A loiterer in New York : discoveries made by a rambler through obvious yet unsought highways and byways

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A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

THE PLAZA, LOOKING SOUTH, SHOWING THE FOUNTAIN OF ABUNDANCE
AGAINST THE CORNELIUS VANDERBILT HOUSE
CARRERE AND HASTINGS, ARCHITECTS (PAGE 308)

ABUNDANCE, DETAIL OF THE PLAZA FOUNTAIN
DESIGNED BY KARL BITTER
EXECUTED BY ISIDORE KONTI

A LOITERER IN NEW
YORK

DISCOVERIES MADE BY A RAMBLER

THROUGH OBVIOUS YET UNSOUGHT

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS

BY

HELEN W. HENDERSON

i]

AUTHOR OF "TIIE ART TREASURES OF WASHINGTON,
ETC., ETC.

WITH A PREFACE BY
PAUL W. BARTLETT

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
BILLIE

AND

GILBERT WHITE

Souvenir d'affection

71S131

PREFACE

To a traveller the thought of loitering in a great
city is more suggestive of the celebrated haunts
abroad than of New York. It conjures visions
of Rome, of Venice, of Florence, where historical
relics and works of art are found at every turn.
It would recall, perhaps, rambles in the streets
and boulevards of Paris and the innocent joys of
the Bouquineur on the Quais; the misty mornings,
the quiet afternoons, and evening strolls on the
banks of the Seine. It would perhaps revive
the souvenir of the delightful feeling of peaceful
comfort and " nearness " to the Past, so readily
enjoyed in the sombre byways and the gay and
bustling highways of London. Things are life-
size abroad and supremely human too. There
one is encouraged to dream and to think, and
loitering is an art!

With these thoughts in mind it seems difficult,
at first glance, to see how one could really loiter
here. The consciousness of one's self is easily
lost in the presence of our superhuman buildings.
The sky-line, however grand, is far away, and a
profound feeling of awe replaces that of intimacy
and charm. The works of art are difficult to

vii

viii PREFACE

find, and the " ambience " of ceaseless and
strenuous activity precludes all hope of peaceful
meditation to those who do not know the nooks
and corners where the Past still lingers with the
Present.

This book, in reality the History of the
Romance and Art of Manhattan, fortunately
comes to our rescue. The traveller will find it
a friendly and willing guide; he will be lured
on, over the old Boston Post Road, along
Broadway and Fifth Avenue, his curiosity and
interest always kept alive; and half -forgotten
mysteries will be disclosed to him while on the
way.

The lover of New York may rejoice in the
folk-lore tales of " hamlet " and " bouwerie,"
retold in sympathetic and feeling words, and in
the remembrance of revered landmarks, beauti-
fully described.

The artist and connoisseur, on the other hand,
may find much to admire in the author's appre-
ciation of art and in her joy to praise. They
will be touched by her quiet persistence in calling
attention to things worth while, and amused by
her skill in dealing with unfortunate works, so
common with us, which, with a few casual words,
are deftly set aside, so deftly indeed that, at times,
one scarcely realizes the strength and justice of
her criticism.

PREFACE ix

Miss Helen Henderson, a true art critic with-
out the pretensions of a critic, is particularly well
equipped for a work of this kind. She had the
good fortune, after completing her studies at the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to spend
some years abroad, to come in contact with most
of the modern masters, and to live in the midst
of the artistic and literary activities of Paris and
London.

To-day her opinions are based on real under-
standing, her emotions and intuitions have been
tempered by years of literary experience, and
her sense of the psychology of human events is
mellowed by a kind philosophy, which is not
devoid, however, of a gentle touch of humour.

In bringing the art treasures of the city nearer
to us, in reminding us that there are still traces
of Poetry and Romance left in Manhattan, Miss
Henderson has done a good and worthy work.

The gentle irony of her title leads me to
believe that she has little hope of persuading
many New Yorkers to loiter; but if any book
could teach them to " idle," and to " idle " with
pleasure and profit, it is certainly " A Loiterer
in New York."

Paul W. Bartlett.

New York, 23 September, 1917.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Picture 15

II. Manahachtanienk 27

III. Dutch Dominion 38

IV. English Rule 57

V. The Old Town 71

VI. Trinity Church 102

VII. The City Hall 125

VIII. Bouwerie Village 152

IX. Greenwich Village — The Bossen Bouwerie . 179

X. Washington Square 200

XI. Gramercy Park 223

XII. Union and Madison Squares . . . 238

XIII. Murray Hill 266

XIV. The Avenue 286

XV. The Plaza 306

XVI. Central Park East— Yorkville ... 318

XVII. Central Park West— Bloemendaal . . 343

XVIII. Columbia Heights . . . . .356

XIX. Inwood — Manhattanvillc to Kingsbridge . 387

XX. Brooklyn — The Sculpture of Frederick

MacMonnies 405

XXI. Brooklyn's Battle Marks .... 425

XXII. Random Decorations 437

Index 455

xi

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Plaza, Looking South .... Frontispiece
" Abundance." By Karl Bitter. Detail of
the Plaza Fountain

PAGE

" Under the Brooklyn Bridge." By Ernest Lawson 18

" Brooklyn Bridge." By Edward W. Redfield . 24

" Night : New York from Brooklyn Heights." By
Edward W. Redfield . " . . . . 30

" Indians of Manhattan." By Barry Faulkner . 40

" Landing of Henry Hudson." By Barry Faulkner 40

Colonel Abraham de Peyster. By Georger Edwin
Bissell . ....... 46

" Fort Orange in the Seventeenth Century." By
Elmer E. Garnsey ....... 50

" Asia." By Daniel Chester French. United States
Custom House 50

The Duke's Plan of New Amsterdam ... 54

Joost Hartgers' View of New Amsterdam . . 54

George Washington. By J. Q. A. Ward. Sub-
Treasury Building 74

" Africa." By Daniel Chester French. United

States Custom House 88

"England." By Charles Grafly. United States

Custom House 88

" New Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century." By

Elmer E. Garnsey 92

xiii

xiv ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

" France." By Charles Grafly. United States Cus-
tom House 92

Main Portal Trinity Church. By Karl Bitter . 104

Recumbent Statue of Morgan Dix. By Isidore

Konti. Trinity Church 108

Bust of Alexander Hamilton. Trinity Church . 108

John Watts. By George Edward Bissell. Trinity

Churchyard 108

Wilson Memorial Cross. Trinity Churchyard . 116

Reverse of Wilson Memorial Cross . . . .116

All Saints' Chapel . . . . . . . 120

City Hall. The Wall View 126

Corridor Screen. City Hall . . . . .126

Rotunda and Stairway. City Hall . . . . 132

The Portico. City Hall 132

The Mayor's Reception Room. City Hall . . 138

" The Marquis de Lafayette." By Samuel F. B.

Morse 138

Nathan Hale. By Frederick MacMonnies . . 142

Horace Greeley. By J. Q. A. Ward ... 148

" Alexander Hamilton." By John Trumbull . . 156

Peter Cooper. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens . . 168

Manhattan Bridge. Bowery Terminal . . . 176

" Commerce." . Detail of Manhattan Bridge . . 176

Washington Arch 184

"The Delicate Spire of St. John's." By Jessie

Banks 194

" St. John's from York Street." By Anne Gold-

thwaite . . 194

ILLUSTRATIONS xv

PAGE

" Washington the Soldier." Detail of Washington

Arch 202

" Washington as President." Detail of Washington

Arch 210

" The Ascension." By John La Farge. Church of
the Ascension 218

Henry Whitney Bellows. By Augustus Saint-

Gaudens. All Souls' Church .... 232

Equestrian Statue of Washington. By Henry Kirke
Browne 240

The Farragut Statue. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens 248

Interior. Madison Square Presbyterian Church . 254

" Wisdom." By Henry Oliver Walker. Appellate
Court House 260

" January." By Edward Simmons. Waldorf-
Astoria 268

" Cattle Fair : Bowling Green." By Albert Herter.
Hotel McAlpin 272

" The Jewels." By Gilbert White. Hotel McAlpin 272

Frieze. By Andrew O'Connor. St. Bartholomew's
Church 276

" Welcome." By John La Farge. Window in resi-
dence of Mrs. George T. Bliss .... 282

Edwin Booth Memorial Window. By John La Farge.

Church of the Transfiguration .... 282

"Romance." By Paul Wayland Bartlett. New

York Public Library 288

New York Public Library. Erecting the Statues . 288

William Cullen Bryant. By Herbert Adams . . 294

The Hunt Memorial. By Daniel Chester French . 298

xvi ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

University Club Library. Decoration by H. Siddons

Mowbray 304

Equestrian Statue of William Tecumseh Sherman.

By Augustus Saint-Gaudens .... 310

Plan of the Plaza 310

Interior. Metropolitan Museum .... 324

Head of Balzac. By Rodin 324

Portrait of Henry G. Marquand. By John S.

Sargent 332

Details of Frieze. By Isidore Konti. Gainsborough

Building 346

The Maine Monument 350

" The Pacific." Detail of Maine Monument . . 350

Equestrian Statue of Jeanne d'Arc. By Anna

Vaughan Hyatt .358

Firemen's Monument. By H. Van Buren Magonigle 364

" Duty." Detail of Firemen's Monument . . 364

Gate to Belmont Chapel. Cathedral of St. John the

Divine 370

Recumbent Figure of Bishop Henry Codman Potter 376

Relief. By Karl Bitter. Carl Schurz Monument . 376

Seth Low Memorial Library ..... 380

" Alma Mater." Columbia University Library . 380

Fountain of the God Pan. By George Gray Barnard 384

Detail of the Fountain of the God Pan . . . 384

" The Old Tulip Tree. Inwood." By Ernest Lawson 392

" The Duchess of Alba." By Goya ... 402

" Washington at Valley Forge." By Henry Merwin

Shrady 408

ILLUSTRATIONS xvii

PAGE

Portrait Statue of James S. T. Stranahan. By

Frederick MacMonnies 414

" The Horse Tamer." By Frederick MacMonnies . 422

" James McNeil Whistler." By Giovanni Boldini . 430

Detail of "Earth" Panel. By Paul Manship.

Western Union Building ..... 438

" The Music of Antiquity." By Edward H. Blash-

field. In residence of Mr. Adolph Lewisohn . 444

Detail of Ceiling. By H. Siddons Mowbray. Mor-
gan Library 448

Drawing for Panel on Morgan Library . . . 448

" Proving it by the Book." By Maxfield Parrish . 452

A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

A LOITERER IN
NEW YORK

i

THE PICTURE

New York has supreme advantage over most
cities of the world in the impressiveness of its
approach. There is something to be said for all
the means of ingress, something prognostic of its
inordinate modernity, of its immense mechanical
superiority, of its intolerance of everything that is
not of the newest and the latest and the best,
according to the American standard; but for the
stranger, who has never seen the city, particularly
one whose quest is character and individuality
rather than convenience or speed — and we are
speaking to loiterers — it is worth the expenditure
of time and trouble to make what detour may be
necessary in order to arrive by water.

The whole sweep through the rough salt waters
of the Lower Bay; the passage through the Nar-
rows into the Upper Bay, all windy, fresh, exhil-

15

16 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

arating, lead dramatically up to the supreme in-
delible impression of a city rising from the sea,
as has so often been said.

The vision thus comes with surprise and splen-
dour. Mirage-like in the offing, its white towers
detach themselves only partially from the back-
ground of bright skies, each detail coming grad-
ually out until the essence of the thing which is
New York is there before you with its largest
suggestion. Through that vivid clearness of
atmosphere the impending city looms — a bristling
promontory pointing its tall, sharp end, incon-
ceivably planted with incredible masses of pro-
digious feats of stone-faced ironmongery, into the
very eye of the spectator.

To the excitement of the moment of realization
every great and small thing contributes. There
is no laziness in a prospect where the chief end
of life seems to be transportation, expressed in
the restless, feverish desire of every craft afloat
to get quickly somewhere else; this sensation of
hurry and flurry augmented by the wind and the
tide, animated by the same desire for displacement
and unrest. All this is carried on with the fine
unconsciousness that bespeaks the metropolis. The
tugs, the ferries, the minor craft, the ships, bent
on their separate ways, independent of mien and

THE PICTURE 17

action yet taking one another into account, accept-
ing jostlings and delays amiably with a philosophy
born of lifelong dealings with crowds.

The city, deposited at the water's edge, comes
with sudden revelation, yielding at first glance its
salient features. Individual buildings rise to fan-
tastic heights above the compact pile, giving light-
ness and variety to the aerial line. The smoke
which curls about their towers mingles with the
clouds. Everything is in excess. League long
bridges fling themselves in abandonment across
turbulent tidal rivers — great arms that span vast
spaces with hands that grasp, and hold to the
parent island, those newly acquired boroughs now
proud to count themselves technically part of the
great city.

Like some gigantic puss-wants-a-corner game
worked out beyond all hope of joy for the per-
former, these bridges contribute to that same
insensate desire for change that animates the river
craft,, their immeasurable lengths traversed by
ceaseless belts of concatenated cars condemned to
a sort of treadmill destiny staggering in its mag-
nitude.

In all weathers, in all seasons, at all times of
day or night, the island, from whatever point of
observation, is a thing of wonder and delight. In

18 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the early morning it shines and glistens in the
dazzling sun; its walls giving back white efful-
gence, in marvellous contrast to the blueness of
an habitually cloudless sky, and the deeper note
of constantly agitated waters.

In the late afternoon the thousand windows
reflect the fire of the setting sun, its colourful after-
glow, and the island seems ablaze; while at dusk
the whole becomes enveloped in a soft, Whis-
tlerian haze, through which the lights in the office
towers sparkle like stars. The rushing, crowded
ferries and busy steam tugs, that all day have
stirred the restless waters, begin a more rhythmic
action, and make black accents in the sapphire
blue of the rivers, disappearing into shadowy
docks, disgorging their heavy loads, floating out
again — vast platforms of shifting humanity.

Gradually mellowing, the scene at night is most
significant of all. Then the towering mass of the
island deepens to a rich silhouette against the sky,
luminous with the city glow. The lower end is
deserted, and looms mysterious and awful in its
empty vastness. To one who goes in for rich
effects, there can be nothing more impressive of
the value of New York, as a unique city, than a
study of the various and bizarre pictures it makes
from such vantage points as the Brooklyn Heights,

'UNDER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE"
AFTER A PAINTING BY ERNEST LAWSON

THROUGH THAT VIVID CLEARNESS OF ATMOSPHERE
THE IMPENDING CITY LOOMS—" (PAGE l6)

V :*:*>::.; *;: : -v.. }

THE PICTURE 19

the ferries, or from any of the several bridges.
There, comfortably ensconced, one may ponder at
one's leisure upon its most curious unsubstantial
quality, as of some gigantic Luna Park, its out-
lines traced by prodigal dots of light, its features
illumined in so strange a fashion as to make them
appear translucent; the whole high strung to the
strident note of perpetual fete.

This sense of improbability deepens on closer
acquaintance, when the fantastic notion that the
whole amazing structure that shifts and changes
before one's approaching gaze is more or less
stage land, gotten up for effect, is substantiated
by the recorded facts; by the comparison of the
series of prints of old New York, that show this
very tip of the island to have undergone, in the
short space of three hundred years, metamorpho-
ses that leave not one stone standing of the original
assemblage.

Rains and fogs but add effect and interest to
the picture; summer suns and winter snows, char-
acter. But these are accidents: New York the
typical is clear, bright, sunny, breezy, invigorat-
ing. It seems, as it rears its giddy height there at
the head of the bay, the young, vital city that it
is — the metropolis of a new world.

New York has one of the finest of natural har-

20 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

bours. It has an entrance of about a mile in
width between Fort Hamilton, at the southwest
angle of the borough of Brooklyn, and Fort
Wadsworth, the point opposite on Staten Island.
This entrance, known as the Narrows, leads into
a fine bay about five miles wide and six miles long,
within which lie several small islands of indifferent
interest and little physical grace.

Bartholdi's impressive statue, "Liberty En-
lightening the World," stands on Bedloe's Island,
in the bay, of which it is a distinguishing feature.
It stands for fine sentiment, as well as sesthetic
achievement ; for it was presented to the people
of the United States by the people of France, in
commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary
of American Independence. The sculptor, Fred-
eric Bartholdi, was a Frenchman, of whose work
we have another worthy example in the city — the
Lafayette in Union Square, presented by the
French residents of New York, in gratitude for
American sympathy in the Franco-Prussian War.
His reputation rests upon that noble monument,
the " Lion de Belfort," of which a reduced replica
dominates the Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris.

Unlike many of the foreign works which have
been shipped to us, and erected without the artist
having ever seen the country, let alone the site,

THE PICTURE 21

this one was devised after Bartholdi had made the
trip to the United States, to view the bay in which
his projected statue was to stand, and picked out
Bedloe's Island as the spot best adapted for it.
He wished to make something to impress the im-
migrant to these shores, and conceived this majestic
symbol of Liberty holding the flaming torch, that
should typify for him the freedom and opportunity
of a new world. As early as 1865 he had this
ambition, — to make a statue commemorative of
the friendship between the two countries.

Unfortunately, at the time that the statue was
erected, 1885, great stress was laid upon the colos-
sal proportions of the figure. People were im-
mensely impressed by its size, having been duly
instructed upon that inconsequent point, by a
zealous press, and loved to marvel upon the fact
that forty persons could stand in its head — if they
wanted to do so. Everything being relative, the
attention of a fickle public has been many times
shifted, with this regard, since the Liberty statue
used to epater les bourgeois on the grounds of its
height, many times eclipsed by the towering sky-
scrapers invented since.

Bartholdi's statue remains, none the less, an
imposing feature of the Upper Bay. The attitude
of the figure is dignified; its mass, sculpturesque;

22 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

and it has gained immeasurably, since its erection,
by the lovely patine which time and exposure have
added to the metal. It is very interesting also
mechanically, being made of a shell of repousse
copper, riveted together and supported by an
interior skeleton of iron, designed by the French
engineer, Eiffel, who built the famous tower. Pro-
vision is made for expansion and contraction,
caused by variations of temperature, and an asbes-
tos packing is employed to insulate the copper
from the iron and prevent the corrosion which
would otherwise be caused by the action of elec-
tricity, induced by the salt air.

Governor's Island, near the Battery, is occupied
by the United States government for military pur-
poses. It figures in the early history of New
York, having been purchased from the Indians,
in 1637, by Wouter Van T wilier, one of the Dutch
governors, and one of the richest landowners in
the province. The Indians called the island Pag-
ganck; and under the Dutch dominion it was
known as Nooten, or Nut, Island; while under
English rule it was set aside by the assembly for
the benefit of the royal governors from which it
takes its name. After various changes, it was
ceded to the federal government, by the State of
New York, in 1800.

THE PICTURE 23

Governor's Island was once a part of Long
Island, so that cattle were driven across the But-
termilk Channel — so narrow and shallow, in Van
Twiller's time, that it was easily forded. Boats
drawing very little water were the only craft able
to get through the channel, and numbers of these
took buttermilk from Long Island to the markets
of New York, embarking at Red Hook Point.

The Military Museum, on Governor's Island,
contains many relics of former wars; and Fort
Jay, formerly Fort Columbus, has a well-pre-
served moat, drawbridge, parapet, and guns. The
barracks here are still in use. Castle William,
from which the sunset gun is fired, is used as a
military prison.

Ellis Island, a mile and a half from the Battery,
was famous, in Dutch days, as Oyster Island,
owing to the quantities of oysters consumed there.
It was sold by the state to the national govern-
ment, in 1808, and has been the immigrant station
since 1891, when the old Castle Garden was dis-
qualified for that portentous use.

On Swinburne and Hoffman Islands, made by
filling in, in the Lower Bay, are the quarantine
stations, which were located at Seguine's Point,
Staten Island, in 1859, and occasioned the upris-
ing of the people in vigorous protest. The build-

24 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

ings were burned, together with those at Tomp-
kinsville, and the country was forced to pay the
state over an hundred thousand dollars indemnity.

The approach to New York by water, supple-
mented by a trip around the Island of Manhattan,
in one of the sightseeing yachts, will fix once and
for all the puzzling topography of the original
city in its relation to its four tributaries; the whole
constituting what is known as Greater New York.
A flight in an aeroplane over the city would be
even more helpful, and will no doubt one da}^ be
thoroughly practical. For the present an excellent
idea of the lay of the land may be got by mount-
ing into the towers of one or another of the higher
buildings, from which the whole country lies flat
below one, as a map.

Before 1874 the city did not extend beyond
Manhattan Island. Parts of Westchester County
were in that year first incorporated, and in 1895
more territory, in the same county, was annexed.
The city of Greater New York, incorporated in
1898, now embraces an area of two hundred and
eighty-five square miles, and includes five bor-
oughs, of which the original island is very much
the smallest, containing but twenty-two square
miles, or considerably less than one-tenth of the
combined area. Of the others, Queens has an

BROOKLYN BRIDGE
AFTER A PAINTING BY EDWARD W. REDFIELD

LEAGUE-LONG BRIDGES FLING THEMSELVES IN ABANDONMENT ACROSS
TURBULENT TIDAL RIVERS — " (PAGE lj)

\ ' •;,''•••

. ' »••»•*'

THE PICTURE 25

area of one hundred and three square miles ; Brook-
lyn, seventy-two; Richmond, fifty, and Bronx,
forty-two.

Passing through the Narrows into New York
harbour, the borough of Brooklyn, occupying the
southern end of Long Island, lies on the right;
Richmond, or Staten Island, to use the old Dutch
derived name, on the left. The other extensions
of the city proper lie to the east and north of the
island, across the East and Harlem Rivers and
Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Queens lies adjacent to
Brooklyn, on Long Island; while the Bronx is
the most northern adjunct to the city, the only
section to form part of the mainland of New
York State.

Jersey City, Hoboken, Paterson, Weehawken,
and other small Jersey towns and cities, would
have been comprised in the consolidation of 1898,
except that they are in a different state. As it
is they are, in effect, suburban in their relation to
the city, and their ferries and underground tubes
bring daily a vast contribution to the sum total
of workers, shoppers, and pleasure-seekers on
Manhattan Island.

The boundary between New York and New
Jersey was an early point of dispute; the main
controversy being whether Staten Island was in-

26 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

eluded in the grant of New Jersey to Carteret
and Berkeley, by the Duke of York. The point
was determined in a sportsmanlike manner, when
the duke, afterwards James II, announced that
all islands in the bay that could be circumnavi-
gated in a day should belong to the province of
New York; and Staten Island was won through
the enterprise of Captain Christopher Billop, who
sailed around it in less than twenty-four hours, in
his famous ship, the Bentley.

Billop's delightful old house, built on the large
tract of land on the southern part of the island,
presented to him in recognition of his feat, still
stands, in a state of lamentable decay, a monu-
ment to his memory, and to civic indifference to
old landmarks.

II

MANAHACHTANIENK

Antiquabianism, pursued for its own sake, has
smashed some of our most hallowed traditions.
Yet, so sweet are the ways of error, it moves us
very little from our romantic conception of Hud-
son's thrilling voyage in de Halve M'oen, and his
incidental discovery of this region and the river
named for him, to know, from soulless savants,
that his was not the first white man's ship seen hy
the Redskins inhabiting these shores.

Irving, indeed, in his heartily sympathetic man-
ner, disposes cavalierly of the whole question of
the Italian claim for the priority of their explorer,
Giovanni Verrazzano, in a rich footnote to his
jocose History of New York, not only on the
ground of his inadequate description, but for the
more soul-satisfying reason that this Verrazzano
— for whom he confesses a most bitter enmity — is
a native of that same Florence that " filched away
the laurels from the brow of the immortal Colon
(vulgarly called Columbus), and bestowed them

27

28 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

upon its officious townsman, Amerigo Vespucci."
The incident described in what Irving scurri-
lously calls " a certain apocryphal book of voy-
ages by one Hakluyt," relates that, eighty-five
years before Hudson, the Italian explorer, sailing
for the king of France, coasted along the eastern
shore of North America from North Carolina to
Newfoundland; and, on the way, "found a very
agreeable situation — the bay (?) — located between
two small prominent hills, — the Narrows (?) — in
the midst of which flowed to the sea a very great
river, — the Hudson (?) — which was deep within
its mouth." His ship, the Dauphin, sl caravel of
one hundred tons, " anchored off the coast in good
shelter."

That the Florentine navigator was a gallant
captain and a handsome man, in the eyes of his
compatriots, is evident from the portrait bust, sur-
mounting the monument to his memory, the work
of Ettore Ximenes, the Roman sculptor, erected
by his fellow countrymen, in Battery Park, whence
he gazes proudly out upon the bay which he is
said to have first discovered. The letter, generally
believed to be authentic, in which he made his
report to Francois I, contains the earliest recorded
description of any part of the seacoast eventually
included in the original colonies.

MANAHACHTANIENK 29

During the same century, statisticians would
have us believe, the bay served as a harbour for
mariners of many nationalities — Spanish, French,
Portuguese, and Dutch — and it is to be supposed
that the European fishing craft, that abounded
further north, put into this excellent natural
shelter, from time to time, as exigency demanded.

Cosmopolitan in its primitive history, cosmopoli-
tan it remains, though these casual discoveries
produced no results; and it was not until early in
the seventeenth century, when Henry Hudson, an
English explorer, in the service of the East India
Trading Company, of Holland, set foot upon
these shores, that the real history of our island
begins.

The Half Moon, a flat-bottomed, two-masted
Dutch vessel, of eighty tons' burden, designed to
meet the peculiar features of navigation about the
Zuyder Zee, and named in honor of the island of
Vlieland, a vlieboot, was one of many ships owned
by the East India Company, a great trading cor-
poration, organized at Amsterdam, in 1602.

Hudson was an experienced explorer, having
twice been sent by merchants of his own country,
in search of that mythical short cut to the Orient,
upon which traders and mariners, of this epoch,
built their fondest hopes.

30 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

The Dutch owned islands, rich in spices, in the
Indian Ocean; their only means of access thereto
was the long, dangerous voyage around the conti-
nent of Africa, by way of the Cape of Good Hope.
The extent and breadth of the Western Hemi-
sphere was unsuspected in those days, and every
bay or strait or important stream on the Atlantic
Coast of North America seemed, potentially, the
entrance to broader waterways to seas, beyond the
far west, to the farther east.

The Narrows seemed to an expectant mariner
ideally to promise, and when the Half Moon
sailed up the open gates of the majestic river on
the left of the great bay, Hudson thought he had
found the passage to the Indies, and pushed on
as far as Albany, where the shallow waters dis-
couraged him, and he gave it up.

The commercial importance of his discovery was
perfectly clear to so keen a man as Henry Hud-
son; the failure of his particular quest he had,
himself, anticipated, in his advice to the company
before starting out, that he should be permitted
to investigate the possibilities of a passage west
of Greenland, through Davis Strait.

He returned to Holland with his story of the
shores of his Great River, which he called the
River of the Mountains. He told of bartering

NIGHT: NEW YORK FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS
AFTER A PAINTING BY EDWARD W. REDFIELD

THEN THE TOWERING MASS OF THE ISLAND DEEPENS TO A RICH SILHOUETTE
AGAINST THE SKY, LUMINOUS WJTH THE CITY GLOW" (PAGE l8)

MANAHACHTANIENK 31

with the Indians; of the fur-bearing animals,
samples of whose pelts he brought as evidence
of their richness; he described the high hills which
he thought might contain mines of valuable metal;
and upon his intelligent report was based the
whole future development of the company's im-
mense transactions with this region.

Hudson, personally, profited nothing of his
discoveries. He fell out with the Hollanders and
returned to England, making another voyage, for
an English company, for the same purpose, and
discovered the great north bay, which, like the
river, was later named for him, and there mys-
teriously perished. The story of his fate has
worked into the legend of the Hudson Valley and
its mountainous environment. His crew mutinied,
and their leader, his son, and seven faithful sailors
were put into a small boat, and set adrift in the
great bay and seen no more. Hendrick Hudson
men still figure in the folk-lore of this romantic
country.

The Dutch were just as human as the people
of other nationalities with regard to their treat-
ment of heroes and heroines. After he was, pre-
sumably, dead and gone, they not only named the
river and bay that he had discovered after Hudson,
they claimed him bodily and ancestrally for their

32 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

own, pretending that he was a Dutchman, and
changing his name to Hendrick in their annals
and descriptions.

They followed up his discoveries with the most
businesslike acumen, and traders were sent out
immediately upon the explorer's return to Hol-
land, in 1609.

The Island of Manhattan, to which the growth
of the official city confined itself during the first
three hundred years that succeeded its discovery,
and which will always mean New York, at least
to the present generation, no matter how all-em-
bracing it may become in its need of territory, was
so named by the Indians who inhabited its shores.
At least the word, Manhattan, is a derivative from
the original dialect of the native tribes.

The Delawares and Mohicans called the island
where they received the Dutch visitors Manahach-
tdnienk, which, in the Delaware language, we are
assured by Bishop Heckewelder, the Moravian
missionary to the Indians, means " the place where
we all became intoxicated."

Historians have pooh-poohed this quaintly
prophetic significance of a word, indeed, variously
interpreted, but have failed to impair its peren-
nial aptness. The name might have been selected
by many generations of bons viveurs, who have

MANAHACHTANIENK 33

made merry in this fashion on the island, includ-
ing, notably, the present.

' We have corrupted this name into ' Manhat-
tan,' " says the missionary, " but not so as to
destroy its meaning or conceal its origin." " There
are few Indian traditions," he goes on to tell us,
" so well supported as this."

Hudson, on his return to Holland, was detained
at an English port, and sent his charts and his
journal to the East India Company by his mate,
a Netherlander. Though they have disappeared,
and such parts as were quoted in a contemporary
publication make no special mention of his land-
ing in the harbour of New York, we possess a very
striking tradition of the event as preserved by the
hospitable tribe who received him.

The story of the arrival of the Half Moon was
taken down by Heckewelder, from the mouth of
an intelligent Delaware Indian, and given, with
much picturesque data, in all simplicity^ in his
" History of the Indian Nations," published by the
American Philosophical Society, in 1818.

The Indians described themselves as greatly
perplexed and terrified when they beheld a strange
object, of great size, in the offing. During the
hours that it took a sailing vessel to approach,
they were thrown into a panic of fear and appre-

34 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

hension, not knowing what visitation to expect
out of the horizon, that encompassed their knowl-
edge of space. Their fears were only augmented,
when it was reported to them by the runners sta-
tioned along the shore, that the object appeared
to be a huge house or canoe, and could only con-
jecture that they were about to receive a visit from
Mannitto — the Great or Supreme Being.

Anxious to propitiate him, lest his object should
be to punish them for their misdeeds, the chiefs
instructed the women to prepare a feast in his
honour, and, in their distracted way, ordered a
great, spectacular dance to be given, hoping to
please him and to show their respectful intentions.
Chiefs from all the neighbouring territory were
warned of the impending danger and congregated
together with their tribes, in great agitation and
bewilderment, not knowing how to meet so august
a visitor, nor what his intentions with regard to
themselves might be.

Meanwhile fresh runners, from the lookout
places, came with the news that the large house
approaching was of various colours, and crowded
with living creatures. The Indians then thought
that Mannitto must be bringing them some new
kind of game and rejoiced exceedingly at this
mark of favour. Soon, however, it was spread

MANAHACHTANIENK 35

abroad that the living creatures were men, like
themselves, only with white skins, and that among
them was a gorgeous godlike man in a red coat
all glittering with gold lace, who seemed to be
their chief.

The Indians could no longer doubt that this was
indeed their Mannitto, come in person, with his
retinue, and their excitement and agitation knew
no bounds. Soon the big house, some said canoe,
came near to the shore, and the Indians, unable
to restrain themselves, pushed out in their small
craft, or ran along the bank, answering the shouts
of the sailors with their strange cries, and assisting
them to land with every sign of hospitality and
welcome.

Never doubting that they were in the presence
of the Supreme Being, they only marveled that
their Mannitto should not be a red man like them-
selves, but should have fair skin. However, the
gorgeousness of his apparel, and the respect with
which his suite treated him, left no room for ques-
tion, and their only thought was to propitiate
the visitor.

With this end in view, all went smoothly until
the resplendent one sent one of his attendants
back to the ship for a hackhack (properly a gourd,
but applied also to bottles and decanters) and a

36 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

glass, out of which the chief poured himself some
dark liquid and drank it with significant gestures
and friendly looks. He then directed another
glassful to be poured out and this he passed to
the nearest Indian, who took it, smelled of it,
bowed low and passed it on to his neighbour. In
this fashion the glass went round the circle of
wondering chiefs, until a strong brave chief
stepped forward, took the glass, and harangued
the others at length upon the risk of exciting
their Mannitto's ire by the refusal to drink the
potion prepared for them. " I will drink it," he
said, " let the consequences be what may; for it is
better for one chief to die than for a whole tribe
to be destroyed."

So saying this valiant warrior drained the cup
to the dregs. The others watched breathless, in
anticipation of the direst results. Nothing hap-
pened for a moment, when the giant chieftain
began to sway backwards and forwards, and
finally fell to the ground, apparently dead. When
he regained consciousness, he staggered to his feet,
and described in glowing terms the effect of the
potion, how happy he had felt, what dreams had
visited his sleep, and urged his fellows to try it.
This was done; more liquor was brought from the
boat and the day was spent in wild intoxication

MANAHACHTANIENK 37

" As the Whites became daily more familiar
with the Indians," Hecke welder goes on to tell
us, " they at last proposed to stay with them, and
asked only for so much ground for a garden spot,
they said, as the hide of a bullock, then spread
before them, would cover, or encompass. The
Indians readily granted this apparently reasonable
request; but the Whites then took a knife and,
beginning at one end of the hide, cut it up to a
long rope, not thicker than a child's finger, so that
by the time the whole was cut it made a great
heap; they then took the rope at one end and
drew it gently along, carefully avoiding its break-
ing. It was drawn out into a circular form, and
being closed at the ends, encompassed a large
piece of ground."

Ignorant of what is related of Queen Dido, in
ancient history, and that the Dutchmen were
simply practising classic tricks upon them, this
cunning equally surprised and delighted the sim-
ple and confiding Indians, who allowed the suc-
cess of the artifice good-humouredly and made their
visitors cordially welcome.

So much for the initial step in acquiring foot-
hold on the Island of Manhattan.

Ill

DUTCH DOMINION

The lofty aims that inspired the founding of
Boston and Philadelphia and some other of the
oldest cities of North America had no part in the
settlement of New York. If the Indians named it
in honour of conviviality, the Dutch claimed it for
the purposes of commercialism ; and if the attempt
to take the sesthetic view is invariably blighted, as
James has said, by this most salient characteristic
— the feature that has persisted through the few
centuries of its progress — one must not blame too
harshly a city that was wronged from the start.

It was, indeed, with no idea of founding a city
that the first traders were sent here under Hen-
drick Christiaensen, in 1610, to follow up Hudson's
account of the business to be conducted on the
island. Between this year and 1616, when he was
killed by an Indian at Fort Nassau, Christiaensen
was the most active skipper concerned in the many
voyages to the Hudson River.

During this time no permanent landings were

38

DUTCH DOMINION 39

made; the Dutch traders lived upon their boats
in the harbour, remained only long enough to
secure a cargo of pelts, and speedily returned to
Holland to reap their harvest and prepare for
fresh voyages.

The first homes of white men built upon the
island were the result of an accident. Christiaen-
sen had entered into partnership with Adriaen
Block, the commander of the Tiger. While this
ship lay at anchor in the bay, in the direct course
that the Staten Island ferryboats now take, it
took fire, one cold November night, and Block and
his men were forced to swim ashore, and to build
for themselves the famous four huts known to tra-
dition as the Block houses. A tablet, placed on
the facade of No. 41 Broadway, marks the sup-
posed site of the Block houses, the first habitation
of white men on the Island of Manhattan.

Block spent the winter building a new ship,
which he called the Onrust, or Restless, the first
ship to be built in this region, and the second made
by white men in America. She rendered much
service in exploring Long Island Sound, and is
thought to have been the first vessel to pass
through the waters of Hell Gate.

The year 1614 is memorable in the history of
New York, for then the United New Netherland

40 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Company was formed. This established the name
of the province, New Netherland, and opened the
duly chartered commerce of the Hudson River.
About this time Fort Manhattan was built — a
rough stockade intended as a temporary shelter
for the factors of the company while engaged in
stripping the island of furs, which it was expected
could be accomplished in a few years. The life
of this trading organization was limited by its
charter to three years and four voyages, to be
completed before January 1, 1618.

Fort Manhattan was simply a trading post of
ephemeral construction — a redoubt. According to
some writers, it stood " just south of Bowling
Green," according to others " on the site of the
McComb mansion," at what is now 39 Broadway.
Others, again, declare that neither it nor the Block
houses had existence on the island, at least at this
epoch in its history. Some confusion seems to
have existed, in the minds of early historians, be-
tween the doings of the United New Netherland
Company and the West India Trading Company,
formed by the rich fur traders of Holland, about
1621.

The West Indies then included every country
to be reached by sailing west from Holland. It is
probable that no one understood much of the vast-

INDIANS OF MANHATTAN/ BY BARRY FAULKNER
PANEL IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL (PAGE 450)

LANDING OF HENRY HUDSON/ BY BARRY FAULKNER
PANEL IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL (PAGE 450)

DUTCH DOMINION 41

ness of the new continent; and New Netherlands
was vaguely referred to as including the territory
along the Atlantic Ocean now embraced by the
states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut,
and extended inland as far as the company might
care to send colonists.

The Dutch West India Company received from
the States-General enormous powers, including the
exclusive privilege of trading in the province of
New Netherland for twenty years. Merely in
order to protect its commercial interests from pos-
sible Indian raids, or the encroachments of neigh-
bouring English colonists, was an attempt at per-
manent settlement or colonization made. Leaven-
worth, Denver — numerous western cities were
founded in the same way, yet none has so fully,
so flamboyantly achieved its destiny. Founded
for trade, by trade, New York owes its very
existence to the commercial enterprise of the
doughty Hollanders.

As a remarkable instance of the familiar reflec-
tion that " you can't beat the Dutch," it is freely
quoted on all sides, that Peter Minuit, the first
Dutch Governor of the Province of New Nether-
land, bought the entire Island of Manhattan from
the unsuspecting savages for sixty guilders, cur-
rently estimated at $24 of our national currency.

42 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Some historians take consolation in the modifying
statement that the purchasing value of this neat
and tidy sum equalled $120 of " our money,"
ignoring, in this pitiful reckoning, the fact that
the barter was made in beads and baubles, such
as pleased the eye of the simple native, and not in
coin of the realm. Mrs. Van Rensselaer briskly
disposes of any false sentiment on this score by
remarking that " of course Minuit gave, instead
of useless money, articles that had an immense ( ! )
value in the Indians' eyes;" and lays doubtful
unction to her soul in the assertion that they were
not (technically) dispossessed of their island, but
merely pledged, " like tenants at will to yield from
time to time such portions of it as the white men
might need — if, indeed, many of them used Man-
hattan as an actual abiding-place. The island, for
the most part, seems to have been uninhabited
although constantly frequented by the savages
who lived on the neighbouring shores."

Be this amazing reasoning as it may, and, even
admitting the hypothesis, it leaves one wondering
how the present-day commuters would feel to have
their holdings, as distinguished from their places
of residence, so nonchalantly rated, the lurid fact
remains; and the sum, inflated to its Nth purchas-
ing power, fails of impressiveness as compared

DUTCH DOMINION 43

with the recent selling price ($576 per square
foot) of land on the corner of Wall Street and
Broadway, within a stone's throw of the place of
original sale.

This place of original sale, or original robbery,
this place of monumental taking, as of candy from
a child, is pointed out as the rocky point of land,
since known as the Battery, and the time — the
month of May, 1626.

Guileless as they seemed — these chiefs of the
Manhattoes and Wickquaskeeks — their bargain
was not unconditioned. They reserved for them-
selves the hunting rights in the most prolific part
of the island, whose resources none knew so well
as they — the richly wooded section now known as
Inwood ; and they enforced their claim, when ques-
tioned, by two wars and a massacre which depopu-
lated the Bouwerie farms and almost annihilated
the little hamlet of Haarlem, until their rights
were recognized in equity and the Dutch magis-
trates bought them off at a material advance on
their original estimate of values.

The Dutchman's wildest dreams of avarice were
as disproportionate to the stupendous statement of
growing valuations with which we are at
every turn confronted, as were the modest de-
mands of the aborigine to Minuit's excellent

44 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

knowledge of the bargain he had so unscrupu-
lously driven.

Geologists tell us that the trap rock under the
streets of New York is the oldest part of the sur-
face of the earth, a fact which lends colour to the
contrasting and perennial rejuvenation of the
unfinished city. The Island of Manhattan is thir-
teen and one-half miles in length, with an average
width of one and three-quarter miles ; its maximum
width being at Fourteenth Street, where it is two
and one-quarter miles across. The total area is
about twenty-two square miles or twenty-two thou-
sand English acres.

The surface of the island is still undulating and
rocky, and in its original state presented many ob-
stacles to the sober ideals of the city plan, which
insisted up levelling and grading in the interest
of those " pettifogging " parallelograms, which
have irritated no writer more perhaps than Mr.
Henry James, from whom one borrows the quali-
fying adjective.

At Washington Heights, the ground rises to an
altitude of 238 feet from the Hudson, but slopes
abruptly towards the east where there is a level
stretch, formerly known as the Harlem Flats.
Farther to the south, the elevation continues as
a central ridge with sloping ground on each side.

DUTCH DOMINION 45

With the exception of the Harlem plain and an
extensive bed of beach sand to the south and east
of City Hall, the island is chiefly rock, overlaid
with a generally shallow glacial drift deposit. Tht
greater part of the city is built on a rock founda-
tion, except where the glacial deposit is deep and
in the beach sand where pile foundations are
necessary.

The Hudson River was called by its discoverer
the " Great River " or the Groot Rivier. After
1623 it was sometimes called the Mauritius, in
honour of Prince Maurice of Orange ; and by others
it was- known as the Manhattan. The Indians
called it the Cohohatated or Shatemuc or Mohican-
nittuck. Mariners knew it as the North River, in
contradistinction to the South River (the Dela-
ware) also discovered by Hudson, and by this
name New Yorkers proper invariably speak of it.

Until the organization of the provincial govern-
ment under the first governor, such colonists as
had ventured sporadic settlement of the island had
been under the provisional protection of Cornelius
Jacobsen May, who was sent out with the first
families and put in charge of the affairs of the
company. Rude huts were put up in the vicinity
of the fort, and Pearl Street, the first identified
roadway, came into existence. Pearl Street was

46 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

at this time the water front and followed the shore,
leading from the fort to the Brooklyn Ferry at
Peck Slip.

Peter Minuit, in his capacity as governor, was
invested, by the West India Company, with full
authority over all the Dutch lands in America. He
organized a government consisting of a koopman,
who was secretary of the province; a schout-
fiscal, a sort of sheriff, attorney general, and
custom officer combined; and a council of five
men.

