A  HISTORICAL  TOUR OF  THE  GREATEST  STREET IN THE WORLD.......BROADWAY

       FROM  CANAL  STREET  TO  UNION  SQUARE
                                 Prior to 1911

1.  THE  COLLECT  OR  FRESHWATER  POND
      Lying northeast of the City Hall Park was the pond which has been
frequently mentioned in these pages, the Collect, or Freshwater. It had
outlets to both the East River and to the Hudson, and it had been proposed
several times from very early days to connect the two rivers by a canal
across the island, making of the Collect an inland harbor, or basin. Near
the North River, the little stream found its way through swamps and meadow
land, which were known as Lispenard's Meadows after the owner, Leonard
Lispenard, who had married the daughter of Anthony Rutgers, the original
grantee from the city in 1730. Under the terms of his grant, Rutgers was
obliged to drain the land; but it was not until 1792 that steps were taken
to render the land useful for building purposes. Then followed plan after
plan for disposing of the water of the Collect and its outlets; and these
were of such diverging character that in the multitude of schemes nothing
was done. At Last, in 1808, the proprietors of adjoining lands in despair at
the inactivity of the local authorities, petitioned the Legislature for the
appointment of a commission that would adopt and carry out any one plan,
however imperfect, rather than that they should continue to be held up in
their improvements by so many fluctuating ideas. The result was the laying
out of a street one hundred feet wide, through the middle of which was an
open ditch, or canal, with planked sides, which continued to carry off the
water of the Collect. Trees were planted along the sides of the ditch and
the street became populated; but this took several years to accomplish.
      The regulating and grading of the streets in the vicinity were going
on and the tops of the hills were used in filling in the Collect and the low
land of Duggan Street, as it was first called after a tanner of that name
who was located at Broadway and Canal Street. Within twenty years
afterwards, about 1840, the canal became a covered sewer, which still
continues to draw off the water from the springs which fed the ancient
Freshwater Pond.

2.  THE  MEADOWS,  A  FAVORITE  PLACE  IN  THE  EARLY  DAYS.
      In early days, the meadows were a favorite place for the sportsmen of
the town, as ducks, snipe, and other game were plentiful. In the winter
time, the skaters occupied the frozen meadows, and the slopes of the hills
were convenient coasting places for the younger people. The Trinity Church
farm extended as far north as this on the shore of the Hudson. Wishing to
help the Lutheran Church located at Rector Street, the Trinity corporation
offered it several acres of land near the meadows; but after looking it
over, the officers of the Lutheran Church declined the offer, as the land,
in their opinion, was not worth fencing in. The river road to Greenwich
passed over the meadows on a causeway and bridge. All that now remains of
the ancient meadow is the small, triangular park at the foot of Canal Street
near the Hudson.

3.   STONE  BRIDGE
      At Broadway the stream was crossed by an arched bridge, which was
known as the Stone Bridge. This was probably built by the British when
occupying the city during the Revolution to serve as a means of
communication between their fortifications on the Kalck Hook and those above
the stream at Bayard's, or Bunker, Hill. The ancient bridge is buried some
eight or ten feet below the surface of the present thoroughfare; and when
the engineers come to build the proposed subway under the line of Broadway,
they will run across the old landmark. Near the bridge was the Stone Bridge
Tavern. About 1850, the New York and New Haven Railroad had its station near
the site of the bridge___this was then about the centre of the city.

4.  A  COMMISSION  APPOINTED TO LAY OUT STREETS AND AVENUES ABOVE HOUSTON STREET.
      In 1801, the Legislature authorized the appointment of a commission to
lay out the upper part of the island above Houston Street in streets and
avenues. The commission, consisting of Simeon De Witt, Gouverneur Morris and
John Rutherford, began its work in 1807 with John Randall, Jr., as surveyor;
the work was finished and the final plan submitted in 1821. In the plan of
streets, no allowance was made for the natural configuration of the land nor
for the lanes and roads already existing, except in a few cases, as with the
Boston Road. Instead, a system of broad, parallel avenues, crossed by
streets at right angles, was adopted which, while it might make for
convenience, did not make for beauty, especially as the commission was chary
in the allotment of spaces for public parks, for which, at that time, they
could see no adequate reason. Their lack of foresight in that respect has
since cost the city many unnecessary millions of dollars which might have
been saved if the plan had included a number of parks for the prospective
population. In the formation of this plan, the idea was at first seriously
considered of doing away with Broadway altogether, as it was believed that
the main artery of the city's business life would be the Boston Road,
leading from the Park via Park Row and the Bowery. In fact, Felix Oldboy
designates Broadway as "an accidental thoroughfare." The laying out of the
city as far north as One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street caused a good deal
of merriment on the part of the general population, and a good deal of fun
was poked at the commissioners for their optimism, for which they felt
called upon to apologize.

