between the Hudson River and Newark Bay. The termination of this peninsula is Communipaw, long a sleepy village, originally granted to a Dutch West India Company Director--Michael Pauw. He was proud of this domain, of which he was the patroon, so he called it Pavonia or Communipauw, the "Commune of Pauw." His Dutch garrison ma.s.sacred the Indians in the neighborhood, and soon afterwards, in retaliation, they exterminated all the Dutch but one family. At Jersey City there come out to the Hudson River all the great Trunk Line railways from the West, with the single exception of the New York Central Railroad. In the Revolution, the site of the present Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal Station was a British fortification, which was partly stormed and captured, with a number of prisoners, in 1779, by Major Henry Lee. Jersey City is entirely a growth of the nineteenth century, at the beginning of which it had a population of only thirteen persons, living in a single house. It now has two hundred and fifty thousand, and is replete with important manufacturing establishments, its expansion having come from the overflow of New York and the wonderful development of its railway system. While spreading over much surface, yet it presents little attraction beyond the enormous railway terminals and factories. The traveller rarely stops there, but rushes through to get into or out of New York. To the northward is Hoboken, with sixty thousand people, including many Germans, and it has large silk factories. Here, in strange contrast with the commercial aspect of everything around, the river front rises in a bluff sh.o.r.e, crowned by a grove of trees and running up into a low mound, whereon is the "Stevens Castle." This was the home of Edwin A. Stevens one of the projectors of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. He endowed the Stevens Inst.i.tute of Technology at Hoboken, and spent his declining years and much of his railway fortune in building the "Stevens Battery," a noted warship, for New York harbor defense, which he bequeathed his native State of New Jersey, and that Commonwealth shortly afterwards sold it to be broken up for old iron. Beyond is the village of Weehawken, with the Elysian Fields, where Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in the duel of 1804, then a pleasant rural resort, but now largely absorbed by railway terminals. This duel arose from political quarrels, and at the first fire Hamilton received a wound from which he died the next day.
Behind Jersey City rises the long rocky ridge of Bergen Hill, through which all but one of the railways cut their routes by tunnels or deep fissures, and its outcroppings above Weehawken come forward to the Hudson River bank in the grand escarpment of the Palisades. These remarkable columnar formations of trap rock extend for twenty miles along the western sh.o.r.e of the river, and in part appear to be built up of basalt. To connect the various railways terminating at Jersey City with New York, a tunnel is being constructed under the Hudson River; and two others, and also a gigantic bridge, are projected.
I have already referred to Staten Island, which is the western border of New York harbor, where its pleasant hill-slopes add so much to the scenic beauty. The narrow "Kills," stretching for nearly twenty miles down to Perth Amboy, make its western boundary, separating the island, which is the Borough of Richmond in Greater New York, from New Jersey, to which by right it is said to belong. It covers about sixty square miles, with its diversified hill-slopes rising in some places to an elevation of over four hundred feet, and has probably seventy thousand population. It is shaped something like a leaf, hung, as it were, upon the long projecting peninsula between Newark Bay and New York harbor, the Kill von Kull stretching westward to divide it from this peninsula, which at that part is the town and port of Bayonne, running off into Bergen Point at the lower end of Bergen Hill. It was from Bergen Point that General Washington in 1787 was rowed in a barge to New York, to be inaugurated the first President of the United States. From Elizabethport, on the western side of Newark Bay, the Arthur Kill stretches, a narrow strait, far southward, broadening somewhat into Staten Island Sound, and debouching at Perth Amboy into the western end of Raritan Bay. Perth Amboy was the terminus of the original line of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. It was the capital of the Colonial Province of New Jersey two centuries ago, and its eligible position at the confluence of Staten Island Sound and the Raritan River and Bay, the point of union of the various interior water ways, made it at that early period very ambitious. In fact, "Perthtown, or Ompoge on Ambo" (the Indian name for the point, which meant "round and hollow"), then rivalled New York in commercial importance. Its name came from the Earl of Perth, one of the grantees of lands in East Jersey. Early travellers flocked thither, praising its merits; and even William Penn was persuaded to go over and look at it, oracularly declaring, "I have never seen such before in my life,"
whatever that might have meant. But New York, with its great harbor, ultimately overshadowed Amboy, and it has since dropped out, even as a way-station on the route between the two leading cities. It has about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and its trade chiefly consists in shipping coal and fire-clay, brought out by the railroads.