He laid out the lines of a fort on the site of the
present Custom House, on the spot where, the fur
traders' stockade had stood. This he called Port
Amsterdam. Built of earth and stone and sur-
rounded by cedar palisades, it was large enough
to shelter the whole community in case of danger;
and having four bastions, it rose proudly above the
little group of settlers' houses clustered about its
walls. The shore line was much less extended in
those days; the water came up to State Street on
the south, while Pearl Street followed the bank
of the East River, as has been said, and on the
other side from Greenwich Street, the land sloped
away in marshy flats to the water's edge. The
spot where Castle Garden now stands was then an
island two hundred feet from the shore; so that

COLONEL ABRAHAM DE PEYSTER, BY GEORGE EDWIN BISSELL
BOWLING GREEN (PAGE 88)

DUTCH DOMINION 47

the fort stood close to the water and easily com-
manded the entrances to the North and East
Rivers, and the junction of their currents in the
Upper Bay. In the earliest prints of the settle-
ment, such as that published by Joost Hartger
in 1651, it stands out as the dominating landmark
of the little dorp or village that occupied the
southern end of the Manhattan Island.

As the Custom House faces Bowling Green
to-day, so the main gate of the fort opened on
that same historic spot nearly three hundred years
ago, for it has maintained its identity as a public
garden spot throughout the entire development
of the city. First known as " The Plaine," it was
reserved for all the uses of a village green — a play-
ground for children, a parade ground for soldiers,
the market-place, the annual cattle show; while
under English rule a Maypole dance on the green
brought youths and maidens to the spot at the
appropriate season. It was indeed the general
meeting-place, and here, upon occasion, the Indians
met the Whites and made treaties and smoked
the pipe of peace.

The governor's house was inside the fort. The
large warehouse for storage of furs, the staple
export, was outside. This was a stone building,
thatched with reeds; and in its second story was

48 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

a room used as a place of worship by the budding
community.

The early history of New Netherland is domi-
nated by the will and ambitions of the four Dutch
governors. Peter Minuit bought the island, built
the fort, established the government, and divided
the lower part of the island into farms — called in
the Dutch vernacular, bouweries — which were por-
tioned out to the settlers in an arbitrary fashion.
Of these an interesting record is preserved in the
well-known Duke's Plan, a draft made in 1664
for the Duke of York upon the capture of the
town by the English. It shows the disposition of
property; the existing roadways, later to become
streets; with some extensions beyond the actual
limit of the city, fixed by a rude fence which ex-
tended across the island on the line of the present
Wall Street, and which had been built to keep
cattle from straying off into the wilderness. The
Duke's Plan is in the custody of the British Mu-
seum, but fac-similes of it are familiar enough, and
it has been repeatedly reproduced.

Wouter Van Twiller devoted his opportunities,
as second Dutch governor, to the acquisition of
property for himself, buying from the _ Indians
the spot known as Governor's Island, as well
as Randall's and Ward's Islands in the East

DUTCH DOMINION 49

River; and became the richest landowner in the
colony.

William Kieft, called William the Testy, rebuilt
houses and put down smugglers. He instituted the
fairs that were held on Bowling Green, where
cattle and pigs were exhibited, and this brought
so many people to the island that a tavern had
to be erected to house the transients. This was
a large stone house, of typical Dutch architecture,
such as one sees to-day in Amsterdam, with the
odd gable end pointed towards the street; and
it stood at the head of Coentie's Slip, in Pearl
Street, where a bronze tablet, erected by the
Holland Society, at No. 73, marks the site of
Kieft's Stadt Herbergh, or tavern, which
became the Stadt Huys, or first City Hall,
in 1653-54.

The nomenclature of the streets of the old town
followed the lines of least resistance, and are rich
in significance. Pearl Street, including Stone,
followed the water side and took its name from
the quantity of pearly shells left there by receding
tides; it was the first defined roadway on the
island, though Broadway is said to have existed
as an Indian trail. A second road stretched up
through the island, through the bouweries, and
leading to outlying farms, and may be identified

50 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

as the old Bowery, or Bouwerie Lane, as it then
was called.

During Governor Kieft's administration the
first of the Indian wars, that occasionally devas-
tated the settlement, was precipitated by the gov-
ernor's treachery towards the natives, and so
thorough were they in their vengeance that scarcely
an hundred men were left to tell the tale, and the
country was laid waste.

Till now the barrier for confining the cattle had
been but a peaceful precaution; in 1653 it gave
way to a strong city wall or palisade, built by
Peter Stuyvesant, the last of the Dutch governors,
to defend New Amsterdam against the Indians.
Bastions stood on sites in the rear of Trinity
churchyard, No. 4 Wall Street, the Sub-Treasury,
and at the head of Hanover Street; and at
Pearl Street a Half Moon Battery was located, to
protect the water gate. The wall stood until 1699,
and gave the name to the busy thoroughfare which
now marks its extent.

Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of
New Amsterdam, is the picturesque and sterling
figure which identifies itself indissolubly with the
fortunes of the early settlers. While the others
retired to Holland after short and selfish domina-
tion, he not only endeared himself to the people,

"FORT ORANGE" (ALBANY) IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
DECORATION IN THE COLLECTOR'S ROOM, UNITED STATES
CUSTOM HOUSE, BY ELMER E. GARNSEY (PAGE Q5)

ASIA/ BY DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH
ENTRANCE UNITED STATES CUSTOM
HOUSE (PAGE 90)

DUTCH DOMINION 51

but cared enough for this country to return to it
after his unhappy surrender to the English, and to
make it his home until his death. His bones rest
in a charming old church, built on the site of an
older one that he himself erected on his bouwerie,
far beyond the city limits of his time.

Stuyvesant was a faithful servant of the West
India Company, having lost his leg fighting in
its service. Under him the colony became a city,
with a mayor, two burgomasters, and five schep-
ens; and these, excepting always the mayor, pre-
sided over the trials which were held in the stone
house, which Kieft had built, and which now be-
came the Stadt Huys, at the head of Coentie's
Slip.

Governor Stuyvesant built him a house, in 1658,
called White Hall, and the road which led to it
still bears the name of the house, which stood at
what is now the southwest corner of Pearl and
Whitehall Streets. Perel Straet in those days
extended only as far as the governor's house,
after passing which the name changed to the
Strand.

Coentie's Slip is one of the few preserved Dutch
names which used to abound in this region. It
was an inlet in the days when the Stadt Huys was
built, and its peculiar name comes from a cor-

52 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

ruption of Conraet Ten Eyck, as the owner of
the land about here was called. The filled-in slip,
now buried beneath Jeanette Park, accounts for
the width of the street.

I think it is Felix Oldboy who said that a
Dutchman no sooner finds himself housed than
he looks about to see where he can dig a canal.
The land settled by the Netherlanders on Manhat-
tan Island gave ample opportunity for the exercise
of this ruling passion. The coast line was full of
little inlets, the interior swampy, and badly
drained by a little creek running through what is
now Broad Street; and the whole conformation
of the lower island adapted itself readily to the
character imposed by a Dutch community.

The swampy region extending along Broad
Street from Exchange Place to South William
Street was reclaimed by the digging of a glorious
Dutch canal through Broad Street (known to the
burgomasters as the Heere Gracht) to Beaver
Street, north of which it narrowed into a ditch.
A street was laid out on both sides of the canal,
and it became a favourite place of residence. The
English, with their horror of smells, filled it up
after it had become a public nuisance, in 1676.
The swampy character has recently shown its
persistence when excavations were made for cer-

DUTCH DOMINION 53

tain high buildings, and it has been necessary to
dig deep to secure solid foundations.

Broadway, even in those days, was the central
artery of New York and is said to have existed
as an Indian trail before the Whites landed on
the island. It was called Heere Straat, or Breede-
weg by the Dutch, the latter, of course, Hollandish
for its present name, derived from the broad way
that led from the entrance of the old fort up to
the gate in the wall. The street was wide near
the fort to give room for the soldiers to drill.

The original Dutch city, of which the present
Wall Street was the northern boundary, grew in
a haphazard manner. Settlers built their houses
wherever they pleased, and roadways were opened
to give access to the houses: the footpaths and
cowpaths, and canals and ditches, incidentally
established, developed into thoroughfares, and con-
tributed to the tangle of streets characteristic of
lower New York. Pearl Street, laid out in 1633,
was the first residential street, the original huts
of the transient settlers being built along the water
front under the guns of the fort. After, Pearl
Street was extended to become, in a way, the most
curious street in New York. It begins and ends
in Broadway, describing an irregular half-circle
in its path. " Straight like Pearl Street " has

54 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

become a figure of speech with certain merchants
of the present city in giving the character of their
business associates.

It is certainly a great pleasure, in a city so
doomed to stupid regularity, to find this little
oasis where one can lose one's self, and where
names of streets have association and interesting
significance. New Street was " new " in 1679, and
is still thus distinguished; Stone Street changed
its name from Brouwer Straat, derived from the
company's brewery, at No. 10, to its present ap-
pellation because it was the first street of the city
to be paved (with cobblestones in 1657) . Hanover
Square was called for George I, of Hanover; and
William Street took its name from William of
Orange, later William III.

When war was declared between England and
Holland, in 1652, the population of New Amster-
dam numbered about one thousand people, con-
stituting a thriving little community. That they
had little loyalty to their native land is certain
from the small show of resistance that was made
to the change of government.

In 1664 Charles II, basing his claim to the
locality upon the voyages of the explorers John
and Sebastian Cabot (whose discoveries of the
same region, it was alleged, antedated Hudson's

THE Dl'KKS PLAN. REPRODUCED FROM A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL IN THE
BRITISH MUSEUM: "a DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWNE OF MANNADOS, OR
NEW AMSTERDAM, AS IT WAS IN SEPTEMBER, 1663." MADE FOR THE
DUKE OF YORK WHEN THE ENGLISH FIRST TOOK POSSESSION
OF THE PROVINCE (PAGE 55)

JOOST HARTGERS VIEW OF NEW AMSTERDAM
THE EARLIEST KNOWN PICTURE OF
NEW YORK (PAGE 46)

DUTCH DOMINION 55

by about one hundred years) simply gave New
Netherland to his brother, James, Duke of York.

In the suite of this high-handed proceeding the
Duke at once sent over four ships filled with sol-
diers to take possession of his property. The town
was ill protected. The fort was such in name only,
and, as historians have pointed out, Stuyvesant
and the other governors had made frequent com-
plaint to headquarters of its insecurity against the
ravages of goats and cows that roamed the pas-
tures ; and it stood upon such low ground that from
the heights in the rear it could be readily over-
looked. It had not been built with the thought
of real warfare, but only as a retreat from savage
inroads and such. Furthermore, the community
was willing to risk the advantage to itself of a
change from Dutch to English rule, hoping for
greater leniency and freedom under the latter, and
refused to aid in the defence.

On September 8, 1664, Stuyvesant, at the head
of his soldiers, evacuated Fort Amsterdam with-
out resistance; the English soldiers took posses-
sion, and the city of New Amsterdam became the
city of New York; the province of New Nether-
land became the province of New York; and
Fort Amsterdam was called Fort James in honour
of the Duke of York.

56 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Stuyvesant's story of his surrender was ill
received by the company in Holland, whither he
went at once to make his report ; and he returned
to take up his holdings on Manhattan Island,
established his residence on his former country
seat, known as the great Bouwerie, not far from
St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, near the intersection of
Tenth and Stuyvesant Streets. Here he died, and
his remains lie undisturbed in the family vault
included in the foundations of the present church
edifice.

The Dutch retook New Netherland in 1673,
retaining possession for less than a year, during
which time the city was called New Orange, in
deference to the Prince of Orange, who, by his
marriage to the daughter of the Duke of York,
became William III of England. Within the
year the complete and final restoration of the
province was made to England, and the colony
entered upon the most eventful epoch of its history.

IV
ENGLISH RULE

A perspective map of New York, preserved
in the du Simitiere Collection of the Philadelphia
Library, gives the outstanding features of the city
as it appeared when, by the peace of 1674, it
became an English province for the second time,
and was thenceforward gradually to lose its exclu-
sive Knickerbocker character.

At this time we may picture an essentially
Dutch town, built upon the water front, and upon
canals; its houses presenting their serrated gable
ends to the street, in true Hollandish fashion. The
first houses had been of wood, practically one-
story log cabins ; but as the colony prospered, social
distinctions arose, and the well-to-do settlers began
to build their homes of brick and stone. Bricks
at first were imported from Holland, but, under
the last of the Dutch governors, yards were opened
in the outskirts of the town, while the natural
resources of the island yielded an abundance of
stone. The gable ends were often of black and

57

58 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

yellow bricks, bearing the date of their erection,
noted in iron figures. The type was distinctly
Dutch, with small diamond-paned windows and
large doors, in two sections, so practical for keep-
ing the children within and at the same time, by
leaving the upper half open, furnishing all the
advantages of neighbourliness to the passer-by.

The fires which ravaged the city during the
Revolution and subsequent improvements have
robbed us of every vestige of the old Dutch town;
but one important heritage persists in the high
" stoop " (stoep) which the colonials built from
force of habit, to protect the best rooms from the
dangers of inundation, a necessary precaution in
the old country; and thus fastened upon the city
one of its most characteristic architectural features,
and upon the vernacular an amusing Dutch-
derived word, purely local in its usage.

With thrift and industry the Dutch settlers
combined the love of pleasure and good cheer.
They observed the national feast days — Christmas,
New Year's Day, Easter, Whitsuntide, and St.
Nicholas Day — and made merry on their individual
family anniversaries with feasting, games, and
dance. The custom of New Year's calls, long ob-
served religiously in New York, was established
at this time, when no gentleman of social pre-

ENGLISH RULE 59

tentions failed to pay his respects to every lady
of his acquaintance on the first day of the year.
The ladies, on the other hand, were expected to
keep open house, and to offer " a piece of cake
and a glass of wine " to their callers, a courtesy
so much appreciated in later times, when the
rivalry between the ladies, in the quality and
quantity of hospitality offered, became so brisk,
that the gentlemen were victimized by their own
gallantry, and fairly incapacitated for making their
rounds. Thus the custom, by an excess of zeal
in the observance, defeated its own ends, and died
a natural, if opprobrious death.

The chief development of the city, during the
first hundred years of its founding, was along the
East River, known as the Salt River in those days,
its impressive feature to the community being its
most practical one, its saltness, which meant im-
munity from freezing and thus interfering with
ships and cargoes. The Hudson, though washed by
salt tides, is inherently fresh, and has been known
to freeze in bitter weather, and to be frequently
blocked by ice, washed down in the current from
the north; whereas the East River, literally an
arm of the sea, connecting the Upper Bay with
Long Island Sound, was never subject to these
inconveniences.

60 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

A ferry to Brooklyn was started as early as
1651, from Peck Slip; and the shipping interests
extended along the East River, bringing ware-
houses in their train, as well as the establishment
of business interests of various kinds near to
the ferry, in order to catch the Long Island
trade.

The city sloped away from the high ridge of
ground along the line of Broadway, which was
really a distant and unfrequented part of the
town, while west of this thoroughfare were but
open fields. This is readily explained by a glance
at the old maps.

In the original apportionment of the farms
on the lower end of the island, provision had
been made for the benefit of the civil and military
servants of the West India Company. The Com-
pany Farm, as it was called, extended west of
Broadway to the river, between the present Fulton
and Warren Streets. This land has always been
held intact, identified under various titles as gov-
ernment changed. The British, upon occupation
of the island, passed it over to the private uses of
the Duke of York, increasing the property by the
purchase of the farm of Annetje Jans, which ex-
tended as far north as the present Christopher
Street. When the Duke of York became king,

ENGLISH RULE 61

this tract was known as the King's Farm, and
when it became the royal property of Queen Anne,
as the Queen's Farm.

This grant as described by Mrs. Lamb in her
history of New York consisted of sixty-two acres
granted to Roelof Jans beginning south of War-
ren Street, extending along Broadway as far as
Duane Street, thence in a northwesterly direction
for a mile and a half to Christopher Street, form-
ing a sort of unequal triangle with its base upon
the North River.

Roelof Jans died soon after receiving this grant,
leaving a wife and four children; and his widow,
Annetje, married Dominie Bogardus, in 1638,
whereupon her farm was known as the Dominie
Bouwerie. When the English took possession of
the island this grant was confirmed by the govern-
ment; the heirs sold the farm in 1671 to Governor
Lovelace; it was afterwards incorporated into the
King's Farm, and in 1703 was presented by Queen
Anne to Trinity Church.

This farm constituted Queen Anne's munificent
grant to the English Church in the Island of
New York which has made the "Trinity Cor-
poration at the present day so powerful a factor
in the growth and development of the city. The
English Church in the Island of New York meant,

62 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

in those days, Trinity Church, the parent church
from which all the rest have sprung. The corpo-
ration has preserved the grant practically intact,
and still retains possession of it. This farm for
many years blocked the westward growth of the
city, the citizens naturally preferring to build
where they could acquire title to the land.

The English rulers of the province did little to
distinguish themselves, and proved, if possible, less
to the taste of the colonials than the Dutch gov-
ernors. Most of them were men of harsh manner,
despotic in their rule, and chiefly interested in get-
ting what they could for themselves out of the
colony. Colonel Richard Nicholls, who was in
command of the British soldiers when the fort was
taken, became the first English governor, and by
tact and moderation contrived to win the esteem
of the people. He made little change in the city
government, and appointed as mayor Thomas
Willett, a man well known and well liked in the
community. The " Duke's Laws " proved liberal
both in letter and in spirit, providing that no
Christian should be molested for his religious be-
liefs— an especially grateful clause, carried out in
practice when, upon the introduction of the Eng-
lish church in the colony, the Dutch dominie and
the English chaplain made common use of the

ENGLISH RULE 63

church within the fort, one occupying it in the
morning and the other in the afternoon.

Nicholls was succeeded by Colonel Francis Love-
lace, whose effort was all for the growth and bet-
terment of the province. He established a Mer-
chants' Exchange, whose meetings were held once
a week at about where Exchange Place now crosses
Broad Street, fixing upon that locality its present
inheritance; and he also started the famous mail
route to Boston. Each first Monday of the month,
the mail coach, in the hands of a carrier whom
Lovelace, in a letter to Governor Winthrop of
Connecticut, describes as " active, stout, and in-
defatigable," set out from New York, making its
first stage Hartford, and expected to return within
the month from Boston. The first mail from New
York to Boston, also the first on the continent,
started on New Year's Day, 1673, following bridle-
path and Indian trail, directing the course of
the future highway that still, beyond the Harlem
River, retains the name — Boston Post Road.

The interruption in English rule caused by the
retaking of the province by a Dutch fleet, in 1673,
as an incident in the naval war then on between
England and Holland, dislodged Lovelace, and
when by the treaty of Westminster New Nether-
land was transferred from the States General to

64 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Charles II, that monarch restored it to his brother,
who appointed Edmund Andros, a major of dra-
goons to the post of governor. It was he who
caused the passage of the Bolting Act, in 1678,
which granted New York merchants a monopoly
of the manufacture of flour, and laid the founda-
tion of the city's fortunes. So important a mea-
sure was it that we find it symbolized in the seal
of New York, whose shield bears the sails of a
windmill and the two flour barrels in commemo-
ration of the Bolting Act. The two beavers, al-
ternating with the barrels between the blades of
the sail, refer to that earliest industry of the island,
the fur trade. The sailor and Indian, supporting
the shield, stand, respectively, for the Duke of
York, in his character of Lord High Admiral of
England, and the aboriginal inhabitants of his
American province. The bald eagle rising from
a demi-terrestial globe, replaces the crown of the
original seal.

Colonel Thomas Dongan, a genial Irishman,
was the best of the English governors, a man of
high birth and character, who secured for the prov-
ince, under the Dongan Charter, in 1686, the most
definite advance towards self government yet ac-
corded any of the colonies. This charter of liber-
ties still forms the basis of New York's civic

ENGLISH RULE 65

rights. Amended by Queen Anne, in 1708, and
further amplified by George II, in 1730, into the
Montgomery Charter, it was confirmed by the as-
sembly of the province in 1732, making New York
virtually a free city.

But for the most part these were lawless days,
and governors came with pomp to be sent away in
disgrace. Meantime piracy flourished practically,
it has been thought, under the protection of offi-
cials of the province. Governor Fletcher was sus-
pected of sharing in private booty ; and merchants,
who feared to carry on regular trade as their
ships were almost sure to be seized, openly bought
the pirates' cargoes, contending that " they were
right in purchasing goods wherever found, and
were not put upon inquiry as to the source from
which they were derived." Indeed so well did the
merchants and shipowners of New York and the
" privateers," as the Red Sea men were politely
called, understand one another, that the pirate
captain, in rich yet outlandish garb, was a familiar
figure in the streets of New York towards the end
of the seventeenth century.

With French and English vigilance scouring
the southern waters in determined effort to put
down the practice, and increasing defection of
Gallic and British pirate captains who showed a

66 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

meek willingness to adopt honesty as the best pol-
icy, when driven to extremes, the news that pi-
racy, disguised as privateering, was winked at by
the New York authorities, circulated rapidly
among the captains serving under the black flag.
New York became the universal port of refuge
where piratical booty was disposed of at enormous
gains, and no questions asked, for the profits were
mutual and home products entrusted to the buc-
caneers for sale at their Madagascar rendezvous
brought fabulous returns on the original invest-
ment.

Suddenly, however, this was all to end with the
withdrawal of Fletcher and the appointment of
Lord Bellomont, whose mission was to put down
piracy at all costs. By a curious irony of fate,
his first effort in this direction launched the noblest
pirate of them all, the famous Captain Kidd, a
Scot, resident of New York, highly recommended
as a seaman of known honesty and valour, who
had proved his bravery as a privateer against the
French, and for some years commanded the
packet, Antigua, trading between New York and
London. In 1695, on the recommendation of
Robert Livingston, a colonist, then in London,
Bellomont placed Kidd in command of a privateer,
giving him letters of marque against the French,

ENGLISH RULE 67

with a special commission to suppress piracy. His
ship, the Adventure, sailed from Plymouth for
New York, and from New York to Madagascar,
with a crew of one hundred and fifty men. He
was financed by a syndicate and took shares to
the amount of six thousand dollars, Livingston
signing his bond for one-half that amount. Thirty
thousand dollars was subscribed and the profits
of the cruise, less a royalty of ten per cent for
the king, were to be divided among the members
of the syndicate. Just how this peculiar deal
squared itself with the strict line of law and equity
it was supposed to uphold defies a casual analysis.
At any rate, the king, though a stockholder, took
the precaution not to advance the money for his
share in so equivocal an enterprise. Kidd followed
the lines of least resistance. Failing as an op-
ponent of piracy, he succumbed to the entreaties
or threats of a mutinous crew, replaced his ensign
with a black flag, and, plundering and sinking
ships, became a terror of the seas. His adventur-
ous career ended in 1699, when, having exhausted
his ingenuity in eluding his pursuers, he appeared
in the eastern end of Long Island Sound, where,
burying his treasure, as we are told, on Gardiner's
Island, he opened communication with Lord Bel-
lomont, who was then in Boston. Representing

68 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

himself as the victim of his crew, turned pirate
against his will, he offered to share a large part
of his booty with the governor or the syndicate
of noblemen who had sent him to the East Indies.
Bellomont heard his story, and, on the ground of
his failure to account for the Quedah Merchant,
his last prize, sent him to England, where he was
tried at Old Bailey, and hanged on Execution
Dock, in the city of London — the victim of his
own misdeeds and the scapegoat for a pretty
complication of political treachery.

During Lord Bellomont's administration a first
effort was made to light the streets by means of
a lantern, fitted with a candle, hung on a pole from
the window of every seventh house; and a night
watch was established consisting of four men.
The governor removed what remained of the city
wall and laid out Wall Street on the line of the
fortification; he erected the new city hall in Wall
Street near Nassau Street, equipped with dun-
geons for criminals, cells for debtors, a court room,
and such modern improvements commensurate
with the city's growth. The city hall also con-
tained the first library, afterwards known as the
Society Library.

Under Governor Hunter, in 1711, the first slave
market was established at the foot of Wall Street,

ENGLISH RULE 69

and negroes began to form a large proportion of
the city's population. Slave importation into
New York began some time prior to 1628, and
reached a climax about 1746, when a census of
the city revealed the presence of twenty-four hun-
dred negroes in a total population of less than
twelve thousand souls. The same insensate fear
of the unknown and incalculable that led the
Whites to inhuman treatment of the native In-
dians was now turned with even more injustice
against the race which they had imported to these
shores. Under the constant dread of a servile
insurrection, rigid and cruel laws regulating the
conduct of negroes were enforced, and a fury of
feeling grew up against the slaves, who were
accused of plotting against their masters and of
committing the most frightful depredations.
The slightest infringement of the laws that de-
prived them of most of the blessings of liberty
met with instant and unmitigated punishment.
The burning and hanging of negro slaves, in the
little valley beyond the Collect Pond, became the
order of the day, and a most pitiable state of
affairs ensued, in which the harassed blacks con-
fessed to crimes of which they were innocent in
order to save their lives; the panic culminating
in the famous " Negro Plot," of 1741, only com-

70 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

parable in its terrible expiation to the witchcraft
abominations of Salem, in the previous century.
When it was all over a revulsion of feeling took
place in favour of the negroes, who, in ten years,
were admitted to the franchise, while slavery was
practically abolished, in 1758, by the act declaring
all children born of slave parents from that time
free.

This was New York until about the time of the
outbreak of the Revolution.

THE OLD TOWN

One grows to have favourite spots in New York.
To me one of the most agreeable is that occupied
by Ward's heroic statue of the first President, on
the steps of the Sub-Treasury. Not only does it
make perhaps the most dignified and consistent
picture in the whole city; it commands one of the
really thrilling prospects on the island.

The concentrated essence of historic New York
is confined in this small area spread before you.
From the steps of the Sub-Treasury it is amusing
to fancy one's self standing upon one of the ram-
parts of the ancient wall, overlooking the old
Dutch town, which lay to the south and east of
the spectator. The Fort and the Stadt Huys
dominated the southern view, marking, in their
relation to this vantage point, opposite angles of
an imaginary equilateral triangle.

The region between Coentie's Slip and White-
hall Street was the site of the first city dock, the

71

72 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

corner-stone as one may say of the metropolis,
the progenitor of our thirty or more miles of
wharves. It was built by the West India Com-
pany, whose quaint, round-bottomed, high-pooped
ships were the first vessels to anchor there. As
late as 1702 this dock formed almost the sole
wharfage of the city.

Made ground has obliterated all trace of this
dock, and the old Dutch city was destroyed by
fire, so that no vestige remains to give colour to
one's mental picture, save the very important one
— the character and complexity of the old streets.

The breadth of Broad Street, as one surveys it
from the portico of the Sub-Treasury, the peculiar
bend which it takes at Exchange Place, suggest
the existence of the old canal, which we know it
superseded. Bridge Street marks the site of the
old bridge across the canal; and Beaver Street,
then Sever Gracht, led to the swamp in Broad
Street, and was drained by a small canal or ditch.
In this delightful labyrinth there are no parallels;
State and Pearl Streets swept in a generous curve
about the lower end, skirting Battery Park and
the former shore line; and all sorts of short cuts
are invited by the unruly way in which streets run
into and over each other in their intensity of life
and activity. If historic landmarks are few, a

THE OLD TOWN 73

plentiful distribution of tablets, diligently erected
by the various societies interested in colonial relics,
marks most of the important sites.

The statue of Washington, conceived as the
great legendary figure towards which the whole
country looked, as to a father, in the days of the
young republic, stands on the spot where, in 1789,
he took the oath of office and became the first
President of the United States. The Sub-Treas-
ury replaces the second state house of colonial
days, which, in honour of the great event about to
take place there, had been remodelled by the
French architect, L'Enfant, the same who made
the plan of Washington, and converted into Fed-
eral Hall. When Chancellor Livingston, who
administered the oath, exclaimed, " Long live
George Washington, President of the United
States! " thirteen cannon were discharged and the
shouts of the immense crowd in Wall and Broad
Streets reechoed the proclamation.

Pervaded by an interest at once human and
heroic, Ward's statue is singularly apt and im-
pressive. The whole harmony of the design sug-
gests consecration and power, emphasized by the
simple gesture of the lifted hand, betokening
reserve and authority; giving as no other statue
of our hero has done, the immense symbolic weight

74 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

of his presence. Not self-crowned, like Napoleon,
he accepts the greatest honour that his country had
to grant with a simple dignity infinitely more con-
vincing. Set in the midst of the supreme struggle
of our greatest city, the figure maintains a large,
national significance; remains an essentially per-
manent type and exemplar.

The statue was erected in 1883, by public sub-
scription, under the auspices of the Chamber of
Commerce. At its foot was formerly the original
slab of brown stone upon which Washington stood
when taking the oath of office. This is preserved,
under glass and in a heavy bronze frame, on the
south wall of the interior of the building. Relic
hunters may identify parts of the railing of the
balcony, from which Washington delivered his
inaugural address, at the Historical Society, and
in front of the Bellevue Hospital.

These fragments are all that remain of an
original historic structure, pulled down, in 1812,
to make way for the present edifice, which served
fifty years as the Custom House of New York.
The building followed the mode of the day, which
was all for Greek temples.

Arnold Bennett's disappointment in our famous
Wall Street as the seething centre of the cele-
brated " American hustle," now quelled by the

i- -

■:, I'

X 1'J )'WJl'_i* J -

-wsi

^^^^^^^^^^^

GEORGE WASHINGTON, BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD.

ON THE STEPS OF THE SUB-TREASURY BUILDING (PAGE J$)

THE OLD TOWN 75

perfection of the mechanical contrivances that have
literally transformed the methods of the Stock
Exchange, was that of the keen traveller alert for
local colour. Certainly the ingenuity of the inven-
tions which facilitate the mighty transactions of
this great bourse have completely changed the
character for which Wall Street was far-famed.
The telephones and the annunciator are indis-
putably the features of the building; and it is
amusing to compare the old cumbrous methods
with the perfect installation of scientific devices
by which a member may be communicated with
freely, without a spoken word, and without leaving
his seat.

In each of the two side walls of the room is a
great checkerboard, containing twelve hundred
rectangles of glass. Behind each rectangle is a
member's number, which may be shown in different
coloured lights from behind. These lights can be
so alternated as to make a perfectly intelligible
sign language, according to a secret code.

George B. Post, one of the builders of New
York, was the architect of the building, its con-
struction having presented a pretty problem,
attacked courageously; for in it Mr. Post attempt-
ed to combine all the requirements of the most
modern of structures with an ornamental, massive

76 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

facade, topped by a pediment that should rival in
sculpture the great pediments of the world. Much
has been sacrificed to secure the feature of the
building, that vast room, whose ends are simply
great sheets of glass to afford light for negotia-
tions of the greatest speculative mart in the world.
A portico of six Corinthian columns partially dis-
guises this opening, and behind these columns
stand mullions, hung from girders overhead, con-
structed to resist the force of the wind against
the glass and to support its immense weight.

The pediment, another fine example of the work
of John Quincy Adams Ward, has been criticized
for its lack of constructive significance, the build-
ing being high and square, behind the facade,
which is applied like an excrescence to its struc-
tural face. But the sculpture within the pediment
calls for serious consideration, and may be ocn-
sidered one of the interesting artistic features of
this quarter.

If the figures, eleven in number, overwhelmingly
massive, seem to fall out into the street, it is
because one cannot in a narrow thoroughfare get
far enough away from the building to see things
in their proper relations. Angle views can be had
from the high portico of the Sub-Treasury, or
within the vestibule of the Mills Building. But

THE OLD TOWN 77

directly in front, in Broad Street, one is simply
crushed and sees nothing. This great general
fault of all the buildings in lower New York
gives one a feeling of suffocation and surfeit; and
things fine and impressive in themselves lose im-
portance and seem often in very bad taste, like
fingers loaded to the joints with massive rings,
which impress one merely with their intrinsic
worth and tell nothing of their individual beauty.

The pediment is admirable in its flowing, cumu-
lative lines, its effective grouping, and interesting
contrasts of light and shade. It is strong and
simple in design, with none of the superflous de-
tails which encumber most pediments. Its story
is expressed by the central figure, " Integrity,"
the grave impersonation of business honour, sur-
rounded by the usual allegorical groups. The
weather has played amusing tricks with the marble,
already veined and spotted with grey, adding to
its undoubted picturesqueness. Though the pedi-
ment was the design of Ward, the execution is by
Paul Wayland Bartlett, who has recently com-
pleted the pediment for the House Wing of the
United States Capitol.

A bronze tablet, erected by the Sons of the
Revolution at the corner of Broad and Beaver
Streets, calls attention to the historic site where

78 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the patriot, Marinus Willett, halted the ammuni-
tion wagons, guarded by British soldiers, single-
handed on June 6, 1775, as they were attempting
to carry arms to Boston.

We are now upon recognizable historic ground.
At the corner of Broad and Pearl Streets that
handsome colonial house on the left in Fraunce's
Tavern, one of the oldest buildings in the city,
rich in Revolutionary memories, and intimately
associated with General Washington, dividing
honors, in this respect, with St. Paul's Chapel, and
the Jumel and Van Cortlandt Mansions.

The shore line of the East River, extended sev-
eral blocks by the filling-in process, originally
came up to the site upon which Fraunce's Tavern
now stands. The property, once part of the Van
Cortlandt Manor, was deeded by Colonel Stephen
Van Cortlandt to his son-in-law, Etienne de Lan-
cey, a Huguenot nobleman, and an active merchant
in the city. It was he who built the present house,
as his residence, in 1719. It takes its name from
Samuel Fraunce, a West Indian Creole, vulgarly
known as "Black Sam" — a freeman, who opened
here . the Queen's Head, or Queen Charlotte
Tavern, named for the consort of George III.

The Chamber of Commerce was organized here
in the " Long Room," so called from the long

THE OLD TOWN 79

Indian lodges used for tribal meeting; and many
other interesting things happened here, but none
so important as its use by General Washington, as
a temporary headquarters, when the British evac-
uated New York, at the close of the Revolution.
Here at noon, on December 4, 1783, the touching
farewell took place between Washington and his
forty-four officers; a ceremony so simple and
affecting finds few parallels in history.

The return to the city, alone, was a melancholy
business. The town was in a deplorable condition;
the wide tract, swept by the fire of 1776, still lay
in blackened ruins, and no effort to rebuild had
been made except where mere wooden shelters had
been put up by the soldiers, and desolation pre-
vailed.

Fraunce's Tavern is now owned by the Society
of the Sons of the Revolution, who restored the
building, taking formal possession on December 4,
1907. The present appearance is believed to be
practically the same as during the Revolutionary
period, the utmost care and pains having been
taken by the architect of the restoration, William
H. Mersereau, not only to preserve every brick
and beam of the original structure, but to match
what was missing by bricks brought from contem-
porary buildings in Maryland, or imported from

80 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Holland. The first floor is still used as a restau-
rant. On the second floor is the famous Long
Room, containing portraits of Frederick Samuel
Tallmadge and John Austin Stevens; while the
third floor is devoted to the purposes of a museum
of Revolutionary relics.

Edwin Austin Abbey has pictured the historic
Bowling Green in what is said to be his first deco-
ration, the famous picture, which hangs over the
bar, in the Hotel Imperial. Done, of course, from
imagination, aided by much authentic data, the
picture has all the charm and accuracy of the
work of this famous American painter.

It is a long panel, dating well back to the early
eighties, when Abbey was better known as illus-
trator than painter. In the picture, he has, as
always, been very particular as to his facts. A
game of bowls is in progress on the green ; a group
of several men in sporting costumes of the period,
are playing, while another keeps score. These
men are very possibly Colonel Philipse, John
Roosevelt, and John Chambers, to whom " The
Plaine " was leased, in 1733, for eleven years, at
a nominal rental of " one peppercorn a year "; to
be maintained by them as a bowling green, fenced
in, and laid out with pretty walks for themselves
and other citizens. When the lease expired the

THE OLD TOWN 81

price for the privilege was raised to twenty shill-
ings per annum.

Behind the green to the right, presumably on
Broadway, stand Dutch brick houses with their
broken gables, and to the left, south of the park,
the fort, with soldiers drilling in front, and a wind-
mill. It is spring, to judge from the delicate
colour of the grass and the touch of high green
foliage, just breaking upon the trees. A woman
and child, dressed picturesquely, according to the
prevailing mode of the period, make a centre of
interest in the picture as they watch the game
of bowls.

Bowling Green, once the heart of the Dutch
colony, now marks, roughly speaking, the half-
way spot in the length of Greater New York. In
the old days it was the scene of stirring events.
The Stamp Act Riot centred here, in 1765, when
Governor Colden was burned in effigy on the
green; and later the equestrian statue of George
III, the first piece of public statuary on the
island, was set up for a brief space in this place

Old records tell of its arrival, together with the
marble statue of William Pitt, ordered by the
patriots, on the Brittannia, in June, 1770, and of
its erection " with great ceremony " on August
16, of the same year. It was of lead, richly gilt,

82 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

and has gone down to history as the work of
Joseph Wilton, a well-known English sculptor
of the epoch; and in the old engraving of the
subject it is represented as a classic king seated
on a rearing charger, preserving its equilibrium
by perfect balance, after the fashion of the
Andrew Jackson before the White House.

More authentic evidence would seem to prove
that in a general way it resembled the Marcus
Aurelius, of the Capitoline Hill, from which it
was doubtless imitated. It is recorded that Wilton
made a replica of this statue for London, and one
fancies that this was none other than what the
author of " Nollekins and his Times " describes as
" that miserable specimen of leaden figure taste,
the equestrian statue of King George III, lately
standing in the centre of Berkeley Square." This
he tells us was executed under the direction of Mr.
Wilton, on his premises, in Queen Anne Street
East, and that " it was modelled by a French
artist of the name of Beaupre, recommended to
Wilton by Pigalle, as an excellent carver of
flowers."

It had a short life and a gay one, standing less
than six years, for it was dragged down by a
patriotic mob, after the reading of the Declaration
of Independence, July 9, 1776, and, to do the thing

THE OLD TOWN 83

thoroughly, melted into bullets of agression against
the same king it had been designed to honor. The
fractures in the posts of the iron fence surrounding
the little park still bear witness to the fury of
this mob, for they broke off the balls to cast into
the same vindictive melting pot.

A tablet at No. 1 Broadway commemorates the
occasion, and the New York Historical Society
preserves a collection of interesting relics, includ-
ing four or five fragments of the statue, picked
up on the farm of Peter S. Coley, at Wilton, Con-
necticut, and the pedestal, which served in the
interim as a grave-stone to Major John Smith
of the Royal Highland Regiment. This pedestal
shows the three holes left by the imprint, so to
speak, of the horse's hoofs — thus proving that he
was not a rearing animal, but that he stood on
three legs, in conventional statue style.

The whole history of the statue is fraught with
romantic incident. The journal of Captain John
Montressor, chief engineer of the British Army,
published by the New York Historical Society,
in 1881, contains the following illuminating entry:
" My hearing that the Rebels had cut the King's
head off the Equestrian Statue (in the centre of
the Ellipps near the fort) at New York, which
represented George III in the figure of Marcus

84 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Aurelius; and that they had cut the nose off, dipt
the laurels that were wreathed round his head, and
drove a musket bullet part of the way through
his head, and otherwise disfigured it, and that it
was carried to Moore's tavern, adjoining Ft.
Washington, on New York Island, in order to be
fixed on a spike on the Truck of that flagstaff, as
soon as it could be got ready, I immediately sent
Corby thro' the Rebel Camp in the beginning
of September, 1776, to Cox (John Cock) who kept
the tavern at King's Bridge, to steal it from thence,
and to bury it, which was effected, and it was dug
up on our arrival, and I rewarded the men and
sent the head by the Lady Gage to Lord Town-
shend in order to convince them at home of the
infamous disposition of the ungrateful people of
this distressed country."

The tradition in Wilton, where the fragments
owned by the Historical Society were found, in
1871, is that the ox-cart carrying the broken
statue passed through Wilton on its way to Litch-
field, and that the saddle and tail were thrown
away there, perhaps to lighten the load, or more
probably because they were not of pure lead and
unsuitable for making bullets. Most of the statue
seems to have reached its destination, and a very
interesting book, published by Caroline Clifford

THE OLD TOWN 85

Newton, called " Once Upon a Time in Connecti-
cut," describes the operation of running the bullets
by the women and girls of the town and a ten-year-
old boy, directed by an old general. The ladle
used in pouring the lead into the moulds is in the
Litchfield Historical Museum, and amongst Gov-
ernor Walcott's papers is a memorandum stating
that 42,088 cartridges were made from the remains
of the monument and that " His Majesty's statue
was returned to His Majesty's troops with the
compliments of the men of Connecticut."

There is preserved in the Historical Society of
New York a sketch of the Bowling Green statue,
compiled from contemporary data, by Charles M.
Lefferts. It shows the monarch wearing the
Roman toga, for sculpture was then under the
influence of the classic revival, and it was unheard-
of to dress a subject in his ordinary clothes.
Nearby are the fragments.

This room in the Historical Society always
suggests one of my earliest childhood memories.
My sister and I had a passion for paper dolls
which we used to cut from fashion magazines and
clothe with garments made from the coloured fly
leaves of my father's choicest books. He had, in
particular, a stack of pamphlets describing a steam
engine of his invention, and covered with a glorious

86 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

paper, with velvet finish, in strong cobalt blue.
Extensive wardrobes for our dolls were gleaned
from this treasure trove, our tracks being cleverly
concealed, for an indefinite period, by the simple
device of beginning our inroads from the bottom
of the pile, and using only the under sides of
the covers.

Our activities were such that these dolls used
to pile up on us beyond our ability to house and
care for them; and my sister, who, even in those
days, combined with a fertile imagination and a
strong streak of romanticism, a remarkable sense
of order that led to unheard-of sacrifices of pos-
sessions in her periodical " riddings out," conceived
the idea of holding wholesale " cremations " of
these dolls, as over-population required it. She
was as powerful and autocratic in her authority
as Herod, when he ordered the slaughter of the
innocents, and no reserves were allowed. She was
as callous as Nero, when he watched the burning
of Rome; suffering the loss of mine and her own
with equal stoicism, and glorying in the sight with
an eclecticism that brooked no appeal, carrying
my feeble regrets and hankerings as straws before
the wind.

The funeral pyre, once lighted, was allowed to
burn itself out; and, after the extinction of the

THE OLD TOWN 87

flames, it was our morbid pleasure to rake over
the ashes and identify such portions of anatomy
as had escaped total destruction. These we pasted
into a mortuary book, kept for the purpose, and
meticulously labelled, each according to its history
— " Remains of Eva Livingston," " Arm of Flor-
ence Raymond," etc.

The " remains " of George III, as well as those
of Peter Stuyvesant's Pear Tree, all carefully
varnished and presented by a descendant of the
governor, strike me as just as humorous, and, if
I may say so, just as silly as this enfantillage of
my extreme youth; but it is rather delicious to
find august dignitaries at the same game.

There is also preserved in the same room of the
Society the fragment, sans head and arms, of the
contemporary marble statue of William Pitt, also
in classic draperies, erected by the colonists, in
gratitude for Chatham's influence in the repeal
of the hated Stamp Act. This statue stood in
Wall Street until it was overthrown and mutilated
by the British soldiers, in revenge for the outrage
committed on the George III, soon after their
occupancy of New York, at the outset of the
Revolution.

The Green assumed its present oval form about
1797. The seated figure of Colonel Abraham de

88 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Peyster now decorating with, as Taft says, " much
presence," the grassy spot, is considered one of
the two best works of George E. Bissell, an
American sculptor.

Bissell was for many years a stone carver, and
entered the field of sculpture late in life, so that
while he is contemporary in point of years with
many of the earlier sculptors of this country (he
was born in 1839), his work belongs with that of
a later generation. This statue of de Peyster
brought him into prominence in a pleasant way,
for in the autumn of 1902 a committee of local
sculptors, requested by a New York journal to
designate the six finest examples of monumental
sculpture in the city, chose Bissell's figure as one
of them.