5.   THE  BAYARD'S  FARM
      The delay in the improvement of Canal Street held back the development
of Broadway above that street for several years. The principal owner of
property was Nicholas Bayard, whose farm extended across Broadway above the
canal, so that the Middle Road divided it into the west and east farms. This
land was badly cut up by fortifications which the British had erected during
the Revolution. North of Bayard's west farm was the Herring estate, which
extended north from Bleecker Street. Bayard's east farm extended to between
Prince and Houston Streets; above this was the land of Alderman Dyckman;
above him was the land of Anthony L. Bleecker, and above him was the Herring
property, which thus crossed the line of the road___the eastern boundary of
these lands was the Boston Road, or the Bowery.

6.   BROADWAY  AND  ITS  REGULATION
      In 1802, the Middle Road was surveyed and a plan devised for its
regulation  which was adopted, but which had to wait for the completion of
some plan in regard to Canal Street. In 1805, Broadway was regulated as far
as Prince Street, and in 1806, as far as Great Jones Street; in the
following year (1807), to Art Street (also called Stuyvesant Street and
Astor Place). By 1809, the street was paved and sidewalks completed as far
as Art Street. In the same year, Mr. Samuel Burling offered to the city as
many poplar trees as might line Broadway, Provided the city would stand the
expense of carting them and setting them out. The proposition was accepted
by the corporation as "an additional beauty to Broadway, the pride of our
city." There was public spirit for you. We do not find it in later days,
when some of the biggest swindles perpetrated against the city have been the
enormous prices of trees which have been used to line our boulevards and
streets, and which ought to have been supplied by the nurseries in our
public parks.

7.   RESIDENCES  ABOVE  CANAL  STREET  BY  1820
      A few pioneers found their way above Canal Street, but the war with
England in 1812 deterred others from trying the experiment. By 1820,
however, there were a good many settlers as well as a good many vacant lots.
The houses generally were of a poor character ; though several fine
residences, belonging to such people as Abijah Hammond, Elbert Anderson,
Gabriel V. Ludlow, Albert S. Pell, Foxhall A. Parker, and Citizen Genet, who
had become a citizen of the United States after giving Washington so much
trouble when French minister, were distributed along the thoroughfare as far
as Astor Place. Stephen B. Munn was a speculative builder, who erected
numerous houses and probably reaped the benefit of his foresight; nor must
we omit Astor, who owned property everywhere on the island, whose
son-in-law, Walter Langdon occupied a handsome house between Prince and
Houston Streets, on the west side. On the corner of Prince Street, was Dr.
Henry Mott, the father of the famous Dr. Valentine Mott. Between Amity
(Fourth) and Art streets were larger parcels of land still used as farms.

8.    THE  DEVELOPMENT OF BROADWAY AFTER 1820 WAS STEADY.
      The development of Broadway after 1820 was steady, as the stages made
the section convenient. About 1825, at 663 and 665 Broadway, two houses were
constructed with marble fronts, probably the only houses in the country so
constructed. A great deal of interest was displayed in them by the general
public at first, and the favorite Sunday afternoon walk of many of the
inhabitants was
as far up Broadway as Bond Street in order to see the "Marble Houses," as
they were called, located near the northern boundary of the city. Later,
they became known as the Tremont Hotel. Two other houses on the opposite
side of the street opposite Washington Place, with granite columns in front,
remained standing almost within the present decade as reminders of the style
of houses occupying Broadway at this early period. There are still standing
two houses, one at the southwest corner of Third Street and the other at the
southwest corner of Bleecker, which will give some idea of the style of
houses of sixty years ago; though these have long since lost any air of
distinction they may have possessed.

