Greenwich Village Part 2

Did you know that "Greenwich Village" is tautology? That region known affectionately as "Our Village" is Greenwich, pure and simple, and here is the "why" of that statement.

The word _wich_ is derived from the Saxon _wick_, and originally had birth in the Latin _vicus_, which means village. Hence, Greenwich means simply the Green Village, and was evidently a term describing one of the first small country hamlets on Manhattan. Captain Sir. Peter Warren, on whom be peace and benedictions, is usually given the credit of having given Greenwich its name, the historians insisting that it was the name of his own estate, and simply got stretched to take in the surrounding countryside. This seems rather a stupid theory. The Warrens were undoubtedly among the earliest representative residents in the little country resort, but by no stretch of imagination could any private estate, however ample or important, be called a village.

But Greenwich was the third name to be applied to this particular locality.

Once upon a time there was a little settlement of Indians--the tribe was called the Sappocanicon or Sappokanikee. Like other redmen they had a gift for picking out good locations for their huts or wigwams--whatever they were in those days. On this island of Manhattan they had appropriated the finest, richest, yet driest piece of ground to be had. There were woods and fields; there was a marvellous trout stream (Minetta Water); there was a game preserve, second to none, presented to them by the Great Spirit (in the vicinity of Was.h.i.+ngton Square). There was pure air from the river, and a fine loamy soil for their humble crops. It was good medicine.

They adopted it far back in those beginnings of American history of which we know nothing. When you go down to the waterfront to see the s.h.i.+ps steam away, you are probably standing where the braves and squaws had their forest home overlooking the river.

But their day pa.s.sed. Peter Minuit--who really was a worth-while man and deserved to be remembered for something besides his thrifty deal in buying Manhattan for twenty-four dollars--cast an eye over the new territory with a view to developing certain spots for the Dutch West India Company. He staked out the Sappokanican village tentatively, but it was not really appropriated until Wouter Van Twiller succeeded Minuit as director general and Governor of the island.

Van Twiller was not one of the Hollanders' successes. R.R. Wilson says of him, "Bibulous, slow-witted and loose of life and morals, Van Twiller proved wholly unequal to the task in hand." Representing the West India Company, he nevertheless held nefarious commerce with the Indians--it is even reported that he sold them guns and powder in violation of express regulations--and certainly he was first and forever on the make. But before he was removed from office (because of these and other indiscretions) he had founded Our Village,--so may his soul rest in peace!

Not that he intended to do posterity a favour. He never wanted to help anyone but himself. But, in the first year of his disastrous governors.h.i.+p, he got the itch of tobacco speculation. He knew there was money in it.

He, too, looked over the Indian village above the river, and he, too, found it good. He made it the Company's Farm Number 3, but he did not work it for the company. Not he! He worked it for Wouter Van Twiller, as he worked everything else. He eliminated the Indians by degrees, whether by strategy or force history does not say. R.R. Wilson says it was "rum and warfare." Anyway, they departed to parts unknown and Van Twiller built a farm and started an immense tobacco plantation. As the tobacco grew and flourished the place became known by the Dutch as the Bossen Bouwerie--the farm in the woods. It was one of the very earliest white settlements on the whole island. R.R. Wilson says, "Rum and warfare had before this made an end of the Indian village of the first days. Its Dutch successor, however, grew from year to year."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JEFFERSON MARKET. The old clock that has told the hours of justice for Greenwich Village during many years.]

The names of these first Dutch residents of the Bossen Bouwerie--or Sappocanican as it was still occasionally called--are not known, but it is certain that there were a number of them. In the epoch of Peter Stuyvesant someone mentioned the houses at "Sappokanigan," and in 1679, after the British had arrived, a descriptive little entry was made in one of those delightfully detailed journals of an older and more precise generation than ours. The diary was the one kept by the Labadist missionaries--Dankers and Sluyter--and was only recently unearthed by Henry Murphy at The Hague. It runs as follows:

"We crossed over the island, which takes about three-quarters of an hour to do, and came to the North River, which we followed a little within the woods to Sapokanikee. Gerrit having a sister and friends, we rested ourselves and drank some good beer, which refreshed us. We continued along the sh.o.r.e to the city, where we arrived at an early hour in the evening, very much fatigued, having walked this day about forty miles. I must add, in pa.s.sing through this island we sometimes encountered such a sweet smell in the air that we stood still; because we did not know what it was we were meeting."

It is odd that the Dutch names in Greenwich have died out as much as they have. There is something in Holland blood which has a way of persisting. They--the old Manhattan Dutch anyway--had a certain stubborn individuality of their own, which refused to give way or compromise. I have always felt that the way the Dutch ladies used to drink their tea was a most illuminating sidelight upon their racial characteristics. They served the dish of tea and the sugar separately--the latter in a large and awkward hunk from which they crunched out bites as they needed them. Now I take it that there was no particular reason for this inconvenient and labourious method, except that it was _their way_. They were used to doing things in an original and an unyielding fas.h.i.+on. I believe a real old-world _Mevrouw_ would have looked as coldly askance upon the innovation of putting the sugar _in_ the tea, as she looked at the pernicious ingress of the devil-endowed Church of England.