It was said that his Chancellor Watts would
have been chosen except that it stood in Trinity
churchyard, and was not a public monument.
Certainly his portrait statues gain greatly over
most that the city has to show in a live quality of
personal interest. Even in such a case as that
of the de Peyster, an early mayor of New York,
who died as far back as 1728, so that the portrait
must be largely drawn from imagination, Bissell
makes him live, revealing him as interesting
as his vivid fancy pictures him to have been.

AFRICA/ BY DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH
ENTRANCE UNITED STATES CUSTOM HOUSE (PAGE 91)

ENGLAND/ BY CHARLES GRAFLY
ATTIC UNITED STATES CUSTOM
HOUSE (PAGE 91)

1

c:z: : :.

THE OLD TOWN 89

The rarity of such a performance is not to be
depreciated.

. An elaborate inscription details de Peyster's
many civic services duly inscribed on the pedestal,
which also records the interesting fact that the
portrait was erected by John Watts de Peyster,
of the seventh generation, in direct descent, and
the sixth born in the first ward of the, City of
New York.

The Custom House, which, like the old fort,
whose site it occupies, fronts upon Bowling Green,
is the design of one of New York's ablest archi-
tects, Cass Gilbert. A fine building in itself and
built upon historic ground, it is rich in sculpture
without and painting within.

A tablet in the Collector's Room records the
history of the site. We know that here was
erected, in 1626, under Governor Minuit, Fort
Amsterdam, succeeding the original stockade or
traders' fort of earliest times. Within the fort
was the director general's house and the Church of
St. Nicholas, or the Church-in-the-Fort, erected in
1642, and the mother of the Collegiate Dutch
Church in New York.

After the demolition of the fort in 1790, the
so-called Government House, intended as the
presidential residence of the United States capital,

90 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

was built upon this ground. This political mis-
sion it never fulfilled, as New York remained the
capital for only a year, and the house was not
ready for occupancy till too late. It was, how-
ever, the official residence of Governor Clinton and
Governor Jay, and later was used as the Custom
House, until burned in the year 1815.

The present building, erected 1902-07, is planned
in the style of modern French architecture. Large
granite columns, crowned with composite capi-
tals that extend around the four sides of the
building, make it impressive, even in the crowded
environment of lower Broadway. In this respect,
however, it has immense advantage, over most of
the buildings, in the protection of the little park
upon which it fronts, while the Battery insures
the open space to the water, on its western
exposure.

In the design of the building an effort was made
to have it representative of American art as well
as American commerce, and commissions were
given to eleven of our best sculptors, for the fig-
ures which adorn the facade. Of this the most
satisfactory are the four groups, symbolizing the
four continents, which, on pedestals advanced from
the building, flank the entrance. These are by
Daniel Chester French. In their solidity and

THE OLD TOWN 91

repose, they recall, a little, the seated figures of
the French provinces, which surround the Place
de la Concorde in Paris. The figure of Africa
is particularly expressive of the mighty traditions
of that continent as well as its immense reserve
power. The woman sleeps easily between the two,
making no effort to profit by the glory of the past
nor to develop the possibilities of the future.

The twelve heroic figures, representing the sea-
faring powers ancient and modern, which have
influenced the commerce of the globe, carry out
the lines of the twelve columns that support the
attic on the main front. These figures stand forth
rather flamboyantly from the wall behind them,
without much sense of belonging to the building.
Beginning on the left the subjects are Greece and
Rome, done by F. E. Elwell; Phoenicia, by F. M.
Ruckstuhl; Genoa, by Augustus Lukeman; Venice
and Spain, by F. M. L. Tonetti; Holland and
Portugal, by Louis Saint Gaudens; Denmark, by
Johannes Gelert; Germany, by Albert Jaegers;
and France and England, by Charles Grafly.

It is a motley company thus assembled on the
attic story, for sculptural unity has been sacrificed
to historic fact, and each figure seems to insist
upon its individuality to the detriment of the en-
semble. Some sculptors have chosen to represent

92 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the country allotted to them by famous personages
in the history of those countries; others by the
commonplace symbolic figure; and still another
by a Greek goddess. All are encumbered by
accessories which identify the country without
stirring the imagination of the spectator
more than that of the sculptor was agitated in
his rather stupid acceptance of the first symbol
at hand.

In front of the seventh story, over this row of
figures is a cartouche by Karl Bitter, displaying
the shield of the United States, supported by two
female figures, and surmounted by the American
eagle with outstretched wings. The cartouche
over the main entrance is by Andrew O'Connor,

The four sides are richly embellished with
motives suggested by the world-wide commerce
of the United States, of which seventy-five per
cent is said to enter through the port of New
York. The head of Mercury, ancient god of com-
merce, is repeated in the capitals of the columns;
and, cut in the granite lintel of each window,
carved heads, representing the eight types of race,
are repeated alternately.

Paintings of seventeenth century ports, by
Elmer E. Garnsey, make the Collector's Room in
the Custom House one of the finest rooms in

"NEW AMSTERDAM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
DECORATION IN THE COLLECTOR'S ROOM, UNITED STATES
CUSTOM HOUSE, BY ELMER E. GARNSEY (PAGE 93)

. . -

' france, by charles grafly
attic united states custom house
(page 91)

THE OLD TOWN 93

New York. Mr. Garnsey did also the mural
painting in the entrance hall of the building.

The ten decorative panels in the Collector's
Reception Room represent the ports of Amster-
dam, Curacao, Fort Orange, New Amsterdam,
La Rochelle, London, Port Royal, Plymouth,
Cadiz, and Genoa.

This period Mr. Garnsey selected because of
its picturesque possibilities; and these ports be-
cause of their relation to the discovery, settlement,
and commerce of the Dutch and English colonies
in the new world. The views show the ports as
they were in 1674, the last year in which the Dutch
flag floated over Fort Amsterdam, whose walls
enclosed the site of the Custom House.

The painting of New Amsterdam is particularly
interesting in its accuracy, and from it one can
learn much about old New York. The picture
reverses the viewpoint of Abbey's decoration of
Bowling Green, where the port was seen from
shore. In this case the spectator is supposed to
be upon the water, looking at the island from the
East River. It is amusing to identify the fort, as
it appeared after its sod walls and palisades had
been replaced by stone. From the rocky point
outside the walls of the fort, friends of departing
voyagers had their last view of the disappearing

94 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

sails bej^ond the Narrows. The name of Schreyers
Hoek, or " Weepers' Point," bestowed upon this
spot, recalled to the exiles Schreyers Toem, the
Weepers' Tower of old Amsterdam.

On the river shore stands Stuyvesant's house,
' White Hall." This shore was at first protected
by wooden piles and sheathing, and later by stone.
From the shore were built out various extensions
and bulkheads to form havens for river craft.
These havens became gradually filled with waste
and dredgings which caused new extensions to be
made, until the three blocks at present lying be-
tween Pearl Street and the river were all filled
in and added to Manhattan Island. The picture
shows the Heere Gracht that followed the course
of the present Broad Street, and emptied into the
river near the site of Fraunce's Tavern.

Fronting on the water, now Pearl Street,
between the Fort and the Heere Gracht were ware-
houses and shops, of which the largest was the
Company's warehouse. Under English rule it
became the Custom House, until it was pulled
down in 1750. The site is now numbered 33 Pearl
Street. The buildings of the town, standing in
compact order north as well as south of the Heere
Gracht, were mostly of brick, and were nearly
all devoted in some measure to mercantile pur-

THE OLD TOWN 95

poses. Near the right-hand end of the picture the
building with the cupola is the Stadt Huys, or
City Hall. Here the director and the council of
the colonies long held court; and when, in 1670,
the English governor, Francis Lovelace, built the
new inn adjoining it on the west, he had a con-
necting door opened in the wall between his
hostelry and the court-room to facilitate hospi-
tality.

In the foreground appear two large merchant
ships, just arrived from Holland. The one at
the left carries the banner of Amsterdam at her
stern, and the flag of the Dutch West India Com-
pany at her mainmast head. The other flies the
ensign of the States-General and the Company's
flag. A government yacht is moored alongside
the breakwater at the right, and beyond lie Hud-
son River sloops and small craft.

When the Dutch first sent colonists to settle
New Amsterdam, others were sent by the West
India Company further up the river discovered
and described by Henry Hudson; and these built
houses and a fort, which they called Fort Orange
in honor of Maurice, Prince of Orange, on the
site of the future city of Albany.

Garnsey makes Fort Orange the subject of a
second mural painting, showing the town, sur-

96 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

rounded by a palisade, strengthened by block
houses, and with gates opening on the principal
streets. At the intersection of Handlers Street
(now Broadway) and Yonkers (now State)
Street stood the Dutch church, the steep roof of
which appears above the nearest block house.
From the church, Yonkers Street mounts the hill
to the site of the present capitol, where the Eng-
lish built Fort Frederick soon after their final
occupation. In the foreground are shown the
sloops which carried the commerce and passengers
of the time. No contemporary picture of Fort
Orange exists, so far as is known, and the artist's
painting is a painstaking " restoration," studied
from old maps and records, showing also the
characteristic Hudson River sloops of the period
which carried New York's commerce up and down
the North River. Each of the other panels, eight
large and two small ones, is treated with the same
fidelity to place and period. The colour scheme of
the paintings is warm and rich, making a hand-
some room, full of sunshine and vigorous colour.

The Custom House occupies the whole of the
block bounded by Bowling Green, State, Bridge,
and Whitehall Streets. From its windows is an
extensive view of the bay, seen across the Battery.

This charming bit of park seems oddly accidental

THE OLD TOWN 97

and pastoral in so mercantile an environment,
having been left pretty much as a neglected field,
with no formal improvements since the day when
Governor Fletcher thought it wise to fortify the
island along the sea wall, in anticipation of a pos-
sible coming of the French fleet, as a move in the
warfare then waged between France and England.
The battery of guns set up outside the fort gave
the locality its present name, by which it has been
known since 1673.

The park was a favourite promenade and play-
ground during colonial days, when Bowling Green
was the centre of fashion, and shipping came up
almost to the doors of the city's aristocracy. The
north side of the Battery was then one of the most
chic of residential streets, while the fashionable
quarter extended into Greenwich Street, where
fine old houses may still be found in a state of
pathetic dilapidation. Old people are still living
in New York who remember playing in Battery
Park, when it was the logical breathing-space for
city children.

Of all the fine residences which faced the park,
but one remains, and that, situated at the extreme
point of the mass of buildings which form the end
of the island, is designated as No. 7 State Street.
The house may be distinguished at a glance for

98 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

its obvious age, expressed by the style of its pil-
lared front, as well as by its peculiar shape. It
stands at the sharp turn in State Street where it
rounds the curve of the island's base, the house
being built on the apex of the angle.

It is known to have been built during the last
part of the eighteenth century, by James Watson,
who sold it, in 1805, to Moses Rogers, a promi-
nent merchant and man of affairs in those days,
and well connected as connections went in New
York. He was an active member of the Society
for the Manumission of Slaves, an officer of the
New York Hospital, treasurer of the City Dis-
pensary, a vestryman of Trinity Church, and a
member of the Society for the Relief of Distressed
Prisoners. This latter society was an important
one in the early history of the city ; its purpose was
to ameliorate the unhappy condition of prisoners
housed in the gaol, the demolished building known
to us as the Hall of Records. The state, it is
said, allowed them only bread and water and they
depended largely for sustenance upon benevolent
people.

Until 1830 this house remained in the family,
and was the scene of many notable entertainments.
During the Civil War it was taken by the govern-
ment for military uses and afterwards became the

THE OLD TOWN 99

office of the Pilot Commissioners. It is now
devoted to the use of the Catholic Mission of Our
Lady of the Rosary.

The elevated roads and subway have done what
they can to destroy the simple beauty of this bit
of green, but it is still thoroughly enjoyed by the
leisure class of the quarter, and commands a superb
view of the harbour with all that it contains of
animation and life. One of the things that absorb
the attention of loungers in the park is the flash
of the sunset gun, followed by the kindling of the
Liberty torch, and the blink of the revolving light
on Bobbins' Reef, off Staten Island.

At the time that the United States declared
war against Great Britain, in 1812, a number of
forts and defences were built on the islands in the
bay to defend the approach by ocean, while others
were erected in Hell Gate to protect the entrance
by Long Island Sound. Amongst others was
built Fort Clinton, upon a little island close to
the Battery, and this we know to-day as Castle
Garden. The fort was built on a mole and
connected with the city by a bridge. The em-
brasures for the thirty heavy guns may still be
seen.

It achieved its immortal history as the portal
through which millions of immigrants entered the

100 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

United States, but before that time it had been
a place of public amusement and entertainment.
Lafayette was received here, on his visit to the
city in 1824, by an enthusiastic gathering of six
thousand persons; later, in 1835, Morse, the in-
ventor of the telegraph, made a public demonstra-
tion of the value of his discovery, by means of a
wire coiled about the interior of the Garden; and
here, in 1850, Jenny Lind, the Swedish singer,
made her American debut under the management
of P. T. Barnum. The tickets were sold by auc-
tion, and so curious was New York over the whole
affair, that three thousand persons paid the admis-
sion fee of 25 cents to see the sale. The first ticket
brought $225, and one thousand tickets were sold
on the first day, realizing $10,141. The doors
were opened at five o'clock, and 5,000 persons
attended the concert, of which the gross receipts
amounted to nearly $18,000. Of Jenny Lind's
half of the receipts of the first two concerts she
handsomely devoted $10,000 to the public chari-
ties of New York.

Castle Garden was the immigrant bureau until
1890, and six years later was opened as an aqua-
rium, so that it has never known a moment's
privacy in the whole of its chequered career. As
one of the fine aquariums of the world, it attracts

THE OLD TOWN 101

multitudes of people daily, by reason of its superb
exhibits of fish of the most brilliant species.

Besides Verrazzano, John Ericsson has been
appropriately chosen as worthy of a statue on
Battery Park, in his character of inventor of the
Monitor, which defeated the Confederate ironclad
Merrimac, at Hampton Roads, on March 9, 1862,
and thereby saved New York from bombardment.
The statue is by J. Scott Hartley, a well-known
local sculptor, recently deceased, and by him pre-
sented to the city, in 1903. The rather charming-
inscription reads: " The City of New York erects
this Statue to the Memory of a Citizen whose
Genius Contributed to the Greatness of the
Republic and the Progress of the World."

VI
TRINITY CHURCH

Trinity Church takes the full value of that
noble preeminence which once made it the pride
of the town and the feature of Broadway, on a
bright autumn afternoon. Especially on a Sat-
urday or a Sunday afternoon, when there is no
business to detract from the cold gloom of Wall
Street, and the loiterer may have lower Broadway
to himself, does the charming edifice put its case
most strongly.

It particularly delights me to make the loop
around Pearl Street from the lower end, fancying
myself on the old river road, back to Wall, and
to surprise myself with this admirable vista of
the church centred in the western end of that
thoroughfare, for Wall is one of the few streets
of prosaic New York that boasts a vista. Coming
along the shaded " cingle," crushed by the weight
of new masonry, it is amusing to take one's stand
against the heavy walls of the building opposite

102

TRINITY CHURCH 103

the Sub-Treasury, and absorb the unusual ele-
ments of a paradoxical picture.

Over by the corner of the Sub-Treasury a
pretty woman, bareheaded and at ease, even on
more tremendous days, sits casually selling papers.
A knitted garment of the genus " tea-cosey,"
fitted tightly to the figure, protects her against
the sharpening air of a waning season, and she
wears that secure look of a woman that has
become part and parcel of men's vast enterprises,
sure that the friendly police and habitues of the
district will see her through any misadventures
of so thronged a thoroughfare ; and herself lending
a warm and homelike air to the most frenzied
corner in New York.

Trinity Church nestles in comfortably beyond
the Bankers' Trust Building, which frames the
view to the right, its dark, Gothic mass, black,
deep, and substantial, never losing weight and
dignity in this rough environment. One of the
sycamores in the churchyard, leaning towards the
church, lends its delicate tracery to the poetry of
the picture, and at the chosen season shows small
leaves, intensely green and fresh in the general
brownness, with the afternoon sun shining through
them.

The gradual extinction of Trinity by the en-

104 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

croaching skyscraper is a theme that has animated
every writer interested in the city's sky-line, since
the days when the spire of Trinity Church domi-
nated the profile view of the island from the
Jersey side. Henry James, speaking for a whole
passing generation of New Yorkers, of the period
when people were still " born in New York,"
deplores with admirable cynicism and much deli-
cious imagery, the actual shrunken presence of
that laudable architectural effort. But things
have grown immensely in the ten years that have
elapsed since Mr. James recorded his impressions
of a city revisited. The " jagged city " is still
jagged, yet some of the teeth in the colossal hair-
comb, to which he so wonderfully compares her,
have been filled in; and this filling in, while it still
further eclipses any claims to visibility to which
Trinity might hopelessly cling, especially in the
sky-line, has brought about something quite other
than was originally intended.

Where she formerly dominated, she now sits
enshrined ; and the beauty of that shrine is perhaps
more precious, more subtle, because of its very sur-
prise and rarity in a world of commerce. Not the
elevated trains thundering past the rear of the
fine old graveyard; not the throng of money-
makers pressing ceaselessly before the door of

MAIN PORTAL TRINITY CHURCH
KARL BITTER, SCULPTOR (PAGE 107)

TRINITY CHURCH 105

the edifice; nor the trivial office girls, with diffi-
culty restrained from eating lunches on the very
tombs of ancestral notables, can detract from the
dignity of the church and its setting. Through all
it maintains its ecclesiastic calm and beauty. Bells
ring the hours. Within the gateway all is peace —
old-world peace. The trees of the garden are
wonderful against the sunlit background of the
Gothic office building that walls it in on the north.
Like some old cathedral of newer Italy it holds
its own with the increased pace set by progress,
and opens its doors for such fragments of atten-
tion as a busy world can spare for a submission
to spiritual influences. Such churches become
tremendous factors in the daily life of citizens,
the one ameliorating circumstance, perhaps, in
the humdrum of business, to whose enormous gains
the passing throng is but as so much mechanism.

The rectors, wardens, and vestry of Trinity
Church have influenced the nomenclature of the
thoroughfares hereabout, not only in such names
as Rector, Church, and Vestry Streets, but in
Vesey, Barclay, and Beach Streets, named after
old-time ministers of the parish. Rector Street
received its name from the Reverend William
Vesey, who once lived in this street, and Vesey
Street was called for him. More than a score of

106 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

thoroughfares bear the names of prominent mem-
bers of the corporation; among them Murray,
Chambers, Warren, Reade, Jay, Harrison, North,
Moore, Laight, Desbrosses, Vandam, Watts,
Charlton, King, Hamersley, Clarkson, LeRoy,
Morton, and Barrow Streets.

The church is the third of the name that has
stood on this site since 1697. The first was burned
in the great fire of 1776, which destroyed five hun-
dred buildings. Almost the entire western part
of the city was at this time consumed, St. Paul's
Chapel being the only building of importance
saved. The second Trinity was condemned as
unsafe and pulled down to make way for the
present edifice, erected between 1839 and 1846,
so that the church, which in modern New York
seems so ancient, has spanned but the average
life of man — threescore years and ten.

R. N. Upjohn was the architect of Trinity;
and his work is considered a fine example of the
simplified Gothic style. The brown sandstone of
which it is composed is characteristic of the city,
and was much used for dwellings of about this
period and later. The artistic features of the
church came at a much later date, and were largely
the gift of the Astor family. The bronze doors
to the three entrances were given by William

TRINITY CHURCH 107

Waldorf Astor, in memory of his father, John
Jacob Astor; while the handsome altar and reredos
are memorials to William B. Astor, erected by
his sons, John Jacob and William.

The three pairs of bronze doors are by Karl
Bitter, Massey Rhind, and Charles H. Niehaus;
three foreign-born sculptors, identified for many
years with the art life of New York. The Bitter
doors are those in the tower, opening upon Broad-
way, and are generally closed, except during serv-
ice, so that they can be well seen from without
and in their entirety. They represent the sculp-
tor's first work in this country, to which he had
come from Austria, his birthplace, in 1889, in the
twenty-second year of his age. Bitter had here
neither friends nor relatives, and he won the com-
petition, into which he entered as an unknown
sculptor during the first year of his stay in Amer-
ica, entirely on his merits.

The Bitter doors follow the general type of the
Ghiberti gates to the Baptistry, in Florence; the
space being divided into panels, and surrounded
by small upright figures alternated with heads,
and reclining figures separated by emblems. The
subjects of the panels are biblical. These doors
express Bitter's accomplished use of decorative
sculpture; the modelling is charming in its smooth

108 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

fluency, and shows the thoroughness of the sculp-
tor's fundamental groundwork. Of the many
doors founded on the Ghiberti tradition none ex-
ceed these in graceful adaptation. They gained
for Bitter instant recognition, when they were
shown, and brought him to the favourable notice
of Richard M. Hunt, the most celebrated local
architect of his time ; and it was through Hunt that
Bitter became associated with the Columbian
Exposition, which gave him his larger opportunity
and fixed his status with us as sculptor. For
Hunt he made the elaborate sculptural decoration
for the Administration Building, and at the re-
quest of another influential architect, George B.
Post, decorated the Liberal Arts Building for the
Chicago Fair.

The north door, by Massey Rhind, is also pan-
elled with Bible subjects; and the south door Mr.
Niehaus has treated with local historical matter.
Both are dated 1892. The statues of the four
evangelists were placed in the tower by William
FitzHugh Whitehouse and his wife, in 1901.

The interior is of impressive proportions, its
dim, religious light violated, however, by the lurid
chancel windows of conventional design, contem-
porary with the building. Rumour attributes the
design of the end chancel window to Richard

JOHN WATTS, BY GEORGE EDWIN BISSELL
TRINITY CHURCHYARD (PAGE II3)

BUST OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, SIGNED
"j. JARDELLA, FECIT, FOR J. TRAQUAIR,
PHILADELPHIA/' OVER MEMORIAL TABLET,
SEXTON'S OFFICE, TRINITY CHURCH (P. Iio)

RECUMBENT STATUE OF MORGAN DIX, BY ISIDORE KONTI
ALL SAINTS' CHAPEL, TRINITY CHURCH (PAGE IOg)

TRINITY CHURCH 109

Upjohn, the architect, and the story persists that
it was executed by an Englishman, named Sharp,
and baked on the spot, in a shop erected behind
the chancel. There is a legend, too, that the pul-
pit is made from wood taken from the frigate
Constitution.

All Saints' Chapel, designed by Thomas Nash,
architect, was added to the church in 1912, by the
vestry, as a memorial to Morgan Dix, for forty-
six years rector of the parish. In itself extremely
sympathetic, harmonious, and charming, it con-
tains the recumbent figure, portrait of the rector
in death, by Isidore Konti, sculptor. This figure,
in marble, occupies a little niche on the north wall
of the chapel, and follows very closely the tradi-
tion of such sculptured tombs as preserved In the
Gothic cathedrals of Europe. The memcraJ ?s
beautifully modelled and fits the general scheme
of its setting with rare good taste.

The rather perfunctory effigy of Bishop Onder-
donck, between the chapel and the passageway
north of the chancel, is much earlier. Beyond are
some interesting stones, wreckage from the old
buildings. In the sacristy are many fine memo-
rials to departed parishioners, of which a handsome
one, in the reserved style of the period, was erected
to the memory of Alexander Hamilton by the New

110 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

York State Society of Cincinnati. It bears a noble
inscription, beautifully cut and embellished, and is
surmounted by a bust of the statesman.

In the vestry, beyond, is the large marble relief
over the tomb of John Henry Hobart, rector of
Trinity and bishop of the State of New York,
interesting as the work of Thomas Ball, an early
American sculptor, whose work, generally of a
dignified and monumental type, is best exempli-
fied in the equestrian statue of Washington, in the
Boston Public Gardens.

On high days and holidays the old Queen Anne
communion service is brought to light, — seven
massive pieces of silver presented by the Queen to
\ ,the:chiirch over two hundred years ago, stamped
with the. royal arms and hall-marked 1709. Still
•':••• bldeV-is a' baptismal bason, of the time of William
and Mary, bearing the 1684 hall-mark and the
royal arms. This is only part of the church's
treasure which includes chalices and flacons of
royal gift and a chalice studded with the jewels
of Augusta McVickar Egleston, to whose memory
and that of her husband a tablet is erected in the
sexton's office.

If the church is comparatively modern, the
graveyard goes back to Queen Anne's day, and
was granted by the city for a burial ground in

TRINITY CHURCH 111

1703. Fees for burial were limited to 3s. 6d.
for adults, and Is. 6d. for children under twelve
years. The oldest graves, however, antedate the
erection of the first church edifice, and existed
within the enclosure before the official grant.
These are those of two children, Richard and
Anne Churcher: quaint headstones record their
deaths, in 1681 and 1691. When these graves
were dug, New York was a little city of barely
three thousand souls, recently come into possession
of the English. Members of the established church
held service in a little chapel in the fort, to which
Queen Anne had presented the silver communion
set.

To browse amongst the tombstones of this sa-
cred little garden spot is to revive many memories
of colonial history. A moss-covered slab on the
north side, worn by the weather, covers the grave
of Benjamin Faneuil, the father of Peter Faneuil,
who built Faneuil Hall, Boston. This family was
driven out of France by the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, under which Protestants were
tolerated in that kingdom. Benjamin Faneuil
came to this country with a large colony of Hu-
guenots, and numbers of these refugees and their
descendants lie buried here. The first burial vault
at the south entrance is that of " D. Contant," a

112 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

victim of the edict which enriched America with
the best blood of France. This persecution
brought also the Bayards, Jays, Boudinots, and
Tillons, and peopled South Carolina with such
revolutionary leaders as Marion and Laurens; it
led also to the erection of Bowdoin College, where
Longfellow and Hawthorne studied, and the
Faneuil Hall.

The vault of the Earl of Stirling lies on the
western slope, close by the fence. This was built
in 1738, and is the ancestral vault of the Living-
stons, Jays, Stuyvesants, and Rutherfords, and
contains the remains of James Alexander and his
descendants by his son, William, Earl of Stirling.
The third Earl of Stirling figured honourably in
the Revolutionary War, while his two daughters,
Lady Mary Watts and Lady Kitty Duer, were
prominent at the court of Washington.

There is a charming monument to Alexander
Hamilton, erected by the Corporation of Trinity
Church in testimony of their respect for this " pa-
triot of incorruptible integrity, the soldier of ap-
proved valour, the statesman of consummate wis-
dom, whose talents and virtues will be admired
by grateful posterity long after this marble shall
have mouldered into dust." At the foot of the
monument a slab records the interment of " Eliza,

TRINITY CHURCH 113

daughter of Philip Schuyler," Hamilton's widow,
who died at Washington and is buried here. Next
to Hamilton is a memorial to Robert Fulton, with
a portrait medallion by Weinert; and nearby Bis-
sell's imposing portrait statue of John Watts, the
last royal recorder of the City of New York,
erected by his grandson, John Watts de Peyster,
the same who presented the statue of Abraham de
Peyster to the city. John Watts, a contemporary
record tells us, married his cousin, Jane de Lancey,
and " they were considered the handsomest couple
of their day." Here too lies Sir Henry Moore,
the only native American ever appointed governor
of the province. He is interred in the chancel.
Five generations of Bleekers sleep in the vault of
Anthony Lispenard Bleeker, a slab marking the
spot at the southwest corner of the building. The
last body was interred in this vault in 1884.

As late as 1729 there was no street west of
Broadway, and the lots on the west side of that
thoroughfare descended to the beach. In the ele-
vation of the churchyard above Trinity Place, a
trace of the original bluffs along the North River
may be recognized.

Trinity Church from its income supports the
parent church and eight chapels, contributes reg-
ularly to twenty-four congregations, maintains

114 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

schools, a dispensary, a hospital, and a long list of
charities. Its tenements, its ground rents, and in-
vestments make it the richest church society in
America. Most of the so-called " Church Farm,"
granted by Queen Anne, is still Trinity property,
except the portions ceded to the city, by the cor-
poration, for streets, and for St. John's Park.

Trinity was burned to the ground the night of
the British occupancy of New York; but St.
Paul's, the first of Trinity's chapels, not only
escaped destruction from the flames which scorched
it, but was kept open for services without inter-
ruption, and patriot and tory preached from its
pulpits according to the fortunes of war. It was
here, and not in the parent church, that Washing-
ton worshipped as Commander-in-Chief, when he
occupied the city before the Battle of Long Island ;
while Lord Howe, the British commander, Sir
Guy Carleton, Major Andre, Lord Cornwallis,
and the midshipman, later William IV of England,
and other royalist soldiers were regular attendants.

After the war the governor of the state had his
pew here and the legislature and common council
had seats allotted to them; while Washington's
old square pew, reserved for him when New York
became the capital of the federal government, is
kept untouched. Washington sat under the na-

TRINITY CHURCH 115

tional arms on the left-hand aisle, and on the op-
posite side of the church, under the arms of the
State of New York, Governor George Clinton had
his sittings.

St. Paul's is the only church edifice in the city
that has been preserved from the pre-Revolution-
ary period. When its corner-stone was laid, on
May 14, 1764, at what is now the corner of Broad-
way and Fulton Street, that district was a grow-
ing wheat field, and members of Trinity parish
questioned the wisdom of establishing a chapel " so
far out of town." Its " groves and orchards "
stretched down to the North River, then at Green-
wich Street. The architect, McBean, was influ-
enced by the Sir Christopher Wren type, then
greatly in vogue in London, where he had stud-
ied, and the interior closely follows that of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields, in Trafalgar Square.

The original pulpit is fine in character and deco-
ration; its canopy is surmounted by the crest of
the Prince of Wales — a crown and three ostrich
plumes — the only emblems of royalty that escaped
destruction at the hands of the patriots, when they
regained possession of the city, in 1783. The
chancel rail and some of the chairs, as well as
much of the woodwork, is of this same period, and
very charming and simple; one might easily fancy

116 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

one's self in some parish church of rural England.
The chancel and walls bear many beautifully de-
signed tablets of the Revolutionary period and
later, erected to the memory of old families of the
congregation.

While this church was still one of the most im-
portant in town, in about the year 1818, John and
William Frazee opened their marble shop in
Greenwich Street, and many of the handsome,
carved tablets and tombstones of St. Paul's and
other churches may be traced to their skill. The
Church of the Ascension contains one in perfect
taste, in black and white marble, to the memory
of Jacobi Wallis Eastburn; signed " W. and J.
Frazee." But St. Paul's owns a real curiosity in
what Dunlap* describes as the " first marble por-
trait from a native hand — a bust of John Wells,
Esq., a prominent lawyer in New York, chiselled
after death from profiles. ..." This was John
Frazee's first bust, made in 1824 or 1825, without
instruction. Considering the disadvantages of
working from mere silhouettes, without experience,
the success of the bust is remarkable. For it
and its odd accompaniment of incidental objects
with which the base is loaded, as well as the hand-

* " History of the Arts of Design." William Dunlap. New
York, 1834.

WILSON MEMORIAL CROSS. THOMAS NASH, ARCHITECT
TRINITY CHURCHYARD (PAGE III)

REVERSE OF

WILSON MEMORIAL CROSS

(PAGE III)

TRINITY CHURCH 117

some lettering, Frazee received $1,000. Recog-
nized as a sculptor of parts he was later commis-
sioned, by congress, to make portraits of John Jay
and other prominent characters. Dunlap further
records: — " It grieves me that I cannot relate the
anecdotes of Frazee respecting the sittings of
these eminent men. Webster, at the request of
the sculptor, delivered a congressional speech while
Frazee modeled."

To realize the true distinction of St. Paul's, one
should take the trouble to enter the yard, not from
Broadway, for that is the back way, but from
either Fulton or Vesey Streets, and walk back to
the end of the garden, before turning to look at
the edifice. Thus only can one do justice to its
charming architecture, and appreciate the inten-
tion of the designer. An intelligent custodian has
ranged benches across the end of the churchyard
where one may take in the picture at leisure. The
church, with its portico abutting suddenly on
Broadway, and its spire, apparently on the wrong
end, seems abrupt and awkward until we know
that it was built to face the river, and that it stood
back from a fine sloping lawn, extending to the
water's edge. In the exigencies of city develop-
ment the rear of St. Paul's has become virtually
its front, and one is without some precaution,

118 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

first impressed by the statue of St. Paul in the
pediment, the monument to Major-General Rich-
ard Montgomery against the chancel window, and
the two shafts to the memory of Irish patriots
of distinction. The monument to General Mont-
gomery was erected by congress, who entrusted
Franklin with its purchase, and it was he who
secured the services of Caffieri, a sculptor, in
Paris, whose name is signed to the work.
Montgomery commanded the expedition against
Canada, in 1775, and led the assault upon Quebec,
where he met his death. He was given a soldier's
burial by the English and nearly fifty years later
Canada surrendered his remains to the United
States.

Trinity Church was not rebuilt until 1790, but
lay in black ruins during the British occupation,
but the yard was in use, and figured as the public
burying ground of Revolutionary times. There,
most of the private soldiers, sailors, prisoners of
war, strangers, and the poor were interred. The
Martyrs' Monument stands in memory of the
tragic case of the prisoners who died by thousands
from cruelty and starvation, we are told, and were
cast into trenches in this cemetery.

St. Paul's, on the other hand, was the military
chapel of the British commander, and its grounds

TRINITY CHURCH 119

were reserved for the interment of English offi-
cers as well as citizens of wealth and standing.
Many tombstones antedate the Revolution, but
the parish records, prior to 1777, kept at Trinity,
were all destroyed in the great fire, so that the
tombstones are the only source of information.
These bear mute testimony to the transitional state
of this parish in early days, for friends and foes lie
side by side. There are memorials to the founders
of New York families — Ogden, Somerindyke,
Nesbitt, Rhinelander, Thorne, Cornell, Van Am-
ridge, Gunning, Bogert, Onderdonck, Treadwell,
Cutler, Waldo, and others. Christopher Collis,
who built New York's first waterworks and the
Erie Canal, is buried here. He used steam to
pump water from Collect Pond into his reservoir
on Broadway, and, it is said, was the first to sug-
gest that the same force might be applied to ferry-
boats with safety and economy.

St. Paul's once held a large and fashionable
congregation, drawn from the surrounding streets
when Park Place was a residential centre. The
first substantial sidewalks were laid on the west
side of Broadway, between Vesey and Murray
Streets, about 1787. New York was far behind
Philadelphia in this respect, and Franklin is
quoted as remarking that a " New Yorker could

120 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

be known by his gait in shuffling over a fine pave-
ment like a parrot upon a mahogany table."

.The old Astor House, built on the Astor estate,
just north of St. Paul's, about 1836, and now re-
placed by an office building which retains the
name, was a famous hotel for more than fifty
years, and its register would show the signatures
of many noted men, for " every one " used to stop
there. Washington Irving lived once at No. 16
Broadway with his friend, Henry Brevoort, at the
house of a Mrs. Ryckman. This site is now cov-
ered by the Seaboard National Bank, facing Bowl-
ing Green, and inside the entrance is a fine clock
set in a large sculptured panel by Karl Bitter.

A tablet at No. 113 Broadway marks the site
of the former residence of Governor James de
Lancey, the son of Etienne de Lancey, the
builder of Fraunce's Tavern. Washington's in-
augural ball was held in this house, and Thames
Street becomes interesting, and its narrowness ac-
counted for, when we recognize it as the carriage
drive from the de Lancey house to the stables.

What the gravestones and monuments of Trin-
ity and St. Paul's have not told of the public
men of old New York the portrait gallery of the
Chamber of Commerce will reveal, bringing the
list down to date. This fine collection of portraits

ALL SAINTS CHAPEL THROUGH THE NORTH PORCH OF THE TRINITY CHURCH
THOMAS NASH, ARCHITECT (PAGE IOQ-)

TRINITY CHURCH 121

of New York merchants, numbering now over two
hundred canvases, is housed in that sumptuous
French Renaissance building, crowded into nar-
row Liberty Street, east of Broadway, the design
of James B. Baker.

The florid front and one open side, loaded with
heavy ornament, suggest a condensation of the
architectual features of the modern part of the
Louvre — massive forms applied with richness to
the vast extent of the French palace, set within a
large formal garden designed to enhance its beauty
and impressiveness ; but absurdly disproportionate
to the possibilities of a small New York lot, hedged
in by competitive stone structures in the narrowest
of thoroughfares. By flattening one's self against
the opposite houses and throwing the head back
at a dangerous angle, one gets an impression of a
busy facade topped by a low Mansard roof, worn
smugly, like a flat-crowned derby on a dressy fat
man.

Engaged, fluted columns support the attic story,
and between these columns are groups of statuary
by Philip Martiny and Daniel Chester French.
The central figures of these groups, Alexander
Hamilton, John Jay, and De Witt Clinton, repre-
sentatives of another time, seem to feel their posi-
tion keenly, and to seek escape from a world of

122 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

frenzied finance, whose outward and visible signs
are beyond their endurance as modest colonials.
Even less do the figures of Mercury and his com-
panion by Karl Bitter seem to " belong " to the
pediment which surmounts the ineffective entrance,
their feet dangling insecurely above the little door-
way at the southwest corner of the building. This
entrance leads to a great stairway up which the
members pass grandly once a month to meetings
held in the Chamber, a large room on the second
floor, possibly inspired by the Galerie d'Apollon
of the Louvre, but lacking the elegant proportion
of that famous apartment. This room contains
the greater part of the portrait collection.

The Chamber of Commerce was organized by
twenty-four merchants of New York, in 1768, and
incorporated by George III two years later,
through the offices of Lieutenant-Governor Cad-
wallader Colden, whose excellent portrait, a full-
length presentment by Matthew Pratt, painted for
the Chamber, in 1772, was the nucleus of the pres-
ent collection. In 1792 a companion portrait of
Alexander Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treas-
ury of the United States, also full-length and life-
size, was painted by John Trumbull for the mer-
chants of New York, admirers of that great states-
man, and by them presented to the Chamber of

TRINITY CHURCH 123

Commerce. These two portraits, the treasures of
the collection, have passed through many vicissi-
tudes during the years that preceded the erection
of a permanent building for the organization. The
gallery possesses an unusually fine Stuart portrait
of Washington ; two portraits of De Witt Clinton,
one by Trumbull and the other a very fine Inman;
several quaintly interesting portraits by Asher B.
Durand; a Charles Willson Peale; and a Rem-
brandt Peale of Robert Ainslee. Daniel Hunting-
ton contributed largely to the collection, making
several original portraits as well as many copjes
of older existing portraits, done to fill in gaps in
the series of important members.

But it is as a gallery of New York's money-
makers that the collection holds one, and the
descendants of the makers of New York have
been interested to supply ancestral portraits, so
that in a number of cases one may compare the
first, second, and third generations of local finan-
ciers and study the different types produced by
this absorbing gamble for the city's wealth. One
interesting reflection comes to mind. There are
great portraits of great men — portraits of Ham-
ilton, Washington, Clinton, Colden, and others
that would live on their merits as paintings, with-
out regard to the sitter's personality; and there

124 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

are portraits of rich men that have no interest
other than the personality of the sitter. The first
John Jacob Astor was an exception to a very
general rule that men of wealth have not been
painted by great artists. He is represented in
the Chamber by a copy of an interesting portrait
by Gilbert Stuart.

Amongst other souvenirs preserved by the
organization are two handsome silver tureens given
by the merchants of Pearl Street to De Witt
Clinton, and a Severes vase presented by the
Republic of France to the Chamber of Commerce,
in recognition of the part taken by the Chamber
in the reception and entertainment of the French
delegates to the inauguration of the Statue of
Liberty.

VII
THE CITY HALL

With the growth of the city under English
occupation, Bowling Green gave way to that
larger open spot, now City Hall Park, as more
favourably situated for public purposes. This
locality was included in the common lands vested
in the city under the terms of the Dongan Charter,
in 1686. It was first known as the Vlacte, or flat,
later as the Common, and often was designated
simply as the " Fields." During the trials and
vicissitudes of the people under the English gov-
ernors, and throughout all the excitement that pre-
ceded the actual outbreak of the Revolution, the
Fields was the logical meeting-place of the popu-
lace for weal or for woe.

Here, early in the morning of November 1, 1765,
was held the first public demonstration opposing
the hated Stamp Act; and it was here that the
people gathered again during the stormy month
preceding its repeal. Meanwhile James de Lan-
cey's house on Broadway, next to Trinity Church,

125

126 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

had become the famous Burns' Coffee House,
where the merchants of the city met and signed
an agreement to buy no goods from England, so
long as the English king compelled them to use
stamps. The exaltation following the accomplish-
ment of this drastic action carried the patriots
through a quiet day, when shops were closed and
business suspended, gained momentum at night-
fall, and led to the burning of Lieutenant-Gover-
nor Cadwallader Colden in effigy, in his own coach
of state, on Bowling Green; while Vauxhall, the
residence of Major James of the British Army,
was ravaged, and its contents made into a bonfire
around which the mob howled and danced, because
of this gentleman's unfortunate remark that the
stamps ought to be crammed down the throats of
the people with the point of a sword.

For the repeal of the Stamp Act the gratitude
of the community went to its champion, William
Pitt, Earl of Chatham, to whose memory the citi-
zens erected the marble statue at the site now
marked by the intersection of Wall and William
Streets. Though this was torn down and muti-
lated, as already described, a street was named
for Pitt, and Chatham Square still bears witness
that the jeitx fathers;, de_sired_ .to perpetuate his
memory. The street called Chatham was that part

THE WALL VIEW, CITY HALL. FROM A PRINT OWNED BY THE
MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY OF NEW YORK (PAGE I32)

CORRIDOR SCREEN, CITY HALL

1 II

'l ' »

THE CITY HALL 127

of Park Row which extends beyond City Hall
Park and connects with Chatham Square. His-
torians have deplored the stupidity of the change
of name, not only because it is unmindful of
Pitt's immense service in our colonial history, but
because it deprives Park Row of its exclusively
descriptive significance, as a street extending along
the side of a park.

There is a story of a man who bought himself
a new hat in honour of his wife's birthday. King
George III must have felt something of the same
complexity of emotions as did this wife, when the
Sons of Liberty erected a Liberty Pole on the
Common in New York, to celebrate his birthday,
after the repeal of the Stamp Act. However, he
turned the tables on them by sending a statue of
himself to immortalize the occasion — the same that
was. erected in Bowling Green.

The Liberty Pole was a bone of contention
between the British soldiers and the Sons of
Liberty until torn down and chopped to pieces
by the former, one night in January, 1770, thus
precipitating the Battle of Golden Hill, the first
battle of the Revolution. The battlefield has been
identified as an old ill-conditioned courtyard back
of the Golden Hill Inn, but two minutes' walk east
from St. Paul's in Broadway. The whole of

128 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Golden Hill may be circled by following Maiden
Lane from Broadway to Pearl Street; Pearl
Street to Fulton Street; Fulton Street back to
Broadway; and thence to Maiden Lane. This
exercise is recommended only to persons whose
imagination is hardy enough to persist in the face
of most blighting facts. Antiquarians have dealt
lovingly with it, and it seems almost a pity to
destroy illusions, acquired during cosey evening
readings of the most enthusiastic writers on the
subject of old New York, whereby Golden Hill
may be reconstructed in all its pristine quaintness.
Gold Street, a few feet east of the battle ground,
commemorates the name; and where it intersects
Piatt Street stands the famous Jack Knife house,
once a square tavern, through which was ruthlessly
cut Piatt Street, leaving this curious remnant of
architecture, shaped like a giant knife-blade, and of
which one end is so narrow that the rooms branch
from the stairway like shelves.