9.   THE  MANIA  FOR  CONVERTING  BROADWAY  INTO  A  STREET  OF  SHOPS.
      Under date of 1850, Philip Hone says the mania for converting Broadway
into a street of shops seems to be greater than ever, and that there is
scarcely a block which is not being so transformed. There was evidently
carelessness in propping up adjoining houses while these changes were in
progress; for he adds: "If they don't pull down the houses on Broadway, they
fall of their own accord," referring to the startling crash of a falling
house in his own neighborhood at Great Jones Street, whither he had removed
in 1837 after the sale of his old house at Park Place.

10.   THE BOARD OF EDUCATION ESTABLISHES A NORMAL AND HIGH SCHOOL  FOR  NYC.
      At the close of 1869, the Board of Education established a Normal and
High School for the city of New York. Temporary quarters were engaged at the
southeast corner of Broadway and Fourth Street, and Thomas Hunter, principal
of old 35 in West Thirteenth Street, was chosen president. On February 14,
1870, the school opened with seven hundred students. Work was begun on
permanent buildings at Lexington Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street in 1872; and
the College, for its name had been changed in the meantime, was removed to
the new buildings in the fall of 1873.

11.   LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR ANDREW ELLIOT'S LAND, AND RANDALL'S  " THE
SAILORS'  SNUG HARBOR".
      Astor Place was originally a road leading from the Bowery over to the
village of Greenwich and it was called the Sand Hill Road, as it led along
the base of a range of low sand hills, called by the Dutch the Zantberg,
which extended nearly all the way across the island. In 1766
Lieutenant-Governor Andrew Elliot purchased thirteen acres of land,
extending from the Bowery westward almost to the present Sixth Avenue. His
later purchases increased his holdings to twenty-one acres, which he called
"Minto." In 1780, he was acting governor of the province under the British
and left the city when the evacuation took place in 1783. He had erected a
fine mansion and beautified his grounds. The estate came into the possession
of "Baron" Poelnitz, who sold it in 1790 to Robert R. Randall, a shipmaster
and merchant of the city, for five thousand pounds. Mr. Randall had no
children and no near heirs.
      At the suggestion of Alexander Hamilton, so it is said, who made Mr.
Randall's will, the devisor left the property, which he had named "The
Sailors' Snug Harbor," as a home for aged and infirm seamen. Mr. Randall
died in 1801, and his will at once became a matter of litigation on the part
of his relatives, and it was not until 1831 that the matter was settled by
the Supreme Court of the United States. It had been Mr. Randall's intention
to have had the home occupy his mansion on the farm, which was to furnish
vegetables, etc., to the inmates; but by the time his will was upheld, the
property had become so valuable that the trustees thought it better to buy
land on Staten Island, and the Snug Harbor was opened there on August 1,
1833. The farm was divided up and let on long leaseholds which give the
institution a yearly income of over $400,000. This is one of the most
munificent charities ever established by any one in the city.

12.   THE FARM OF ELIAS BREVOORT
      Adjoining the "Minto" estate of Governor Elliot on the north, was the
farm of Elias Brevoort, which extended from the Bowery to between Fifth and
Sixth Avenues, its northern boundary being Eighteenth Street. The house
stood on the Bowery on the line of Eleventh Street; and though the city made
efforts in 1836 and 1849 to cut the street through both attempts were
blocked by the Dutch obstinacy of Hendrick Brevoort, then the venerable
owner of the property.

13.    THE  GRACE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH
      As we have come up Broadway from the Bowling Green, our course has
been in a straight line; but after we have passed Canal Street, ever before
our eyes and growing larger as we get farther north is a beautiful church
steeple, rising apparently in the middle of the thoroughfare. We find the
reason at Tenth Street, where Broadway changes its course and where stands
Grace Episcopal Church, which was built here in 1846, after the removal of
the congregation from Rector Street. By the plan of the commissioners of
1807, it was intended that the two main roads of the island, the Bowery and
Broadway, should meet at the "Tulip tree," which was located in the present
Union Square abreast of Sixteenth Street. It was found, however, that if
Broadway were continued in its previous straight course, the meeting of the
two roads would be below Fourteenth Street: and the line of the Middle Road
was therefore changed at this point. Many suggestions  have been made to cut
Eleventh Street through the Grace Church property, but these have been
unsuccessful, as the members of the congregation represent too much wealth
and influence. Tweed told the church boldly that he was going to do it, and
the church authorities told him to go ahead; but the street is not yet cut
through. The church has been the scene of many fashionable weddings, and at
several of these there have been scenes of crowding, spoliation of
decorations, and exhibitions of bad manners which have made the New Yorker
blush for the reputation of American women; for it has been the
sensation-loving and uninvited women who have been the chief offenders.