The loyal Jerseyman will never forgive New York for having captured Staten Island. After the English came to New York in 1664, under the grant of King Charles II. to the Duke of York of all the country from Canada down to Virginia, the Duke granted to Berkeley and Carteret the portion lying between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. This grant grieved the New Yorkers, for they said it gave away the best lands around their harbor, so they tried to get it all back, and managed to capture Staten Island. Some sharp fellow invented the fiction, on which they resolutely insisted, that the Arthur Kill was really the Hudson River; and, taking possession, they never gave it up. A legal contest was fought for over one hundred and fifty years, and it was not until 1833 that a treaty between the two States declared the Kills to be their boundary. Staten Island is about sixteen miles long, and from its eastern slopes has a n.o.ble outlook over the Lower New York Bay towards the ocean. Fine beaches line these coasts, which rise sharply into hills inland, and most of the eligible sites are crowned with villas. It was at Stapleton, on Staten Island, that Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the head of the great family, was born in 1794, and he laid the foundation of his great fortune, at the age of sixteen years, by sailing a ferryboat to New York, six miles away. Upon a plateau in the centre of the island is the village of New Dorp, the original settlement of the Vanderbilts, a farm of about four hundred acres. Here the Commodore came in his youth, and here his son, William H. Vanderbilt, was born and lived for many years, an agricultural laborer for his father. Here also is a little Moravian church they attended, and upon a terraced hill behind it, the highest part of the island, is the s.p.a.cious gray granite mausoleum, within which rest the two great millionaires, father and son, with some of their children.
In the old churchyard are the graves of many other Vanderbilts and their collaterals. At Port Richmond, over on the Kill, the most considerable town on the island, and formerly the county-seat, is the house, now a hotel, in which Aaron Burr died in 1836.
SOME NEW JERSEY TOWNS.
Westward from Bergen Hill and the Palisades are the meadows which stretch down to Newark Bay, and meandering through them to form it are the Hackensack and Pa.s.saic Rivers. The name of Hackensack means, in the original Indian dialect, the "lowlands," and it was given by them also to the channel around Bergen Point, by which the waters of Newark Bay reach New York harbor. This river drains the western slopes of the Palisades. Pa.s.saic means "the valley," and the name seems to have referred to the country through which that stream flows. The Pa.s.saic River, which is ninety miles long, comes from the mountains of Northern New Jersey and flows a tortuous course to Paterson, fifteen miles northwest of Jersey City, where there is an admirable water power which has created a manufacturing town of over one hundred thousand people, having extensive silk and cotton mills and locomotive factories. The river describes a curve, forming the boundary of the city for more than nine miles, on all sides excepting the south, and its rapids and falls descend seventy-two feet, the falls being a most picturesque cataract with fifty feet perpendicular descent. The town was named after Governor William Paterson of New Jersey, who signed its incorporation act July 4, 1792, the manufacturing corporation projecting it having been formed under the auspices of Alexander Hamilton.
The Pa.s.saic flows onward past Newark nine miles west of Jersey City, another extensive and prosperous manufacturing city of two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, turning out goods of all kinds with an annual value of over $100,000,000. This city spreads far across the flat surface above Newark Bay and adjoining the Pa.s.saic, and to the northward its suburbs run up into the attractive hills of Orange.
Market Street is a fine highway through the business section, while a large area is covered by comfortable and handsome residences, among which pa.s.ses Broad Street, its finest avenue, one hundred and thirty-two feet wide, shaded by majestic trees, bordered with many ornamental buildings, and skirting three attractive parks embowered with elms. Newark is a great iron and steel centre, makes fine jewelry, good carriages and excellent leather, and also brews much lager beer. Yet few would suppose it had a strictly Puritan origin. In 1666, hearing the praises of East Jersey, a body of discontented men of Connecticut, headed by their pastor, Abraham Pierson, journeyed to the Pa.s.saic meadows and bought these lands from the Hackensack Indians "for one hundred and thirty pounds, twelve blankets and twelve guns."