Maiden Lane winds just as it did around the
base of Golden Hill when it was a tiny stream
between steep green banks. Where it emptied
into the river, at Pearl Street, stood a blacksmith
shop which gave the name, Smit's V'lei, or Smith's
Valley, to the locality. This was the starting-point
of a little settlement, and the old " Fly Market,"

THE CITY HALL 129

a corruption, of course, of the original Dutch
name, stood here. In early days the washing
was done in the river, and the story goes that this
pathway was called Maiden Lane, from the young
laundresses who followed it in pursuit of their
picturesque calling.

An old building, made of tiny bricks brought
over from Holland, standing, for the moment,
the last in a line of general demolition in William
Street, north of John Street, and considerably
over one hundred years old, was the Golden Hill
Inn, which is still doing business around the corner
on John Street. Half a dozen doors from Broad-
way, on John Street, stood the John Street Thea-
tre, called the Theatre Royal by the British offi-
cers who held the city at the beginning of 1777,
and gave entertainments in this house. Washing-
ton attended it during the first year of his presi-
dency, when he lived in the Franklin Square
house, and there is record of his having seen a
performance of " The School for Scandal,'' fol-
lowed by a comic opera, in this theatre in May,
1789, a few days after his inauguration. John
Henry played Sir Peter Teazle, of which he was
the original in this country, and the leading lady
was Mrs. Morris. This actress was tall and hand-
some, and so chary of being seen by daylight that

130 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

" she had a gate made from her lodgings in Maiden
Lane to enable her to run across John Street and
into the theatre, without walking around through
Broadway and exposing herself to the gaze of
the beaux."

Washington's visits to the theatre were always
very ceremonious. His box was " elegantly fitted
up and bore the arms of the United States." At
the entrance soldiers were posted and others were
generally placed in the gallery. " Mr. Wignell, in
a full dress of black, with hair elaborately pow-
dered, and holding two wax candles in silver
candlesticks, received the President and conducted
him and his party to their seats."

The first Nassau Street Theatre was on the
east side of the thoroughfare from which it took
its name, between John Street and Maiden Lane.
Kean and Murray appeared here in March, 1750.
The room in which performances were given T.
Allston Brown, in his " History of the New York
Stage," describes as in a wooden building, belong-
ing to the estate of Rip Van Dam. This was a
two-storied house with high gables. The stage
was raised five feet from the floor, and scenes,
curtains, and wings were all carried by the man-
agers in their property trunks. Six wax tapers
lit the stage, and suspended from the ceiling was

THE CITY HALL 131

a barrel hoop, through which half a dozen nails
had been driven, in lieu of sconces, for the candles,
served as chandelier. The orchestra consisted of
a flute, a horn, and a drum.

The times were colourful. On the occasion of
a benefit to Mr. Jago in this theatre, the adver-
tisement stated: "Mr. Jago humbly begs that
all ladies and gentlemen will be so kind as to
favour him with their company, as he never had
a benefit before, and is just come out of prison/'
Upon another occasion Mrs. Davis gave a benefit,
in order to " buy off her time." It was the prac-
tice of masters of vessels to bring passengers to
New York upon condition that they should be
sold as servants, immediately upon arrival, to any
person who would pay their passage money. They
were bound for a definite period of time, and were
called " redemptors.,, Mrs. Davis was one of
these.

A tablet on the corner of the City Hall marks
the spot where was read the address that pro-
claimed the birth of a free and independent nation.
A horseman brought the news of the adoption of
the Declaration of Independence from Philadel-
phia, the soldiers of the new Union were ordered
to the Common and there, before a great con-
course of people and the commander-in-chief, he

132 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

made the tremendous announcement. The wild
enthusiasm of the crowd as it rushed away found
expression in the tearing down of the portrait of
George III from the City Hall in Wall Street,
and the destruction of his leaden statue in Bowling
Green.

With so much historic background it seems par-
ticularly fortunate that so fine a building as the
City Hall should mark so memorable a spot in
the development of the nation. It has been ranked
among the three or four finest examples of colo-
nial architecture extant. :' When New York was
so small that its business and its dwelling parts
together did not extend much above Chambers
Street," says Richard Grant White, in writing of
this edifice, " its citizens erected the handsomest
public building that to this day (1911) is to be
found within its new immensity, and one of the
finest to be found in the country."

The City Hall presides with a distinct air of
elegance over the intensely active centre of affairs
in which, after over one hundred years of utility,
it still surprisingly finds itself. Projected in the
last year of the eighteenth century, the corner-stone
was laid in 1803, and the building first occupied
in 1811. It has the great advantage of having
been conceived by a cultivated French architect

ROTUNDA AND STAIRWAY. CITY HALL

THE PORTICO OF CITY HALL, LOOKING WEST

THE CITY HALL 133

and carried out by a conscientious Scot; while a
second Frenchman made the exquisite finish in
such details as the carving of capitals and orna-
ment.

It is curious that the authorship of a building
so important, as well as so extremely beautiful,
should ever have been a matter of doubt, but it
was not until the publication of the first volume
of Mr. Phelps- Stokes' monumental work on the
" Iconography of Manhattan Island," last year,
(1916) that the controversy as to the authorship
of the prize drawings for the building has been
settled beyond apparent further question; and
proper credit given to the French architect, Joseph
F. Mangin, McComb's senior partner, for the
design of a building essentially and distinctly
French.

When, in 1800, a committee was appointed to
consider the erection of a new city hall, its first
step towards the achievement of that enterprise
was to offer a premium of $350 for the best de-
sign submitted. Mangin and McComb won the
prize over twenty-five competitors, and three of
the prize drawings, showing the front and rear
elevations and the cross section, are preserved in
a collection of one hundred and five drawings
relating to City Hall left by John McComb, and

134 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

inherited by his granddaughter, Mrs. Edward S.
Wilde, from whom they passed to the New York
Historical Society, in 1898, together with Mc-
Comb's diary and his record book. The restora-
tion and decoration of the Governor's Room in
the City Hall, in 1907, brought to light the exist-
ence of these valuable drawings which was not
discovered until after the work was undertaken.
They proved of invaluable assistance.

After the design was accepted, the name of
Joseph Mangin disappears from further connec-
tion with the building. No explanation has been
offered of the rupture that must have taken place
between the two architects, but it seems highly
probable that they fell out over the committee's
suggestion that the accepted plan should be modi-
fied, and the size of the building reduced to save
expense. This must have been most distasteful
to the artist of the firm, and Mangin probably
refused all compromise that would affect the
beauty and purity of his plan. It would seem in
perfect character with the artistic temperament
to have preferred to chuck the whole commission
rather than suffer alterations prejudicial to the
purity of the design. An examination of the three
existing prize drawings shows an erasure over
McComb's signature where Mangin's name, as

THE CITY HALL 135

senior architect, belongs, which shows to what
an extent the feeling between the two had gone.
McComb submitted the modified plan in accord-
ance with the committee's ideas, and bided his time
to persuade the members to return to the original,
which they did, in most respects, restoring the
original width and voting for restoration of the
original depth, unfortunately too late to make the
change. Meanwhile the old committee was dis-
charged and a new one formed, and this new com-
mittee appointed John McComb architect of the
building with complete control over every depart-
ment, at a salary of $6 per day for each and every
day that he was engaged at the new hall.

Mangin was the architect of the first St.
Patrick's Cathedral and of the State Prison, of
which the plan and elevation are preserved in the
Schuyler Collection of the New York Public
Library. The firm of Mangin Brothers, archi-
tects, 68 Chambers Street, appears in the city
directory for several years at the close of the
eighteenth century. " A careful study and com-
parison of the designs and draughtsmanship of
these two architects," says Mr. Phelps- Stokes,
" and a close inspection of the City Hall plans,
leaves little doubt that the competitive drawings
for the City Hall embodied the ideas, as well as

136 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the draughtsmanship, of Mangin rather than of
McComb. Their presentation is distinctly French,
the shadows are cast in the conventional French
' graded wash ' manner, which was never used by
McComb, and the drawing itself is superior to any
drawing known to have been made by McComb.
A comparison of the City Hall competitive draw-
ings, both plan and elevation, with the sheet of
drawings containing the original competitive de-
signs for St. John's Chapel, which Mr. McComb
was willing to sign ' John McComb Jun. Del.' will
settle beyond a doubt the respective positions of
Mangin and McComb, both as designers and
draughtsmen. To an architect it appears self-
evident that he who made the one (St. John's)
could never have made the other (the City Hall)."
The- importance of McComb's actual work, in
collaboration with his partner in the preparation
of the designs, and as architect of record in charge
during the entire period of construction, is not to
be belittled. He developed the working drawings,
and proved himself a conscientious and thorough
contractor, holding to his purpose through many
vicissitudes in the progress of the building, fre-
quently advancing necessary funds from his pri-
vate purse to meet pressing demands and to carry
on the work, while appropriations were pending.

THE CITY HALL 137

He was vested with every authority by the com-
mon council, which had utmost confidence in his
business ability, sound judgment, and integrity.
When first conceived it was the intention to carry
out the design in brownstone, and McComb was
empowered to purchase a quarry of this product in
Newark; and when, later, the committee yielded
to their architect's eloquent appeal for better
material in the construction of a building that was
" intended to endure for ages," he resold the
Newark quarry, and secured marble for the front
and two end views from West Stockbridge, Mas-
sachusetts. Great difficulty was experienced in
transporting the marble over the Berkshire Hills
by teams of horses and oxen, and McComb himself
supervised the building of roads and the strength-
ening of bridges. He used to make the trip to
West Stockbridge on horseback to attend to the
work at the quarries and expedite the transporta-
tion, and he kept a record, in what he termed his
" Marble Book," of the material as it was received,
each block being accurately described; and this
shows that 35,271 cubic feet of marble were used,
costing a trifle over $35,000.

The work was subject to frequent delay on
account of the refusal of the aldermen to grant
the necessary appropriations, and the little econo-

138 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

mies practised argue as eloquently for the archi-
tect's Scotch thrift as for the stinginess of the civil
authorities in providing for the beauty and dura-
bility of their municipal building. The base and
the north side are of the brownstone, McComb's
concession to the aldermanic point of view, for
which he found no doubt comfort in the thought
that the land to the north of City Hall would prob-
ably remain farms and marshes. The north side,
however, is painted white to simulate uniformity
of material, — an architectural insincerity that
should be effaced.

The carvers were not appointed till early in
1805, when John Lemaire was engaged as chief
carver at $4 a day. The excellence of his work-
manship and artistic knowledge is noticed in the
exquisite carving of capitals and ornaments, work
which McComb proudly claimed was not surpassed
by any in the United States and seldom better
executed in Europe, and which " for proportion
and neatness of workmanship will serve as models
for future carvers," a prediction that has been
realized. The design is pure and no pains or
research have been spared to make it so. The
capitals of the first and second orders are marvels
of execution. Lemaire's name is cut in the top of
the blocking course over the front attic story, as

THE MAYOR'S RECEPTION ROOM, CITY HALL (PAGE I42)

' THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE"
BY SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE
mayor's RECEPTION ROOM, CITY HALL

(page 142)

THE CITY HALL 139

well as the names of the building committee, archi-
tect, and master mechanic.

The Fields, at the time of the proposed erection
of the City Hall, was already a sort of civic centre
of New York, and the new edifice was intended
to form one of a group of municipal buildings
including the Alms House on its north, the Gaol
on the northeast, and the Bridewell to the north-
west. That the position of City Hall was selected
with due regard for its relation to these buildings
is shown by the plan of the Fields, submitted with
the design of the building. This provided for a
site raised above the surrounding land, and the
hall was to be so placed, in its relation to the
Bridewell and the Gaol, that its cupola should
line with that on the Alms House, and the " mugs "
in front range with Murray Street. The portico
originally commanded an unbroken view down
Broadway, with St. Paul's, the wooden spire of
Trinity, and the cupola of Grace Church lending
color to the picture; while, as planned, the vista
from the Battery included Broadway widening
into its Common, crowned by this graceful symbol
of the city government.

The building was never completed according to
the accepted design. The front still lacks the
sculptural mass intended to cap the central bay,

140 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

and for which the existing sketch shows a group
representing the seal of New York supported by
seated figures of the sailor and Indian. Classic
figures were designed to stand along the roof, and
in the execution were replaced by urns, and these,
it is thought, were the " mugs " referred to in the
prospectus. In the original drawing a clock occu-
pies the space given to the middle window of the
attic story; this was never executed, but instead,
in 1828, the cupola was violated by the addition
of an intermediate section to provide for the four
dials of the clock, as it now appears. In 1858
the cupola was entirely destroyed and the low
dome over the great stairway seriously damaged
by fireworks set off to celebrate the successful
laying of the first Atlantic telegraph cable. When
these were rebuilt little effort was made to restore
more than the general appearance of the originals.
The City Hall has survived many threatened
dangers in its brief span of life, and for a time
its destruction seemed inevitable in the general
demolition that has become the accepted practice
in New York. Neglected and shabby it remained
for years, and would have gone but for the united
efforts of loyal citizens whose hue and cry were not
to be disregarded. It took on a veritable new
lease of life, however, when Mrs. Russell Sage

THE CITY HALL 141

munificently financed the restoration of the Gov-
ernor's Room, that splendid salle on the second
floor, originally intended for the use of the gov-
ernor when in the city. This room became in time
the municipal portrait gallery and a reception
room for the distinguished guests of the city.
Lafayette and Edward VII, then Prince of Wales,
were entertained here; and the bodies of Abraham
Lincoln and John Howard Payne lay in state in
this room.

The restoration and decoration dates from 1907
and was done by Grosvenor Atterbury and his
associate, John Almy Tompkins, McComb's orig-
inal notes being closely followed. The Governor's
Room is now an exquisite return to its epoch, and
unique in its harmony of line and proportion. In
it is fittingly hung the historic collection of con-
temporary portraits of Washington, Hamilton,
and the governors from 1777, painted for the city
by John Trumbull, between 1790 and 1808. Be-
fore he was twenty Trumbull had become a colonel
on Washington's staff and done excellent service.
These portraits represent his most distinguished
work as a painter; and that of Governor Clinton
is considered his masterpiece. Rather cold and
formal in manner, and lacking the vitality and joy
of a Stuart portrait, they possess, on the other

142 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

hand, a fine official reserve and dignity, eminently-
suited to the room in which they hang and to the
characters they portray. All the portraits in this
central room are by Trumbull, and all except the
two over the mantels hang in the original frames
made for them, by Lemaire, the sculptor who did
the carving on the City Hall.

The east and west rooms, opening off the
Governor's Room, continue the portrait collection
painted for the city, and contain good examples
of such early American painters as John Vander-
lyn, Henry Inman, Charles Wesley Jarvis, and
others. The most delightful portrait, preserved
in City Hall, is that of Lafayette, by Samuel
Finley Breese Morse, painted for the city on the
occasion of the general's second visit to America,
in 1824. It hangs over the mantelpiece in the
Mayor's Reception Room, in company with inter-
esting portraits of former mayors of the city. This
great canvas shows Lafayette in the sixty-eighth
year of his age, a gallant figure, standing vigor-
ously, dressed modishly, and with a world of char-
acter and humor in the face. It is a stronger por-
trait than that painted by Sully, during the same
visit, which hangs in Independence Hall, Philadel-
phia, though that too is admirable; and reveals
Morse, whom we know better as the inventor of

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THE CITY HALL 143

the telegraph, to have been a remarkably talented
painter.

Vanderlyn, Sully, Peale, Jarvis, Waldo, Inman,
Ingham, and some others competed for the privi-
lege of painting the distinguished French visitor
for the city of New York. The choice fell upon
Morse in his most enthusiastic period, and through
his voluminous correspondence, edited by his son,
we have ample record of the progress of the por-
trait, which was painted under great difficulties.
Not only were the first sittings interrupted by
Lafayette's many social duties and many visitors,
but a more serious break in the work was occa-
sioned by the death of Morse's wife, which cast
a gloom over the whole proceeding.

The sittings were begun in Washington on
February 9, 1825. ' The General is very agree-
able," wrote Morse to his wife on this date, " He
introduced me to his son by saying: * This is Mr.
Morse, the painter, the son of the geographer;
he has come to Washington to take the topography
of my face.' ' The second sitting was interrupted
by a messenger who brought the news of Mrs.
Morse's sudden death, upon which Morse sus-
pended work in order to visit his family at New
Haven, and the portrait was taken up and finished
later.

144 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Morse's own description of the portrait is taken
from a letter, written by him towards the close of
his long life. He says: " Lafayette is represented
at the top of a flight of steps, which he has just
ascended upon a terrace, the figure coming against
a glowing sunset sky, indicative of the glory of
his own evening of life. Upon his right, if I re-
member, are three pedestals, one of which is vacant
as if waiting for his bust, while the others are sur-
mounted by busts of Washington and Franklin—
the two associated eminent historical characters
of his own time. In a vase on the other side is a
flower — the helianthus — with its face towards the
sun, in allusion to the characteristic stern, uncom-
promising consistency of Lafayette — a trait of
character which I then considered, and still con-
sider, the great prominent trait of that distin-
guished man."

Morse lived to be eighty-one years of age. His
life was almost equally divided by his two domi-
nant occupations into two equal periods. Up to
the age of forty-one years he was wholly artist,
while during the latter half of his life, following
his epoch-making invention, art was dispossessed
by a new goddess, and the brilliancy of his scien-
tific career has obscured the immense importance
of his artistic output.

THE CITY HALL 145

The city began its valuable collection of por-
traits in 1790, by requesting President Washing-
ton " to permit Mr. Trumbull to ' take ' his por-
trait, to be placed in the City Hall as a monument
to the respect which the inhabitants of this City
have toward him." In the autumn of 1804, soon
after the tragedy at Weehawken, the common
council commissioned Colonel Trumbull to paint
the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, Trumbull
had already painted, from life, the excellent por-
trait of Secretary Hamilton now in the Metro-
politan Museum, and it is said that, in addition to
this record of the statesman, he used Cerracchi's
marble bust, of which the original is now in the
collections of the New York Public Library. For
seventy-five years the common council continued
this policy of securing portraits of distinguished
men.

The series of governors' portraits was begun in
1791, when Colonel Trumbull was commissioned
to paint Governor George Clinton, and the col-
lection is complete down to Governor Dix, cover-
ing a period just short of one hundred years.
Trumbull's portraits of Duane, Varick, Livings-
ton, and Willett began the series of mayors of
New York, which is complete to Mayor Gunther,
in 1872. One of the latest acquisitions is a por-

146 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

trait of John McComb, painted by Samuel Waldo,
• about 1820.

Time has dealt kindly with the City Hall in the
matter of patine, mellowing the whiteness of its
marble surfaces to, as Hopkinson Smith has said,
the complexion of a tea-rose. The comparison
seems beautifully apt, for this fair flower of archi-
tecture stands indeed like such a rose in a garden
of rank weeds, none more blighting in its influence
than the distressing bulk of the General Post
Office, clapped down in the very face of the
" classic thoroughbred,'' blocking its view and ob-
truding its blatant personality into the vista that
formerly gave colour to the ascent of Broadway.

It is the fate of New York buildings to be old
before their time, and juvenile as is the City Hall,
as buildings go, it is the last of the efforts of the
past century to create for beauty as well as prac-
ticality. The Gaol was long considered the most
beautiful building in the city, being patterned
after the Temple of Diana of Ephesus. When it
was finished, about 1764, the whipping post,
stocks, cage, and pillory were brought up from
Wall Street and were set up in front of it, while
the gallows, as less constantly in requisition, stood
screened from the public eye, in the rear. This
little building, altered beyond recognition, per-

THE CITY HALL 147

sisted many years in the guise of the Hall of Rec-
ords, and was but recently destroyed. The Bride-
well, or common jail, built in 1775, was demolished
in 1838, the stones being used to build the old
Tombs, an interesting and gloomy edifice in the
Egyptian style, from which it took its lugubrious
title, all significance of which is lost in the ugly
modern structure now replacing it on the original
site.

This site is topographically important in the
history of New York. When the Dutch examined
the extent of Governor Minuit's spectacular bar-
gain, they found, situated on that spot of the
island where now stands the Tombs, a fresh-water
pond, known in the English tongue as the Collect,
a corruption of the Dutch Kalch-hook, meaning
lime-shell point, and given to a shell-covered prom-
ontory above the pond, and later applied to the
pond itself. The Collect lay in the middle of a
marshy valley, stretching across the island from
about the present Roosevelt Slip to the western
end of Canal Street. Its natural outlet was a
stream, called the Wreck Brook, flowing from it
across the swamp to the East River. Before the
Revolution a drain was dug through the marsh, on
the line of the present Canal Street, to the North
River. The ultimate filling in of the Collect

148 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

was considered the most important improvement
made in the last decade of the eighteenth century.
This was done by cutting down and casting into
it the nearby hills, the very great depth of the
pond, reputed indeed to be bottomless, caused the
commissioners to hesitate before attempting such
heroic measures; and many plans for dealing with
the Collect were considered before the filling-in
process was decided upon.

Historical memories with which the whole of the
region of City Hall Park is replete have furnished
themes for sculpture and paintings, to be found
in numbers ornamenting municipal buildings,
banks, office buildings, and others in the neigh-
bourhood, and indeed throughout the city.

The great fire of September 21, 1776, burned
up New York from Broadway to the Hudson
River, as far north as St. Paul's. The next day
Nathan Hale, a member of Knowlton's Rangers,
was executed on full confession, some authorities
still insist, in this little park.

The statue of Nathan Hale, which stands be-
fore the City Hall, is an imaginary portrait done
by Frederick MacMonnies when that sculptor was
but twenty-eight years of age. The romantic story
of the patriot spy fired the genius of the sculptor,
and the work, done in his strongest youthful pe-

HORACE GREELEY, BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD
CITY HALL PARK (PAGE 150) '

THE CITY HALL 149

riod, has been classed as his greatest. After the
retreat of the army from Long Island, Washing-
ton took quarters in Apthorpe Mansion, overlook-
ing the Hudson River, miles above the little city
of New York.

In answer to the call for a volunteer to go into
the British lines and learn their plans, Nathan
Hale presented himself, and disguised, he made
his way into the enemy's camp. He had fully
informed himself as to their plans, when, hurry-
ing back to his commander, he was surprised and
captured. At his trial he admitted freely what
he had done, and, asked if he had a last word to
speak before being hanged, he threw up his head
proudly and said, " I only regret that I have but
one life to lose for my country."

MacMonnies presents him in this supreme mo-
ment of his life; fired with the exalted emotions
of youth, his arms pinioned to his sides, his ankles
fettered, he stands proud but not defiant, with
tense sincerity and entire lack of pose. The figure
is intensely living and vital, beautifully expressive
of the peculiar individual grace and charm that
characterize the work of this most talented man.

In our rambles about New York we shall have
many opportunities to study MacMonnies, who is
better represented than most sculptors in the city.

150 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

He is a native of Brooklyn, where many of his
most important works are placed, but wherever
one finds them, whether in Prospect Park, or in
the pediments of the Bowery Bank, or the span-
drels of the Washington Arch, there is always this
feeling for beauty, for nobility and refinement, so
eloquently expressed in the youthful statue of
Nathan Hale.

The charming, realistic statue of a slovenly old
man, with a round face, loosely fringed by a white
beard; seated in a tasselled chair, more comfort-
able than sculpturesque, is Ward's admirable ren-
dering of Horace Greeley, the founder of the New
York Tribune. It belongs against the facade of
the Tribune Building, from whence it was removed
only a few months ago to its present detached
location before the City Court. Thus placed it
loses half the interest of its problem, which was
not only to invest an eccentric exterior with sculp-
tural quality, but to place the figure beneath a
very deep arch in a thick wall, backed up awk-
wardly by a huge window. The disposition of the
figure in a low armchair, leaning forward, hold-
ing a copy of the paper, but looking out above it
as if considering its policy, the rounded back with
advanced head, can only be explained in its rela-
tion to the setting for which it was designed. The

THE CITY HALL 151

low, broad mass, raised upon a high pedestal,
stood well out of the way of passers-by on the
sidewalk, with a result as harmonious and agree-
able as could be expected. The statue as it stands
is human and uncompromising, one of those frank
presentments of personalities that made Ward the
figure he is in the history of American sculpture.

VIII

BOUWERIE VILLAGE

While the little town of New Amsterdam
struggled to maintain itself under the protection
of the guns of the fort, the back country of the
island rapidly filled up with settlers. The poten-
tiality of the territory for trade and development
of various profitable kinds, once realized by the
mother country, the West India Company's next
concern was to devise means of anchoring the
colony to the shore. The fort offered security
and defense against possible invasion, to the origi-
nal settlement, but there was nothing very allur-
ing to attract colonists to these parts, and the
population was transient and unsatisfactory. One
of the methods of peopling the colony was by the
patroon system, under which grants of land were
offered to any man who would emigrate from
Holland, bringing with him not less than fifty
persons to make their homes in New Netherland.
The company reserved the Island of Manhattan
for itself, but large farms were portioned out in

152

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 153

this manner in the surrounding country. The
" patroon " who imported the colony became lord
of the manor, with supreme authority over his
colonists, who operated his farm and contributed
the products of their labours as rent.

This system of colonization failed utterly, from
the Dutch Company's point of view. The pa-
troons were solely interested in enriching them-
selves, at the expense of the company, trading in
furs against the express regulations to the con-
trary, and in other ways breaking faith with Hol-
land, whose interests they were supposed to serve.
Under Kieft's administration the patroons were
done away with, and free passage was offered by
the company to any one who promised to cultivate
the land in the new country. The prospect of
owning their own land brought many colonists,
and laid the foundation for the whole of Greater
New York, as it stands to-day.

Meanwhile several small villages had sprung
up upon the island itself, the Boston Post Road
leading out of the town towards the Bossen
Bouwerie, Haarlem, and Bloemendaal, and
passing through the little Bouwerie Village on
its direct route.

During Kieft's governorship, six bouweries, or
farms, were laid out on the eastern portion of the

154 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

island; it was one of these that Peter Stuyvesant
purchased as a country seat, in 1651, and here he
came to live after the surrender of New Amster-
dam to the English. Four years after Stuyve-
sant's purchase of the tract of land, of which the
existing landmark is old St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery,
on Second Avenue and Tenth Street, the Indians
came to be considered a menace to outlying set-
tlers, having, in retaliation for certain shameful
outrages committed against themselves, attacked
and killed several farmers and their wives. As a
precautionary measure, settlers were instructed to
abandon isolated farms and to concentrate in ham-
lets. This order led to the establishment of the
Bouwerie Village, in the vicinity of Stuyvesant's
farm, centring about where is now Cooper Union,
and to the opening of the Bouwerie Lane con-
necting the village with the town. This was the
beginning of the first road which extended the
length of the island, a road still identified as
that roofed-in, traffic-laden thoroughfare, rich in
honourable, shameful, and pathetic history, the
Bowery.

Three years later the murder of a prominent
settler, who had purchased the flats, on which the
village of Haarlem was afterwards built, led to the
settling of a hamlet, in that locality, and to the

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 155

extension of the Bouwerie Lane to the northern
end of the island.

Though almost every trace of the original little
settlement is blotted out, Bouwerie Village still
possesses a distinct character and flavour of its
own; and is as different from other parts of New
York as it can possibly be. It is rather amusing
to note how little coordination there is between
these divisions of the city, separated by uninterest-
ing wastes of mere streets.

The Great Bouwerie, constituting Governor
Stuyvesant's purchase, was a tract of land extend-
ing two miles along the East River, north of what
is now Grand Street, and taking in a section of
the present Bowery and Third Avenue. The vil-
lage created by the exigencies of troublous times
soon included a blacksmith's shop, a tavern, and
a dozen small houses; and in time Peter Stuyve-
sant built a chapel, in which Hermanus Van Ho-
boken, the schoolmaster after whom Hoboken is
named, preached to the members of the governor's
household and the few residents in the neighbour-
hood. This chapel Stuyvesant erected, at his own
expense, prior to 1660; his house stood just north-
west of the church, and his famous pear tree,
brought over when he returned from his unpleas-
ant experience in Holland, to settle upon his

156 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

American farm, he planted in his garden, where
it grew and bore fruit for two centuries. A tablet
on a house at the northeast corner of Thirteenth
Street and Third Avenue records the circumstance
of the planting of the tree, " by which," Peter is
supposed to have said, " my name may be re-
membered." The City Hall, as well as the His-
torical Society, preserves a branch of this modest
memorial as well as a picture of the tree.

Stuyvesant lived to enjoy his Bouwerie to the
age of eighty years, and was buried in the grave-
yard of the old church. When Judith, the widow,
died, in 1692, she left the chapel, in which the
old governor had worshipped, to the Dutch Re-
formed Church, stipulating in the transfer that
the Stuyvesant vault should always be protected.
The chapel stood another hundred years, by which
time, being sadly fallen into decay, a great-grand-
son of the governor, who had inherited most of
his ancestor's possessions, induced the vestry of
Trinity Church to erect a Protestant Episcopal
church upon the same site, contributing himself
eight hundred pounds, as well as the lot upon
which it stands surrounded by a picturesque grave-
yard. This Petrus Stuyvesant, old Peter's great-
grandson, was a member of the Trinity Corpora-
tion, and a man of influence, so that the vestry

PORTRAIT OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, BY JOHN TRUMBULL
IN THE GOVERNOR'S ROOM, CITY HALL (PAGE I41)

:

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 157

raised five thousand pounds for the building. The
corner-stone was laid in April, 1795, and the edi-
fice completed in 1799. To support the new
parish, Trinity turned over the income of thirty
lots of its city property. The pews in the lower
part of the church were sold at auction on a lease
for five years at an annual rental ranging from
thirty to one hundred and forty shillings. Until
St. Marks, each Episcopal church on Manhattan
Island had been erected by Trinity as a chapel.

The body of Peter Stuyvesant lay in a vault by
the old chapel, and the new edifice was constructed
to cover that vault, which is now visible from the
outer walk, so that pilgrims may read the inscrip-
tion on the stone built into the Eleventh Street
side of the foundation. The body of Governor
Henry Sloughter was interred in the next vault.
The first wardens of the parish were lineal de-
scendants of Governor Stuyvesant and Governor
Winthrop; and among the original pewholders
were Hugh Gaine, one of the earliest and best
printers of the city, and General Horatio Gates.
Notable among the wardens and vestrymen were
Colonel Nicholas Fish, of Revolutionary fame;
Gideon Lee, once mayor of New York; Jacob
Lorillard, Clement C. Moore, Hamilton Fish,
Henry E. Davies, and Henry B. Renwick. The

158 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

trustees were Petrus Stuyvesant, Francis Bayard
Winthrop, Gilbert Colden Willett, Mangle Min-
thorpe, Martin Hoffman, William A. Harden-
brook, and George Rapelye; the last named, how-
ever, declined later to serve.

The churchyard has been used exclusively for
vault interment, and there are no headstones, —
merely the simplest of slabs covering the vaults
and inscribed with the name of the owner. Many
prominent families used this burying ground, and
here lie the remains of Peter Goelet, Thomas
Barclay, Jacob Lorillard, Nicholas Fish, Peter
Stuyvesant (the grandson), Mayor Philip Hone,
and Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. A. T.
Stewart's body was stolen from this cemetery,
and the quiet stone with its simple inscription
still marks the spot where he was interred.

What virtue there is in a crooked street! The
slant of Stuyvesant Street, upon which St. Marks-
in-the-Bowery fronts, gives charm and piquancy
to the whole quarter. The church, by the grace
of this old relic of Bouwerie Village days, stands
at variance to the rage for parallelograms that
affected the Commissioners, who laid out the
streets of New York. Fortunately St. Marks
was built before this happened and its presence,
at an opposing angle to the rectilinear sys-

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 159

tern, saved the street, so pleasantly named for
the founder of the ancient settlement.

St. Marks-in-the-Bowery now finds itself in the
midst of one of the most picturesque and colour-
ful parts of the city. Second Avenue, to which
it presents its garden and an angle view of the
church, especially agreeable to see as one walks
up the avenue, having quickly shed the lustre
of a once famous residence street, has taken on all
the bustle and activity of a foreign boulevard, with
terrace cafes and restaurants, liberally patronized
by foreign residents, and where English is scarcely
understood. In summer, when Fifth Avenue is
deserted, Second Avenue alone vies with Broad-
way in the gaiety indicative of a seething me-
tropolis.

The breadth of the street and the many beautiful
old houses still standing recall the days, well within
the memory of comparatively young people, when
Second Avenue succeeded St. John's Park as the
centre of fashion and elegance. I have before
me a letter written by a friend whose early recol-
lections of New York have often entertained me.
" Our house in Second Avenue," she writes, " was
between Eighth and Ninth Streets. On the same
block were the Winthrops, the Stuyvesants, the
Campbells, and opposite the Kettletas and other

160 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

old families, whose names I've forgotten. Second
Avenue was considered the * swell ' residence ave-
nue in those days. Beautiful homes they were,
set back from the street within green yards — the
wide avenue lined with trees. Wide, spacious
houses, with mahogany front doors and silver-
plated handles. Inside were marble halls, four-
teen-foot ceilings, all mahogany doors, with silver
knobs, set in white frames, carved marble mantel-
pieces, great mirrors, and lustre chandeliers, hung
with brilliant prisms (every summer enveloped in
gauze).

" When I look back it seems as though it must
have been some other child and not I that was
part of all this. The cattle were driven, from the
farms above New York, through Second Avenue
to the market in the Bowery. Many a time, as a
child, rolling my hoop on the broad sidewalk, I
would run into the front yard and shut the gate
till a drove of steers or sheep passed by — usually
the men drove them through in the early morning,
but I suppose they were delayed at times.

"A. T. Stewart's grand department store was at
Chambers Street and Broadway, and to go there
we took a stage which ran through Eighth Street
all the way to Broadway and down Broadway to
the Battery. In winter straw was put on the

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 161

floor of the stages to keep the passengers' feet
warm. When we alighted we had to pick the
straw from our dresses.

" The old Baptist Church on Second Avenue
was built by one of our cousins, Colgate. When
my two older sisters were little girls they went
in there one Sunday and told the sexton that it
was their cousin's church and that they could 4 sit
where they pleased !' " How amused must have
been the sexton at this bit of " cheek " on the part
of two such correct little girls breaking away from
home discipline and out on adventures.

The church stands opposite St. Marks, and the
house where the little girls lived has been made
one with its neighbor and, under a bright coat of
yellow paint, its first story enclosed in glass,
flashes an electric sign, attracting visitors to the
" Stuyvesant Casino." Its former elegance can
still be traced, however, in the fluted columns which
adorn its facade as well as that of its twin, the
Campbell house, and no doubt the upper rooms
retain some of their erstwhile magnificence.

My friend also told me of her recollection of
family burials in the old New York Marble Ceme-
tery, a hidden graveyard enclosed in a block
further down the avenue, approached by a passage-
way between houses. But for this passageway,

162 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

this romantic spot is completely hemmed in by
dilapidated houses and business buildings, and for
years was forgotten and neglected, growing wild
with weeds and suffering slights from the tenement
dwellers, who dumped refuse freely from their
back windows upon the vaults of New York's first
families. During this time the gate at the far end
of the passageway was of wood and so high that
nothing could be seen except the tops of trees, and
one might have passed the cemetery daily without
suspecting its existence. A fee of ten dollars used
to be charged for opening a vault, and the revenue
from interments provided for the care of graves,
but as these became more and more rare, and
finally practically ceased, there was no income to
cover the expense of a caretaker, and the cemetery
was allowed to run wild. From time to time the
descendants of the interred removed the bodies of
their forbears to less obscure resting-places, and
finally, when the desolation was at its worst, the
surviving vault owners established a fund for the
permanent maintenance of the graves. An inter-
ment was held here as recently as 1914.

" I'd like to see that Marble Cemetery," writes
my friend. " I have never even been up to it.
In olden days the men of the family went to the
burial places and the women mourned at home.

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 163

I remember well — a little girl of eight years — the
October day, looking out of an upper window of
our home, to see the procession of noted men of
New York, with long black scarfs across their
coats, following on foot the heavily draped coffin
of my aged father."

The New York Marble Cemetery was estab-
lished in 1830, about the time that Washington
Square was redeemed from the potter's field and
made the centre of a fashionable neighbourhood.
The names of one hundred and fifty-six original
vault owners are indexed on marble tablets, on the
west wall of the cemetery; and, according to an
almost indecipherable inscription on the east wall,
the enclosure was intended as a " place of inter-
ment for gentlemen." Fifteen hundred burials
are recorded, including that of Perkins Nichols,
who once owned the farm upon which the ceme-
tery rests. According to the original agreement
there are no tombstones marking graves, the po-
sition of vaults being indicated by means of squares
of marble of uniform size, let into the walls, and
inscribed simply with the owners' names and the
numbers of the vaults. At the far end of the
graveyard is the old dead house of rough-hewn
stone, a primitive bit of masonry, resembling a
Spanish dungeon.

164 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Upon the day in late October, when I had the
interesting experience of being personally con-
ducted through this cemetery by the custodian, the
venerable lilac bushes, which line the sides of the
broad walks, were just bursting into bloom, the
weather being very mild for the time of the year.
There is always something touching in this final
protest of nature against the inroads of winter,
but in the case of the old lilac bushes in this
neglected graveyard, it seemed doubly charming
and significant, not only as a symbol of the inverse
truth, " in the midst of death we are in life," but
of the renaissance of interest and hope where but
shortly all had seemed forgotten.

Having finally summoned courage to ask ad-
mittance into a place which looks so forbidding
through its two iron gates, it was more than pleas-
ant to find the custodian, Mr. Frederick Bommer,
a man with real antiquarian tastes, and a thorough
knowledge of the personnel, so to speak, of his
cemeteries, as well as a picturesque recollection
of the whole quarter, where he himself was born
and raised. The question of these forgotten grave-
yards had been poignantly revived, only that
morning,* by a sensational story in the newspapers
about an Italian lad who, in digging and explor-

* October 17, 1916.

BOUWERIE VILLAGE . 165

ing on a vacant lot at Second Avenue and Second
Street, diagonally opposite the Marble Cemetery,
had accidentally broken into an old vault con-
taining several coffins and a barrel full of bones;
and fallen therein, to his intense dismay. This
vault was evidently part of an ancient cemetery
connected with a Methodist church that once occu-
pied an adjacent site, and which in 1840 was
turned into a public school. When, twenty years
later, the bodies were removed this vault must have
been sealed up and left. The last building on this
site was pulled down not long ago to make way
for a municipal court-house to be erected there.

Two years after the incorporation of the New
York Marble Cemetery, the New York City
Marble Cemetery was started as a rather potent
rival, and still may be admired as a distinguished
bit of garden, giving breath to Second Street,
east of Second Avenue. In this cemetery tomb-
stones and monuments were allowed, and the vault
owners seem to have been at some pains to show
how really lovely such memorials could be made,
and how worthy of a place in the city beautiful.
The walls too are covered with vines and most
appropriate shrubs and trees, in the weeping wil-
low style, and have been well cared for during
eighty-odd years. Here are buried Robert Lenox,

166 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Marinus Willett, Samuel Kip, of Kip's Bay, and
other celebrities; and here repose, it is said, the
oldest white men's bones interred on the Island of
Manhattan, those of the Dutch dominies, in the
" Ministers' Vault," brought here from their origi-
nal resting-place at the foot of the island. One of
the most graceful monuments is to the memory of
Preserved Fish, a shipping merchant, whose por-
trait hangs in the Chamber of Commerce. His
extraordinary name we are now asked to believe
was a heritage from his father, and not in honour
of his miraculous preservation from the perils of
the sea, whence, it was picturesquely reported, he
was picked up by whalers in his infancy. The
body of President James Monroe was first in-
terred here, and a stone still marks his vault, from
which his remains were removed, in 1859, and
taken to Richmond, Virginia. John Ericsson also
lay here until his body was taken to Sweden.

Though Astor Place bears no physical trace of
the old Bouwerie Village, of which it was once
the centre, it has distinction and interest enough,
gained in a later period of its history, to satisfy
the most exigent of loiterers. Perhaps the locality
is most famous as the scene of the Forrest-Mac-
ready riots, engendered by the bitter jealousy ex-
isting between the English and American actors,

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 167

which assumed the proportions of an international
quarrel. These two great tragedians had each
his adherents, and in the month of May, 1847,
Edwin Forrest's constituents succeeded twice in
stopping the performance of Macbeth, when Mac-
ready was billed to play the title role at the Astor
Place Opera House.

On the second occasion the performance was
attempted in response to a petition, signed by
many prominent citizens, who desired to efface the
memory of the disgraceful incident of a few days
previous, and precautions were taken to keep For-
rest's partisans from the house. This, however,
only served to augment the trouble; many gained
admittance, and the performance was again frus-
trated. Meanwhile an unruly mob gathered out-
side the theatre, blocking Eighth Street, and
assaulted the theatre with stones. Macready
escaped by a rear exit, while a regiment and
a troop of cavalry cleared Eighth Street and
reached Astor Place. Before peace was re-
stored the riot act was read, and thirty-four
persons were killed and several hundred injured.
Clinton Hall, at the junction of Eighth Street
and Astor Place, replaces the old opera house.

Among the rapidly disappearing landmarks of
this vicinity is Colonnade Row, already partly de-

168 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

molished, and going down while I write. The
wide Lafayette Place, now Lafayette Street, was
opened through Vauxhall, a pleasure garden
of great popularity, which ran south of Astor
Place, between Broadway and Fourth Avenue, to
about Fifth Street, in 1826, and soon after La
Grange Terrace, named after Lafayette's home in
France, was built. Its name was afterwards
changed to Colonnade Row. Washington Irving
and the first John Jacob Astor occupied two
of these residences, and from one of the houses
President Tyler was married to Julia Gardiner,
of Gardiner's Island.

Peter Cooper's house was on the site of the
present Bible House, at Eighth Street and Third
Avenue, and his grocery store stood where is now
the Cooper Union, this philanthropist's great
legacy to the students of art and science. Denied
the privileges of education himself, he devoted a
fortune to the establishment of this benevolent
enterprise. Started in 1855, it was transferred by
the founder to the trustees with a handsome in-
come, in 1859.

The Museum for the Arts of Decoration, occu-
pying the fourth floor of the Union, is of a later
foundation, and has proved of immense service to
students and specialists in this field. Modelled

PETER COOPER, BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
COOPER SQUARE, BOWERY (PAGE 170)

C < C I-

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 169

after the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, in Paris, it
is especially rich in textiles: it contains valuable
collections of furniture, drawings, engravings,
casts, and a large collection of encyclopaedic scrap
books, classified, indexed, and made readily acces-
sible by means of a chart similar to the chart in
use at the Paris museum.

The Decloux Collection of French decorative
art, of the Eighteenth Century, is an assembly of
more than five hundred drawings, signed by the
leading French decorators of the period repre-
sented, including several by Watteau and Bou-
cher. The textiles include early Christian, Egyp-
tian, and Byzantine tapestry ornaments, weavings,
and embroideries, from the third to the tenth
centuries, discovered in the tombs at Ahkmin;
silks, brocades, and printed linens, dating from the
seventh to the fifteenth centuries, of Persian, By-
zantine, and Saracenic origin; while the Badia
Collection of textiles from Barcelona, the Vives
Collection of velvets from Madrid, the Stanislas
Baron Collection of early Coptic tapestries from
Paris, presented by J. Pierpont Morgan, place
the museum, in this department, on a footing
with the best of the kind in Europe.