14.   THE  BAKERY  ON  TENTH  STREET
      On the Tenth Street corner, there stood for many years the restaurant
and bakery conducted by the Fleischmanns. The "bread line" here became one
of the institutions of New York, for it was the custom of the firm to give
away every night the bread and rolls that had not been used or sold during
the day. It was a practical charity, duly appreciated by the poor and
unfortunate___men, women, and children___ who could be seen waiting here in
line until midnight to receive their dole of bread, even on the coldest or
most inclement nights.

15.   THE  OLD  STEWART  BUILDING
      On the block below, is the old Stewart building, now occupied by John
Wanamaker, who erected a still larger and taller building below Ninth Street
in 1908, the two buildings being connected by a subway and a bridge across
Ninth Street. Stewart moved here in 1862, but it took several years before
he acquired the whole block between Ninth and Tenth Streets, as the Ninth
Street corner was occupied by the firm of Goupil & Co., the art dealers.

16.   CHURCHES  THAT  ONCE  STOOD  ON  BROADWAY.
      Of the many churches that formerly stood on lower Broadway, the three
already described___Trinity, St. Paul's, and Grace___are all that remain.
When Grace Church left Rector Street, the corner lot there was sold for
$65,000. The following is a list of the churches that once stood on
Broadway:

(1823) St. Thomas Episcopal, Houston Street, removed in 1870 to Fifth Avenue.
(1817)  Broadway Congregational, corner of Anthony Street, dissolved.
(1845)  Unitarian Church of the Divine Unity, between Prince and Houston Streets.
(1839 to 1865)  Church of the Messiah, Unitarian, near Waverly Place.
(1825)  Scotch Baptist in a hall corner of Reade Street, and after several
removals, again in Broadway near Bleecker Street.

Swedenborgian, near Rector Street, removed in 1816 near to Duane Street, and
the Anglo-American Church of St. George the Martyr at Number 563; this last
congregation, notwithstanding that it was assisted by Trinity, finally
perished.

17.   THE  BROADWAY  TABERNACLE
      The Broadway Tabernacle, Congregational, stood for many years between
Worth Street and Catherine Lane on the east side of Broadway. It was the
scene of the May meetings, where William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips,
Gerrit Smith, and the gentle Quaker, Lucretia Mott, used to hold forth upon
the iniquities of slavery and advocate its abolition. The Sacred Music
Society, founded in 1823, gave oratorios and concerts in the Tabernacle, as
did later musical organizations. In 1856, a great gathering of citizens was
held in the Tabernacle to express their indignation at the assault on
Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks while Sumner was at his seat in the United
States Senate Chamber. The hall is said to have been the most convenient for
public meetings and entertainments, as well as for religious observances, of
any in the city.  In the same year as the Sumner meeting, the Tabernacle was
sold by its congregation, which moved to the corner of Broadway and
Thirty-fourth Street, and which has since migrated to Broadway and
Fifty-sixth Street. In closing these paragraphs on the Broadway churches, it
may be well to repeat the remark of an old writer, who said that the
churches in general kept clear of the noise and bustle of Broadway and
sought their sites in quieter localities.

18.  HOTELS  AND  RESTAURANTS
      The hotels and restaurants sought Broadway for the very reason that
the churches shunned it. The hotels that have at various times occupied
sites on Broadway have been legion; with the exception of the Astor House,
all the first-class hotels have departed from below Union Square. We may
mention a few of the older and best known.