In early life the pastor had preached at Newark in England, for which he had quite an affection, and he gave the Jersey settlement its name.
When Philadelphia was founded, the fame of Newark spread down there as a producer of excellent cider and seductive Jersey apple jack. Its most famous son of modern times was General Phil Kearney.
Five miles beyond Newark the diminutive Elizabeth River flows down to the Kills, and here is the city of Elizabeth, with fifty thousand people, noted as one of the handsomest of the Jersey towns. Like Newark and Paterson, it is really an outlying suburb of New York, providing homes for much of the overflow of population, who rush into the metropolis for business every morning, and back again every evening. Under the name of Elizabethport it spreads down to the Arthur Kill, and over there are most of its factories and extensive coal-shipping piers. The original settlement dates from 1665, when it was named in honor of Lady Elizabeth, wife of Sir George Carteret, one of the grantees of East Jersey. The early inhabitants were largely Puritans, and its chief establishment is the extensive works of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Here was founded the College of New Jersey, afterwards removed to Princeton, and a tablet marking the original site was unveiled in 1897. A few miles beyond, another little river flows down to the Kills, first named after old Rahwack, the Indian sachem whose tribe owned the land thereabouts, and here is another thriving town, Rahway, which is noted for its carriages. At Menlo Park, nearby, the electrical inventor, Thomas A. Edison, sustained by New York capital, toiled for years in seclusion to perfect his discoveries, and developed the germ that has grown to such vast proportions. The "Wizard of Menlo Park" afterwards located his chief laboratory and his home at Newark. Then, crossing what are known as the "Short Hills" westward, past many villages, among them Metuchen, once the domain of Metuching, the Indian "King of the Rolling Land," we come to the Raritan River, thirty-one miles from Jersey City.
Here debouches the Delaware and Raritan Ca.n.a.l at New Brunswick, a city of twenty-five thousand people. The Raritan flows through the red shales and sandstones of Central New Jersey, generally a chocolate-colored stream, and goes off to form Raritan Bay, fifteen miles below. Factories cl.u.s.ter on the New Brunswick lowlands along the river and ca.n.a.l, but there is a handsome town built upon the higher grounds, encircling the lower and older portions like a crescent. The Dutch came here from the Hudson River early in the eighteenth century and found a village which had been started by some fishermen from Long Island. They organized the town, naming it in honor of the Ducal House of Brunswick. Its most prominent feature is Rutgers College, housed in red sandstone buildings upon attractive grounds, alongside the railway, a venerated foundation of the Dutch Reformed Church, originally chartered by King George III. as "Queen"s College," but afterwards receiving the name of Rutgers from a benefactor in 1826. It has an important adjunct in the New Jersey Agricultural College.
There is also the Dutch Reformed Theological Seminary, the first established in America, and dating from 1771, its main building, also named from its chief benefactor, being Hertzog Hall. An early traveller, visiting New Brunswick in 1748, described it as "a pretty little town with four churches;" and these quaint buildings are still there, the ancient Christ Church being surrounded with the graves of the first settlers. Eighteen miles to the southeast the Revolutionary battle of Monmouth was fought in June, 1778, and a monument commemorates it at Freehold (Monmouth Court-house). Sir Henry Clinton, having evacuated Philadelphia, was marching towards New Brunswick, intending to embark on the Raritan for New York. Washington, coming from Valley Forge in pursuit, gave him battle. The day was very hot, and the result was an uncertainty, General Charles Lee"s misconduct, for which Washington reprimanded him on the field, preventing a victory, and at night the British withdrew quietly. Lee was afterwards court-martialed and suspended from command for a year. Monmouth was the scene of "Molly Pitcher"s" famous exploit. She was Mary Hays of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, wife of John Hays, a soldier in the First Pennsylvania Artillery. Molly was with the army, and engaged in bringing water to the battery, which was behind a hedgerow, her husband managing one of the cannon. The British made a charge, and a shot killing him, the officers, having no one to manage the gun, ordered it withdrawn. Molly saw her husband fall and heard the order; dropping her bucket, she seized the rammer and served the gun with skill and dexterity. Next morning General Greene presented her to General Washington, who conferred upon her the office of Sergeant. She afterwards lived at Carlisle Barracks, and died there in 1823.