The museum preserves Robert Blum's original
design, in oils, for the " Vintage Festival/' the

170 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

decoration made for the Mendelssohn Society, and
recently removed from Mendelssohn Hall, in For-
tieth Street. This design is accompanied by sixty-
four studies of figures and draperies for the dif-
ferent groups, composing the picture. These,
besides being of great intrinsic beauty and interest,
are valuable, to students, in showing how an im-
portant decoration was conceived and executed.

Augustus Saint Gaudens' benevolent present-
ment of Peter Cooper stands within the little park
enclosed by Cooper Square, at the rear of the
Union, and, thus placed, the philanthropist com-
mands a clear view down the Bowery, and pre-
sides with a fine air of indulgence over the splendid
" bums " which at all hours of the day and night
fringe the enclosure. Torn out, root and branch,
from their historic nesting-places — Mulberry Bend,
Bandit's Roost, and Ragpicker's Row, by the
demolition of these picturesque haunts of crime
which honeycombed the district known as the Five
Points, Cooper Square has been adopted as a rest-
ing-place by the vagrants ruthlessly deprived of
their privacy by the larger interests of public wel-
fare. Exposed to the searchlight of " civic better-
ment," they sit idle and impotent, like wolves with
their teeth drawn.

What disgust must they feel, these moral de-

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 171

scendants of Bill Sykes, in contemplating Mul-
berry Bend " Park " — a children's playground,
forsooth — where once were houses three deep, with
scarce a suggestion of courtyard between, and ac-
cessible only to the knowing ones, by means of
narrow alleys hardly wide enough for broad
shoulders to slouch through. Obscure ways led
beneath houses, over low sheds, to beer cellars and
dives, headquarters of iniquity, where plots were
hatched, spoils divided, and many a scoundrel sent
to his account with all his imperfections on his
head.

Now, their dogs chained, their clubs broken,
they must live in the public eye, sleeping out bored
lives on the comfortable bench provided by Peter
Cooper. Kind and tender they are to each other
in their fallen state, sleeping upon one another's
shoulders, shielding battered faces from the scorch-
ing rays of a summer's sun, shifting and accom-
modating themselves to a brother's comfort with
exemplary forbearance.

" Here we are," they seem to say, " poor ex-
posed remnants of a valourous company, deprived
of the exercise of our natural proclivities, thwarted
in the least of our desires, all ground upon which
we stood swept from beneath our feet. You say
we ought to find work. Look at us. Who would

172 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

have us? What work is there now in these stupid
commercial times fitted to such as we? Your civ-
ilization has crowded out the gentleman of for-
tune, the highwayman, the bandit, professions ap-
preciated in other centuries — exterminated in ours.
What weapons have we against the modern system
of legitimatized robbery whose magnitude has
fairly swept away our right to live. There is no
help for us, we have outlived our time."

Yet Peter Cooper's large humanity seems to
embrace these unfortunates, and Saint Gaudens
has given us an impressive statue of a fine old
gentleman, whose benevolent schemes for dispos-
ing of a fortune, acquired during a long and active
life spanning nearly a century, were as creditable
to his intelligence as were the enterprises which
his sagacity fostered. " Like an uncrowned king,
or a prophet of old," he sits, in his classic niche, a
tangible presence, a real personality, an extinct
type.

Saint Gaudens, who was a student at Cooper
Union in boyhood days, expresses the fulness of
that serene majesty of vigorous age by the simplest
of means — direct portraiture without attempt at
artistic compromise. Peter Cooper, grown hoary
and patriarchal, maintains authority through his
works, and his presence here holds a fallen thor-

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 173

oughfare to something resembling an ideal; bring-
ing one up, in one's casual passings, to a sense of
the permanence of noble effort, of accomplished
good.

Cooper Union marks the site of the second mile-
stone from City Hall, on the old Boston Post
Road, opened by order of Governor Lovelace, in
1672. One of the events of the day was to as-
semble at what is now No. 17 Bowery, to see the
arrival and departure of the Boston stage, carry-
ing the United States mail. The first milestone
stands in its original position on the Bowery, op-
posite Rivington Street, and the inscription is
still fairly legible. Another stands on Third Ave-
nue between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets,
and there are many others, set out originally to
mark the distance from the old City Hall in Wall
Street. Benjamin Franklin, when he was post-
master general, selected the positions for many
milestones along the highways, driving out in a
specially contrived wagon for the purpose, and
measuring off the distances. Some of these so-
called Franklin milestones are still standing — one
of them on the Milford Road in Stratford, Con-
necticut.

The land east of the " One Mile '" stone was
owned by James de Lancey, who, in 1733, was

174 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

chief justice of the colony, and later lieutenant-
governor. His country house was near the mile-
stone at the present northwest corner of Delancey
and Chrystie Streets, and a lane traced the line of
the broader thoroughfare now leading to the Wil-
liamsburg Bridge, through a green field to the
de Lancey house.

The pediments of the Bowery Savings Bank, at
Grand Street and the Bowery, are interesting as
early work of Frederick MacMonnies. The one
on the Bowery front is best seen from the elevated
station which crowds the street at this point, com-
pletely cutting off the view from the street; but
the Grand Street face is clear, and the sculpture
in the pediment may be admired for a simplicity
and restraint characteristic of the sculptor's youth-
ful period.

About at the point where the Bowery begins,
at the northern boundary of Chatham Square,
stands the Thalia Theatre, on the site of the old
Bowery Theatre, four times burned, and famous
in the old days ; for here Charlotte Cushman made
her first appearance in New York, and here were
notable performances by the elder Booth, Lester
Wallack, Edwin Forrest, and other dramatic celeb-
rities. After 1879 it achieved a national repu-
tation for broad melodrama. The Bowery Theatre

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 175

supplanted the historic Bull's Head Tavern, where
drovers traded, and where Washington and his
staff, reentering New York, after the British
evacuation, rested, in 1783.

Chatham Square existed primitively as an In-
dian lookout station, called Werpoes, and in
Dutch days a corral for the protection of cattle
enclosed the present area of the square. The
" Kissing Bridge," crossed the Old Wreck Brook,
close by, and marked the boundary of the little
city at the time of the Revolution, and near this
was the " Tea Water Pump," one of the chief
sources of drinking water in colonial days.

Crowded in by tenement houses and shut off
from the street by a crumbling stone wall, topped
by an iron fence, south of the square on the east
side, is the first Semitic burying ground in the
country, consecrated in 1656, and said to contain
the bodies of Portuguese Jews, the earliest of their
race to emigrate to New York. This graveyard
was attached to the first Jewish synagogue in the
city, at Mill (now South William) Street. Dur-
ing the Revolution this spot was fortified as one of
the defences of the city. When the street, known
as the New Bowery, was cut through the cemetery
was abbreviated, and this remnant left high above
the street level. Behind the rusty iron railing are

176 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

many old brown tombstones, in varying stages of
decay, inscribed with Hebrew characters and sym-
bols. The place has infinite suggestion, so out
of character it is with the surrounding paradox
of thrift and squalor. Fine neglected shrubs hold
their own amidst a tangle of rank weeds, and the
tragic New York cats, lean, hungry, and mys-
terious, take refuge here from the bustle and con-
fusion of the dark highway. The ubiquitous
" Monday's wash," with which New York is strung
from one end to the other, flutters its grey signals
from the fire escapes of the Greek tenements that
enclose this bit of threadbare green, in slatternly
disregard of common decencies.

Manhattan Bridge, the last of the bridges which
span the East River, has completely effected the
threatened reformation of the district known as
the Five Points, by introducing into an old and
squalid quarter the last word in modern engineer-
ing. Though its objective point is Canal Street,
it carries one high and dry into the very heart of
Chatham Square, opens up the formerly elusive
Chinatown to the most casual of loiterers, thus
destroying its mysterious and lurking charm.
Now, while in process of completion, the bizarre
contrasts make for the intensely picturesque, but
handsome as is the structure itself, it means, un-

MANHATTAN BRIDGE, BOWERY TERMINAL
CARRERE AND HASTINGS, ARCHITECTS
SCULPTURE BY RUMSEY AND HEBER (PACE I//)

DECORATIVE PANELS "COMMERCE"''
CARL A. HEBER, SCULPTOR
DETAIL MANHATTAN BRIDGE
BOWERY TERMINAL

s

BOUWERIE VILLAGE 177

questionably, the obliteration of one of the most
extraordinary sections of New York, — one of the
few parts of a prosaic city where one might lose
one's self irrevocably and dangerously, in a hope-
less, labyrinthine slum.

The architectural features of the bridge are the
design of that talented firm of architects, to whom
the city owes so much of fine building — Messrs.
Carrere and Hastings. Regarding the sculpture,
the long frieze above the arch on the New York
side is by C. C. Rumsey; the groups "Com-
merce " and " Industry," on the piers, are by Carl
A. Heber; while, on the Brooklyn end, the two-
seated figures, " New York " and " Brooklyn,"
are the work of Daniel Chester French.

It is not, however, so much the gigantic feat
of the bridge itself, with its qualities of architec-
ture and sculpture, that absorbs us, as it is the
place from which New York looms most vast, most
spectacular, and most improbable. The amazing
contrasts in the view presented, from any point
throughout its length, make it the most famous
loitering ground in all New York. It is the more
wonderful because very few people seem to care
for the long walk across the river, and one may
have the footpath and the benches more or less to
one's self, and from many chosen points the spec-

178 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

tacle presented, especially at dusk, when the lights
first begin to change the picture, and during all
the stages of that change, until deep night over-
takes it, is a thing to hold and to thrill one. The
stupidity of the immediate foreground is vastly
mitigated by the endless festoons of wash that
drape the ugly lines of projecting tenements all
week long, but more fabulous on Monday, when
one wonders what the population can be wearing
with everything so flagrantly in the tub. And
this supremely domestic touch, in the most metro-
politan of sights, adds the piquant plausibility
that confirms the sensation of a vision dreamed
rather than actually seen.

IX
GREENWICH VILLAGE

The Bossen Bouwerie

Arnold Bennett, in his interesting survey of
our United States, made the perspicacious com-
ment on the essential difference between the two
largest American cities, that Chicago is self-con-
scious while New York is not. If he had had
more time to devote to a study of the variety
of life which New York affords, Mr. Bennett
would probably have been intensely amused to
find his theory supported by the extreme self-
consciousness of Greenwich Village, whose popu-
lation is largely drawn from that middle-western
metropolis.

Local historians have always seen Greenwich
Village as the " American Quarter." This remains
whimsically true of the present. American life
is here seen, as it were, in burlesque, following a
Greenwich Village code of ethics, proclaimed by
the little club, with the misleading political name,
which seems to be the mystic shrine for all true

179

180 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

believers. Restaurants are hectic, mostly lodged
in basements and backyards, fitted with long deal
tables, while the service is of the picnic variety;
everybody " digs in and scoops 'round " without
too much dependence upon an overworked func-
tionary with socialistic tendencies, who prefers
honourable domestic service to selling his soul in
commercial pursuits. The cooking is excellent,
done also by the socialists, and the scale of prices of
a decent moderation. The proper dinner costume
for these resorts is something that might be suitable
for going eel bobbing in a dory, on a dark, dank
night in summer, for it will not do to be conscious
of one's raiment, in the sense of protecting it from
the onslaughts of neighbouring diners or frantic
waiters. Conscious of the picturesque antiquity,
and, if one may say so, of the uncleanliness of
their garments, all true Villagers are wearing the
corduroys of the Latin Quarter, and scorning to
cut the hair — except, by perversity, the women —
or shave, or " slick up " — but, despite the effort,
or because of it, maintaining a certain staginess
of make-up, and an undoubted suggestion of
" costume," while the whole setting as well as the
excessive animation and vivacity of the roysterers
seems not to express the real, inner life of the
Village. That, one suspects to be a calm, prac-

GREENWICH VILLAGE 181

tical, well-regulated affair enough, — even, per-
haps, in its practice, a thought Victorian. In
support of this psychogenesis, a writer in the
Unpopular Review describes the breakdown of a
young bride, who, living with her husband in
Greenwich Village, had finally to confide her hon-
ourable state to relieve her feelings, but under
pledge of secrecy, and weepingly, " For," said she,
" if the Freedom Club knew we were really mar-
ried, they would — would thi-ink we were nar-
row- w."

Conflicting with Mrs. Van Rensselaer's theory,
that no aborigines made their homes on Manhattan
Island, the Dutch records make reference to the
Indian Village of Sappokanican, where Hudson
is supposed to have stopped for supplies, and
identified as lying east of the Gansevoort Market.
As Peter Stuyvesant is associated with the
Bouwerie Village, so his predecessor, Wouter Van
Twiller, the second Dutch governor, is the earliest
connected with the Greenwich Village. Amongst
other perquisites of his governorship, this astute
Dutchman appropriated to himself the Company
Farm, No. 3, covering the whole of the future
ninth ward, whose light, loamy soil seemed to him
to be adapted by Providence to the setting of his
own private tobacco plantation. His farmhouse,

182 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

probably the first on the island to be erected
beyond the protective limit of the fort, marked the
founding of the Bossen Bouwerie, or farm in the
woods, by which Sappokanican came to be known
in the Dutch language.

The English called it Greenwich, and because
of its healthfulness and fertility, it became a popu-
lar place of residence for well-to-do New Yorkers
in colonial times. Commodore Peter Warren, of
the British Navy, who was here in the service of
the French and Indian War, bought one of the
choicest farms, embracing about three hundred
acres, and built thereon a country seat on an
eminence overlooking the river, whose site is now
enclosed by Charles, Fourth, Bleecker, and Perry
Streets. He had married, in New York, Susan-
nah de Lancey, a sister of the chief justice, and,
next to the governor, the most important person-
age in the province. His large, comfortable house
was the favourite resort of influential citizens, the
objective point for a fashionable afternoon drive,
being but two miles out of town by the river road.
This, following the western shore of the island,
in the line of present Greenwich Street, was
opened to give access to the several suburban
estates in this section, of which Commodore War-
ren's was the nucleus. James Jauncey, William

GREENWICH VILLAGE 183

Bayard, and Oliver de Lancey, Lady Warren's
brother, held adjoining farms, the latter 's estate
being confiscated during the Revolution because
of de Lancey's British sympathies.

Commodore Warren's daughters married well,
and their connections served to augment the pros-
perity of the village. When the property was
divided and new roads opened, their names were
given to them. Of these, Skinner Road has be-
come Christopher Street, Fitzroy, Southampton,
and Abington Roads have all but disappeared,
while Abington Square still perpetuates the mem-
ory of Charlotte Warren, the commodore's eldest
daughter, who married the Earl of Abington.

The short route to Greenwich Village crossed
Lispenard's Meadows and the Manetta Brook,
where there was a causeway; and tides and
marshes made it so doubtful a thoroughfare in bad
weather that it was readily abandoned for the
Inland Road, connecting the village with the
Bowery, established through the fields in 1768.
The drive out from town then followed the Post
Road to Bouwerie Village, turned off to the left
at what is now Astor Place, followed Obelisk or
Monument Lane in a direct line to about the
position of the Washington Arch, and from that
point to the present Eighth Avenue, just above

184 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Fifteenth Street. The last section of the old road
is Greenwich Avenue, at whose terminus stood the
monument to General Wolf, the hero of Quebec,
supposed to have been destroyed by the British
soldiers.

The Manetta Brook marked the boundary of
the Bossen Bouwerie when Governor Kieft set
aside the land as a farm for the Dutch West India
Company. The brook arose at about the junction
of Fifth Avenue with Twenty-first Street, flowed
to about the southwest border of Union Square,
thence across Washington Square, and along the
line of Manetta Street, emptying into the North
River, just north of Charlton Street. It ran
between sandhills, sometimes rising to a height of
one hundred feet, and crossed a marsh tenanted
by wild fowl, and marked the course of a famous
Indian hunting ground. This brook has never
been entirely suppressed. It works silently in the
subterranean passages to which it has been con-
demned, disturbs foundations, and creates general
havoc when excavations are attempted.

Greenwich Village developed at random and
preserves to this day a picturesque distinction,
though the Seventh Avenue Subway excavations
have cut into and clarified many of its most
tangled parts. From Greenwich Avenue on the

THE WASHINGTON ARCH AS DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE
SHOWING THE PANELS, "FIRST IN WAR" AND "FIRST IN PEACE'
BY FREDERICK MACMONNIES (PAGE 20S)

GREENWICH VILLAGE 185

south side the streets run away at all sorts of
angles, while those on the north side are straight
and regular, showing plainly enough how the by-
ways of the old village met the streets of the
commissioners' city plan, making many remark-
able combinations to the endless confusion of the
uninitiated. The case of numbered streets seems
indeed to offer undue violence to accepted tradi-
tions, though, as Kingsley said, " Why should the
combined folly of all fools prove wisdom? " Per-
haps it is only prejudice that closes the mind to
the logic of Fourth Street crossing Tenth, Elev-
enth, and Twelfth Streets at right angles in this
disjointed region.

The section received the final impetus which
carried it at a bound from a place of more or less
remote country residence to a thriving suburban
village, from the yellow fever epidemic which
broke out in New York in 1822. The city had
had several scourges of smallpox and fevers, but
none so violent as this, which drove panic-stricken
citizens from the town, while the infected district
was fenced off, that no one might enter it. This
condition may be the more readily understood
when we read that " as late as 1820 thirty thou-
sand hogs roamed the streets of New York, living
on the garbage thrown into the streets."

186 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Greenwich was quickly called into requisition
to meet the situation; the post-office and custom
house were hastily installed here and many banks,
insurance offices, and newspapers followed, carry-
ing with them practically the entire business of
the metropolis. Bank Street received its name
as a souvenir of these times, when many wooden
buildings were hastily constructed throughout its
length for the accommodation of the banking
firms of the city. The celerity with which the
transformation was effected is described by the
Reverend Mr.' Marcelus, whom Devoe, in his
" Market Book," quotes as saying that he had seen
corn growing at the present intersection of West
Eleventh and Fourth Streets, on a Saturday
morning, and on the following Monday Sykes
and Niblo had erected there a house capable of
accommodating three hundred boarders. Even
the Brooklyn ferryboats ran up here daily.

Milligan Place and Patchen Place, hopelessly
side-tracked by the ruthless city planners in their
insistence on parallelograms, cling to a precarious
foothold near the old Jefferson prison on Sixth
Avenue, and have been spasmodically affected by
the literary colony of the quarter as possessing
atmosphere, if not light and air. The second
" Beth Haim," in the midst of green fields, front-

GREENWICH VILLAGE 187

ing on Milligan Lane, established early in the
nineteenth century, as a branch of the original
Jewish cemetery at Chatham Square, may be
identified in the tiny triangular remnant wedged
in between houses, just off the corner of Eleventh
Street and Sixth Avenue. When Eleventh Street
was cut through in 1830, it passed directly through
this graveyard, destroying most of it. At this
time it was removed to a spot further out into
the country, now boxed in by abandoned depart-
ment stores in Twenty-first Street, a little west
of Sixth Avenue. Interments were made in this
place until 1852, when the cemetery was removed
to Cypress Hills, Long Island, the common coun-
cil having in that year prohibited burials within
the city limits. These three burial spots the
Shearith Israel Synagogue has persistently refused
to sell, and they stand, each one more curiously
out of value with its surroundings than the other.

Throughout Greenwich Village, and between
that and Chelsea there are to be discovered by
patient diligence many evidences of the streets
and courts of the old villages that survived the
destruction of landmarks by the carrying out of
the commissioners' plan. Sometimes a passage-
way between houses will lead into an inner court
with little frame dwellings or neat brick houses,

188 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

bearing as they may the indignity with which they
have been treated. Occasionally a house or two
have been left standing within deep front yards
by the purchase of which the proprietor has main-
tained his frontage on the new thoroughfare; but
many more lie hidden away in the centre of blocks
and are to be found only by burrowing through
narrow alleys, closed by wooden gates, and lead-
ing to the rear of the outer modern dwellings. So
completely immured are they that the casual
observer walking through the neighborhood would
never suspect their existence.

Some literary memories are connected v/ith
Greenwich. Tom Paine passed the closing years
of his life in a small house in Bleecker Street;
and Barrow Street, opened after his death, was
first called Reason Street, in compliment to the
author of "The Age of Reason." The house
where he died was demolished when Grove Street
was widened, in 1836.

The only way to be comfortable in New York
is to accept transition as its ruling characteristic;
neither to mourn the destruction of old landmarks,
nor to rail against the existing unsightly. Tout
passe, tout casse, tout lasse was never more truly
said of human life than of this city, where things
break, pall, and are forgotten with staggering

GREENWICH VILLAGE 189

brevity. Not only does nothing last, nothing is
intended to last, and this has been true ever since
the Dutch merchants built Fort Manhattan of
wood, and as rapidly as possible, " because the
traders did not intend to live in it a great while."
The same thing, in effect, might be said to-day
of the skyscraper, built as a seven days' wonder,
with no thought for longevity. Long before it
begins to disintegrate it will have been thrown
down like the card house it so resembles, to make
room for the latest thing in architecture. Man-
hattan Island for three hundred years has been
the architect's and builder's experiment station,
where — failures or successes — all are destroyed in
time.

Let this thought give us courage for a walk
down Varick Street, to St. John's Chapel, left, in
the first decade of its second century, almost sole
survivor of one of the most exclusive parts of
town some seventy years ago. In the early days
of the past century, when this second chapel of
Trinity parish was projected, the way led from
Greenwich Village over open and partly fenced
lots and fields, not at that time under cultivation,
and remote from any dwelling house, except
Colonel Aaron Burr's former country seat, on an
elevation called Richmond Hill. The house had

190 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

been built by Abraham Mortier, commissioner of
the forces of George III, in 1760, and was occu-
pied by General Washington as his headquarters
in the year 1776, and later by Vice-President
Adams. Aaron Burr took it in 1797, improved
the grounds, constructed an artificial lake, long
known as Burr's Pond, and entertained lavishly
during ten years of residence. The approach was
through a beautiful entrance gateway at what is
now the intersection of Macdougal and Spring
Streets, while the site of the house is embraced
within the block lying northwest of this junction.
Through the gateway, we are to suppose, walked
Aaron Burr early one summer morning, in 1804,
to his appointment with Alexander Hamilton on
the heights of the Jersey shore, just above Wee-
hawken, where the duel took place. Hamilton,
mortally wounded, was carried to William Bay-
ard's house, No. 8 Jane Street, in Greenwich
Village, where he died next day.

A well-beaten path led from the village to the
city, crossing a ditch through Lispenard's salt
meadows, now flowing peacefully through a cul-
vert under Canal Street. This was the same
swamp, of course, as that surrounding Collect
Pond, and for many years it made a large part
of the valley, that crossed the island at what is

GREENWICH VILLAGE 191

now Canal Street, a dangerous quagmire. So
many cattle were lost by straying into it that bars
were put up across Broadway and the whole area
of the swamp was fenced off by order of council.
It was Anthony Rutgers who drained the marsh,
receiving in consideration of his service to the com-
munity a gift of the whole affected area, in all a
parcel of seventy acres, one of the neatest trans-
actions in real estate recorded since .the days of
Governor Minuit. The meadows were named for
Leonard Lispenard, Rutgers' son-in-law, who
inherited the property.

To-day one must make one's way down Varick
Street over the debris of the new subway exten-
sion that has demoralized Seventh Avenue and
destroyed quaint byways in Greenwich Village.
Varick Street was named for the mayor of New
York, whose portrait by Trumbull hangs in City
Hall. His country residence, '" Tusculum," on
an elevation east of Manetta Brook, gave colour
to the locality; and its site is commemorated by
Varick Place, in narrow Sullivan Street. The
picturesque confusion caused by the extensive
excavations, as well as the widening of Varick
Street, enhances greatly, for the moment, the value
of the contrasts of that once quiet thoroughfare.
Seventh Avenue has been carried in a direct line

192 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

across the tangle of village streets, from its former
terminus in Greenwich Avenue to where Varick
Street starts out, at the lower end of Hudson
Park, leaving devastation in its wake. It is as
though a great knife had cut neatly through,
taking out a rhomboidal section, and leaving odds
and ends of the buildings that met its blade stand-
ing to be patched up and made the best of by
indignant property-owners. Strange segments of
houses stand exposed, like dolls' houses, and one
can stare into three stories of the domestic tragedy
at a glance, while the owner of this triangular
remnant of his home casts about for the best
means of meeting his dilemma.

The widening process has taken a liberal slice
from the left-hand side of Varick Street, and with
it block after block of nice old houses similar in
period to those intact on the opposite side of the
way, meeting no serious obstacle in its path until
it came to St. John's, at whose demolition the long-
suffering public drew the line. At present the
historic old structure juts out from the surveyor's
line, and when the street is paved the sidewalk
will run under the portico of the church, and the
floor will be levelled to that of the sidewalk.
Precedent for this solution of the problem, which
the church presented, exists in the similar treat-

GREENWICH VILLAGE 193

ment of the churches of St. Michael and St.
Philip, in Charleston, South Carolina.

This variation in the straight line is highly
desirable in its effect on the aspect of the street
and the opportunity it affords for picturesque
views of the church. Going south one has a con-
tinuous, shifting picture of the delicate spire of
St. John's silhouetted against the huge light mass
of the Woolworth Building, the highest achieve-
ment in skyscrapers, which counts nowhere so
favourably as in the walk down Varick Street,
unless it be from the Manhattan Bridge. Like
the duomo in Florence, it must be seen from afar
and, if possible, from an eminence to appreciate
its magnitude. From the bridge it takes its part
as the dominating factor in a situation where
everything is on a fabulous scale; in Varick Street
it looms suddenly, and gains improbability from
a humble provincial environment with which it is
thoroughly out of proportion.

One of several lines of superannuated horse-cars
runs along this street over the buried subway. The
type dates back some forty years, and to see the
cars ambling along, the driver flourishing a long
whip, and the conductor standing sheepishly, on the
broken-down platform at the rear, one might
fancy one's self transported back to the Centen-

194 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

nial period. Surely this relic, more than the
Woolworth Building, bespeaks the metropolis.
No other city would dare offer its inhabitants so
antiquated a mode of conveyance, yet in this quiet
section, marked by the sincere brick dwellings of
the last century, it jingles along appropriately
enough, and even braves its way through New
Chambers Street, offering a bizarre extreme to
the ponderous Manhattan Building, and compet-
ing with the most modern means of transportation
in the world.

Prior to the completion of the City Hall, St.
John's was considered the finest building in the
city. The corner-stone was laid in 1803, at which
time the locality was a swamp overgrown by brush,
inhabited by frogs and snakes. In front, a sandy
beach stretched down to the river at Greenwich
Street. The Trinity corporation was greatly
criticized for establishing a chapel, especially so
large and fine a one, " so far uptown," and, to
meet the argument of its remoteness, Trinity laid
out a handsome square directly in front of the
church, with pleasant walks, flower-beds, and trees
and shrubs, and made it a private park for the
use of citizens who might purchase the encircling
lots. The park became a paradise for birds —
robins, bluebirds, wrens, and Baltimore orioles

THE DELICATE SPIRE OF ST. JOHNS
FROM A WATER COLOR SKETCH
BY JESSIE BANKS (PAGE I94)

ST. JOHNS FROM YORK STREET
ETCHED BY ANNE COLDTHWAITE

GREENWICH VILLAGE 195

nested in the trees, and filled the air with color
and song. Many of the better class citizens of
the young metropolis were attracted to this new
neighbourhood; and Alexander Hamilton, General
Schuyler, and General Morton, as well as the
Drakes, Lydigs, Coits, Lords, Delafields, Ran-
dolphs, and Hunters, were among those who
owned the houses and had keys to the park, to
which no outsiders were admitted.

The chapel stood within its own garden facing
the square, and, that the neighbourhood should
not be depressed by the thought of death, the
burying ground was established further out
towards Greenwich Village, and has lately been
made over into Hudson Park at the end of Varick
Street. Sir Christopher Wren was again followed
in the style of the chapel, which is much larger
and more imposing than any other of the old
churches in New York. John McComb, the
builder of City Hall, was the architect, and St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields was the model. The ma-
terial was stone, rough cast and painted to sim-
ulate the brownstone of which the portico, with
its Corinthian columns, is built, and of which the
trims are made. The bell, the clock in the steeple,
and the fine old hand-wrought iron fence, now
rotting in a rubbish heap in the desolate garden,

196 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

were brought over from England. The chapel
has been closed for some time, but there is an
intelligent custodian and it is quite possible to
inspect the interior. Until June 1, 1916, a curate
came from St. Luke's Chapel to conduct a seven
o'clock service. Sometimes, the sexton told me,
as many as ten persons attended.

The galleries, columns, and pulpit are original,
contributing charm to a somewhat gloomy interior,
an effect enhanced by the depressing colour of the
whole.

What the new subway when finished will mean
for this luckless neighbourhood, who can tell? In
the brief span of a man's life it has passed through
all the stages that lie between birth and decay
with unprecedented swiftness. Its aristocratic
high-water mark was reached about sixty years
ago, when the church and park were the centre
of one of the most dignified parts of town, a con-
dition maintained for scarce a decade, when its
slow decline was precipitated by Trinity's sale of
St. John's Park to the Hudson River Railroad
Company for one million dollars. Thus were the
community, the church, and the park crushed
utterly, in 1869, the date being recorded on the
unsightly freight station planted squarely over the
whole four acres of unfortunate park — a stagger-

GREENWICH VILLAGE 197

ing blow from which there was no hope of recov-
ery. The cruelty of this blight is poignant to this
day, and it wrings the heart to see to what depths
of degradation the wide-front houses, of which
many stately wrecks remain, have fallen. Erics-
son was the one man of position who refused to
be dislodged by this disastrous caprice of fortune.
He lived and died in the first of the remaining
block of houses on the south side of the erstwhile
park, No. 36 Beach Street. There is nothing but
the shell of this mansion to recall its former dig-
nity. The silver handles are gone, the escutcheons
sold for old metal, the fluted columns flanking the
entrance slant at opposing angles, doors swing
wide on rusty, broken hinges, and motley tenants
come and go staring defiantly at the aesthetic
loiterer who lingers before the threshold in a
complexity of reverie.

The cheerful flippancy with which the Hudson
River Railroad Company stamped out every trace
of the poetic charm that once this locality exhaled,
the supreme egoism that never questioned its ex-
clusive right to live at the expense of a whole
community, is immortalized in that most outra-
geous " art treasure " in New York — the incred-
ible sheet-iron pediment, erected on the Hudson
Street front of the freight station in honour of the

198 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

railway achievements of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
This atrocious mass of sculpture consists of a
central full-length statue of the commodore,
standing in a niche; on his right Ceres, on his left
Neptune, lolling in abandoned attitudes, made the
more ludicrous by the loss of sections of their legs
and arms, exposing the hollow sham of their sup-
posed anatomy, within the which nest pigeons.
The intervening spaces between the statue and
the mythological figures are crammed with a mass
of detail representing ships and shipping, trains
and steam engines running headlong into one
another, in a valiant effort to express the stupen-
dous activities of a life of business adventure in
which the extermination of a neighbourhood was
a mere incident. If one questions the state of
society that permitted so monstrous a piece of
vandalism as the carrying of a freight station into
the garden spot of a city's most reserved quarter,
this work of art surmounting the whole egregious
mass of fact is the terrific answer.

A cold spring or summer day, with a touch
of Scotch mist in the atmosphere, is the most sym-
pathetic to the understanding of Varick Street
and its environs. Charlton, Vandam, and Domi-
nink Streets are full of quiet self-respecting private

GREENWICH VILLAGE 199

dwellings. The little brick houses of two, two
and a half, and three stories date from about sixty
years ago, but among them, here and there, are
many wooden dwellings of a much earlier period.
In Dominink Street, especially, are to be found
old frame houses with hip-roofs, brass door-knobs
and numbers, immaculately clean; one boasts even
a well-worn name-plate in polished brass, while a
paradise tree shades the front and protects the view
where adjoining houses have been torn away.

Behind St. John's Chapel, York Street opens
a distinguished vista of the church and steeple
above the stone wall that encloses the eminence on
which it stands, the lower streets having been
levelled in accordance with the commissioners'
plan. Across the rear of the chancel enclosure,
the paradise tree again, friend of the fallen, throws
its protecting shade in a graceful effort to miti-
gate the desolation of its lonely, unaffiliated state,
and all this charm can be taken in in a flash
from the elevated train, as it whisks one by, on
its noisy way downtown; and a moment after,
in the street below, one may catch a glimpse of
the sole surviving remnant of Annetje Jans'
Farm, of which all this section bounded by the
river, and as far north as Tenth Street in Green-
wich Village, was a part.

WASHINGTON SQUARE

Washington Square as the base line of Fifth
Avenue draws therefrom inevitable distinction,
and extends its Palladian influence as far north
as Twelfth Street in that thoroughfare, beyond
which it rapidly loses all control of the most way-
ward street in the world. The square's own dig-
nity, as a centre of refinement and elegance, has
been retrenched and violated on all sides except
the north, which still presents, with one exception,
the " Row " of period houses built by wealthy
New Yorkers of the early thirties, when society,
always seeking foothold apart from business inva-
sion, settled eagerly in this promising locality.

The growth of the city northward was acceler-
ated by the yellow fever epidemic of 1822, which
populated Greenwich Village, and was now to
result beneficently for the marshy land lying, be-
tween Greenwich and Bouwerie Villages, along
Monument Lane. The swamp and waste land
hereabout, forming part of the farm of Elbert

200

WASHINGTON SQUARE 201

Herring, had been purchased by the city for a
potter's field in 1797; and here were buried during
the scourges which swept the city early in the
past century thousands of bodies, many of which
still lie beneath the soil of Washington Square.
That it was not strictly a paupers' burying ground
was proven by the unearthing of gravestones (a
luxury not allowed paupers) when, in 1890, ex-
tensive excavations were made for the foundations
of the Washington Arch.

But all memory of paupers and yellow fever, as
well as of the gallows that once formed a con-
siderable attraction in this pleasant spot, seems as
remote as do those earlier stories of trout fishing
in the Manetta Brook, and of wild-duck shooting
in the marsh, through which it wandered, now
Washington Square. The potter's field was lev-
elled, filled in, and abandoned in 1823; additional
land was added four years later, and, under the
new title of Washington Parade Ground, walks
were laid out, trees planted, and the whole en-
closed by a wooden fence.

Among the merchants who built along the upper
side of the square, in 1831, were Thomas Suffern,
John Johnston, George Griswold, Saul Alley,
James Boorman, and William C. Rhinelander.
Their houses had deep gardens with gay, box-

202 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

bordered flower-beds, beyond which stretched the
open country. As the avenue was developed, little
by little, and the first streets opened to the east
and west of these early beginnings, these houses
were accepted as the type for the neighbourhood,
which was all for the elegance of simplicity and
fine proportions, while what detail was used was
of the best. This was happily before the brown-
stone blight had left its trail upon domestic archi-
tecture, and the fluted columns with carved capi-
tals, the window trimmings, and front steps are
all of white marble, contrasting neatly with the
cheerful red brick of the period. This happy
influence, here concentrated, gives to the whole
neighbourhood a distinction of its own. In many
cases the houses are still tenanted by the descend-
ants of the original owners, others, notably the
little two-and-a-half-story dwellings in Eleventh
Street, known as Brides' Row, have been reclaimed
by intelligent real estate dealers, and restored to
their pristine quaintness.

Until 1894 the old grey castellated buildings
of the New York University, built in 1837, stood
on the east side of the square. In the old build-
ing Morse established his studio — he was perhaps
the first artist to work in Washington Square —
and here he experimented with the telegraph.

WASHINGTON THE SOLDIER/ BY HERMON A. MACNEIL
PHOTOGRAPHED FROM THE PLASTER IN PLACE ON LEFT PIER
WASHINGTON ARCH (PAGE 207)

WASHINGTON SQUARE 203

Here also Draper wrote, and perfected his inven-
tion of the daguerrotype ; and Colt invented the
revolver named for him. Nearby is the site of the
house, also long since demolished, where Henry
James was born. He himself has described feel-
ingly the impossibility of reconstructing, out of
the uncompromising mass of stone-faced girders
clapped down over the scene of such hallowed
memories, any of the tender sentiment that the
square must have at that time expressed. One
can but turn one's back to the displeasing, and
get what one can from the fine physique of the
square itself and the picture, wherein swarms of
alien workers make holiday against a background
of classic souvenirs. The Italian residents, whose
quarter touches the southern extremity of the
square, have made the place more homelike for
themselves by the erection, in 1888, of Turini's
statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, under whose patri-
otic influence their children may imbibe more of
hero worship than of art.

Ward's bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, the
American inventor and engineer, associated with
the manufacture of Bessemer steel, was given to
the city the following year, and with its fine archi-
tectural setting, by Thomas Hastings, erected in
Washington Square as one of the improvements

204 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

to the locality, inspired by the centenary anniver-
sary of Washington's inauguration.

The chief of these improvements, the Wash-
ington Arch, was erected as a temporary Arc de
Triomphe for the celebration of this event, at the
expense of William Rhinelander Stewart and
other residents of Washington Square. It was
considered so successful that a fund was raised, by
popular subscription, to make it a permanent
memorial to the first President, and the present
arch was finished in 1895. To this fund Pade-
rewski, then making his initial tour of this coun-
try, devoted the proceeds of one of his piano
recitals. The arch is one of those carefully
transplanted bits of foreign architecture by which
one soon learns, in New York, to recognize the
hand of Stanford White. Very perfect and
charming in themselves, they have no special rele-
vancy to the city, nor to the purpose to which
they have been adapted, and stand in time and
character as so many exotics in a provincial
setting.

Nevertheless, to take from New York the works
of Stanford White would be to rob it of its
greatest beauty. He did much for architecture
in New York; his name stood for quality and he
took care to associate with himself, in the execu-

WASHINGTON SQUARE 205

tion of details in the buildings, the best available
artists of his time. Saint Gaudens, La Farge, and
White made a powerful trio twenty to thirty
years ago when they left their big mark in the
field in which they collaborated. At the time, too,
that the Washington Arch was made, MacMon-
nies was a young sculptor, just coming into prom-
inence. His French training, at the Ecole des
Beaux Arts, especially qualified him for the work
that White needed on his Triumphal Arch, and
the beautifully executed spandrels show how
fully he understood his problem. They have,
with all their grace and charm, the inestimable
quality of flatness — of resting in one plane —
essential to the harmony of this architectural
result.

Together the two artists conceived and planned
the completion of the sculptures for the arch — for
years left in an unfinished state — and, fired with
the richness of the idea for which the memorial
was meant to stand, MacMonnies sailed away to
Paris, and there in his studio he made the sketches
for the two groups of Washington — " First in
War, First in Peace " — which were to symbolize
the great outstanding features of the subject and
give point and flavour to the arch as a commemora-
tive monument. These were the groups that were

206 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

to have been placed against the piers of the arch,
on the side facing the avenue.

These groups, designed by MacMonnies, were
enthusiastically approved by White as exactly
expressing his thought for the arch, and accepted
as final. They show — the sketches have been pre-
served— Washington, the Commander-in-Chief,
and Washington, the President, accompanied in
each case by two allegorical figures. The Com-
mander is being crowned by Courage and Hope
— the President by Wisdom and Justice. The
figures are in full relief against a panoply of flags.
Made twenty-five years ago, in the flux of the
sculptor's most youthful, imaginative period, they
have infinite charm and a richness, both of idea
and sculptural quality, that is not of this age.

Most unhappily they were never carried out.
The work was at first deferred owing to lack of
funds and with White's subsequent death the
whole question of the completion of the arch was
allowed to lapse for so long a time that it became
ancient history. When the project of the two
groups for the piers was recently revived, Mr.
MacMonnies was in France and the architect
dead; and so the commissions were turned over
to two resident sculptors without further cere-
mony.

WASHINGTON SQUARE 207

Unfortunately, instead of setting aside the
original scheme entirely and conceiving something
quite different, just enough of the first design
was retained to recall MacMonnies' sketch with-
out giving its essential qualities. Where the orig-
inal shows the group as an inspired ensemble of
figures in high relief, set as a " bouquet " against
the pier, the later development is unpleasantly
unrelated to the surface of the arch.

Furthermore MacNeil's panel, which is in place,
may be criticized as too small in design and too
large in scale. The single figure of Washington
is not rich enough and its size is entirely too big
for the scale of the arch. The result is ruinous
to the arch itself; all its charming elegance of
proportion is destroyed by this insistent presence
on the left pier. Mr. Calder's group is in
the cutter's hands; its general features corre-
spond to those of MacNeil's panel, while the mod-
elling is much bolder, and the whole gesture more
dramatic.

We had learned to accept the arch in its unfin-
ished state as a rather cold but very perfect little
monument. MacMonnies' sculpture was to have
added the warmth of the related note that was to
have brought its perennial significance promi-
nently before us. In its present state that is

208 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

gone; but since New York delights in demolition
a mistake which seems unpardonable may some
day be rectified.

We have Stanford White and John La Farge
in handsome combination, on the lower side of
the square, in the Judson Memorial — the Baptist
temple erected to honour Adoniram Judson,
the celebrated missionary to Burmah, where he
settled in 1813. He translated the Bible into
Burmese and wrote a Burmese-English dictionary.
The style of the building is chaste, while the pure
white interior of the chapel renders immensely
effective the La Farge windows of which there
are twelve, the one exception being the memorial
window to John Knott, which was executed after
Mr. La Farge's death, by a pupil, from designs
left by the artist. The two floating angels, bear-
ing an inscribed tablet in memory of Joseph
Blachley Hoyt, placed over the pool, behind the
platform, are by Herbert Adams.

We have the three artists, La Farge, White,
and Saint Gaudens in the perfection of collabora-
tion at Tenth Street, in that dim old church of
1840, built in response to the needs of the growing
community that settled about the square, as it
began to reach into the gradually developing ave-
nue. Its name is wonderfully perpetuated in La

WASHINGTON SQUARE 209

Farge's chef d'oeuvre, the great " Ascension,"
that fills the west wall of the chancel, and so
absorbs the interest of the visitor, who may stray
into this silent place, that he is only vaguely con-
scious of the " rich note of interference," as James
says, that comes " through the splendid window-
glass, the finest of which, unsurpassingly fine, to
my sense, is the work of the same artist; so that
the church, as it stands, is very nearly as com-
memorative a monument as a great reputation
need wish." That there is this interference is
only too manifest, when one puts one's mind on
it, perhaps the more so that the windows are not
all by La Farge and so the more disturbing,
though his have been made the type. If they
were not all of the uniform style, carrying out
La Farge's discoveries in coloured glass, there
would not be the distraction of testing one's
shrewdness in separating the real from the spu-
rious, a temptation which assails one in the midst
of one's highest feeling for the decoration, whose
sufficiency pervades and dominates the dusk in-
terior. And so one comes always back to it as,
after all, the thing, the enduring thing for this
edifice.

La Farge made it within a stone's throw of its
destination, in the old Studio Building in Tenth

210 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Street, so that it has the rare advantage, for New
York, of having been produced and placed under
homogeneous conditions. The adornment of the
chancel is the work of several artists, under the
general direction of the three collaborators, the
altar and reredos in stone mosaic lending extraor-
dinary texture and quality to the wall under the
great painting. The windows cover a period of
twenty years of La Farge's life. The Southworth
Memorial was done by the firm of La Farge and
Wright, in 1890, and the Davies Coxe Memorial
by La Farge, in 1908, shortly before his death.
They mark what was then a new departure in
stained glass, based upon the artist's personal
experiments and discoveries.