          A)  CAFE  DES  MILLES  COLONNES:
      On July 9, 1842, Mr. Pinteaux, a Frenchman, opened the Cafe des Milles
Colonnes at the corner of Duane Street, which soon became famous under the
management of F. Palmo. The accommodations and appointments of this
restaurant were far superior to anything of its kind yet seen in this
country. In February, 1844, Palmo, who was an Italian and a great lover of
the music of his native land, opened Palmo's Opera House at 39 and 41
Chambers Street. He was unsuccessful as an impresario, and the theatre
passed out of his hands, and became Burton's Theatre, where that amusing
comedian held forth for a number of years.

         B)  TAYLOR'S
      Another famous restaurant much frequented by the fashionable ladies
and gentlemen of the thirties and forties was Taylor's, situated on the west
side of Broadway at the northwest corner of Franklin Street, and figuring
largely in the romance of the day.

         C)  AINSLEE'S- between Duane and Anthony Streets
         D)  LOVEJOY'S- at the corner of Worth Street.
         E)  GUERIN'S

      Probably the ancestor of all the restaurants conducted in a foreign
style was Guerin's at 120, which from 1815 onwards for several years sold
confectionery, chocolate, pastry, liqueurs, etc.; this was below the Park,
near Maiden Lane.

        F)   THE  BROADWAY HOTEL
      Of hotels proper, there was the Broadway Hotel at the northeast corner
of Grand Street, erected by Abraham Davis before 1810, which became the
headquarters of the Whigs when their party was formed and where the returns
of the elections were received. After the election of 1844, the hotel lost
prestige and declined in popularity. After 1830, a large room on one of the
upper floors was used for some time as an armory and drill-room by the
second company of the Seventh Regiment.

       G)   THE  NEW  YORK  HOTEL
      In 1847 the New York Hotel, the second of its name in the city, was
opened at 721 Broadway, between Washington Place and Waverly Place, by S.B.
Monnot. The undertaking was considered by many to be a perilous one, as the
hotel was so far up-town. Monnot was successful, notwithstanding the
croakers, and after several years was succeeded by Hiram Cranston. The hotel
was a favorite one with Southerners and remained so during the Civil War; so
much so, in fact, that it was almost constantly under supervision by the
Federal secret service. A number of romances have been written concerning
the part played by this hostelry in blockade running and similar enterprises
for the advantage of the Confederacy. The building was demolished in 1895,
and the site has been marked by a bronze tablet on the front of the great
New York Commercial Building which has taken its place.

      H)  MISCELLANEOUS  HOTELS
      At Leonard Street, was a hotel known as the Carleton House; there was
another at Walker Street, known as Florence's Hotel; and on the west side,
corner of Spring Street, was the St. Nicholas, a name very appropriate
considering the Dutch ancestry of the city, but which has not been employed
by a really first-class hotel since the departure of the old house. The
Sinclair House stood for a long time at Eighth Street and has only been
demolished within the past five years. Three hotels may still be found above
Chambers Street; these  are the Hotel St. Denis at Eleventh Street; the
Broadway Central, first established as the Grand Central at 671 on the site
of the La Farge House, where, when it was the Grand Central, occurred the
tragic death of James Fisk in 1872 at the hands of a rival for the favors of
a worthless woman; and the Raleigh, opposite Bond Street, adjoining the
Broadway Central. This last suffered a severe fire in the fall of 1910, and
is marked for demolition, a business building having been planned to take
its place.

19.  " PFAFF'S, "  A  POPULAR  PLACE  OF  RESORT  FOR  JOURNALISTS  AND
OTHER  WRITERS.
      A popular place of resort for journalists and other writers for some
years after 1858 was "Charley" Pfaff 's, an ill-ventilated and rather dingy
place situated in a cellar on the east side of Broadway a few doors above
Bleecker Street. It owed its vogue to Henry Clapp and his associates on the
Saturday Press, a journal of ephemeral existence. When the paper suspended,
there was pasted on the door of the publication rooms this notice: "This
paper is obliged to discontinue publication for lack of funds; by a curious
coincidence, the very reason for which it was started." "Pfaff 's" was the
resort of the Bohemians of both sexes, but there was good beer and there
must have been good cooking, as we find that the place was visited
occasionally by people who were somebodies in literature; such men as Thomas
Bailey Aldrich, William Winter, the dramatic scholar and critic, William
Dean Howells, Bayard Taylor, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and Walt Whitman,
among others. George Arnold, the poet, was a visitor, and one night he
saddened the crowd by his story of the suicide at the Stevens House of a
friend of his, a young Englishman named Henry W. Herbert, who wrote under
the pseudonym of "Frank Forrester." Another friend of Arnold, who introduced
him to the coterie at "Pfaff 's," was George Farrar Brown, better known to
the reading public as "Artemus Ward." They were a jolly crowd, but
journalism had fallen somewhat from its high estate of a generation before,
when the "Bread and Cheese Club" held forth  at Washington Hall.