GREATER NEW YORK.
The Dutch city of New Amsterdam, which became New York by the English conquest in 1664, was of slow growth. It had hardly more than twenty thousand inhabitants at the time of the Revolution, being less than either Boston or Philadelphia, and a map made in 1767 shows that the town scarcely extended beyond Wall Street. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were sixty thousand people, and its rapid growth began through large immigration after the War of 1812, and was stimulated by the completion of the Erie Ca.n.a.l in 1825, which gave it greatly increased foreign trade. By the new Charter of "Greater New York" coming into operation in 1897, the city was made, next to London, the largest in the world, being expanded beyond Manhattan Island, so as to include all the outlying cities. It now consists of five boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Richmond, having an area of three hundred and twenty square miles, and a population exceeding three and one-half millions. If Jersey City and the other New Jersey settlements on the west side of the Hudson were added, the population would be four millions. This great city is about thirty-five miles long from north to south, and nineteen miles wide.
The long and narrow island of Manhattan stretches thirteen miles, while it is not much over two miles broad in the widest part, and sometimes narrows to a few hundred yards, particularly in the northern portion. The Harlem River and the winding strait of Spuyten Duyvel separate northern Manhattan from the mainland. The island is very rocky, excepting the southern part, which is alluvial, and at the upper end the cliffs rise precipitously from the Hudson over two hundred and thirty feet into Washington Heights, and the surface descends sharply on the eastern side to the Harlem flats. It does not take the visitor long to recognize, however, that the capacious harbor, the converging rivers and numerous adjacent arms of the sea combine all the requisites of a great port, and they could not have been better planned if human hands had fashioned them. There is a vast wharf-frontage, for over fifty miles of sh.o.r.e-line are available for shipping, thus accommodating an almost limitless commerce. This has made the metropolis and continues its wonderful growth.
At the lower end of Manhattan is the Battery Park, of about twenty acres, with the elevated railways coming over it from both sides of the city, and joining at the lower point of the island in a terminal station at the South Ferry. Here were located the old forts for the city defense, but the park superseded them after the War of 1812, and in the earlier years of the nineteenth century this was the fashionable resort for an airing. The old circular fort, Castle Garden, now the Aquarium, was formerly a popular place of amus.e.m.e.nt, and here, under the auspices of the great manager, Barnum, Jenny Lind made her first appearance in America in 1850. The Park contains a statue of John Ericsson. The lower point of the island is Whitehall Slip, and here is the Government Barge Office, an appanage of the Custom House. To the northward of the Battery is the Bowling Green, the s.p.a.ce between them having been the site of the original Dutch palisade fort which guarded New Amsterdam. A row of fine residences was built here, which afterwards became the favorite locality for steamship offices, and the new Custom House is now being constructed on their site. This Bowling Green, a triangular s.p.a.ce of about a half-acre, was in the early days surrounded by the homes of the proudest Knickerbockers. For seven years during the Revolution, and until the evacuation, November 25, 1783, this was the British headquarters. Here lived Cornwallis, Howe and Clinton, Benedict Arnold occupied No. 5 Broadway, and Washington"s headquarters was in No. 1, on the west side, now occupied by the towering Washington Building, rising nearly three hundred feet to the top of the cupola. To the eastward is the s.p.a.cious Produce Exchange, in Italian Renaissance, with its huge square tower, part of the ground on which it stands having been the site of the house where Robert Fulton lived and died.