In 1664 came the English rule in what had been New Amsterdam and with it British settlers and a new language. So the Bossen Bouwerie became Green Wich (later clipped in p.r.o.nunciation to _Grinnich_), the Green Village, and a peaceful, remote little settlement it remained for many a long year.

Now came the rich and great in search of country air, health, rest or change of scene. Colonial society was not so different from twentieth century society. They, too, demanded occasional doses of rustic scenery and rest cures; and they began to drift out to the green little hamlet on the Hudson where they could commune with nature and fortify themselves with that incomparable air. Captain Warren, Oliver de Lancey, James Jauncey, William Bayard and Abraham Mortier all acquired estates there. The road to Greenwich was by far the most fas.h.i.+onable of all the Colonial drives.

Greenwich Road ran along the line of our present Greenwich Street, and gave one a lovely view of the water. At Lispenard's Salt Meadows (Ca.n.a.l Street) it ran upon a causeway, but the marshes overflowed in the spring, and soon they opened another road known as the Inland Road to Greenwich. This second lane ran from the Post Road or Bowery, westward over the fields and pa.s.sing close to the site of the Potter's Field. This, I understand, was the favourite drive of the fas.h.i.+onable world a century and a half ago.

If anyone wants to really taste the savour of old New York, let him read the journals of those bygone days. Better than any history books will they make the past live again, make it real to you with its odd perfumes, and its stilted mannerisms, and its high-hearted courage and gallantry.

I know of no quainter literature than is to be found in these very old New York papers. The advertis.e.m.e.nts alone are pregnant with suggestions of the past--colour, atmosphere, the subtle fragrance and flavour of other days. We read that James Anderson of Broadway has just arrived from London "in the brig Betsy" with a load of "the best finished boot legs." Another gentleman urges people to inspect his "crooked tortoise-sh.e.l.l combs for ladies and gentlemen's hair, his vegetable face powder--his nervous essence for the toothache, his bergamot, lemon, lavendar and thyme"--and other commodities.

Sales were advertised of such mixed a.s.sortments as the following:

"For Sale: "A negro wench.

"An elegant chariot.

"Geneva in pipes, cloves, steel, heart and club, scale beams, cotton in bales, Tenerisse wines in pipes, and quarter casks."

In several old papers you find that two camels were to be seen in a certain stable, at a s.h.i.+lling a head for adults and sixpence for children. The camels were a novelty and highly popular.

Take this item, for instance, from the good old _Daily Advertiser_, chronicler of the big and little things of Manhattan's early days. It gives a fine example of old-style journalism. Observe the ingenuity with which a page of narrative is twisted into the first sentence. The last two are the more startling in their abrupt fas.h.i.+on of leaving the reader high and dry. The cow is starred; obviously the man appears a minor actor:

"On Thursday afternoon, as a man of genteel appearance was pa.s.sing along Beekman Street, he was attacked by a cow, and notwithstanding his efforts to avoid her, and the means he used to beat her off, we are sorry to say that he was so much injured as to be taken up dead. The cow was afterward killed in William Street. We have not been able to learn the name of the deceased"!!

Some of the items contain genuine if unconscious humour,--such as the record of the question brought up before the City Council: "Whether attorneys are thought useful to plead in courts or not?" Answer: "It is thought not."

Then there is the proclamation that if any Indian was found drunk in any street, and it could not be ascertained where he got the liquor, the whole street was to be fined!

Among the earlier laws duly published in the press was that hogs should not be "suffered to goe or range in any of the streets or lands." In 1684 eight watchmen were appointed at twelve-pence a night. But read them for yourselves,--they are worth the trouble you will have to find them!

There were many queer trades in New York, and all of them, or nearly all, advertised in the daily journals. In column on column of yellowed paper and quaint f-for-s printing, we read exhortations to employ this or that man, most of them included in the picturesque verse whose author I do not know:

_"Plumbers, founders, dyers, tanners, shavers, Sweepers, clerks and criers, jewelers, engravers, Clothiers, drapers, players, cartmen, hatters, nailers, Gaugers, sealers, weighers, carpenters, and sailors!"_

And read the long-winded, yet really beautiful old obituary notices; the simple news of battles and high deeds; the fiery, yet pedantic, political editorials. Oh, no one knows anything about Father Knickerbocker until he has read the same newspapers that Father Knickerbocker himself read,--when he wasn't writing for them!

The Revolution had pa.s.sed and Greenwich was a real village, and growing with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity, even in that day of lightning development.

In 1807 they started to do New York over, and they kept at it faithfully and successfully until 1811. Then began the laying out of streets according to numbers and fixed measurements, instead of by picturesque names and erratic cow-path meanderings. Gouverneur Morris, Simeon de Witt and John Rutherford were appointed by the city to take charge of this task, and, as one writer points out, they did not do it as badly as they might have done, nor as we are inclined to think they did when we try to find our way around lower New York today. The truth is that Greenwich had grown up, and always has grown up ever since, in an entirely independent and obstinate fas.h.i.+on all its own. There was not the slightest use in trying to make its twisty curlicue streets conform to any engineering plan on earth; so those sensible old-time folk didn't try. William Bridges, architect and city surveyor, entrusted with the job, mentions "that part of the city which lies south of Greenwich Lane and North Street, and which was not included in the powers vested in the commissioners." And so Our Village remains itself, utterly and arrogantly untouched by the confining orthodoxy of the rest of the town!