20.   AN  INTERESTING  PICTURE  OF  THE  BROADWAY  OF  1858.
      Of the charms and delights of Broadway, we have the testimony of many
people___visitors from abroad and from other sections of the country, as
well as of residents of the city.
      An excerpt from Wilson's Memorial History of New York regarding
Broadway:

      A contemporary gives an interesting picture of the Broadway of 1858.
Once the seat of pleasant residences, shaded with trees, and famous for its
walks and drives, it was now become a street of shops, hotels, and theatres.
The business houses in the retail trade reached far up-town; the finer
dwelling-houses were above Fourteenth Street and around  Union and Madison
Squares. "Broadway in 1858," says the Crayon of that year, "has become not
unlike the Strand in London or a Paris boulevard. Early in the morning the
street begins to fill with carts and vehicles bringing supplies  from the
country to the market. From all the by-streets which connect Broadway with
the river crowds of men, women, wagons, and horses emerge from the Brooklyn,
Hoboken, Williamsburgh, Staten Island, and New Jersey ferries. It is still
very early in the morning; the shops are still closed; only here and there
an omnibus makes its reluctant appearance, its driver and horses not having
yet shaken off the sloth of the night. There are also some carriages
stopping before the Astor House, Metropolitan, St. Nicholas, and other
hotels with a load of passengers just coming in from the east, west, north,
or from European or California steamers. At this early hour Broadway looks
thoroughly respectable, like a big ball-room." The writer goes on to paint
its various changes: "Soon after a crowd of clerks and business men rush
down the famous thoroughfare. Then comes later the stream of fair women
shoppers from the upper part of the town, filling the sidewalks; next, in
the afternoon, the tide of business men rushes back along the same
thoroughfare; and in the evening the street is again crowded with persons
going to theatres and various amusements of the night." In the later hours
the street is no longer "respectable"; it was filled with disreputable and
noisy revellers; now the police and the watchmen were on the alert, and the
noise of wild songs and gross revelry disturbed the peace of Broadway. Such
was our favorite Broadway thirty-five years ago. How different now!  The
theatres are gone; the retail shops are moved up-town; a stately range of
office buildings and wholesale stores lines the street, and but a few of the
old hotels still linger on their early sites. In the day no milk-carts, no
omnibuses, no crowds of fair women, no gallant pedestrians fill Broadway; at
night no cries of revelry. It is silent and abandoned after eight o'clock.
One is almost startled by its solitude. Broadway has become the business
centre of the continent___perhaps of the world.

      Though this was written in 1893, it is equally true to-day; and how
changed the names of the merchants whose signs adorn the fronts of the
buildings; for it was about this date that, owing to the persecutions of the
Jewish people, the tide of immigration began from Russia and Poland. They
have certainly made good in this land of opportunity, and have not been
satisfied with anything less than a virtual monopoly of the greatest
thoroughfare in the world. And the street has been divided into sections for
each line of goods; here are general dry-goods; here, ready-made clothing,
women's suits, furs, notions, children's clothing, type-writers, sporting
goods, millinery:___each article may be found within a section of a few
blocks, generally at wholesale, but more rarely at retail, and then only in
the daytime. At night and on Sundays it might be the street of a deserted
city, save for the street cars crawling lazily along.


Source:  The Greatest Street in the World (The story of Broadway, old and
New, from the Bowling Green to Albany)
Author:  Stephen Jenkins
Publisher:  G.P. Putnam's Sons-New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
Copyright: 1911
________________________________________________

                Researched and Transcribed by Miriam Medina
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