Finding it almost impossible to obtain the
quality of execution he wanted on the glass, La
Farge made experiments with the material itself,
by the introduction of opalescent qualities, by let-
ting the colours run into one another, and by
twisting and flattening the glass while still soft,
obtaining varied and graduated tones. The twist-
ing of the glass gave also creases and ridges that
could be utilized in expressing drapery. With
these qualities of material at his disposal Mr. La
Farge conceived the idea of eliminating altogether
the painting on glass, except for faces and hands,

STUDY MODEL OF "WASHINGTON AS PRESIDENT"
SUPPORTED BY THE FIGURES OF WISDOM AND JUSTICE
FOR THE RIGHT PIER, WASHINGTON ARCH
BY ALEXANDER STIRLING CALDER (PAGE 207 )

WASHINGTON SQUARE 211

thus preserving in its greatest purity the trans-
parency and brilliancy of the colours, and at the
same time not sacrificing light and shade.

This method has been criticized as " substituting
accident for design," since, it has been argued,
the only part of the design which it leaves com-
pletely under the control of the artist is the shape
of the separate pieces of glass and, therefore, the
leads which unite these and form the chief out-
lines in stained glass. Any lines of draperies et
cetera, within these, and all shadows depend abso-
lutely on what the artist can find in the accidents
of his materials that will approximately suit his
purpose.*

The English critics, with their respect for tradi-
tion, felt that La Farge's method sacrificed design
for colour. While there may be some truth in
this, so long as one need not definitely choose for
life between the one and the other, La Farge's
discovery remains an important contribution to
the metier, and his windows hold an unique place
in the history of stained glass.

The pleasant old garden-walled house on the
northwest corner of Washington Square and Fifth
Avenue preserves intact its 1830 character, noth-
ing having been added or subtracted since it first

*Henry Holiday. "Stained Glass as an Art," p. 160.

212 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

marked the gateway of the incipient avenue.
James Boorman's house on the opposite corner
has more personal interest for me. His niece has
made it live for me in her conversations and letters
about old New York. She writes of her sister
having been sent to boarding school at Miss
Green's, No. 1 Fifth Avenue, and of how she used
to comfort herself, in her homesickness for the
family, at Scarborough-on-the-Hudson, by looking
out of the side windows of her prison at her uncle,
" walking in his flower garden in the rear of his
house on Washington Square." " When my uncle
built his house," writes my correspondent, " it was
all open country behind it. My mother has told
me of attending a dinner-party there, soon after
my uncle moved in, and of looking out of the back
windows at the fields."

The house was sold, after his widow's death, and
joined to the Duncan house, next door; and the
entrance to the corner house was made into a bay
window and others were added to the Fifth Ave-
nue side. Mr. Boorman built also the houses
Nos. 1 and 3 Fifth Avenue (now No. 1), and
in the rear two stables, one for his own use and
one leased to Mrs. Duncan. These were the
nucleus of the lively settlement of painters and
sculptors that now, having converted the stables

WASHINGTON SQUARE 213

into picturesque studios, give character to the
neighbourhood. Washington Mews and Mc-
Dougal Alley were unheard-of until the artists
brought them into notice.

At No. 1 Fifth Avenue, James Boorman * es-
tablished his only sister, Mrs. Esther Smith, in a
select school for young ladies, which occupied the
two houses, Nos. 1 and 3, joined together, and
opened in 1835. This was an old established
school, having started in 1816 in the St. John's
Park neighbourhood.

Miss Green came from Worcester, Massachu-
setts, when a girl of eighteen, to be a teacher in
Mrs. Smith's school; and she and her sister even-
tually succeeded to the management. Their
brother, Andrew H. Green, called the " father
of Greater New York," gave his advice and aid
and, in 1844, taught a class in American history.
The Union Theological Seminary, on Washington
Square, furnished students to teach history and
philosophy courses, and amongst the distinguished
men who lectured in Miss Green's school were
Felix Foresti, professor at the University and at
Columbia College, Clarence Cook, Lyman Abbott,
and Elihu Root, then a young man, fresh

* An excellent portrait of James Boorman, by Rossiter, hangs
in the Chamber of Commerce, of which the sitter was a member
for nearly fifty years.

214 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

from college. John Bigelow taught botany at
one time, and John Fiske delivered a course of
lectures.

Miss Boorman has often told me of the amuse-
ment that the shy theological students and other
young teachers afforded the girls in their classes,
and how delighted these used to be to see instruc-
tors fall into a trap which was unconsciously pre-
pared for them. The room in which the lectures
were given had two doors, side by side and exactly
alike, one leading into the hall and the other into
a closet. The young men having concluded their
remarks, and feeling some relief at the successful
termination of the ordeal, would tuck their books
under their arms, bow gravely to the class, open
the door, and walk briskly into the closet. Even
Miss Green's discipline had its limits, and when the
lecturer turned to find the proper exit he had to
face a class of grinning school girls not much
younger than himself, to his endless mortification.
Elihu Root met recently at a dinner a lady who
asked him if he remembered her as a member of
his class at Miss Green's school. " Do I remem-
ber you? " the former secretary of state replied.
" You are one of those girls who used to laugh at
me when I had to walk out of that closet."

Lower Fifth Avenue traverses the old " Minto "

WASHINGTON SQUARE 215

and Brevoort farms which adjoined each other,
according to the old maps, somewhere about
Tenth Street and covered the territory south of
Union Square, extending east to about Fourth
Avenue. The lower farm, touching Washington
Square, is now the estate of the Sailors' Snug
Harbour, founded by Robert Richard Randall,
who when about to die, in 1801, dictated a will
leaving twenty-one acres " seeded to grass," con-
stituting the Minto farm, for the establishment of
a home for old and disabled seamen. This was in
memory of his father, Captain Thomas Randall,
the commander of the Fox, a freebooter of the
seas, who in later life became a wealthy and repu-
table merchant in Hanover Street. Captain Ran-
dall was coxswain of the barge crew of thirteen
ships' captains who rowed General Washington
from Elizabethtown Point to New York for his
inauguration. A line drawn through Astor Place
to the Washington Arch, up Fifth Avenue to
about Tenth Street, with Fourth Avenue as an
eastern boundary, would roughly outline this farm,
which Robert Randall added to the land inherited
from his father, in 1790, paying five thousand
pounds for a property now worth twice as many
millions. It was his intention that the mansion
house in which he had lived should be converted

216 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

into the snug harbour, and the surrounding farm
lands cultivated to supply the inmates with fruit,
vegetables, and grain, according to their require-
ments. The relatives contested the will (made by-
Alexander Hamilton and Daniel D. Tompkins),
and only after many years' litigation was it finally
settled, when the trustees decided to lease the land
and purchase the Staten Island property, where
the home is now located. This land, like the
grants deeded to the Trinity corporation, became
leasehold property in perpetuity, a fact which re-
tarded its development with a perceptible effect
upon the growth of the city. Recently the re-
modelling of Washington Mews and Eighth Street
as an artists' quarter has made changes in the lo-
cality and will bring many artists to the new stu-
dios.

Hendrick Brevoort's farm has left, too, its in-
delible trace upon the layout of the city, a valor-
ous descendant of the old burgher having defied
the commissioners to destroy his homestead, which
lay in the proposed path of Broadway, or to cut
down a favourite tree which blocked the intended
course of Eleventh Street. He is said to have
stood at his threshold with a blunderbuss in his
trembling old hands, when the workmen arrived
to carry out their instructions to demolish the

WASHINGTON SQUARE 217

house; and to have carried his point with such
thoroughness that Broadway was deflected from
its course, causing the present bend in that thor-
oughfare at Tenth Street, while Eleventh Street
between Broadway and Fourth Avenue was never
completed. Soon after the first attempt to violate
his property Grace Church was built and now that
its rectory and garden cover the disputed territory
it is not likely that the street will ever be cut
through, nor Broadway straightened.

Grace Church in Broadway and the First Pres-
byterian Church in Fifth Avenue were built
about the same time, following the establishment
of a fashionable centre in this region. Grace
Church was built by James Ren wick, Jr., the
architect of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and a de-
scendant of Henry Brevoort, in 1846. It contains
many souvenirs of old New York, including the
corner-stone of the original church, erected in
1806 at Broadway and Rector Street, opposite
Trinity, and a stone tablet to the memory of
Henry Brevoort who died in 1841, aged ninety-
four, " in possession of the ground on which this
church now stands." The chancel building, re-
redos, east window, the chantry adjoining Grace
House, and the greater organ were erected in
1878-1882 by Catherine Lorillard Wolf in memory

218 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

of her father, John David Wolf, senior warden
of the church at the time of his death.

On the Tenth Street corner of the church stood
for many years the Fleischmann restaurant and
bakery, and here the " Bread Line," only recently
suspended, became one of the institutions of the
city ; the firm gave away every night the bread and
rolls unsold during the day, a practical charity
much appreciated. Men, women, and children
stood until midnight to receive their dole of bread.
This bit of local colour was swept away by the
recent improvement to the exterior of the church,
by which Huntington Close, with its open-air
pulpit, was opened and dedicated to the memory
of William Reed Huntington, for twenty-five
years rector of the parish. Always deeply in-
terested in beautifying the church, and with the
hope of preserving it for years to come, it was
Dr. Huntington who planned this outside pulpit,
with its garden enclosure for summer services, to
meet the altered conditions under which the fine
old church now stands, hoping to prolong its
active life. The Beatitudes form the subject
of the elaborately carved pulpit, designed by
William Renwick, architect, and Jules Edouard
Roine, sculptor.

Another Henry Brevoort, a descendant of the

Copyright by John La Farge

THE ASCENSION/' MURAL PAINTING BY JOHN LA FARGE
IN THE CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION
FIFTH AVENUE AND TENTH STREET (PAGE 209)

WASHINGTON SQUARE 219

original proprietor of the farm in New Nether-
land, built the substantial old double house at the
corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, which
preserves its fine iron balconies, its pillared door,
within a small green enclosure, and a walled gar-
den to one side. Across the way the Brevoort
House maintains the name, distinguished in these
parts, and brings a distinct French flavour into
the avenue, the house being famous for its cuisine,
and largely patronized by the transient French
population of the city. The first masked ball
given in New York was held in 1840 in the house
of Henry Brevoort, an affair long held in dis-
repute by society on account of the occasion it
furnished Miss Mathilda Barclay, the beautiful
daughter of Anthony Barclay, the British consul,
to elope in fancy dress, domino, and mask with
young Burgwyne of South Carolina, of whom her
parents strongly disapproved. She went as Lalla
Rookh and he as Feramorz, and in this disguise
they slipped away from the ball, at four o'clock
in the morning, and were married. Anthony Bar-
clay was later dismissed for raising recruits dur-
ing the Crimean War.

At Twelfth Street the avenue undergoes an
abrupt change — no more fine doorways, no more
grills, gardens, or churches; but instead, a barren

220 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

skyscraper marks abruptly the line of demarca-
tion, and opposite a vacancy with remnants of a
handsome iron fence and garden extending beyond
the boarded-up empty lot where once stood a pala-
tial mansion, torn down, it is said, to save taxes.
As first laid out, Fifth Avenue was one hundred
feet wide, providing for a roadway of sixty feet
and sidewalks of twenty, but in 1833 and 1844
the city gave property owners permission to en-
croach fifteen feet for steps, courtyards, and por-
ticoes, of which we have so many ornamental
examples all through the lower part of the avenue
and the side streets that open from it. As traffic
grew, congestion increased, and against the most
emphatic protest from owners of private and busi-
ness buildings in behalf of their handsome en-
trances and areas, these were ordered removed in
1908, and the street widened to its originally
planned dimensions. For some beneficent reason
this was not carried out below Thirteenth Street,
where the difference in the width of the roadway
may be noticed, but above this line the destruction
to property by the ordinance was lamentable. One
could quite understand a testy proprietor, upon
receipt of a notice so disastrous to his property,
tearing down the whole affronted edifice in pref-
erence to spoiling his house, and there is so much

WASHINGTON SQUARE 221

temper displayed in the aspect of the demolition
at Twelfth Street, that one likes to think this the
explanation.

Proprietors met this order as best they might,
and took off their " encroachments " obediently,
suppressing the pretty grass plots and hand-
wrought iron fences and balconies; eliminating the
characteristic " stoop " leading to the salon story,
and, for the most part, making the entrance duck
under the sidewalk into the former area door, and
reconstructing that subterranean passage into a
more adequate approach for the foot of quality.
This accounts for the snubbed appearance of the
facades all the way up the avenue, where houses,
shorn of their grace, stand flush with the building
line, in uncompromising severity.

The old Van Beuren house, standing isolated in
its spacious garden in West Fourteenth Street,
suffered a similar indignity, when that thorough-
fare was widened and became the shopping centre
of the city. This was the second mansion of the
Spingler estate which adjoined the Brevoort farm
and part of which is now covered by Union
Square. Most of the property was inherited by
Mary S. Van Beuren, Spingler's granddaughter.
She built the brown-stone front house and lived
there for years, raising flowers and vegetables in

222 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the garden and keeping a cow and chickens. Ab-
surd as this sounds in the heart of Fourteenth
Street, there is nothing about the present aspect
of the neglected garden to preclude the idea of a
suburban farm, though the house has pretensions.

XI
GRAMERCY PARK

Literary and historic memories crowd the
quarter lying east of Union and Madison Squares,
where many old landmarks stand in a fair state
of preservation. Fortunately the neighborhood
still commends itself to the domain of arts and
letters, whose fraternity has established clubs in
the grander houses, or " improved " modest dwell-
ings along the lines of good taste, keeping to the
original character. Nineteenth Street is an in-
teresting example of what can be done to restore
decaying neighbourhoods, its regeneration having
been undertaken by Frederick Sterner, architect,
some years back, with the result now so happily
demonstrated.

Rambles in the old quarter are attended by a
confusion of sentiments in which, perhaps, in the
presence of things changed so little while changed
so much, a pervading tristesse is the dominant
note. In so many cases all the shell of what was
once so fine, so warm, so comfortable, is there —

224 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

while the traditions, the personalities, are gone
irrevocably. We must remember, in our wander-
ings, that the old Boston Post Road opened this
part of the island at an early date, so that the
land hereabouts must have been considered very
desirable for dwellings and farms, being along the
central highway of the advancing city. Stuyve-
sant Square and Gramercy Park were laid out
at about the same time that Washington Square
was developed as a place of fashionable residence;
and, being private parks, after the style of Bed-
ford and Russell Squares, in London, kept under
lock and key, and dedicated exclusively to the uses
of the property holders whose houses faced them,
attracted the best class of tenants that New York,
in those days, afforded.

Stuyvesant Square, originally part of • Peter
Stuyvesant's bouwerie, has been turned over to the
proletariat, and the environment has suffered a
gentle decadence, whose erstwhile dignity is still
brooded over by the ponderous Church of St.
George, standing high, dark, and imposing on the
western side, dating from about 1845. The church
contains an elaborate pulpit erected to the memory
of J. Pierpont Morgan, who belonged to the parish
for over fifty years, and was warden of the church
from 1885 until his death, in 1913. William M.

GRAMERCY PARK 225

Chase's home stands on the south side of the
square; he was buried from St. George's on
October 27, 1916.

Down in the old City Hall is preserved in the
Governor's Room a beautiful portrait of James
Duane, painted by John Trumbull, for the city,
in 1805. This canvas shows the head and shoul-
ders of a gentleman with long powdered hair,
curling at the ends; the face is turned to the left
and the keen, dark eyes look straight ahead.
When James Duane was mayor of New York his
country estate was a twenty-acre farm, lying along
the Boston Post Road, and known as Gramercy
Seat. Innes says that the name, Gramercy, was
the English rendering of Krom merssche, or Krom
moerasje, by which the Dutch indicated the
11 crooked little swamp " drained by Cedar Creek,
which flowed from what is now Madison Square
and emptied into the East River. Later the prop-
erty came into the possession of Samuel Ruggles,
and he, being keenly interested in the development
of the city, presented this choice little spot of land,
now known as Gramercy Park, in trust, to the
sixty lot owners whose property faced it. Accord-
ing to the deed, they were to surround the plot
with an iron railing with ornamental gates, and
by January, 1834, to lay out the grounds and plant

226 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

trees. The tenants thus benefited were then to
have access to the park for recreation, on payment
of an annual fee of ten dollars. Since the destruc-
tion of St. John's Park, this is the only private
enclosure of the kind left in New York. It is
still maintained by the tenants in the immediate
vicinity.

Gramercy Park, in its palmy days, was sur-
rounded by the private dwellings of many notable
people. The oldest house, facing the enclosure, is
said to be that of the late James W. Gerard, an
eminent lawyer of the last century, and active in
public affairs. Philip Hone's Diary speaks of
him often, giving an intimate picture of a charm-
ing and cultivated gentleman. Amongst other
public services he secured the incorporation of the
House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents, in
1824; and having accomplished that, devoted him-
self to costuming the police or " watchmen " of
the city, who up to this time wore no uniforms,
and could only be identified by means of a small
metal badge, worn under the lapel of the coat.
Mr. Gerard wore the new uniform, which his per-
sistency had caused to be adopted, at a fancy-dress
ball given by Mrs. Coventry Waddell, of Murray
Hill, in the Italian villa where Thackeray was en-
tertained. The Gerard house stands exteriorly

GRAMERCY PARK 227

intact on the south side of the square, joining the
original habitation of the Players' Club, of which
it is now part.

The Players' Club House, the former residence
of Valentine G. Hall, was purchased in 1888, by
Edwin Booth, who remodelled and furnished it,
and presented it to actors and friends of the drama
as " The Players." Booth made his home at
the Players' from the date of its opening until
his death, which took place in this house, June 7,
1898. Among the first directors of the club were
Laurence Hutton, Edwin Booth, Lawrence Bar-
rett, Brander Matthews, and William Bispham.

The club's miscellaneous collection of pictures
includes three handsome portraits by Sargent —
Booth, Barrett, and Joseph Jefferson. Booth is
painted in the character of Henry IV, and it was
Sargent's intention, as well as the wish of the club
to preserve in the portrait of Jefferson a picture
of that actor in his famous role, Rip Van Winkle.
Jefferson posed in costume during a long and try-
ing series of sittings, but the painter was never
satisfied with the result. One day at luncheon
both came in from a seance in an unusual state of
nerves, and Mrs. Bartlett, who was present, tried
to relieve Sargent's gloom by the suggestion that
upon seeing the portrait again, with a fresh eye,

228 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

he would agree with every one present in complete
satisfaction with the result. Sargent turned to
her and announced impressively: "I shall never
see it again." There was an emphatic silence in
which Jefferson realized the significance of this
peculiar speech — that the painter had destroyed
the product of their combined labours. " Then,"
said he, " you will never see me like that again."
True to his word he posed again only for the
head, and this, owned by the Players, is a masterly
Sargent.

The fine example of Stuart owned by the
Players is a portrait of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper,
an actor of note in the early nineteenth century,
presented to the club by his granddaughter, Mrs.
Louise Fairleigh Cooper. The mural paintings
in the club are by Edward Simmons.

The National Arts Club now occupies the for-
mer residence of Samuel J. Tilden, adjoining
the Players'. It is readily distinguished for its
curious facade, added when Mr. Tilden bought
the two houses, which it joins together. It is a
refined example of what was considered the quin-
tessence of elegance in those days, and was much
admired for its sculptured front; everything about
it — the style of its iron work, the rosettes in the
ornament, the variations in colour, the bay win-

GRAMERCY PARK 229

dows, and the pointed doorway and windows —
suggests the Centennial period of domestic archi-
tecture, considered a vast improvement over the
Georgian, which it succeeded and in this case re-
placed. All the appointments of the interior were
good and durable and on a handsome scale, for
Mr. Tilden was a man of culture and wealth.
When he died one of his bequests was $2,000,000
to the New York Public Library, to which he
added his library, consisting of 20,000 volumes.

For thirteen years before he ran for President,
Tilden was chairman of the Democratic State
Committee of New York. Nominated for Presi-
dent to succeed Grant, in 1876, he received a ma-
jority of the popular vote, but, owing to the fact
that the votes of several states were disputed,
the electoral commission, consisting of senators,
judges, and representatives, was appointed, and
this commission divided on party lines and gave
the disputed votes to Hayes. There seems to be
but little doubt that Tilden was elected, but party
feeling was so strong it was feared that, had
he been sustained, another civil war would have
resulted.

The gardens in the rear of the Tilden house
were the largest in the row, extending through the
block to Nineteenth Street, and were charmingly

230 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

laid out with box-bordered walks and flower-beds,
and shaded by large trees. When the National
Arts Club took over the property their extensions
covered the gardens, providing extensive gallery
space for exhibitions, which form a useful part of
the club's work. The permanent collection is
composed of paintings and sculpture contributed
by members.

Stanford White lived on the opposite side of the
square in the house now occupied by the Prince-
ton Club. Vines and a hedge mitigate the severity
of its Georgian style, that must, however, have
been pleasing to an architect.

Facetious New Yorkers dubbed the striped All
Souls' Church, of Unitarian denomination, the
Church of the Holy Zebra, when it first made its
unusual appearance just off Gramercy Park.
This was in the year 1854, long before New York
had become accustomed to see planted, on her stern
rock foundations, those exotics that now bloom
so easily in the strong sea-light, of the island city.
This medium Henry James, with great felicity of
expression, compares in abundance to " some ample
childless mother who consoles herself for her ste-
rility by an unbridled course of adoption." The
idea is very quaint and one seems to feel how loose
a rein she gave herself in selecting, as her first

GRAMERCY PARK 231

adoptive infant, this very positive foreigner, this
Basilica di San Gio Battista in Monza, this dis-
tinct type of northern Italian architecture, the
enthusiastic product of an ambitious architect,
Jacob Wrey Mould.

Jacob Wrey Mould was an Englishman, poor
fellow. Not " poor fellow " because he was
English, but because nobody connected with the
church, in those days, seems to have appreciated
him, except the president of the trustees, Moses
H. Grinnell, whom the pastor, Dr. Bellows, im-
patiently considered " bewitched by the architect."
By this we learn how earnest a partisan of the
beautiful was this sterling old merchant of the
last century. He alone had faith in the architect
and his plan, and his method of meeting financial
difficulties in the way of its construction was to
put his hand into his own pocket, and postpone
the pressure to a more convenient season for those
upon whom it was ultimately to fall. By this
means, and in spite of themselves, so to speak,
the " most generous, ardent, and hopeful of men,"
as Dr. Bellows is constrained in justice to de-
scribe him (though one can see he sorely tried
the practical clergyman, intent upon housing the
largest number of souls at the minimum expense),
secured to the congregation a handsome edifice,

232 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

and supported the ideals of an architect who was
only too evidently a " character," who had all the
human failings of his profession — the optimism,
the pride in his creation, and the plausible esti-
mates of expense. All of these the man of God
resented; and all of these Moses Grinnell under-
stood. We feel the reflection of her father's
impatience in Miss Bellows' allusion to Mould
as " what one might call a talented spendthrift.
Peace be to his remains ! " But she found the
church handsome and unique, though it excited
much derisive comment and received many nick-
names. " I thought the complicated and some-
what mysterious and inconvenient parsonage de-
lightful," she tells us, "but" (laconically) " my
mother did not.33

Caen stone and red brick laid alternately in
horizontal courses followed the Italian model
with an effect that no longer seems strange to
us; but it shocked the city and the congregation.
The latter felt the absurdity of their white
elephant the more keenly when the final reckon-
ing came and it was found that the architect had
exceeded his contract for the church and parson-
age by some $48,000; yet, notwithstanding this
unexpected drain upon its resources, the brave
congregation voted the sum set aside for the

RELIEF OF HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS, ALL SOULS' CHURCH
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS (PAGE 235)

GRAMERCY PARK 233

erection of the lofty campanile, that should have
completed the replica of its Umbrian prototype,
for the work of the United States Sanitary Com-
mission, during the Civil War, of which its
pastor, Henry Whitney Bellows, was both
founder and president. The church preserves
elaborate drawings of both San Gio Battista and
All Souls with the campanile as intended by the
architect, a feature which added greatly to the
effect of the ensemble.

Dr. Bellows' immense vitality found vent in
many directions for the public good. He be-
longed to the epoch of pulpit oratory, and his
extemporaneous speech was noted for its lucidity
and style. He was a successful champion of lost
causes and he made his pulpit the medium for
influencing and moulding public opinion. His
defence of the theatre, in which he appeared as
a vindicator of the drama as a public necessity,
had a wide, fruitful influence. It disabused many
consciences of morbid and false sentiments, and
it helped to put the drama on a new footing.
When the Civil War broke out Dr. Bellows
staked everything upon his belief in the church's
duty to support the government with all its
power, awaking in his congregation, by sheer
force of eloquence, a state of united and un-

234 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

qualified loyalty that carried its members into the
most important work in its history.

Bellows' great enterprise, the Sanitary Com-
mission, the precursor of the Red Cross Society,
engrossed him throughout the war; twenty mil-
lions of dollars in money or stores passed through
his hands; his associates served on over six hun-
dred battlefields, including skirmishes, and in-
numerable hospitals, camps, and soldiers' homes.
Besides this the commission collected and paid
over twelve million dollars' worth of soldiers'
claims, otherwise irrevocable. Eighteen years
after the outbreak of the Civil War, Dr. Bellows
made over the archives of his work to the Astor
Library, to be handed down in memory of the
largest voluntary charity in history for the use
of future generations.

Dr. Bellows remained pastor of All Souls' for
forty-three years, but notwithstanding his long
service and his full record of activity he died
a comparatively young man, not having attained
his sixty-eighth year. Four years after his death
his congregation erected the intensely virile por-
trait by Augustus Saint Gaudens, placed in the
church in June, 1886.

Unfortunately hedged in and deprived of day-
light, the interior can be seen only inadequately,

GRAMERCY PARK 235

and, except during service, through the com-
plaisance of the most efficient coloured sexton.
One enters through Dr. Bellows' house, now
transformed into a church house and a hive of
useful activities. One is often surprised, in a
heartless metropolis, at the individual attention,
almost provincial in its kindness and thorough-
ness, with which a stranger is sometimes re-
ceived, especially when externals are forbidding.
All Souls' Church looks, on the week-day, neg-
lected and shabby. Its stone work is scaling off,
its garden is overgrown, and its gates padlocked
and rusty. One hesitates to seek admittance, even
in quest of Saint Gaudens' matchless relief of the
former pastor, the chef d'oeuvre of its interior.
But at the church house one is received with
genial hospitality, and informed, piloted, person-
ally conducted, and illuminated by one of the
best qualified custodians of the many churches
visited in one's rounds of New York; and were
this a Baedecker, I should double star that
amiable sexton of All Souls' Church, as guide,
philosopher, and friend.

The memorial to Dr. Bellows, placed to the
left of the pulpit, is in the form of a life-size,
full-length figure, in comparatively high relief,
against a lettered and delicately decorated back-

236 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

ground. The subject, dressed in ample official
robes, stands, presenting a three-quarter view to
the spectator. Renaissance ornament surrounds
the bronze tablet, of which the whole arrange-
ment is perhaps the most eloquent example of
Saint Gaudens' great professional prowess not
only as technician, though that is indeed supreme
in this monument, but as psychologist, revealing
with unusual fluency the character, the force, the
style, the ensemble of a man, great in a very
special field of action.

The neighbourhood is rich hereabout in ghosts
of faded memories for those who have courage
for the disillusion that each and every identified
home of cherished literary memory presents. If
Washington Irving's house — poor derelict — seems
desoriente, distracted, in its abandonment on the
ragged edge of skyscraping invasion, how much
less suggestive of belles lettres is that dismal
apartment house, " remodelled on the French
plan," pointed out as Bayard Taylor's resi-
dence; or the Carey sisters' home, or the house
where Horace Greeley lived! If Henry James
felt the melancholy check and snub to the felici-
ties of his backward reach " in the presence, so to
speak, of the rudely, the ruthlessly suppressed
birth house ': in Washington Square, what are we

GRAMERCY PARK 237

to suppose must be Mr. Theodore Roosevelt's
emotions when he regards that terrible travesty
in Twentieth Street, its entire face opened to
the vulgar gaze, its discreet brown-stone features
annihilated by the flagrant burst of plate glass
from loft to basement, across which reads the
lurid inscription — " Theodore Roosevelt was born
in this house."

In still another of the transverse thorough-
fares a to-let sign is the only distinguishing in-
signia of the once charming abode of William
Cullen Bryant, while the Cruger Mansion, the
birthplace of the Metropolitan Museum, is now
levelled to the democratic uses of the Salvation
Army.

Assuredly oblivion is better than this.

XII

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES

In its present state of stupid decadence it is
hard, even for one who knew it in its prime, to
visualize Union Square as it was not more than
a quarter of a century ago, the very acme of
fashionable shopping districts for the wealthy
residents of Fifth Avenue, whose homes are now
obliterated by the prevailing " loft " buildings
from Twelfth Street to Madison Square. " In
those days " the shopper left Fifth Avenue at
Madison Square and followed Broadway to the
cluster of big shops that faced the square or
lined its approach. The atmosphere of the place
was gay and charming, somewhat after the
fashion of Tremont Street in Boston, which
gains colour and vivacity from the Common. So
Union Square, with its green grass, its fountain
playing in the centre, its equestrian statue of
Washington, and its horses and carriages stand-
ing before fine shops, had distinctly an air. At
night, too, during the season, the place was ani-

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 239

mated, for the Academy of Music at Fourteenth
Street and Irving Place was the opera house, and
Wallack's Theatre stood just below the square,
on Broadway.

Tiffany moved to Union Square from Broome
Street in 1870, remaining until 1905, when that
shop was again a pioneer in the movement which
carried the exclusive trade into the upper reaches
of Fifth Avenue. The publishing houses of
Schirmer and Ditson were installed here during
these palmy days, and the Gorham Company,
Vantine's, and many of the better class depart-
ment stores were located in Broadway beyond
the square. Rounding " Dead Man's Curve,"
which led into the deep mysteries of the " way
downtown " section of Broadway, was one of
the adventures of surface travel, when the cable
road was built. The cars used to take the double
curve from the west side of Union Square into
Broadway at full speed, on the theory that it
was impossible to let go and grip the cable again
while the car was on the curve. This, for a long
time, the authorities believed, and the innumer-
able resulting accidents were supposed to be un-
avoidable and gave rise to the lugubrious title.

Some patching in the city plan is felt at Union
Square. In colonial days the Bowery followed

240 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the present line of Fourth Avenue from Fourth
Street to Union Square, where it turned, in
passing the space now devoted to the park, and
pursued a course due north. From this turn,
at about Seventeenth Street, it was called the
Bloomingdale Road, since its objective point was
the old Dutch hamlet of Bloemendaal — famous
for its horticultural nurseries — not far from
Haarlem. Here were farms and country seats
of wealthy citizens, overlooking the Hudson.
When Broadway was developed from Hendrick
Brevoort's house, it was bent to the left so as to
connect with the old Bloomingdale Road, now
upper Broadway.

When the Croton Reservoir was built, in 1842,
on the site now occupied by the Public Library,
one of its first extravagances was to supply the
fountain in Union Square with water. This was
the first attempt to beautify the square, which the
grudging commissioners had left merely because
so many streets intersected at this point that
it seemed the simplest solution of the tangle.

The majestic equestrian statue of Washington
that so superbly dominates Union Square was a
gift to the city from its merchants, the fund being
raised by subscriptions of four hundred dollars
each, through the earnest efforts of Colonel Lee.

EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF WASHINGTON, UNION SQUARE
HENRY KIRKE BROWN, SCULPTOR (PAGE 242)

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 241

Horatio Greenough, our first professional sculp-
tor, he who made the classic marble of Washing-
ton for the Capitol, projected the scheme of this
equestrian statue and was to have undertaken the
work with Henry Kirke Brown, but after having
done much to arouse enthusiasm and promote
subscriptions, finally abandoned the enterprise.

Considered a great achievement in its day, and
the first equestrian to be erected in New York
since the destruction of the statue of George III,
in Bowling Green, it still remains one of the best
in the country. One other, only, is older, that
of Jackson, by Clark Mills, which stands before
the White House in Washington, finished in
1853.

Greenough was a confirmed classicist, having,
under the tutelage of Thorwaldsen, allied himself
with the classic revival in sculpture in Italy. Had
he carried out the statue, he would surely have
made our American hero look like Caesar, Marcus
Aurelius, or Apollo Belvidere, as was the custom
in his world of ideality. But Kirke Brown was
of different stuff, and his work was an important
development of what had remained to his day
an alien art. He was in reality the first American
sculptor, the first, that is to say, to express some-
thing essentially national, and he owed less to

242 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Europe than did any of his predecessors and
colleagues who modelled figures.

He began his career as a portrait painter,
studying in Boston under Chester Harding at
the age of eighteen, but soon gave up painting
for sculpture, keeping himself by means of tire-
less industry, yet unable to reach Europe, with-
out which no artist then hoped to attain dis-
tinction, until 1842, when he was thirty-eight
years of age. During his four years in Italy he
made the marble statuettes and reliefs expected
of sculptors at that time, but he did not fit into
the environment of the old world, and they could
not make a classicist of him. Upon his return to
the United States he vindicated his independence
by making a series of studies of Indians, and later
received commissions for a large bas-relief for
the Church of the Annunciation in New York,
and a statue of De Witt Clinton for Greenwood
Cemetery, where stands also his " Angel of the
Resurrection." His studio was in the old Ro-
tunda in Broadway, the first home of the National
Academy. Brown established a miniature bronze
foundry there and cast many of his smaller works
in metal.

The equestrian statue of Washington marks
the spot where the citizens met the Commander-

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 243

in-Chief of the army when he reentered the city-
after the British evacuation, November 25, 1783.
Washington, Tuckerman tells us, is represented
"in the act of calling his troops to repose; the
figure is bareheaded, the hat resting on his bridle
arm, the sword sheathed, the right hand extended
as if commanding quiet; the drapery is the simple
Continental uniform."*

The silhouette of the group is compact, its total
mass in dignified relation to the simple pedestal.
The horse is large and spirited; the rider com-
manding, his control of his mount revealing the
character of the man in whom we feel essentially
the leader, while his noble gesture conjures the
vision of the army of patriots to whom it speaks.
The statue has serene dignity, composure, equi-
librium— the attributes of great art. Commenced
in February, 1853, it was finished and inaugur-
ated, with impressive ceremonies, on the eightieth
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,
July 4, 1856.

Kirke Brown, like Verrocchio, has been called
a man of one masterpiece; and if the equestrian
statue of the condottiere, Bartolomeo Colleoni, in
the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice, has
remained, with the famous Gattamelata, of Dona-

* "Book of the Artists," p. 575.

244 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

tello, the type of such things for the sculptors
of succeeding generations, this noble conception
of Washington has more than held its place in
the annals of American sculpture, in whose re-
shaping Kirke Brown was a strong force. He
and Clark Mills, indeed, were pioneers in the re-
action against the classic revival, which under
Thorwaldsen and Canova had spread its mere-
tricious influence throughout the civilized world.
Brown boldly rejected the lifeless tradition, and,
especially through his pupil, John Quincy Adams
Ward, who assisted in the making of the statue
of Washington, fathered an American school of
sculpture that stood for the honest representation
of things as they are. These old fellows, with all
their faults, directed at least a movement towards
something American and related to their time.
Ward, who was brought up in Brown's studio,
broke thoroughly free, and during his long and
honourable life was a tremendous influence in that
first national movement.

Ward's vitality in resisting the condition of art
in Italy, to which he, of course, went in due
course, was a veritable stemming of the tide; and
his words, preserved in that charming and just
appreciation of the sculptor written by Mrs.
Herbert Adams, express the profundity of his

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 245

convictions. " ' A cursed atmosphere,' cries Ward.
* The magnetism of the antique statues is so
strong that it draws a sculptor's manhood out
of him. A modern man has modern themes to
deal with; and if art is a living thing, a serious,
earnest thing, fresh from a man's soul, he must
live in that of which he treats — an American
sculptor will serve himself and his age best by-
working at home.' "

We have seen how straightforward was Ward's
dealing with the great Washington, before the
Sub-Treasury; with the Greeley statue in City
Hall Park; and we shall see later before the
Brooklyn Borough Hall, his most uncompromis-
ing portrait of Henry Ward Beecher, so ugly
in its fidelity to fact, so little subtle in the
expression of those extraneous figures that en-
cumber its base. But the value of these rugged,
basic truths, even when unpalatable, is not to be
disparaged.

Ward had a fund of human interest and
psychology, but little sculptural feeling. After
him came Saint Gaudens, who added to the elder
sculptor's qualities the inestimable attribute of
beauty. The three pioneers — Mills, Brown, and
Ward — had paved the way for distinguished
American expression, opened the door for Saint

246 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Gaudens who arrived with the general awakening
that followed the Centennial, when Paris, not
Rome, became the objective point of students and
the French-trained sculptor rose into prominence
and dominated the field of vision. Saint Gaudens
was " finished," so to speak, in the Beaux Arts,
but he was primarily a product of Ward's atelier,
so that he relates directly to our movement, of
which he was, in his day, the ultimate flower.
The sculptors that follow in his train have lost
the old basic foundation of those American
pioneers and their work without • it becomes
meaningless and empty. This condition has
developed the portrait statue, as we know it
to-day, in all its monumental stupidity — the
demand for which has practically killed sculpture
in this country, so far as the national movement
is concerned.

And with that decline came also the Teutonic
invasion of the field, an influence now predom-
inant with us. The Germans, in their monu-
mental and applied sculpture, generally speaking,
went back to the old neo-Greek, and were a
factor in the commercialization of sculpture under
which baleful influence we are now suffering.
How the case stands may be appreciated by a
glance at the membership list of the National

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 247

Sculpture Society, which shows that body to be
largely composed of foreign-born artists.

With the exception of Clark Mills, who is not
represented in the city, New York furnishes a
field for the study of the development of sculp-
ture in America to any one sufficiently interested
to look it up. To study Canova we shall have
to penetrate a private collection — Senator Clark
owns an example; Thorwaldsen, the Danish
classicist, is represented at an upper entrance of
Central Park, with a life-sized portrait statue of
himself; Central Park abounds in the most pain-
ful pre-Centennial conceptions of sculpture, that
show the wearing away of the Italian influence,
with nothing vital to replace it. " The Falconer,"
by George Simonds, a sculptor who resided in
Rome, is a typical example of this vapid period,
for which undoubtedly Hiram Powers' " Greek
Slave," shown at the Crystal Palace exposition,
in 1853, set the public taste, for it was fondly
believed to be the greatest work of sculpture
known to history. One can realize how far we
have come since our first world's fair, when we
learn that some time during the famous domina-
tion of the Tweed Ring in New York one of
their aesthetic measures was to paint all the bronze
statues in Central Park white, to simulate marble.

248 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

This was at about the time of the Centennial, or
just prior to it.

The statue of the youthful Lafayette, by
Bartholdi, which stands at the head of Broadway
in Union Square, shows the decline of classic
influence, still, however, quite apparent in the
use of the toga, thrown across the shoulder of the
figure to give sculptural mass. This is interest-
ing as showing how difficult it was for sculptors
of his period to give up dependence on the Roman
models. Lafayette wears his drapery, over his
eighteenth century uniform, very much as Ger-
manicus wore his in the famous classic statue
of that hero.

Nor need one leave Union Square to look into
the matter of German influence, for here we
have a notorious example of the native product —
the small bronze fountain by Adolf Donndorf, of
Stuttgart, a gift to the city, in 1881. As for the
neo-Greek sculpture by our foreign-born residents,
that is rife about the lower part of the city in
the neighbourhood of City Hall Park, especially
some caryatides in that vicinity, some groups on
the municipal buildings, the portrait statues of
Franklin and Gutenberg in front of the Staats
Zeitung Building, and the Franklin by Plassman
in Printing House Square. Union and Madison

uli _

THE FARRAGUT STATUE, BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
PEDESTAL DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE
MADISON SQUARE (PAGE 249)

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 249

Squares and Central Park furnish prolific
examples of the stupid portrait statue that grew
out of the decadence of classic influence; while
with the later period of commercial portrait we
are only too well supplied.

Two years after the general awakening of 1876
came the important commissions for the statues
of Admiral Farragut and Robert Randall; and
here we have proof of Ward's large-mindedness,
for it was he who decided a committee, wavering
between the eligibility of himself and Saint
Gaudens, who had just come back from Paris,
for the monument to Farragut. " Give the young
man a chance," said Ward; and the commission
was passed to Saint Gaudens.

The Farragut statue, unveiled in 1881, on the
Fifth Avenue side of Madison Square, marked
again a departure in sculpture in this country,
and had the advantage of the collaboration of a
distinguished architect in the design of the exedra
upon which the standing figure of the admiral is
so handsomely mounted. Saint Gaudens executed
the figure in Paris, showing it in the salon of
1880. When he returned to New York, he spent
much time with Stanford .White in designing and
perfecting the pedestal, which was so to modify
and amplify the civic traditions on this important

250 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

subject. This was not effected without the
demolition of some of the city's cherished rules,
for New York had enacted a labour-saving regu-
lation that all pedestals should follow a uniform
design; and this proved so much of an obstacle
that at one time Saint Gaudens threatened to
withdraw his figure unless the pedestal should be
" permitted " as designed. In the end, of course,
the sculptor and architect prevailed, with the
result here so happily displayed. The ceremony
of unveiling was made a great occasion, and with
it Saint Gaudens stepped into the high place in
American sculpture, which he occupied with in-
creasing honour until his death, in 1907.

The statue of Farragut was made when the
sculptor was thirty years old. Upon it the base
of Saint Gaudens' great reputation rests; and
while in New York its merits are often balanced
with those of the Sherman equestrian group, at
the entrance to Central Park; the Peter Cooper,
in Cooper Square; and the relief of Dr. Bellows,
in the All Souls' Church — all later works — it has
never had to yield precedence to any, but holds its
own by force of its splendid vigor and youthful
plasticity. It has the essential characteristics of
the portrait but so combined with the attitude of
the artist that the figure stands as much more

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 251

than a portrait, having in it something more
living, more typical, deeper than the mere out-
ward mould of the man. Saint Gaudens' Farra-
gut has the bearing of a seaman, balanced on
his two legs, in a posture easy, yet strong. He
is rough and bluff with the courage and sim-
plicity of a commander; his eye is accustomed to
deal with horizons, while the features are clean-
cut and masterful. The inscription is happy:
' That the memory of a daring and sagacious
commander and gentle great-souled man, whose
life from childhood was given to his country, but
who served her supremely in the war for the
Union, 1861-1865, may be preserved and hon-
oured; and that they who come after him and
who will love him so much may see him as he
was seen by friend and foe, his countrymen have
set up this monument A.D. MDCCCLXXXI."
The pedestal, like which nothing had been seen
in this country, was much discussed at the time
of its erection, and became the prototype of the
numerous exedras which followed throughout the
country. Richard Watson Gilder eulogized it
sympathetically in his magazine,* and no one
ever seemed to suggest that its cleverness was
just a little in excess of its depth, or that the

* Scribners, June, 1881.

252 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

suave lines of those conventional females, personi-
fying Courage and Patriotism, were a bit weak
and inept as companions to the man who took
the fleet past the forts in Mobile Bay; so that
the monument always seems to me to separate
into two parts — one very strong, the other very
beautiful, between which there is no coherent
sympathy, but a very certain ambiguity.

These ladies belong clearly to the same
family as those, more fortunately placed by Stan-
ford White, on the Gorham Building, further
up the avenue, and felicitously sculptured by
Andrew O'Connor. To the trade of the silver-
smith, in its highest expression, they do most
admirably belong, and the pendentives on this
building, which Mr. Arnold Bennett brought
into agreeable prominence by his unstinted praise
of its cornice — the finest in New York, he called
it — are one of the pleasures of the ride up the
avenue.