Talleyrand also once lived on Bowling Green. In the centre is the statue of Abraham de Peyster, an original Knickerbocker, erected in 1895. There was a leaden statue of King George III. here at the opening of the Revolution, but it was pulled down when the Declaration of Independence was promulgated in 1776, carried to Litchfield, Connecticut, and melted into bullets for the Continental soldiers, so that it was facetiously said at the time that "King George"s troops will probably have his melted Majesty fired at them."
BROADWAY.
The two smaller streets on either side of the Bowling Green, Whitehall and State Street, unite to the northward and form Broadway. This is the chief highway of New York, and one of the most famous in the world, extending in various forms all the way to Yonkers, a distance of nineteen miles. The long and narrow formation of Manhattan Island puts Broadway longitudinally in the centre of the city, and necessarily throws into it an enormous traffic. One can hardly make any extended movements in New York without getting into Broadway.
Hence the noted street has its show, always on exhibition, of the restless rush of life in the modern Babylon. The architecture of its great buildings, which tower far skyward, excites admiration, and its perpetual din of traffic, with the moving crowds and jam of vehicles, is the type of New York activity. This wonderful street is eighty feet wide between the buildings, and extends of that width from the Bowling Green five miles to Central Park at Fifty-ninth Street; and from its upper end, beyond this, the "Grand Boulevard," one hundred and fifty feet wide, with pretty little parks in the centre, is prolonged northward. In its course, which inclines somewhat to the westward, Broadway diagonally crosses Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and at the Central Park boundary intersects Eighth Avenue. Here is the "Merchant"s Gate," entering the Park from Broadway, the opposite entrance from Fifth Avenue being known as the "Scholar"s Gate." The intermediate entrances at Sixth and Seventh Avenues are the "Artist"s Gate" and the "Artisan"s Gate."
A survey of Broadway gives the best idea of the characteristics of New York. Its lower course is a succession of wealthy financial and business establishments and huge office buildings, and the adjacent streets on either side are similarly occupied. Banks, trusts, insurance offices, and manufacturers" and merchants" counting-rooms, railroad and steamship offices are everywhere. But in the midst of all this display of worldly wealth and grandeur is the quiet graveyard at the head of Wall Street, wherein stands the famous Trinity Church. Its chimes, morning and evening, summon the restless brokers and business men to attend divine service, though few may take heed. It is a wealthy parish, with over $500,000 annual revenue, maintaining a magnificent choir and various charities, and owns valuable buildings all about. The old graveyard stretches along Broadway, and in Church Street, behind, the elevated railway trains rush by every few minutes.
It is part of the valuable domain of Trinity Church that "the heirs of Anneke Jans" have long been trying to recover. Anneke Jans Bogardus was an interesting Dutch lady who died in Albany in 1663, having outlived two husbands. The first husband owned the whole of the Hudson River front of New York between Chambers and Ca.n.a.l Streets, with a wide strip running back to Broadway. Her heirs sold this to the British Colonial Government, and it was known as the "King"s Farm,"
being afterwards given as an endowment to Trinity Church. This is what the present generation of heirs want to recover, but thus far have gained more notoriety than cash by the effort.
In 1696 the first Trinity Church was built, being afterwards burnt, while a second church was built and taken down, to be replaced by the present fine Gothic brownstone edifice, whose magnificent spire rises two hundred and eighty-four feet. This church was dedicated in 1846, and its chancel contains a splendid reredos of marble, gla.s.s and precious stones, the memorial of William B. Astor, while the bronze doors are a memorial of his father, John Jacob Astor. The churchyard is chiefly a ma.s.s of worn and battered gravestones, resting in the busiest part of New York, the oldest stone being dated 1681, for it has been a burial-place more than two centuries. Near its northern border is the Gothic "Martyrs" Monument," erected over the bones of the patriots who died in the British prison-ships, moored over on the Brooklyn sh.o.r.e during the Revolution. There are hints, however, that it was not so much the reverent memory of these heroes that prompted the erection of the monument as the desire of the vestry to stop the proposed opening of a street through the yard. There is also a remembrance that, while these patriots were in prison dying, among their relentless foes was the Trinity rector, Dr. Inglis. When General Washington came into New York in 1776 he desired to worship at the church, and sent an officer to Dr. Inglis, on Sunday morning, to request that he omit reading the usual prayers for the king and the royal family. The rector refused, and afterwards said: "It is in your power to shut up the churches, but you cannot make the clergy depart from their duty." Among the noted graves is that of Charlotte Temple, under a flat stone, having a cavity out of which the inscription plate has been twice stolen. Her romantic career and miserable end, resulting in a duel, have been made the basis of a novel. William Bradford"s grave is here, one of Penn"s companions in founding Philadelphia; but he removed to New York, published the first newspaper there, and for fifty years was the official printer. A brownstone mausoleum covers the remains of Captain James Lawrence of the frigate "Chesapeake," killed in action in 1813, when his ship was taken by the British ship "Shannon," his dying words being, "Don"t give up the ship." Here also are buried Alexander Hamilton, Robert Fulton, Albert Gallatin and other famous men, almost the latest grave being that of General Philip Kearney, killed in the Civil War.