The pa.s.sing of the British rule was the signal for variously radical democratic changes, not only in customs and forms, but in nomenclature.

After they had melted up a leaden statue of King George and made it into American bullets, they went about abolis.h.i.+ng every blessed thing in the city which could remind them of England and English ways. The names of the streets were, of course, nearly all intrinsically English. A few of the old Dutch names persisted--Bleecker, Vandam, and so on--but nearly every part of the town was named for the extolling of Britain and British royalty. Away then, said New York, with the sign manuals of crowns and autocracy!

In 1783, when the English evacuated Manhattan, the _Advertiser_ published: "May the remembrance of this DAY be a lesson to princes!" and in this spirit was the last vestige of imperial rule systematically expunged from the city. Crown Street was a red rag to the bull of Young America; it was called Liberty, and thus became innocuous! Queen Street doffed its ermine and became homely and humble, under the name of Cedar.

King Street was now Pine. King George Street was abolished altogether, according to the chronicles. One is curious to know what they did with it; it must be difficult to lose a street entirely! A few streets and squares named for individual Englishmen who had been friendly to America were left unmolested--Abingdon Square, and also Chatham Street, which had been given its appellation in honour of the ever popular William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; Chatham Square, indeed, exists to this day.

Greenwich was at all times a resort for those who could afford it, an exclusive and beautiful country region where anyone with a full purse could go to court health and rest among the trees and fields and river breezes. It was destined to become the most popular, flouris.h.i.+ng and prosperous little village that ever grew up over night. Those marvellously healthy qualities as to location and air, that fine, sandy soil, made it a haven, indeed, to people who were afraid of sickness. And in those days the island was continually swept by epidemics--violent, far-reaching, and registering alarming mortality.

Greenwich seemed to be the only place where one didn't get yellow fever or anything else, and terrorised citizens began to rush out there in droves, not only with their bags and their baggage, and their wives and children, but with their business too!

John Lambert, an English visitor to America in 1807, writes:

"As soon as yellow fever makes its appearance, the inhabitants shut up their shops and fly from their homes into the country. Those who cannot go far on account of business, remove to Greenwich, situate on the border of the Hudson about two or three miles from town. The banks and other public offices also remove their business to this place and markets are regularly established for the supply of the inhabitants."

Things went so fast for Greenwich during the biggest of the yellow fever "booms" that one old chronicler (whose name I regret not being able to find) declares he "saw the corn growing on the corner of Hammond Street (West Eleventh) on a Sat.u.r.day morning, and by the next Monday Niblo and Sykes had built a house there for three hundred boarders!"

Devoe says that:

"The visits of yellow fever in 1798, 1799, 1803 and 1805 tended much to increase the formation of a village near the Spring Street Market and one also near the State Prison; but the fever of 1882 built up many streets with numerous wooden buildings for the uses of the merchants, banks (from which Bank Street took its name), offices, etc."

"'The town fairly exploded,'" quotes Macatamney,--from what writer he does not state,--"'and went flying beyond its bonds as though the pestilence had been a burning mine.'"

It was in 1822 that Hardie wrote:

"Sat.u.r.day, the 24th of August our city presented the appearance of a town beseiged. From daybreak till night one line of carts, containing boxes, merchandise and effects, was seen moving towards Greenwich Village and the upper parts of the city. Carriages and hacks, wagons and hors.e.m.e.n, were scouring the streets and filling the roads; persons with anxiety strongly marked on their countenances, and with hurried gait, were hustling through the streets. Temporary stores and offices were erecting, and even on the ensuing day (Sunday) carts were in motion, and the saw and hammer busily at work. Within a few days thereafter the custom house, the post office, the banks, the insurance offices and the printers of newspapers located themselves in the village or in the upper part of Broadway, where they were free from the impending danger; and these places almost instantaneously became the seat of the immense business usually carried on in the great metropolis."

Bank Street got its name in this way, the city banks transferring their business thither literally overnight, ready to do business in the morning.

Miss Euphemia M. Olcott in her delightful recollections of the past in New York, gives us some charming snapshots of a still later Greenwich as she got them from her mother who was born in 1819.

"She often visited in Greenwich Village, both at her grandfather's and at the house of Mr. Abraham Van Nest, which had been built and originally occupied by Sir. Peter Warren. But she never thought of going _so far_ for less than a week! [She lived at Fulton and Na.s.sau streets.] There was a city conveyance for part of the way, and then the old Greenwich stage enabled them to complete the long journey.

This ran several times a day, and when my mother committed her hymn:

_"'Hasten, sinner, to be wise, Ere this evening's stage be run'_

she told us that for some years it never occurred to her that it could mean anything in the world but the Greenwich stage."