Saint Gaudens and White again collaborated
on the graceful tower of the Madison Square
Garden, modelled on that of the Giralda, at
Seville. The gilded Diana, which surmounts the
whole, is another early work of the sculptor of
the Farragut monument, a finial figure, inspired
by Houdon's " Diana of the Louvre." Her fate

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 253

hangs in the balance, with that of the building
over which she is poised; for the building has an
unforgivable fault — it never "paid." And just
for that " they " say it has got to come down,
and the beautiful golden Diana is to be sold at
auction to the highest bidder. Before this book
is published its destiny may be decided, but none
can foretell it now. The best that it can wildly
hope is a refuge in a museum, where, denied its
setting, robbed of its associations, its day will
be done.

Both the Farragut statue and the pleasure
house, erected ten years later, have been thrust
out of scale by the heavy intrusion of office
buildings on the east side: yet the Farragut holds
by its integral weight as a work of art, and the
Madison Square Garden remains an imposing
monument to the genius of its architect. Old
prints of New York show how these two kindred
works used to sound the note of the square, a note
now brazenly taken for modernity by the bump-
tious Metropolitan Tower, whose ugly bulk
quashed the pretty charm of the fine trees and
fountain, putting the very sky out of scale, and,
as a last word in impertinence, claiming derivation
from — oh shade of St. Marks! — the Campanile of
Venice.

254 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

The Tower replaces the first site of the Madi-
son Square Presbyterian Church, which gradually
became enclosed by the encroaching Metropolitan
Life Insurance Building. On the opposite corner
stood, until not more than ten years ago, the Cath-
arine Lorillard Wolfe mansion, a fine old brown-
stone dwelling, and one of the landmarks of the
square, once an exclusive residential neighbour-
hood. When this house came upon the market
it was bought by John R. Hegeman, of the Metro-
politan Company, ostensibly for his own use.
After holding it for a time, Mr. Hegeman, speak-
ing for the company, offered to exchange the
Wolfe house and lot, valued at about $700,000,
for the site of Dr. Parkhurst's Church, the lots
being of equal size and value, and, to make the
offer more attractive to the trustees and congre-
gation, to " throw in " an extra $300,000 for good
measure.

This apparently handsome offer the church
accepted. Nothing had been said about the char-
acter of the structure that was to replace the
original church, and which now sinks it into a well
of darkness. Although the new church was dedi-
cated only ten years ago (1907) it was not
thought necessary to pursue a fleeing congre-
gation into the outskirts of the city. The church

INTERIOR MADISON SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
LOUIS C. TIFFANY AND STANFORD WHITE (PAGE 256)

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 255

was called " The Madison Square Presbyterian
Church," and the trustees had no wish to destroy
the significance of that honourable title. So set
were they upon remaining in their original locality,
that when an endowment fund was subscribed for
the maintenance of the church, it was stipulated
that the foundation was to be available only during
such time as the church should occupy its present
location, after which, supposing it was ever found
expedient to move in spite of the conditions, the
fund should be forfeit and the amount paid over to
the Presbyterian Hospital.

With all these details understood the manage-
ment set about the construction of an edifice that
should compare with the most beautiful churches
of New York. Stanford White was the archi-
tect. His tragic death occurred the year before
the church was ready for occupancy, and it rep-
resents therefore the last important work of New
York's most noted architect. White conceived it
as a Roman basilica. The exterior is exceedingly
beautiful, executed in grey brick, throughout
which is repeated, in the manner of a diaper
pattern, the Maltese Cross, giving variety and
interest to the surface. The porch is supported
by exquisite pillars of polished granite.

White never stopped short of the best. His

256 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

buildings were modelled after the noblest types;
their details were executed by the ablest talent
that the country afforded. The effective white
figures on the blue enamel of the pediment, which
gives colour to the facade, were designed by
H. Siddons Mowbray and executed by him
in combination with the sculptor, Adolph
Weinman.

The interior follows the spirit of the Mosque
of Santa Sophia, in Constantinople, the greatest
achievement of its style, the most satisfactory of
all domed interiors. In its elaboration the archi-
tect collaborated with Louis Tiffany, who lent
himself to the task with the more ardour, perhaps,
because the Tiffany family belonged to this
church. The general tone of the colour scheme
is gold, to which the enriched dome and the
ornamental chancel organs contribute the positive
notes, while the interior is, perhaps, most notably
a monumental example of the Tiffany favrile
glass, in whose happy use the building has no
rival.

The church gets little or no daylight, and the
effect of the iridescent windows, executed in this
beautiful substance, simulates light in an extraor-
dinary way. The light which appears to come
through them is really the reflection of the light

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 257

thrown upon them from the many electroliers,
themselves marvels of originality. The central
designs of the windows, representing biblical
subjects, in circles, are surrounded by smaller
circles enclosing symbols of the seasons, done in
leaded glass, the whole idea being unique both in
conception and in execution.

The chancel wall presents in one continuous
block of lettering the Ten Commandments, done
in the favrile glass on a white mosaic background.
The effect suggests mother-of-pearl, and is ex-
tremely delicate and refined, as indeed are all the
embellishments of the interior, about which there
is nothing ostentatious. The surfaces are richly
wrought with encHess detail, but with such discre-
tion that the interior seems to draw upon an inex-
haustible source of beauty, which the eye dis-
covers little by little, sounding new depths at each
renewed vision.

Hopkinson Smith has spoken of Madison
Square in the spring as a " mosaic of light and
shade." * It made, in its day, its wide appeal to
artists, and so we have ample record of its for-
mer brilliancy and charm. Its name in those
days seemed to evoke, more than any other fre-
quented spot, the physical semblance of the city?

•"Charcoals of New York," F. Hopkinson Smith.

258 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the picture of gaiety and sunshine, of freedom
and fresh air, of chic coupes drawn by spanking
teams of glossy horses, of breezy pedestrians
taking with pleasure the sprint across the square,
itself the merry playground of happy children,
the resting-spot of nounous and sleeping, lace-
frilled babies.

It was James Harper, of the distinguished firm
of publishers, whose influence preserved, beauti-
fied, and increased the public lands originally
planned and used as a " Parade Ground.'' The
park was opened during his administration as
mayor of New York, in 1844. He also stimu-
lated the purchase of additional territory, closed
the old Boston Post Road, whose bed is indicated
by the double row of trees leading from the foun-
tain north, and ordered Fifth Avenue filled in
and regulated from Twenty-third to Twenty-
eighth Streets. The potter's field, established
here, in 1794, had been banished to Washington
Square after a short tenure, being considered an
eyesore on the popular afternoon drive — the four-
teen miles around, as Washington called it, cov-
ered by following the Bloomingdale Road to
Harlem Heights, and returning along the Boston
Post Road.

The Fifth Avenue Hotel, at Twenty-third

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 259

Street and Fifth Avenue, replaced the ancient
road-house kept by Corporal Thompson, and
known, in coaching days, as the Madison Cottage.
The hotel, built in 1858, was a six-story structure
of white marble, containing every then known
luxury, including the first passenger elevator —
called a " vertical railroad."

The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, was
entertained here on his visit to this country, in
1860; the Emperor Dom Pedro, of Brazil, and
the Empress stayed at the hotel in 1876; and
Presidents Lincoln and Grant were among the
celebrated guests. General William T. Sherman,
William J. Florence, the actor,- and ex-Senator
Thomas C. Piatt, the republican boss, made their
homes here. The Fifth Avenue Hotel remained
a feature of the avenue for fifty years, when it
was torn down to make way for the Fifth Avenue
Building, which now marks this historic site.

Madison Square has suffered more than most
public places in New York from misguided efforts
at embellishment. The portrait statue of Gov-
ernor Seward, by Randolph Rogers, of Rogers'
group fame, is only interesting as showing the
state of mind towards sculpture just prior to the
Centennial. It had, to the American critic of
its period, the inestimable advantage of having

260 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

been made in Rome, though not indeed as a
portrait of Governor Seward. A certain am-
biguity of character, in the long, loosely hung
limbs and bony frame, substantiates the current
scandal that Rogers modelled it as a portrait of
Lincoln and, failing to dispose of it under that
guise, made a new head and sold it as Seward.
Its hard, dry academicism presents all the stu-
pidity of its epoch. Bissell's Chester A. Arthur
and Ward's Roscoe Conkling were given to the
city about twenty years later; while still later a
flood of mediocre sculpture was let loose upon the
over-decorated building of the Appellate Court,
on the east side of the square.

The Appellate Court House, designed by James
Brown Lord, architect, was completed in 1900,
and represents a new departure in municipal
buildings. It has the great misfortune to have
been erected on an L-shaped plot of ground,
alongside of which fronted Twenty-fifth Street,
so that the main facade was obliged to face that
narrow street, while only an end is visible from
the square, whence its features might be sup-
posed to have gained by an effective approach.
The absence of any sort of setting for so formid-
able an array of personalities as those presented
by the sky-line of statues merely, to say nothing

Copley Print.

Copyright by Henry Oliver Walker
Copyright, 1899, by Curtis and Cameron

DECORATIVE PANEL, WISDOM, BY HENRY OLIVER WALKER
APPELLATE COURT HOUSE, MADISON SQUARE (PAGE 264)

<■ « e • (. •

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 261

of the more pregnant symbolic groups of this
exorbitant structure, seems to express the high
pitch of competition reached in this central cur-
rent of desirability.

No less than sixteen sculptors were in the con-
spiracy to make the Appellate Court House com-
mit this unpardonable breach of reticence; to
announce from its own house top the intellectual
sources of its legal precedent, claiming derivation,
it is to be supposed, from those ten law-givers of
antiquity, carved as finials to the main uprights
of the building itself; standing upon those tried
and sound virtues — Wisdom and Justice, — or
assertively proud of its Force and of the inevi-
table Triumph of Law over Anarchy, with its
resultant Peace. Morning, Noon, Evening, and
Night* and throughout the Seasons, it is alle-
gorically put to us, will these conscious virtues
operate for eternal good, until the mighty hand
of civic progress shall come along and sweep the
whole florid structure into the dust.

There was once a genial and delightful member
of a shabby, Bohemian club in Philadelphia, where
camaraderie was cherished to the exclusion of the
minor qualities of law and order and so-called
good behaviour. In good time the club prospered,
and feeling the weight of its purse, moved out of

262 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

its hospitable attic into a house of its own. With
this removal came new responsibilities, and house
committees began to take themselves and their
duties seriously, so that finally a hostile sort of
discipline crept into the little club, and this the
older members, and those of the younger set
with the cult for camaraderie, resented with whim-
sical bitterness, like naughty children under the
rule of a conscientious stepmother. The genial
and delightful member was one of these, and, sad
to relate, he clung to his Bohemian proclivities,
and distressed his stepmother house committee
by feats of drunkenness in which he reverted com-
pletely to his type and seemed to think himself
still a member of that attic club of shameful mem-
ory. Finally he was expelled. Not only had he,
when confused by wine, poured libations into the
grand piano; it was cited, as the culmination of
his depredations, that once the sight of a neat and
orderly row of bottles and glasses ranged upon a
classic mantelpiece had so enraged him that with
one sweep of his strong right arm he cleared the
shelf, scattering destruction in his path. If some
benign giant Bacchus could but, in a state of
super-intoxication, with a mighty gesture sweep
the offending impedimenta from the roof of the
Appellate Court, where Manu, Mohammed, Zoro-

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 263

aster, Confucius, and the others are ranged with
maddening neatness, what a relief it would be to
brain and eyes.

If in its outer surfaces the Appellate Court
protests too much, from the iconoclastic point of
view, so also the richly embellished interior seems
to " overdo " the symbolic, to have dragged all
the rivers of learning and power that no minute
particle of wisdom be left unexploited in this
verbose statement of authority. The psychologi-
cal effect of such magnificent courts upon the
simple offender was not lost upon so subtle an
observer as Mr. Anatole France; and one can
understand another Crinquebille awed by the
luxury of this one, and even flattered by an
unjust sentence coming from august beings in-
spired by such dreams of classic equity.

The handsome frieze, which ornaments the Main
Hall, holds together well in colour, though painted
by three artists with different ideas — Henry Sid-
dons Mowbray, Robert Reid, and Willard L.
Metcalf. This frieze, in bright colours, in the
illuminated style, harmonizes excellently with the
handsome onyx walls. On entering, Mr. Mow-
bray's section is opposite, Mr. Reid's to the right,
Mr. Metcalf's to the left and carried over to the
entrance wall, where also, between the doors, are

264 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

two lunettes by Charles Yardley Turner. The
series by Mr. Mowbray, representing the Trans-
mission of the Law, is conceived in the best deco-
rative spirit. A formal winged figure, repeated
from space to space, carrying a scroll, links the
groups together; and these intermediate groups
form an historical sequence of law-givers, from
Moses to the Greeks; from the Romans onward
to the Common Law of England and down to
the black-robed judges of to-day.

Reid's decoration, neither realistic in treatment
nor flat and decorative, is beautiful in colour, with
blue predominating; while Metcalf has seen his
problem more in the light of easel pictures, in
which the symbolism is ineffective and obscure.

The three panels, for which the court-house is
famed, are in the Court Room, an ornate chamber,
opening off the Main Hall. These panels by
Edward Simmons, Henry Oliver Walker, and
Edwin Howland Blashfield, three of our most
eminent mural painters, are the feature of the
Appellate Court, and bring it at once into the
class of those more consistently conceived struc-
tures, with which it was contemporary, the Boston
Public Library and the Library of Congress.

At this time, between 1888 and 1897, following
the admirable lead of the French nation, which

UNION AND MADISON SQUARES 265

had secured in the decorations of the Hotel de
Ville and the Petit Palais, in Paris, as well as in
the Pantheon, and other municipal buildings, ex-
amples of the work of all of its great living paint-
ers, the feeling had become strong here that
American artists should be represented in the
public buildings of our cities, and the whole ques-
tion of mural painting became the live issue that
it is to-day. If Boston was more fastidious in her
choice of painters and sculptors, Washington laid
special unction to her soul in the fact that all the
artists commissioned by the government were both
native and resident.

In conforming to a practice so salutary to the
cause of American art, the intention of the Appel-
late Court cannot be too highly respected. It
secured the work of many artists towards its em-
bellishment. Certainly the painters of the Court
Room panels attacked the work in the right spirit,
and have collaborated with much success.

To the right and left of the three central pic-
tures are the seals of the State and City of New
York, by George Willoughby Maynard, and the
remaining panels are the work of Kenyon Cox
and Joseph Lauber.

XIII

MURRAY HILL

Caprice has settled, for the moment, our shift-
ing centre of seething, whirling, metropolitan ac-
tivity upon the summit of Murray Hill, sweep-
ing, hurtling, before the advancing march of trade,
the older residence quarter, now as buried and for-
gotten and inconceivable as the cornfield where
Washington tried to rally his troops, on Robert
Murray's farm, somewhere between the sites of the
Grand Central Station and Bryant Park. At
the manor house of Incleberg, the Murray estate,
which stood near the present intersection of Park
Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street, Mrs. Murray
entertained General Howe and the British offi-
cers so hospitably, with her fine old Madeira, that
Washington and Putnam were given time to mus-
ter the Continental soldiers, who, in sad disorder
and panic-stricken, filled the farms and fields in
the neighbourhood of Murray Hill. Washington's
army had been disastrously worsted on Long

MURRAY HILL 267

Island, and was in flight; the leader's superhuman
efforts to rally his men were thrillingly described
by General Greene, who remarked: "He sought
death, rather than life." Meanwhile Mrs. Mur-
ray * was beguiling and flattering General Howe
and passing the good cheer, with the assurance
that the Continental troops had so long passed
that way that pursuit was useless; and Washing-
ton and Putnam, having rounded up their men,
withdrew them in safety to Harlem Heights,
where was fought the only battle of the Revolu-
tion, within the limits of the present city, that
resulted in victory for the Americans. This suc-
cess clinched the dogged determination of their
commander and made possible the brilliant ex-
ploits at Trenton and Princeton.

The steep, upward slope of the Avenue from
the Waldorf Hotel to the Public Library con-
tributes much to the brilliant effect of the great
showy thoroughfare, known primitively as the
backbone of the island, in the days when the first
John Jacob Astor had the foresight to buy the
middle ground, instead of the then much more
desirable East River shore. At the commence-

* Mrs. Murray, who died soon after this patriotic incident, was
a Miss Lindley of Philadelphia, a famous Quaker belle. Her son
was Lindley Murray, the grammarian.

268 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

ment of the present century, Mr. Astor began in-
vesting the profits of commercial ventures in real
estate upon Manhattan Island, whose immense
future value he was one of the first to foresee.
He bought meadows and farms in the track which
the growth of the city would follow, trusting to
time to multiply their worth.

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel covers the site of
two former Astor residences. The Waldorf was
built in 1893 by William Waldorf Astor upon
the site of John Jacob's town house, while, in
1897, Colonel Astor erected the Astoria on the
Thirty-fourth Street corner of Fifth Avenue, to
replace his father's house. The Waldorf was
called after the little village near Heidelberg,
from which the founder of the family's fortune
emigrated; and the Astoria was named for his
greatest enterprise, the settlement of Astoria, at
the mouth of the Columbia River, the subject of
Washington Irving's novel of that name. The
two hotels are now operated under one manage-
ment.

The hotels when built were considered the last
word in sumptuous luxury, and besides being
overlaid with gilt wherever possible, upholstered
in velvet, and encrusted with marbles, were lav-
ishly decorated by the chief of the available Amer-

Copyright by Edward Simmons
Copley Print. Copyright, 1897, by Curtis and Comeron

JANUARY, FROM A SERIES OF MURAL PAINTINGS REPRESENTING THE
MONTHS AND SEASONS IN THE ASTOR GALLERY OF THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL
BY EDWARD SIMMONS (PAGE 269)

MURRAY HILL 269

ican decorators of the period; and some of these
managed their work so skilfully, despite a gen-
eral fatness in the whole voluptuous scheme, that
one room, at least of the half dozen treated, re-
mains one of the fine things in the city, in its con-
sistent moderation. This is the Astor Gallery,
designed after the manner of the Hotel de Soubise,
in Paris, decorated with sixteen allegorical pen-
dentives representing the months and the seasons,
by Edward Simmons. These are considered
among the best work done by this talented mural
painter, of which the city contains so much. The
motives are joyous groups of women and cupids,
exquisitely painted, without ponderous allegory,
but light and charming simply, in sentiment as
well as treatment.

The Astoria restaurant contains murals by C.
Y. Turner; the Marie Antoinette Room, a ceiling
representing the " Birth of Venus," by Will Low;
the small ballroom, in the Waldorf side, a ceiling
by Fowler, and lunettes by Armstrong; the Red
Room, or Library, a frieze by Maynard; while
the grand ballroom, besides six lunettes by Low,
is enriched by an early and beautiful decoration
bv Edwin Howland Blashfield, of which the sub-
ject — Music and the Dance — is treated in a large
oval ceiling panel, in delicate and charming colour.

270 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

A vaulted effect of sky is intended, in which ap-
pears a celestial orchestra, composed of two groups
of half-draped nudes — at one end playing the
strings and at the other the cymbals and wind
instruments, and crowning a central figure with
bay.

The Waldorf was a pioneer in this country in
the matter of hotel decoration, setting a standard
which newer hotels strove to reach or surpass.
The Imperial, the Martinique, the McAlpin — all
nearby, in Broadway — and the Vanderbilt, over
on Park Avenue, are all lavishly decorated with
varying success. The Imperial, built by McKim,
Mead, and White, about twenty-five years ago,
naturally secured something unusual and of fine
quality. The first mural painting done by Abbey
— that of Bowling Green, over the bar — was
painted for Stanford White, who also commis-
sioned Thomas W. Dewing to paint for the ceil-
ing of the small cafe the circular panel which was
removed from that place about two years ago and
replaced by an inferior work. It was the only
mural painting by Mr. Dewing in the city, and its
mysterious disappearance from the hotel for which
it was made is a matter of much regret. For-
tunately, Mr. Dewing had the small sketch, by
which one may still judge the delicacy and beauty

MURRAY HILL 271

of this panel. The Imperial owns also a collec-
tion of pictures, including Bouguereau's " Art
and Music."

The Martinique, built by Hardenbergh, the
architect of the Waldorf-Astoria, contains, in its
Louis XV dining room, portrait panels by Car-
roll Beckwith and Irving R. Wiles, depicting the
notables of the court of the French king, and other
decorations by Charles M. Sheen and C. Y.
Turner.

A most interesting feature of the McAlpin
Hotel is the series of twenty-six tapestries from
the Herter Looms, which are hung about the
walls of the mezzanine gallery. These tapestries,
executed after designs by Albert Herter, are im-
portant as examples of American tapestry, an
industry created by the artist. In 1908 Mr.
Herter established the looms that bear his name
and started to weave tapestries of the kind made
in the Netherland in the time of Charles V. The
panels in the Hotel McAlpin picture the story of
New York from earliest times. In texture they
aim to reproduce the low-warp fabric of the golden
age of tapestry.

The lunettes in the lobby of the hotel are by
Gilbert White, who made the decorations for the
court-house in New Haven and the state capitol

272 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

of Kentucky. In the bar are tiny lunettes by
Sperry.

The Knickerbocker Trust Company, that mas-
sive white building on the upper side of Thirty-
fourth Street, opposite the Waldorf-Astoria, re-
places the " marble palace " of Alexander T.
Stewart, the first of New York's merchant princes,
which stood scarcely a quarter of a century.
Stewart never lived in it, but his widow resided
there until her death, in 1886, when the house
passed into public life. The Knickerbocker Trust
Building is one of many designed by McKim,
Mead, and White which contribute to the beauty
of the Avenue. The Gorham Building, with its
fine cornice, repeating that of the Strozzi Palace
of Florence, itself copied from a Roman antique,
is one of the handsomest; the Tiffany Building is
less successful in its somewhat perverse adapta-
tion of the architectural features of the Casa
Grimani, of the Grand Canal, in Venice. This
noble example of florid Italian Renaissance, the
chef d'oeuvre of Sanmicheli, has itself been criti-
cized for monotony in the repetition of its second
and third stories; though Ruskin calls it " the prin-
cipal type in Venice and one of the best in Europe
of the Renaissance schools." The New York ver-
sion is doubly monotonous, many of the hand-

CATTLE FAIR, BOWLING GREEN, FROM A TAPESTRY IN THE MCALPIN HOTEL
BY ALBERT HERTER (PAGE 2TJ I )

THE JEWELS/ BY GILBERT WHITE
DECORATION IN THE LOBBY, MCALPIN HOTEL (PAGE 271 )

. . . .

I . ..

MURRAY HILL 273

some, striking features of the old Reale Corte
d'Appello, such as the fine entrance with the
sculpture in the spandrels, the fluted (instead of
plain) pilasters and columns, the central windows
in the upper stories, and the charming disposition
of the other windows — having been changed or
suppressed for the advantage of commerce.
Ruskin could not have written of the Tiffany-
Building as he wrote of its prototype: " There is
not an erring line, not a mistaken proportion
throughout its noble front."

The Herald Building, which has long stood
concealed behind the shanties of the construction
company engaged in building the new subway
lines, is one of Stanford White's most famous
adaptations. Inspired by the exquisite Palazzo
del Consiglio, of Verona, it repeats indeed most
accurately much of the detail of the Old Town
Hall or Loggia, as it is usually called. This
ancient building, designed by Giocondo, and a
famous example of early Renaissance, was re-
stored four centuries after its erection, in 1876,
just prior to White's period of study in Europe,
whence he returned, filled with enthusiasm for the
masterpieces of Italian architecture. The original
is much smaller and quite different in proportion.
Its facade is crowned with statutes of eminent

274 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

natives of Verona; these White has replaced, in
his copy, by a row of owls, whose electric eyes are
supposed to blink the hours, and the bronze clock
with mechanical figures surmounted by Minerva.
The clock was made by a French sculptor, An-
tonin Jean Carles, and Minerva was exhibited at
the Salon of 1894. Condemned to the endless
activities of the newspaper world, planted in the
thick of congested traffic, and now obliterated by
the upheavals of the underground road, the ghost
of the Palazzo del Consiglio seems reproachfully
to quote : " To what base uses may we return at
last!"

Of White's meticulous care in the detail and
finish of his work, we have a beautiful example
in the restoration and embellishment of Renwick's
Church of St. Bartholomew, on Madison Avenue
for the moment, but about to remove to a new
edifice on Park Avenue, of which Goodhue is the
architect. Few remember the unpretentions little
church erected here in 1865, on the outskirts of
the growing city. Its improvements brought it
into prominence about twenty years ago, when
some members of the wealthy congregation wished
to present the bronze doors, now a feature of the
front, in order to keep pace with the gifts to
Trinity Church, downtown. When the scheme

MURRAY HILL 275

was first projected, it appeared that the plain
modern Renaissance design would not support the
elegance of six highly wrought surfaces of bronze;
and a rich portal was designed for each one. of the
three doorways. The next problem was to con-
nect these ornate masses, and the triple porch was
built to bind the three elaborate entrances to-
gether into one composition. The harmonious
effect of the altered ensemble is very creditable
to the skill of the architects, Messrs. McKim,
Mead, and White, to whom the elaboration of
the facade is due. The general design and treat-
ment follows the wonderful portals of Aries
and Saint Gilles in Languedoc, in the south of
France.

Much of the sculptured detail is the design of
the architects themselves, but the main features
were given to three sculptors. Andrew O'Connor
designed the main doorway, with its enriched
architraves and pilasters, its highly wrought lintel
for the doorway proper, its storied tympanum, and
the doors themselves. O'Connor made also, in
its entirety, the broad frieze, in two short lengths,
which flank the opening of the middle doorway — a
colourful band of sculpture, in the more modern
spirit, which, more than any other detail of the
design, excites critical interest. The south door,

276 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

with its rich tympanum and accessories, is by
Herbert Adams, and the north portal, its ana-
chronistic tympanum inspired by Luca della Rob-
bia, is. the design of Philip Martiny.

A roseate impression of the Ascension fills the
west wall of the church, done by Francis Lathrop,
his hand evidently guided by the architect, to
judge from the subordination of the painting to
the setting, which rather overshadows it in colour
and quality. The colour of the picture repeats the
scheme of the marbles, employed in the altar, with
an oversweet harmony, and the eye, seeking relief,
constantly travels to the handsome architectural
frame in which Lathrop 's painting is placed.
This, overlaid with gold, is in character with the
richly carved capitals of the marble columns sup-
porting the roof, and other details of architecture,
unmistakably bearing the hall-mark of White's
taste, for his aesthetic standards were of the
highest.

How many of the enrichments of St. Barthol-
omew's will be preserved in the new structure
time will tell. It has been promised that the doors
and the sculpture, where possible, will have place
there, but much of the beauty of the present
church will necessarily be useless, and it seems a
great pity that this rather charming and certainly

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"THE PROPHETS." VANDERBILT DOOR, ST. BARTHOLOMEW S CHURCH
ANDREW O'CONNOR, SCULPTOR

MURRAY HILL 277

very interesting little place of worship should be
demolished, after so short a sojourn in our midst.
But the king is dead! Long live the king! The
new church is to be very beautiful, and New York
has no time for sentiment.

The Brick Presbyterian Church seems a sorry
anachronism in the present aspect of Fifth Ave-
nue, where it stands perversely, sole relic of the
vintage of the " fifties " of the last century, replac-
ing that spectacular mansion, or castle, of Coventry
Waddell, who, enriched by the fortunes of Andrew
Jackson's administration, balanced momentarily,
as it were, this freakish Gothic bauble on a prom-
ontory of the old country road that extended
beyond Madison Square in about the year 1845.
:< Waddell's Caster," an unfeeling brother dubbed
it with uncompromising humour, comparing its
towers, orioles, and gables to the vinegar cruets,
mustard pots, and general equipment of the orna-
mental table service, long since abolished by so-
phisticated authorities on the art of correct dining.
Though it stood less than a decade, Waddell's
Caster cut a figure in its day, and appears in all'
the bravery of its original architecture in many
old prints of the city. Mr. Waddell lost his
fortune in the financial crash that preceded the
Civil War, and, obliged to sacrifice his estate, the

278 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

house was demolished and the grounds levelled to
make way for the encroaching city.

It is difficult to visualize the effect of the desul-
tory country road, now Fifth Avenue, in the year
1854, when the old Brick Presbyterian Church,
having once removed from its first location in
Wall Street, dating from 1767, to a spacious lot
in Beekman Street, overlooking City Hall Park,
was again forced to go farther afield to catch up
with a receding residence quarter. The new
church, finished in 1858, stood as an outpost of
the advancing city, upon a part of the Waddell
tract. When, in the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury, Murray Hill was suddenly seized upon as
desirable for residence, land values increased by
leaps and bounds. In nine years the property
for which Mr. Waddell had paid only $9,150 had
advanced to $80,000, and the church for its por-
tion was obliged to pay $58,000.

A new fashion in domestic architecture was at
this time just making its appearance in residence
districts, superseding the fine old red brick houses
in the London style; these now began to be
replaced by the brown-stone fronts with high
" stoops," so detrimental to the aspect of the city,
and of which they were for many years a salient
characteristic.

MURRAY HILL 279

The Brick Church — though committed to the
material indicated by its original name, which there
was no thought of changing — in deference to the
accepted fashion of the day composed its base and
trimmings and the greater part of the steeple of
brownstone. The tower contained the old Beek-
man Street bell and clock, and the architecture
followed in its details the late classic, with the
severe and barren effect of a formal New Eng-
land meeting house.

The exterior presents essentially the same ap-
pearance as in the days when it counted as a
feature of the upper Avenue, but when the cele-
brated pastor, Henry Van Dyke, was called, about
1883, it was felt that the interior needed restora-
tion, and this, by some beneficent chance, was
turned over bodily to John La Farge, already a
person of some consequence in the field of art.
The result is a most bewildering paradox. Out-
side the prim, austere meeting house; inside the
plain, strict surfaces structurally the same, but
embroidered and embellished, after the manner
of the early Italian churches, from the eighth to
the tenth centuries.

La Farge applied himself to the plain interior
with an unbridled hand. In its way its plainness
was its great advantage, for it gave La Farge a

280 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

base of operations comparatively untrammelled.
The decoration follows closely that of the Cathe-
dral of Torcello * and other churches of the same
period, or earlier, in Ravenna, Venice, and else-
where in Italy.

In the decoration mosaic of various colours is
combined with relief work in majolica, a product
of the Minton manufactory imported from Eng-
land. Even the embroideries in the curtains and
drapery for the reading desk were designed by
La Farge in perfect harmony with the ensemble,
and he made the lanterns and the geometric win-
dows, the elaborate organ loft, the rail of the
gallery, and every minute decorated detail of this
remarkable interior. The ceiling and cornice are
important, bearing a rich, symbolic design in som-
bre colours on a background of dull, weathered
gold which enhance an effect of extraordinary
beauty and interest. The congregation was well
satisfied, and accepted easily the distinction of
possessing in this exotic interior what was consid-
ered one of the most important examples of deco-
rative art in America; they had given La Farge
a free hand, and they did not question so specious
a result. The artist, on the other hand, made of
the church a glorious experiment* developing the

* 1008.

MURRAY HILL 281

possibilities of his glass to the utmost. Like an
industrious spider, he spun his beautiful webs
wherever he could get foothold; but if this par-
ticular attachment seems peculiarly unsuited to
his medium, one can at least admire the ingenuity
with which ends were met, so that even when the
thought comes, as come it must, of the irrelevancy
of the whole decoration to the thing decorated, it
comes with no shock, but is borne in softly upon
the inner consciousness as the glowing interior
gradually asserts itself in the dim light with which
it is usually pervaded.

While Boston is richest in the works of John
La Farge, New York preserves much of the pro-
lific output of this distinguished artist, in private
houses as well as in the several contemporary
churches treated by him. The famous Peony
window made for the Marquand house is now
owned by Mrs. Bliss, for whom La Farge made a
wonderful cloissonne window; and some fine work
was also done for Mrs. Payne Whitney. Less
well known than the chef d'oeuvre in the Church
of the Ascension are the panels representing the
" Nativity of Christ " and the " Adoration of the
Magi " by this artist in the chancel of the Church
of the Incarnation, on Madison Avenue, not far
from the Brick Church. These are handsome and

282 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

strong — in a way more vigourous than the highly
finished decoration of the " Ascension." They
are, however, badly set, one each side of a white
Gothic altar, which fills the eye to the detriment
of the panels. The two windows by La Farge
in this church are early examples of no great
importance.

The embellishment of the Church of the Incar-
nation seems to have been pursued without defi-
nite plan, and the result is more curious than
pleasing. Most of the windows are English, sev-
eral are by Henry Holiday, a close follower of
Burne-Jones, whose methods were diametrically
opposed to those of La Farge, so that it is un-
fortunate for the ensemble that the work of the
two artists should be thus juxtaposed. There are
two small memorial windows of little consequence
from the establishment of William Morris. The
Romanesque monument, on the north side of the
church, to the memory of Henry E. Montgomery,
was designed by the late Henry H. Richardson,
the architect of Trinity Church, Boston, and the
bronze medallion and inscription plates were exe-
cuted by Augustus Saint Gaudens. Louis Saint
Gaudens made the sculpture for the font, sur-
mounted by a figure of John the Baptist, and the
bas-relief representing the Church Militant and

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BY JOHN LA FARGE (PAGE 28 1 )

Copyright by John La Farge
MEMORIAL WINDOW TO EDWIN BOOTH
CHURCH OF THE TRANSFIGURATION
BY JOHN LA FARGE (PAGE 283)

MURRAY HILL 283

the Church Triumphant. The relief portrait of
Phillips Brooks is by W. Clark Noble, sculptor.
La Farge is again represented, and rather
charmingly, in that strange, rambling old Church
of the Transfiguration, in Twenty-ninth Street,
better known and loved as the " Little Church
Around the Corner." From it have been buried
Wallack, Booth, and Boucicault, and in it " The
Players " erected their memorial window to Ed-
win Booth, in 1898. La Farge made it in his
freest manner. It shows a seated figure, repre-
senting a medieval histrionic student, his gaze fixed
upon a mask held in his hand. Below is Booth's
favourite quotation:

"As one in suffering all
That suffers nothing:

A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Has taken with equal thanks." — Hamlet III. 2.

The Church of the Transfiguration has been
accepted warmly by the theatrical profession ever
since the funeral of George Holland, one of the
favourite actors of Wallack's Theatre, was held
in that church. The story of a neighbouring rec-
tor's refusal to perform the funeral rites over the
body because Mr. Holland had been an actor is
movingly described by Joseph Jefferson in his
reminiscences. Mr. Jefferson, accompanied by

284 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

one of George Holland's sons, went in quest of a
minister to officiate. " On arriving at the house,"
says Mr. Jefferson, " I explained to the reverend
gentleman the nature of my visit, and arrange-
ments were made for the time and place at which
the funeral was to be held. Something, I can
scarcely say what, gave me the impression that I
had best mention that Mr. Holland was an actor.
I did so in a few words, and concluded by presum-
ing that probably this would make no difference.
I saw, however, by the restrained manner of the
minister and an unmistakable change in the ex-
pression of his face, that it would make, at least
to him, a great deal of difference. After some
hesitation he said that he would be compelled, if
Mr. Holland had been an actor, to decline hold-
ing the service at the church.

" While his refusal to perform the funeral rites
for my old friend would have shocked, under ordi-
nary circumstances, the fact that it was made in
the presence of the dead man's son was more
painful than I can describe. I turned to look
at the youth and saw that his eyes were filled
with tears. He stood as one dazed with a blow
just realized; as if he felt the terrible injustice
of a reproach upon the kind and loving father
who had often kissed him in his sleep and had

MURRAY HILL 285

taken him on his lap when a boy old enough to
know the meaning of the words and told him to
grow up to be an honest lad. I was hurt for my
young friend and indignant with the man — too
much so to reply, and as I rose to leave the room
with a mortification that I cannot remember to
have felt before or since, I paused at the door and
said : * Well, sir, in this dilemma, is there no other
church to which you can direct me from which
my friend can be buried ? '

" He replied that * There was a little church
around the corner ' where I might get it done — to
which I answered, * Then if this be so, God bless
the Little Church Around the Corner,' and so I
left the house."

A bit of old world, forgotten here, the low,
rambling structure set within a garden whose en-
trance is marked by a lich gate, unique in this
country, is full of poetic feeling. The simplicity,
the sincerity of the dim interior lend essentially
to the highest personal expression of the devo-
tional spirit. It has the charm of a place dwelt
in harmoniously, worshipped in abundantly, em-
bellished lovingly.

XIV
THE AVENUE

In its northward course Fifth Avenue marks
two imposing centres — one of trade, the other of
fashion, and both architecturally enriched by the
work of Messrs. Carrere and Hastings. If the
Plaza, with Bitter's " Fountain of Abundance,"
makes a pivot for the circlings of the gay world,
the Public Library fits no less snugly into the
heart of the busy shopping district, and seems
most fortunately placed, both for looks and service.

Directly succeeding the granitic mass of the old
Reservoir, it owes the spaciousness of its setting
to the happy accident which reserved, from early
days, the summit of Murray Hill as city property.
Long before Fifth Avenue came into corporeal
being, the land upon which Bryant Park and the
Library are now situated was bought by the city
for a potter's field.. After 1842 the park was
known as Reservoir Square, in honour of the first
distributing reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct, the
same whose overflow found vent in the sumptuous

286

THE AVENUE 287

fountain of Union Square. In the western part
of the park the Crystal Palace, built upon the
type of the famous Crystal Palace of London, to
house our first world's fair, was opened in 1853.
These were the " sights " of those days; the Res-
ervoir marked the objective of northward walks,
for from the height of its curious Egyptian walls
an extensive view was obtainable.

The Crystal Palace burned up after five years'
glorious extravagance, for the enterprise never
paid, burying in its ruins the rich collection of the
American Institute Fair. The Reservoir stood
until 1900, when the civic corporation gathered
into grand alliance the minor libraries of the
town and the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden founda-
tions were combined to make the New York
Public Library.

It was doubtless indirectly due to his intimacy
with Washington Irving that John Jacob Astor
founded the library which bears his name, incor-
porated in 1849, with Irving as first president.
The building in Lafayette Place was for many
years one of the literary landmarks of New York,
and still stands, untenanted, opposite the rapidly
disappearing Colonnade Row, and equally marked,
no doubt, for speedy demolition.

Ten years before his death, in 1870, James

288 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Lenox, one of America's greatest book collectors,
gave to the city of his birth his books and his art
treasures and a liberal endowment fund for the
maintenance of the Lenox Library, now replaced
by Mr. Prick's palatial residence. Both the Astor
and the Lenox Libraries were for reference,
merely, and it was not until the city received the
munificent Tilden bequest, which more than
doubled its endowment fund, and added materially
to its collections, that provision was made for a
circulation department, and the new corporation
was established. The question of a site for the
building was happily settled by the existence, in
the heart of the city, of this large piece of city
property, unencumbered save for the old, disused
reservoir.

In a competition held in 1897 to decide upon the
architect for the Library, the design of Messrs.
Carrere and Hastings, of New York, was chosen,
and that firm awarded the commission for its erec-
tion. The building is monumental and imposing
in the eighteenth century French style. Designed
to face the Avenue, it sets well back from the
street, within a dignified approach, and raised suf-
ficiently, by means of its terrace and steps, to give
it just the right note of reserve and distinction.
The warm colour of the Vermont marble, taken

ROMANCE. ONE OF SIX FIGURES ON THE ATTIC
OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
BY PAUL WAYLAND BARTLETT (PAGE 289)

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
CARRERE AND HASTINGS, ARCHITECTS
ERECTING THE BARTLETT STATUES
TO THE ATTIC (PAGE 289)

THE AVENUE 289

together with the building's fine lateral expan-
sion— the " seated " look, as James expressed it —
and the interest added to an already agreeable
facade by the spirited sculpture, in the French
decorative style, there applied, express hospital-
ity and give to this rather fascinating part of
town a central point of interest and beauty.
Against its stable bulk picturesque effects are
possible; and the live, human quality that is New
York's most appealing asset comes here into
pleasing prominence.

The effective note in the building, emphasizing
its Louis XVI feeling, is the treatment of the
attic story, above the main entrance, where have
recently been placed the six figures — History,
Drama, Poetry, Religion, Romance, and Philoso-
phy— by Paul Wayland Bartlett. Made in the
sculptor's studio in the rue Commandeur, Paris,
these figures have distinctly the French feeling,
and lend colour and vivacity to the lines of the
facade, where, because they present a departure
from the accepted pseudo-classic type, current in
the sculpture of our public buildings, they have
excited controversy and proved quite a shock to
the complacency of public taste. If they are a
little strong for their place, on an unusually nar-
row plinth, any flattening of their surfaces, in the

290 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

traditional classic manner, would have destroyed
the very element for which they were created — the
colour and vivacity, the spirit and animation of an
otherwise rather conventional front. But the
public abhors change; all it asks is to rest in the
security of accepted tradition — not to be made to
think.

It will be remembered that when Carpeaux
made his famous group, La Danse, for the Paris
Opera, it was so at variance with the habits of
popular taste that even the architect disliked it,
and ordered another group from a different
sculptor, but Carpeaux' death, which occurred at
this critical moment, caused a revulsion of popular
feeling in favour of his work and the group was
allowed to remain. It is now considered the great
redeeming feature of the Opera House.

So Mr. Bartlett's figures were not accepted
without some discussion. His first charming con-
ception of Romance was refused on the same
amazing charge as that made against MacMonnies'
" Bacchante," rejected by the Boston Public Li-
brary— indecency. The original Romance is a
figure of rare poetic beauty, a very flower of
sculpture; had the architects had courage to place
it, it would have made the enduring glory of the
building. Even in its modified form, as it stands

THE AVENUE 291

on the attic story, the figure is especially free
and delightful; rarely expressive in its youth and
grace.

The extraordinary effect of high relief in these
figures is the more remarkable when we know
some of the difficulties which the problem pre-
sented. The plinth upon which they stand is but
one foot wide. They are ten feet six inches
in height by one foot six inches at their greatest
depth. Some additional space was made for the
draperies that blow against the wall behind them,
by cutting into the face of that wall. Mr.
Bartlett's original design showed, instead of
the upright pairs of figures, groups conceived to
give further variety to the facade. History and
Philosophy were to have stood, as now at the
ends, with Drama and Poetry, Religion and
Romance linked together in two effective composi-
tions; but this was too great a departure from
tradition, and as they stand the six figures carry
out the lines of the supporting columns under
them.

The Library has been nearly twenty years
under way. During that time, many important
things have occurred, bearing directly upon its
fortunes. The Art Commission was formed the
year after the plans were accepted. Saint

292 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Gaudens, who was to have directed the choice of
sculptors and supervised the work, died ten years
later. The original scheme divided the figures
amongst as many sculptors as possible, and only
the tact and courage of the architects spared
us a repetition of the fiasco of the Appellate
Court.

Three other sculptors are represented on the
Library's main front: Mr. Potter, by the heroic
lions that flank the entrance; Mr. Barnard, by
the pediments in the ends; and Mr. MacMonnies,
by the fountains at each side of the entrance.
These last will represent the sculptor's latest work
in a city where he is already prolifically and
splendidly in evidence. The staff models, erected
in place, recall the Trevi fountain in Rome, the
figures — Truth and Beauty — being placed within
niches in half reclining poses, while the water,
flowing from beneath the pedestals, fills the basins
in front.