SOME FAMOUS BUILDINGS.
The great number of immensely tall office-buildings on lower Broadway, literally "sky-sc.r.a.pers," so encompa.s.s the street as to give it the appearance of a deep canyon as one gazes along it between them. The Bowling Green Building out-tops the Washington Building, and there are the Welles, Standard Oil and Aldrich Court Buildings, the latter marked by a tablet of the Holland Society, being erected on the site of "the first habitation of white men on Manhattan Island." Opposite it is one of the most curious appearing of these tall structures, the Tower Building, nearly two hundred feet high and only twenty-five feet wide. Just above, the tall light sandstone building of the Manhattan Life Company is surmounted by a cupola three hundred and fifty feet high. The Empire Building rises twenty stories, and the American Surety Building at the corner of Pine Street, nearly opposite Trinity churchyard, twenty-three stories, three hundred and six feet, being surmounted by the various weather-gauging instruments of "Old Probabilities." Here are also the magnificent buildings of the Union Trust and the Equitable Life Companies.
Opposite Trinity Church, Wall Street leads off from Broadway, with winding course and varying width, down to the East River, following the line of the ancient Dutch palisade wall which it has replaced.
Here is the financial centre and the domain of the bankers. One block down, Broad Street enters from the south, and the narrower Na.s.sau Street goes out to the north. At this corner, on the one hand, is the white marble Drexel Building, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan"s office, and on the other the United States Treasury and a.s.say Office. The huge Manhattan Trust Building also is there, rising three hundred and thirty feet, and opposite is the Stock Exchange, while across Broad Street from the latter is the Mills Building, the home of many bankers and brokers. In Na.s.sau Street is the magnificent building of the Mutual Life Insurance Company. These financial structures at Broad and Wall Streets are regarded as the most valuable real estate in the world. The Treasury and a.s.say Office contain most of the gold owned by the Government, and in the latter the kegs of gold are made up that are shipped to Europe. It holds millions of gold bars that make annual excursions in fast steamers across the ocean and back again, to adjust our varying foreign exchange balances. The Treasury is a white marble building fronted by an imposing colonnade and a broad flight of steps, and here is a bronze statue of Washington on the spot where he was inaugurated the first President of the United States in 1789, the location being then occupied by the old Federal Hall, where the first Congress met. Farther down Wall Street, the next corner is William Street, where there is a ma.s.sive dark granite building with an elaborate Ionic colonnade. The interior contains a large rotunda surmounted by a dome supported by eight immense columns of Italian marble. This building was originally constructed for the Merchants"
Exchange, and it afterwards became the Custom House. It is hereafter to be the office of the National City Bank, the largest financial inst.i.tution of New York. Wall Street goes on to the river, where there is a ferry to Brooklyn. Down William Street is the broad, low, granite building, with a columned portico, of the Farmers" Loan and Trust Company, another financial inst.i.tution of renown.
