Nooks and Corners of Old New York Part 4

[Sidenote: The Origin of Broadway]

From New Amsterdam, which centered about the Fort, the only road which led through the island branched out from Bowling Green. It took the line of what is now Broadway, and during a period of one hundred years was the only road which extended the length of the island.

That Broadway, beyond St. Paul's Chapel, ever became a greatly traveled thoroughfare, was due more to accident than design, for to all appearances the road which turned to the east was to be the main artery for the city's travel, and all calculations were made to that end.

Broadway really ended at St. Paul's.

[Sidenote: The First Graveyard]

Morris Street was called Beaver Lane before the name was changed in 1829. On this street, near Broadway, the first graveyard of the city was situated. It was removed and the ground sold at auction in 1676, when a plot was acquired opposite Wall Street. This last was used in conjunction with Trinity Church until city interment was prohibited.

[Sidenote: The First House Built]

On the office building at 41 Broadway there is fixed a tablet which bears the inscription:

THIS TABLET MARKS THE SITE OF THE FIRST HABITATIONS OF WHITE MEN ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN ADRIAN BLOCK COMMANDER OF THE "TIGER"

ERECTED HERE FOUR HOUSES OR HUTS AFTER HIS VESSEL WAS BURNED NOVEMBER, 1613 HE BUILT THE RESTLESS, THE FIRST VESSEL MADE BY EUROPEANS IN THIS COUNTRY THE RESTLESS WAS LAUNCHED IN THE SPRING OF 1614

Adrian Block was one of the earliest fur traders to visit the island after Henry Hudson returned to Holland with the news of his discovery.

The "Tiger" took fire in the night while anch.o.r.ed in the bay, and Block and his crew reached the sh.o.r.e with difficulty. They were the only white men on the island. Immediately they set about building a new vessel, which was named the "Restless."

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

[Sidenote: Tin Pot Alley]

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

Morgan Dix, the pastor of Trinity Church.

At the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector Street, where a sky-sc.r.a.per is now, Grace Church once stood with a graveyard about it.

The church was completed in 1808, and was there until 1846, when the present structure was erected at Broadway and Tenth Street. Upon the Rector Street site, the Trinity Lutheran Church, a log structure, was built in 1671. It was rebuilt in 1741, and was burned in the great fire of 1776.

[Sidenote: Trinity Churchyard]

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

[Sidenote: Annetje Jans's Farm]

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

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

The city's growth was r.e.t.a.r.ded by church owners.h.i.+p of land, as no one wanted to build on leasehold property. It was not until the greater part of available land on the east side of the island was built upon that the church property was made use of on the only terms it could be had. Not until 1803 were the streets from Warren to Ca.n.a.l laid out.

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

[Sidenote: Oldest Grave In Trinity Churchyard]

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

W. C.

HEAR . LYES . THE . BODY OF . RICHARD . CHVRCH ER . SON . OF . WILLIA M . CHVRCHER . WHO .

DIED . THE . 5 OF . APRIL 1681 . OF . AGE 5 YEARS AND . 5 . MONTHS

The records tell nothing of the Churcher family.

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

HA, SYDNEY, SYDNEY!

LYEST THOU HERE?

I HERE LYE, 'TIL TIME IS FLOWN TO ITS EXTREMITY.

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

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Sidenote: Grave of Charlotte Temple]

On the opposite side of the path, nearer to Broadway, is a marble slab lying flat on the ground and each year sinking deeper into the earth.

It was placed there by one of the s.e.xtons of Trinity more than a century ago, in memory of Charlotte Temple.

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

[Sidenote: Martyr's Monument]

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

[Sidenote: A Churchyard Cryptograph]

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

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

And above the inscription are cut these curious characters:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The second series begins with K, because the I sign is also used for J.

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

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