It is evident, as Broadway is traversed northward between the huge office-letting structures, reared skyward, and among them the little, narrow, crooked streets, pouring their traffic into the main stream, carrying a vast, surging ma.s.s of humanity, that the crowded-in New Yorker, deprived of lateral expansion, thus seeks needed relief by mounting upward. Fulton Street here stretches across the island from river to river, the turmoil from its conflicting streams of traffic showing the full tide of restless development in lower Broadway. Above is the white marble Park Bank and the enormous St. Paul Building, rising three hundred and eight feet, twenty-six stories high. Opposite is the sombre church of St. Paul, with a tall spire, the oldest church-building in New York, built in 1756, containing the memorial of General Montgomery, who fell at the storming of Quebec in 1775, and in the graveyard a monument to Emmet, the Irish patriot. Just beyond is the triangular City Hall Park, with Park Row diagonally entering Broadway. Here can be got an idea of the rush and restlessness of New York, for two enormous streams of traffic pour together into lower Broadway, at probably the worst street-crossing in the world.
THE CITY HALL PARK.
The New York City Hall Park was the ancient "Commons," or public pasturage, and it now contains the headquarters of the city government, and may be regarded as the political and business centre.
It is enclosed by Broadway, Park Row and Chatham Street, a triangular s.p.a.ce, formerly a sort of garden around the City Hall, but now well occupied by other buildings. At the southern extremity is the Post-office, which cost $7,000,000, a grand granite structure in Doric and Renaissance, with a fine dome and tower, which are a landmark for miles. Around this Park, and in the many streets radiating from it, are a vast aggregation of corporate inst.i.tutions and great buildings devoted to all kinds of business. Here are the offices of newspapers, banks, trusts, insurance companies, railways, lawyers, politicians, exchanges, etc., with lunch-rooms and restaurants of every grade, liberally provided to feed or stimulate the mult.i.tude. The famous hotel of a past generation, the Astor House, rich in historical a.s.sociations, stands on the opposite side of Broadway from the Post-office. Along Park Row are the great newspapers, and here is Printing House Square, adorned with statues of Benjamin Franklin and Horace Greeley, appropriate in this region deluged with printer"s ink.
Here is the Ivins Syndicate Building, finished in 1898, the loftiest structure in New York, twenty-nine stories, its towers rising three hundred and eighty-two feet. The tall and narrow Tribune Building, of red brick with white facings, has its clock tower reared two hundred and eighty-five feet, while beyond is the Pulitzer Building, of brownstone, with a gilded dome, its apex rising three hundred and seventy-five feet. The building of the American Tract Society on Na.s.sau Street is twenty-three stories and three hundred and six feet high, with a restaurant on the top. Park Row runs into Chatham Square, over which the Brooklyn Bridge terminal comes out, with elevated and surface railroads all about. This is a location of cheap shops and concert halls, and is prolonged into the Bowery, an avenue of the humbler cla.s.ses, lined with shops, theatres and saloons, generally crowded, and having four sets of street cars running on the surface, besides the elevated roads above. The ancient Dutch farms on this part of the island were known as the "Bauereies," whence came the name of the street.
Chambers Street bounds the City Hall Park on the north, and upon it faces the Court-house, a ma.s.sive Corinthian building of white marble, finished in 1867, famous as the structure which the "Tweed Ring" of that time used to extract about $15,000,000 from the city treasury on fraudulent bills, or more than five times the actual cost of the work.
It stands on part of the site of an old fort, which in the Revolution was the British outpost commanding the approach to the city by the Northern or Bloomingdale Road, now Broadway. The City Hall, to the southward, is a less pretentious and much older building, constructed in the Italian style, of white marble with freestone at the back to the northward, it being supposed at the time of its completion, 1812, that "no one of importance would ever live to the north of the building," then a broad expanse of farms. Here is the office of the Mayor and the meeting-place of the Board of Aldermen, and its chief apartment is the "Governor"s Room," adorned with portraits of various Governors of New York and Revolutionary patriots, and having among its treasures Washington"s desk and chair which he used when first President of the United States, and also the chairs of the First Congress. To the southwest of the City Hall a fine statue of Nathan Hale, an early victim of the Revolution, executed by the British in New York in 1776, faces Broadway.