The Library houses an important collection of
paintings and prints. The paintings, maintained
by the institution, but not increased, comprise the
gifts of three donors: James Lenox, whose col-
lection of about fifty paintings was presented, in
1877; the Robert L. Stuart collection of about
246 paintings, bequeathed by Mrs. Stuart, in

THE AVENUE 293

1892; and some of John Jacob Astor's pictures,
presented by William Waldorf Astor, in 1896.

The Stuart Gallery is typical of the taste of
collectors of its period, which dealt exclusively
with foreign artists of salon fame, a few Barbison
painters, and our own Hudson River men. The
Lenox collection is more eclectic, containing, be-
sides many fine eighteenth century portraits, a
number of interesting examples of the American
school that developed along those lines. There is
a beautiful Sir Joshua Reynolds, representing
Mrs. Billington as Saint Cecilia, listening to the
celestial choir. Apropos of this picture, Haydn
is supposed to have gallantly suggested that the
angels would have been better employed in listen-
ing to Mrs. Billington. Amongst the early
American portraits are those of David Garrick,
by Robert Edge Pine; Robert Lenox, by Trum-
bull; a charming unfinished head of Mrs. Robert
Morris, by Gilbert Stuart; a portrait of Wash-
ington, by James Peale; a fine Copley, of Mrs.
Robert Hooper; and two delightful portraits by
Morse, one of Fitz-Greene Halleck and the orig-
inal study for the portrait of Lafayette, in City
Hall. With the Lenox pictures came also the
original bust of Alexander Hamilton, by Cer-
racchi, the Roman sculptor, who visited this coun-

294 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

try after the close of the Revolution with the idea
of interesting congress in a monument to Liberty,
which he had designed for our special delectation,
and his own aggrandizement.

Between the Library and the Plaza, Fifth
Avenue reveals its most brilliant aspect, wears
its most opulent effect. Though business has
taken firm foothold in this more rarefied section,
driving the ultrafashionable beyond Fifty-ninth
Street, the shops, extending quite up to Central
Park, vie with the clubs, residences, and churches
in architectural interest. Many of the better class
art dealers have established themselves here, and
exhibitions flourish throughout the season. The
buildings, erected by the firm of Carrere and
Hastings, for Black, Starr, and Frost, and for
Knoedler, are in excellent taste, and the Duveen
house is highly ornamental to the street. The
latter transports to Fifth Avenue a handsome
bit of French architecture, the work of Monsieur
Rene Sergent, of Paris, and Mr. Horace Trum-
bauer, of Philadelphia.

The Temple Emanu-El, considered a fine
example of Moorish architecture, designed by
Leopold Eidlitz, dates from 1868.

One of the many features of this part of the
Avenue, and the most celebrated, is St. Patrick's

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. BY HERBERT ADAMS
BRYANT PARK (PAGE 2Q2)

•♦•••« r - ' «.

THE AVENUE 295

Cathedral, conceived in 1850, by Archbishop
Hughes, of the diocese of New York, and erected
during the nineteen succeeding years, after the
designs of James Renwick, the architect of Grace
Church and St. Bartholomew's. Renwick con-
sidered it his chief work; and the cathedral holds
high rank as an example of the decorated, or
geometric, style of Gothic architecture that pre-
vailed in Europe in the thirteenth century, and
of which the cathedrals at Rheims, Cologne, and
Amiens are typical. It is built of marble with a
base course of granite. Said to be the eleventh
in size of the cathedrals of the world it has a
capacity of 18,000 persons. The modern French
and Roman windows, which, to the eye of the later
criticism, impair the beauty of the simple interior,
were considered something most desirable in their
day, and their completion was hastened in order
that they might be shown at the Centennial
Exhibition, of 1876, where they were a feature
much admired. One of them — the window erected
to St. Patrick — has at least an antiquarian in-
terest. It was given by the architect, and
includes, in the lower section, a picture of Ren-
wick presenting the plans of the cathedral to
Cardinal McCloskey.

The rose window is said to be a fac-simile of

296 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the rose window at Rheims, recently destroyed
by German bombs; a provenance that may be the
more securely claimed since the original has been
immolated. As a matter of fact it, too, bears the
stigma of the Centennial period, of which it is a
characteristic example. The only windows of
aesthetic interest in the church are the recent lights
in the ambulatory, made by different firms in
competition for the windows of the Lady Chapel,
which is to be treated in the same rich manner.
St. Thomas' Church, opposite, is one of the
chief architectural ornaments of New York, re-
cently rebuilt upon the site of the original, an
imposing brown-stone structure of the early
seventies, the design of Richard Upjohn, and
famous for its decorations by La Farge and Saint
Gaudens. The church, with its artistic contents,
was destroyed by fire about ten years ago; and
the present edifice represents the design of Ralph
Adams Cram, carried out by his former partner,
Bertram Goodhue. Built of white limestone,
with certain effective splashes of dark that varie-
gate and enliven it, the facade is very beautiful,
though unfortunately squeezed by the adjoining
business building, recently crowded in, replacing
one of the Vanderbilt houses — for this part of
the Avenue was the Vanderbilt stronghold.

THE AVENUE 297

The restricted lot is even more meretricious
in its effect upon the interior, in which one feels
the lack of expansion, and the inexpressiveness of
the blind north wall. The exterior seems to
promise something richer and warmer than this
rather drab realization, with its insistent black-
outlined stone facing, its Quaker-grey woodwork,
and the geometric windows of the clerestory. The
rose window and the tall lights of the sanctuary
are, indeed, most lovely in design and depth of
colour, and the reredos, when placed, will no doubt
enhance the effect. The reredos will reproduce
so far as is possible the Saint Gaudens reredos
of the old church. Though it was totally de-
stroyed by the fire, excellent photographs of it
had been taken, and from these Lee Lawrie, an
American sculptor, is reconstructing a similar
panel.

The Gothic note is emphasized in this part of
the Avenue by the adjacent Vanderbilt houses,
of which the earlier, at the corner of Fifty-second
Street, was inspired by a chateau in the Vosges,
and represents, at his best, one of the builders of
New York — Richard Morris Hunt — who, until
superseded by his young colleague, Stanford
White, was the architect most sought after by
the cognoscenti of the city. Hunt made the

298 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

central part of the new Metropolitan Museum,
and the Lenox Library; he built the twin Vander-
bilt houses further down the Avenue. He was
one of a talented family — his brother was the
celebrated painter, William Morris Hunt. A
man of excellent tradition, his work was highly
esteemed in New York; and when he died, in
1895, the art societies of the city erected the
monument to his memory, by Daniel Chester
French, which stands at Seventieth Street and
Fifth Avenue, opposite Mr. Frick's house.

This Gothic chateau, transported to the heart
of fashionable New York, has been shorn of the
dignity of even a tiny setting by the widening
of the Avenue, and seems to stand rather
abruptly on the building line. Hunt carried out
the Gothic spirit in the handsome doorway, really
one of the most beautiful things on the Avenue.
The little stone effigy of the architect, seated on
the peak of the mansard, is a humorous and
characteristic touch. The adjoining house, be-
longing to William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., has been
made to correspond with Hunt's design, and the
business buildings alongside make some attempt
to carry out the spirit of the architecture and
to connect with St. Thomas' on the next corner.
Hunt, in his designs for the twin houses in brown

THE HUNT MEMORIAL, CENTRAL PARK EAST
BY DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH (PAGE 298)

THE AVENUE 299

freestone, built, in 1882, by William H. Vander-
bilt, for himself and his daughter, stipulated that
the material should be white marble, then greatly
in vogue; but Vanderbilt owned a quarry of
brownstone and the native product was employed.

Arnold Bennett, with the easy decision of the
casual visitor, picked the University Club as the
building in New York that pleased him most;
Henry James seemed to indicate a preference for
the Metropolitan Club; while still a third critic,
a celebrated French architect, told us that for
purity of architecture New York held nothing
comparable to the Harmony Club in Sixtieth
Street.

Of the many fine examples of the work of
Charles Follen McKim, the University Club, the
Morgan Library, and the Library of Columbia
University, stand out notably amongst the fea-
tures of the city, and none perhaps exceeds in
dignity and distinction the building officially
erected by Messrs. McKim, Mead, and White, at
the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-
fourth Street.

The junior member of the firm had already
given to the city a new proof of his equipment
in the design and interior construction and em-
bellishment of the Metropolitan Club, whose

300 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

calm surface protests against the heterologous
inventions of the upper Avenue. But, fine as it
unquestionably is, it seems to compare not at all
in personality, nor in its outward expression of
its ultimate purpose, to the mature product of
White's accomplished partner. McKim's prob-
lem, too, presented unwonted difficulties. He had
to construct a house consisting really of nine
stories, necessitated by the requirements of the
club, so as to conceal this fact and to present a
graceful facade with proportions satisfactory to
the fastidious eye. This has been done with ex-
traordinary success, and no one sensitive to archi-
tectural charm can pass the University Club
without taking off his hat to this achievement or
pausing to congratulate the Avenue upon its most
impressive feature.

The Palazzo Farnese seems to have furnished a
theme for the building, which follows in the main
the fifteenth century Florentine in architecture.
Besides the handsome Renaissance doorway, the
balconies, the coat of arms above the second main
story of the Fifty-fourth Street front, the two
facades are enriched in a fashion suggested by
the source of inspiration. Between the small
windows of the two mezzanine floors are sculp-
tured in Knoxville marble the shields of the

THE AVENUE 301

various colleges represented in the club, carved
in high relief. Beneath each is the Latin in-
scription conveying the appropriate mottoes.
This form of shields, or coats of arms, with
inscriptions beneath, were common in the decora-
tive details of the Italian Renaissance, and are
frequent in Italy, notably in the Court of the
Bargello, in Florence.

The club's seal was designed by Kenyon Cox,
and executed by George Brewster; and may be
seen, carved in stone, on the main front high up
above the entrance. It represents two Greek
youths, their hands clasped in friendship. One
holds a tablet, bearing the word " Patria," the
other a torch symbolizing learning as well as
eternity. The derivation is from the old Greek
race in which the runner carried a burning torch
until he fell exhausted, when he passed it to
another, indicating the light of learning that
scholars keep alive and transmit from generation
to generation.

The same idea has been adapted by Charles
E. Keck in his decorative panel above the fire-
place of the central hall within. The figure of
Athene introduced in the panel is altogether
different from the statuette on the shield, but
expresses the same thought.

302 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

The interior of the University Club is one of
the marvels of New York, unpardonably inac-
cessible. For one month, January, 1900, its
treasures were thrown open to a selected public,
on certain days and during certain hours. Its
hospitality was liberally appreciated and thou-
sands visited the handsomely decorated rooms,
which were further enriched and embellished by
the hanging of rare and beautiful tapestries and
draperies lent from the remarkable collections of
Stanford White. Since that time the manage-
ment has followed the stringency of the London
clubs in reserving its features strictly for the
enjoyment of members.

The club is chiefly famous for the decorations
of the library by H. Siddons Mowbray. These
decorations consist of seven large lunettes and
thirty-four minor panels, besides sculpture and
ornament, all executed by this artist. The gen-
eral scheme of design and color, with its at-
tendant richness, is founded on the architectural
decorations of Pinturicchio in the library at Siena
and in the Borgia Apartments at the Vatican. In
thus choosing its type from among the greatest
mural paintings of the world McKim was true
to the faith of his firm. It was first intended
to make a copy of the decoration of the Borgia

THE AVENUE 303

Apartments, but this idea, except for its richness
and general plan, was gradually dropped as the
work proceeded in Mr. Mowbray's studio in
Rome, conditions rendering a copy impossible.

The magnificent rooms of the Borgia pope are
moderate in size, separated by simple doorways,
and not to be seen en suite; their walls are of
light plaster, toned in patterns to imitate marble
and varied stones, while those of the New York
club are lined with woodwork, shelves, and books.
There is, however, a general similarity of con-
struction in the arches and lunettes of the ceiling
of the library and those decorated by Pinturicchio.

It happened opportunely that the Borgia
Apartments, long closed to the public, had been
cleaned and restored and, in 1897, opened by
Pope Leo XIII, so that during Mr. Mowbray's
sojourn in Rome they were accessible for study.
Not only the paintings, but the small figures in
relief in the panels, and the final architectural
mouldings were designed by the artist and, with
the exception of the last, entirely executed by him.
These mouldings were all done by hand, to avoid
mechanical repetition, and were carved by native
workmen under the painter's supervision, in his
workshop in the Via Margutta.

Though frankly derived from Pinturicchio

304 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

much of the decoration is Mr. Mowbray's own.
In four of the alcoves he has utilized as many
of the master's designs, following with close fi-
delity the details of certain panels symbolizing
Geometry, Arithmetic, Music, and Rhetoric in
the Vatican. In addition to these lunettes there
are panels in the ceiling illustrating mythological
types and episodes wherein Pinturicchio again
may be identified. But the large lunettes at the
ends of the gallery, Romance, at the east, and
History, at the west, are Mr. Mowbray's own,
as are also the entire central bay, the panels in
gold relief, the ornament of the arches, and
most of the secondary paintings.

The religious element, an important feature of
the Borgia decorations, is introduced in two demi-
lunettes over the central white marble portal —
the Old and the New Testament. The secondary
panels in the arches and the ceiling, carrying out
two of Pinturicchio's themes, are devoted to
Greek mythology and the myth of Isis and
Osiris; the four smaller rectangular panels over
the central bay, to Literature, Art, Science, and
Philosophy; the four medallion portraits over
each of the compartments on each side of the
central one are, on the east, of Dante, Tasso,
Virgil, and Petrarch, and on the west, of Homer,

UNIVERSITY CLUB LIBRARY. CHARLES FOLLEN MCKIM, ARCHITECT
EAST END SHOWING DECORATIONS BY H. SIDDONS MOWBRAY (PAGE 304)

«•••••

THE AVENUE 305

Socrates, Goethe, and Shakespeare. Two very
narrow panels, heavy in relief and gold, which
descend on the wall on each side of the central
white portal, represent, in medieval fashion, the
Illumination, and the Inscription, and on the
opposite wall are the Papyrus and the Book.
Throughout all of these decorations, so varied in
theme and in composition, the text is clear, and
the application of the decoration to the purpose
of the place decorated has not once been for-
gotten.

XV

THE PLAZA

Driving one day down the Champs Elysees,
my companion, a lady whose girlhood had been
passed in the sumptuous days of the Third
Empire, turned and said to me with conviction: —
" L'automobile a beaucoup gate Paris! " I think
of it every time I pass through this section of
Fifth Avenue, especially from a perch on the top
of one of the popular busses. If the automobile
has taken the charm from Paris, where there is
left such infinite variety to offset that deteriora-
tion, how much more lamentably has New York
suffered in the aspect of its one handsome show
street! As one looks down upon it in the bril-
liant morning hours, when the butterflies are out
in quest of plumage, what used to present a gay
scene of prancing steeds, smart vehicles, elegant
costumes, skilled drivers, and correct footmen,
has now given place to a long, unbroken line
of shiny black boxes, working their uneventful,

THE PLAZA 307

colourless way, like some vast convocation of
hearses bound for the cemetery.

During the summer there has been of late a
revival of the fiacre, in the form once accepted
for park driving in the days when driving was
a means of displaying beautiful clothes, and
Central Park was something more than a short
cut between formidable distances. This fiacre,
or victoria, as it may be called, lends to the
perverse state of leisure with which, sometimes,
it is amusing to oppose the universal command
to " step lively," which so regulates our habitual
gait. It is quite worth the sensation to step
into one of these antiquated vehicles, driven with
some feeling for the moribund art, and to make
the tour of the park, sympathetically, from the
long approach up the Avenue, at the old-time
pace.

That Fifth Avenue, at the Plaza, has reached
its ultimate climax is a conviction that grows with
study. Now that it has been practically aban-
doned to trade, we are to learn that there is
nothing really chic beyond the gateway to the
park. In its adventurous course from Wash-
ington Square, during more than three-quarters
of a century, its centre of interest had but to
move from stage to stage. Now nothing can be

308 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

done but to double on its tracks; unless it should
be some day deemed possible to " treat " the park
in some comprehensive architectural scheme that
would make it subservient to a more monumental
city of speculative conception.

Whether or not this is what we are grandly
to come, in the course of human events, Karl
Bitter's last work, the " Fountain of Abundance,"
as the culminating feature of the new " lay out "
of the Plaza, marks the now supreme spot in the
centre of fashionable and beautiful New York.
A posthumous work, for which, however, the
sculptor left ample data, the figure, finished by
a compatriot, Isidore Konti, was quietly placed
in May, 1916, about a year after the sculptor's
untimely death. Bitter and Konti were fellow
students in the Imperial Academy of Art in
Vienna; they came to this country at about the
same time,* and both did important work in
connection with the sculpture at the Columbian
Exposition, which brought Konti into promi-
nence, while Bitter, who had already made the
doors for Trinity Church, and been discovered by
the architects, as we have seen, it gave an oppor-
tunity for bigger work in the decorative field so
suited to his gifts and education.

* Bitter in 1889, Konti in 1892.

THE PLAZA 309

These two native Austrians, bred in the one
school, under the one master, came together for
the first time in Chicago during their work for
the World's Fair, of 1893, and formed a friend-
ship which endured for twenty-two years, and
was only terminated by the fatal calamity, by
which Bitter, while still in the prime of life, was
suddenly killed. Unfinished in his studio, Bitter
left the sketch model for the figure of Abundance,
to top the Plaza fountain, designed by Messrs.
Carrere and Hastings. This, together with the
architects' plans, was handed over to Mr. Konti,
who, as he himself expresses it, rendered his in-
terpretation of Bitter's creation, as a virtuoso
interprets the composition of another musician.
Abundance, as she stands, is entirely the execution
of Mr. Konti, read from the small model left by
her creator. The staff model, which Bitter had
made merely to try the scale of the fountain in
place, was not considered possible for perma-
nency, though Mr. Konti advocated placing it, in
its incomplete state, in order that his friend's last
work should stand, unfinished but still in its
entirety the product of his own brain and hand.

Whether this fine sentiment was really im-
practicable or not, one is not in a position to
state, never having seen the staff model; but one

310 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

thing is certain — Bitter's creation lost nothing in
Konti's interpretation; rather, one may suppose,
by comparing it with other works of the deceased
sculptor, it gained in a certain grace and charm,
both in the action of the figure and in the beauty
of the handling.

A most lovely figure it is, so rich, so Renais-
sance in feeling, so expressive, and so vital. It
seems to epitomize the best in both sculptors, and
to surpass the single creation of either. Sweetly
ingratiating, this exotic presence, standing high
above the generous, overflowing basin, strangely
aloof from the conglomerate surroundings, which
the architectural setting has done much, yet not
enough, to mitigate, she bends graciously, ap-
pealingly, her arms swung to the left holding a
panier filled with fruits, her drapery connecting,
strengthening the composition. If Bartlett's
Romance is the companion of the lyrics of the
Opera Comique, Abundance is of the world of
Jean Goujon's Diana, yet, perhaps, more one
of us in her human " sympatheticism."

She is best seen from the rear, as one comes up
the Avenue, her strong, young body silhouetted
against the sky; but she must be studied also
from a position due north, where the details of
the fountain itself become visible, with the fine

EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS. PLAZA (PAGE 314)

plan of the plaza

carrere and hastings, architects

(page 313)

f lm*< tm

1 M 1

e ' '. J ?* J ,<♦*• *o* *•« • •,"« u *

THE PLAZA 311

contrasts of the dark bronze above the stone
basin, over whose rounded edge sheets of water
pass and are blown forcefully by the wind; and
there she has something of a worthy background
in the chateau of Cornelius Vanderbilt * relating
to her ancestry.

This same " chateau " contains a rather precious
chimney-piece supported by two caryatides, an
early work of Augustus Saint Gaudens, of the
epoch of the angel of the Morgan Monument, in
Hartford, and the angel of St. Thomas' Church —
both destroyed by fire — and of the Amor Caritas,
preserved in the Luxembourg Museum. This
winged figure, in Greek draperies, seems to have
been a product of Saint Gaudens' student days
in Paris, though as Taft points out she is " not
related to those ample demoiselles who thrive and
bloom so insistently upon the average French
monument " — still the sculptor, animated by the
Gallic feeling for visualizing the abstract spirit of
an enterprise, introduces her floating above the
march of the black regiment in the Shaw Me-
morial, and in another phase she is presented to
the vision beyond the climax of the Avenue, in
that splendid glittering group of General Sher-
man, led by Victory, at the entrance to the park.

* By George B. Post, architect.

312 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

In the Sherman equestrian group and the
Lincoln at Chicago, finished towards the close of
his life, Saint Gaudens reached the high-water
mark of his genius. During Sherman's life the
sculptor had modelled the bust, owned by the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a
literal record of the wrought and wrinkled face
of the restless old general, very much as we see
it again in the bronze group. The statue was
made a number of years after the general's death,
itself occupying a matter of six years, from the
time when Saint Gaudens began the work, in
Paris, to its final unveiling, on Decoration Day,
1903. With the Shaw Memorial and the Amor
Caritas, the Sherman won for its author the
highest award of the Paris Exposition of 1900.
Though he had exhibited it, Saint Gaudens did
not consider it finished and revised it critically
and changed it before it was shown again, for
the first time in this country, at the Pan-
American Exposition, of Buffalo. Here it was
more effective, than in the Grand Palais, where
it stood one among many large sculptural works;
and placed impressively, facing the Fine Arts
Building, it contributed a vigorous note to the
magnificent architectural scheme of the arrange-
ment.

THE PLAZA 313

Placed at first casually at the edge of the park,
it stood for more than the first decade of its life
on the outskirts of the rather paradoxical, con-
glomerate apology for a square that marked
our present t€ Grand Place " — still heterogeneous
enough, but coming to something formal and
elegant under the design of Messrs. Carrere and
Hastings.*

As for its aspect ten years ago, we have Henry
James' delicious word for it in his whole inimi-
table description of the park, the statue, and the
square.t And since, while in the very act of see-
ing and even exaggerating the absurdity of the
"mere narrow oblong" (the park) and the
casual and inconsistent end to which things came
at this curious terminus, where neighbourhoods
still clash, where clanging trolley cars and rattling
trucks, bound for the Queensborough Bridge,

* This design embraces the rearrangement of the Plaza and
constitutes the Joseph Pulitzer Memorial. At the present writing
one-half of the architects' plan has been carried out. When the
subway tunnelling under the Avenue at this point is finished the
design already executed will be duplicated on the other side of
Fifty-ninth Street, and the Sherman statue moved to a spot cor-
responding to that occupied by the " Fountain of Abundance," so
that the two works will balance each other in the completed ar-
rangement. The driveway will sweep around behind the Sherman
group, entering the park on a line with Sixtieth Street and the
Hotel Plaza.

f " The American Scene." Henry James. P. 166.

314 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

weave a rough woof through fashion's purring
motors, where saloons and newspaper stands and
tobacco shops and chewing gum venders in Fifty-
ninth Street, pursue unseemly commerce and back
their mongrel shanties into the domain of elegance
to the north and south of this persistent artery
of civic vulgarity, he picks with discrimination the
essence of the good in the statue, one must believe
that even then it dominated the petty meanness
of inadequate surroundings and held its own.
Just as one has been trying to prove all along,
without pushing the point, it demonstrates the
enduring nobility of art, either in buildings or
sculpture or whatever that cannot be downed, no
matter how absorbing, how degraded even, the
surroundings.

Referring to this " most jovial of all the sacri-
fices of preconsidered composition " our distin-
guished visitor wrote: —

" The best thing in the picture, obviously, is
Saint Gaudens' great group, splendid in its
golden elegance and doing more for the scene
(by thus giving the beholder a point of such dig-
nity for his orientation) than all its other elements
together. Strange and seductive for any lover of
the reasons of things this inordinate value, on the
spot, of dauntless refinement of the Sherman

THE PLAZA 315

image; the comparative vulgarity of the environ-
ment drinking it up, on one side, like an insatiable
sponge, and yet failing at the same time sensibly
to impair its virtue. The refinement prevails and,
as it were, succeeds; holds its own in the medley
of accidents, where nothing else is refined unless
it be the amplitude of the * quiet ' note in the
front of the Metropolitan Club; amuses itself, in
short, with being as extravagantly ' intellectual ' as
it likes. Why, therefore, given the surrounding
medium, does it so triumphantly impose itself, and
impose itself not insidiously and gradually, but
immediately and with force? Why does it not
pay the penalty of expressing an idea and being
founded on one? — such scant impunity seeming
usually to be enjoyed among us, at this hour, by
any artistic intention of the finer strain? But I
put these questions only to give them up — for
what I feel beyond anything else is that Mr.
Saint Gaudens somehow takes care of himself."
Take care of himself he capably does in the
highest technical sense, in the immense measured
value of handsomeness which the group presents
on all sides; the sense of invincible oncoming in
the stride of the maiden, the step of the lean
charger, the inflation of the military draperies of
the commander, the upright palm branch, and

316 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the uplifted hand of the herald with her rich
embellishment of golden wings, all lending to
an erectness of posture in the component parts of
the statue whereby we feel the contributing value
of long lines to the freedom of strong victorious
advance.

Yet great as is the decorative weight of this
monument, more than equestrian by reason of
the winged figure that comes before the com-
mander and whose grace and sweeping force
give special character and intention to the ap-
proach of the horseman, there is always • a
haunting reservation in one's acceptance of the
ensemble. Is there not a weakness in the neces-
sity for an embodied Victory? Does not the too
actual presence of this rather typical American
girl, taking, as it were, the glory of the charge,
that should all be present in the forward move-
ment of the conquering hero himself, dock the
doughty old general of his proudest plume?

Taft saw her as a " spirit presence," a " per-
sonification of a force " rather than as an in-
dividual, the embodiment of a poetic inspiration
permeating the whole brilliant scheme.* Ob-
viously that was what Saint Gaudens wished to
convey; and Taft, with the generosity of a

* " History of American Sculpture." Lorado Taft.

THE PLAZA 317

brother sculptor, reads into the expression the
full revelation that the author sought. But there
is a lack of correlation between the poetic idea
and the general's face, which is the literal, un-
sculpturesque countenance of the Pennsylvania
Academy's bust. The face does not reach to the
heights of the ideality of the Victory, which calls
for something more than literal portraiture.
There is nothing exalted in the general's ex-
pression: he looks, indeed, baffled; a little cheated
of his right to a personal triumph as the victor;
a little foolish and uncomfortably conscious of
this goddess intrusion. From every point of view
she fits the composition marvellously, she lends
variety and vivacity to the statue; but in so
doing she obscures the central idea, her presence
is confusing and ambiguous, she tells too much,
and she detracts from Sherman's triumphal entry
— she takes the wind out of his sails.

XVI
CENTRAL PARK EAST

YORKVILLE

The " mere narrow oblong " offers itself, in
the capacity most noted in these days of preferred
gregariousness, chiefly as an obstacle to traffic,
a handicap that must be reckoned with in one's
hectic cross-town dash in the upper regions with
which we are now to deal. The intimacy with
which the Common and the Public Gardens are
interwoven with the daily lives of all good
Bostonians; the inviting charm whereby the
Luxembourg Garden becomes the contributory
factor to the quarter touching upon it; the
graceful interlude in the traversings of countless
footsteps yielded by the Tuileries form no part of
the exhalation of Central Park. Even for solitary
ramblings, such as are deliciously possible through
the green pastures of Kensington Gardens, down
the gentle decline to the real smartness of Hyde

318

CENTRAL PARK EAST 319

Park Corner, the atmosphere is wanting in our
factitious substitute.

Mistrustful of the quality of its hospitality,
questioning perhaps its right to wasteful holding,
for the mere benefits of light and air, a tract of
such inordinate value, as values go in our re-
stricted acreage, the park presents an extraordi-
nary effect of self-restraint, of lack of confidence,
of having, with all the pretty artifices and artful
dodges by which its small area is exaggerated,
outlived its time.

Park life with us has perhaps become ob-
solete; our national breathlessness cannot brook
this paradox of pastoral musings within sight
and sound and smell of the busy lure of money-
making. Within its gates we pass into a new
element; and this element is antipathetic to the
one-sided development imposed by city life. In-
stead of resting us, it presents a problem, and
the last thing for which we now have time is
abstract thought. And so we prefer the dazzling,
twinkling, clashing, clamouring, death-dealing,
sinking, eruptive, insistent Broadway, where
every blink of the eye catches a new impression,
where the brain becomes a passive, palpitating
receptacle for ideas which are shot into it through
all the senses; and where, between "stepping

320 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

lively " and " watching your step," a feat of
contradictoriness only equalled in its exaction by
the absorbing exercise of slapping with one hand
and rubbing with the other, independent thought
becomes an extinct function.

Not only does Central Park offer resistance
to ready communication between the city's com-
ponent parts, it demonstrates the breach, or
yawning gulf, that separates several incompatible
neighbourhoods of the island town. The trolley
cars that rule off its southern boundary cut con-
nections sharply and definitely between upper
and lower Fifth Avenue. Beyond their parallel
business may not pass. Till now the cold ex-
ternality of Millionaires' Row, except for a few
exclusive clubs and apartment houses — the latter
gaining rapidly — has been secure against invasion,
the last residential stronghold of exorbitant
wealth.

Even before Central Park was laid out Fifty-
ninth Street was the dividing line between the
most desirable sections of New York and the
most promiscuous. Below was the centre of
fashion and elegance; above, along the country
road, now called Fifth Avenue, and throughout
the unsightly waste land later taken for the
park, lay the habitat of "squatters," the un-

CENTRAL PARK EAST 321

fortunate offscourings of our new civilization.
Their encampment, reaching almost to Mount
Morris Park, numbered over five thousand squalid
and dreadful victims of poverty, who lived by
cinder-sifting, rag-picking, and bone-boiling, in
a state of abject misery. Relics of this curious
colony remained until as recently as 1880, when
the construction of the elevated roads and the
running of surface cars made the section west of
Central Park more accessible, and building opera-
tions drove out this tribe of unfortunates. This
was doubtless the source of the armies of pigs,
of which Dickens wrote ironically in his im-
pressions of New York; and the Harlem goats
and chickens and shanties were visible long after
the opening of the elevated road; while many old
prints of New York dwell upon this picturesque
aspect of the suburbs.

Fifth Avenue above Fifty-ninth Street re-
mained undeveloped for years. Prints of about
the year 1860 show the pond of the New York
Skating Club at this street just east of the
Avenue, and photographs of more recent date
preserve the amazing record of the block of small
frame dwellings which antedated the first luxur-
ious apartment house at Eighty-first Street, and
the squatters' settlement, dislodged by Andrew

322 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Carnegie's mansion, at Ninetieth Street. Until
late in the nineties residences were scattered,
with many vacant lots and mean buildings inter-
vening, and there are still strange lapses in
grandeur, most notable of all the peanut stand
opposite the Metropolitan Museum, with its
roughly fenced " back yard," abandoned to all
the indignities of such weed-grown enclosures
belonging to nobody in particular.

The farms of the upper island extended
through this region, only recently become val-
uable. One of the notable cases, whose simple
descent is readily traced, is the site of the Frick
house, which, replacing the Lenox Library, oc-
cupies part of the original farm of Robert Lenox,
one of the early financiers of New York. This
farm, extending from Sixty-eighth to Seventy-
third Streets and from Fifth to Madison Avenues,
was bought prior to 1829, by Robert Lenox, who
had faith in its ultimate appreciation. The prop-
erty for which he paid $40,000 is now estimated
at over $9,000,000. The farm, comprising about
thirty acres, descended to his son James, who
erected thereon the famous Lenox Library,
opened in 1877 as the first improvement of this
character to the Avenue; for it antedated by
several years the coming of the Metropolitan

CENTRAL PARK EAST 323

Museum that was to give to this district its
aesthetic stamp. Mr. Frick's house then is the
direct successor of the original building, designed
by Richard M. Hunt, whose memorial was fit-
tingly placed opposite on the edge of the park.

The ample lot provided an ideal location for
the Frick house and gallery, designed by
Messrs. Carrere and Hastings, with special ref-
erence to its artistic intention. The gallery is
the low wing at the upper corner. Built of
white marble, its simple elegance is relieved by
four lunettes in sculpture, done by Sherry Fry,
Philip Martiny, Charles Keck, and Attilio
Piccirilli.

When the cautious commissioners, Gouverneur
Morris, Simeon de Witt, and John Rutherford,
after four years' prodigious effort, produced the
" gridiron " plan, which the city has been con-
demned to follow since the fruition of these
master minds in 1811, no allowance was made
for a city park. There is a curious and fatal
consistency in the growth of New York from
earliest times. One might have supposed that
the appointment of a commission of this char-
acter would have resulted most beneficently for
the development of the city. Gouverneur Morris
was one of the most interesting characters of the

^

324 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Revolutionary era; living abroad for many years,
as he did, he must have noted the importance of
plan in the beauty of foreign cities, a fact which
Washington felt instinctively and impressed upon
the character of the national capital. His op-
portunities for cultivation were extraordinary,
and we know that his own house, Morrisania in
the Bronx, profited largely by the knowledge of
architecture and interior decoration which he had
imbibed during his long residence in France. Yet
he was one of those three who rejected " fanciful
forms " that, while embellishing a plan, they
felt would interfere with the erection of straight-
sided and right-angled houses that for a practical
city seemed to them most desirable.

" It may be a matter of surprise," they said
in their report, " that so few vacant spaces have
been left, and those so small, for the benefit of
fresh air and consequent preservation of health.
. . . Had New York been situated near little
streams like the Seine or the Thames," was their
reasoning, " a great number of ample spaces might
have been necessary, but Manhattan, being em-
braced by large arms of the sea, neither from the
point of view of health nor pleasure was such a
plan necessary. . . . To some," they remarked,
" it may be a matter of surprise that the whole

INTERIOR METROPOLITAN MUSEUM (PAGE 33l)

HEAD OF BALZAC, BY RODIN
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

CENTRAL PARK EAST 325

island has not been laid out as a city. To others
it may be a subject of merriment that the com-
missioners have provided space for a greater
population than is collected at any spot this side
of China. They have, in this respect, been gov-
erned by the shape of the ground. It is not
improbable that considerable numbers may be
collected at Harlem before the high hills to the
southward of it shall be built upon as a city; it is
improbable that for centuries to come the grounds
north of Harlem Flat will be covered with houses.
... To have gone further," they added, " might
have furnished materials to the pernicious spirit
of speculation."

This was little over a century ago! Even
when, in 1856, the city purchased the eight or
nine hundred acres now included in Central
Park, for a public recreation ground, the six
millions spent upon it was considered a mad
extravagance. Central Park was opened about
1859. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert
Vaux were the landscape architects, and their
work was considered wonderful in its day.

Immediately upon the completion of the park
a new civic consciousness awoke in the people,
and within ten years the Metropolitan Museum
began to be talked of. In 1871 the State Legis-

326 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

lature passed a bill appropriating the sum of
half a million of dollars to erect a suitable build-
ing in the park. The idea of locating an art
museum in Central Park originated with Andrew
H. Green, the father of the park, and the museum
now stands on the spot selected by him for the
purpose. But the actual housing of the museum
there, in a building erected and owned by the
city, and the lease defining the relation between
the museum and the city, does credit to the far-
sighted policy of the public officials, who at
this time represented the city, and who curi-
ously enough were none other than the no-
torious politicians, William M. Tweed and Peter
B. Sweeny.

Meanwhile the museum had been organized by
a little band of public-spirited men, in 1870, and
was sustained by their private purses. The initia-
tive had come from the art committee of the
Union League Club and the officers of the meet-
ing called on November 23, 1869, to consider the
founding of the museum represented the intel-
lectual and artistic leadership of New York.
Among the founders were William Cullen
Bryant, president of the Century Association;
Daniel Huntington, president of the National
Academy of Design; Richard M. Hunt, presi-

CENTRAL PARK EAST 327

dent of the New York chapter of the American
Institute of Architects; Dr. Barnard, president
of Columbia College; and Dr. Henry W. Bel-
lows, foremost among New York's public-spirited
clergymen. The city government was repre-
sented by the presence of Andrew H. Green,
comptroller of Central Park, and Henry G.
Stebbins, president of the Central Park Com-
mission. The Committee of Fifty, into whose
hands the project was committed by this meeting,
added to this earlier body the foremost business
men of the period.

The committee set out to found a museum that
should contain complete collections of objects
illustrative of the history of " all the arts, whether
industrial, educational, or recreative, which can
give value to such an institution." They set
themselves what seems, in the light of later
developments, a modest goal, aiming to raise by
personal subscription the sum of $250,000 — about
two-thirds of the present annual administrative
expenses. But their utmost efforts succeeded in
raising, during the first year, less than half that
sum. With such small financial beginnings the
growth of the museum in less than fifty years
seems almost incredible; for besides its exten-
sive building and its priceless collections, its

328 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

endowment fund for purchase now exceeds
$10,000,000.

The history of the museum divides itself into
three periods: the first, during which it had to
depend upon voluntary service in its management,
ended in 1879, when General di Cesnola was
elected as its first salaried director; the second
period ended with his death, in 1904; and the
third began with the election of J. Pierpont
Morgan as president, which opened to the
museum vastly larger resources than it had
known up to this time.

During the first epoch the museum had no
permanent abiding place. Its first exhibition
was installed in the Dodworth Building, 681
Fifth Avenue, a private residence that had been
altered for Allen Dodworth's Dancing Academy,
and exceptionally well constructed for the pur-
pose. " A skylight let into the ceiling of the
large hall where the poetry of motion had been
taught to so many of the young men and maidens
of New York," wrote a contemporary reviewer,
" converted it into a picture gallery." The
Cooper Union had given storage to the nucleus
of the museum's collections, which consisted of
one hundred and seventy-five paintings, principally
Dutch and Flemish, but including representative

CENTRAL PARK EAST 329

works of the Italian, French, English, and Span-
ish schools, secured for the new organization by
William T. Blodgett, assisted by the museum's
first president, John Taylor Johnson. Owing to
the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War Mr.
Blodgett had been able to secure, on most ad-
vantageous terms, two collections; one belonging
to a well-known citizen of Brussels, and the other
to a distinguished collector of Paris. Mr. Blod-
gett acted on his own initiative and purchased the
collections at his own risk, exempting the trustees
of the museum from any obligation to take the
pictures should they not approve the purchase.
Mr. Johnson immediately assumed half the re-
sponsibility of the purchase, which was, however,
ratified by the trustees, and became the property
of the museum, in 1871.

In 1873 the headquarters of the museum were
moved to the Douglas Cruger mansion, 128 West
Fourteenth Street, interest in the movement being
stimulated by the display of a part of the Cesnola
Collection of more than ten thousand objects
extracted from Phoenician, Greek, Assyrian, and
Egyptian tombs by General di Cesnola during his
six years' residence, as United States consul, at
Cyprus.

After ten years' nomadic existence the original

330 A LOITERER IjST NEW YORK

red building, still standing as the nucleus of the
present pile on the Avenue, bordering Central
Park, was opened with impressive ceremonies,
by Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United
States, in 1880. The occasion was rendered the
more brilliant by the placing, for the first time,
of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection of
paintings, one of the earliest bequests to the
galleries.

The architecture of the original building was
never considered a feature of the museum, in
which every consideration was sacrificed to in-
ternal convenience. The committee of architects
appointed to superintend the design included
Russell Sturgis, Richard Morris Hunt, and
James Renwick; the chief architect of the
building was Calvert Vaux, the landscape archi-
tect, who with Olmsted had laid out Central
Park, and either singly or with some associate
planned Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Riverside, and
Morningside Parks. Jacob Wrey Mould's name
appears on the working drawings, and the Eng-
lish architect of All Souls' Church was no doubt
the chief designer of those plans which the mu-
seum officials found far " too magnificent and
elaborate," though he is little credited in the
official reports of the building.

CENTRAL PARK EAST 331

The museum, once established, grew rapidly
and the first building was soon found inadequate
to house the increasing collections. In 1894, one
year before his death, Richard Morris Hunt de-
signed plans for the new building that was to
surround the first structure on all sides; and in
1902 the central portion of the east front was
completed, by Mr. Hunt's son, Richard Howland
Hunt, George B. Post acting as consulting
architect. This portion of the building departed
from the original red brick of Mould's design,
and was built of Indiana limestone, its facade
enriched by medallions and caryatides designed
and executed by Karl Bitter. The medallions
bear the heads of certain old masters selected by
the building committee — Bramante, Diirer, Mi-
chelangelo, Raphael, Velasquez, and Rembrandt,
while the caryatides represent Sculpture, Archi-
tecture, Painting, and Music.

For all the new wings, added during the last
period of the museum's growth, McKim, Mead,
and White were appointed architects, and these
are being carried out. Carrere and Hastings too
have had their part in the construction of the
museum, having designed the interior of the East
Wing for the installation of the Bishop Collection
of Jade. The room reproduces, in substance, Mr.

332 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Bishop's ballroom, in which, previous to its trans-
ference to the museum, the extensive collection
of jade was displayed.

The scope of the museum is comprehensive,
ranging from the earliest beginnings to the latest
word in foreign or native work. There is no
vagueness in the display of the collections, which
give not merely illustrations, but are broadly
outlined in the synthetic method, the gaps con-
stantly filled. Henry Gurdon Marquand's con-
stant gifts to the museum during the thirteen
years of his presidency included many practical
details, such as the collection of sculptural casts,
Renaissance metal work, porcelain, and manu-
scripts; but most important of all was the pres-
entation of his collection of thirty-five paintings,
among which are some of the best known and
most esteemed treasures of the institution, in-
cluding Van Dyck's "James Stuart," Rem-
brandt's " Portrait of a Man," and Vermeer's
" Young Woman at a Casement."

J. Pierpont Morgan's princely giving to the
museum, of which he was president from 1904 until
his death, covered many fields, of which the most
important was his gift of the Georges Hoentschel
Collection of objects of French decorative art
of the eighteenth century, unmatched in any

PORTRAIT OF HENRY G. MARQUAND, BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM (PAGE 332)

» ♦ " » * c *

! •«* • • *2

i «* c * t * I

CENTRAL PARK EAST 333

public museum, and providing a large and valu-
able nucleus for the collection of European dec-
orative arts. The disappointment of the with-
drawal of the greater part of his loans to
the museum, after his death, was handsomely-
atoned for by his son's gift of the clou of the
collection of paintings, Raphael's " Colonna
Madonna," which had for years been one of the
chief ornaments of the National Gallery. For-
tunately the famous Fragonard panels, lent to
the museum by Mr. Morgan, were bought by
Henry C. Frick, and installed in his Fifth Avenue
house, in a room designed to contain them, so
that they are not lost to New York.

The recent accession of the Altman Collection
of old masters, porcelains, etc., places the
museum upon a footing with the galleries of
Europe in the schools represented. The Rodin
Collection is a feature of the modern department
of sculpture; the George A. Hearn Collection has
its important place in the development of Ameri-
can painting, with particular reference to the con-
temporary school; while the department of early
American portraiture is rich and important.

The rocking, swaying Fifty-ninth Street cross-
town car, in its shuttle-like passage east and west,
skirts the boundaries of the erstwhile villages of

334 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Yorkville and Bloomingdale, and marks a line
of recession, a snapping of all sympathy and
interest between adjacent sections, intensely char-
acteristic of New York, where the early settle-
ments, absorbed and incorporated in the growth
of the city, maintain throughout the island a
marked individuality. This individuality, perhaps
it should be said, expresses itself not so much in
externals — though that too — as in the psychologi-
cal attitude.

Sixty years ago there were but two main thor-
oughfares in the upper part of the island — the
Boston Post Road on the east side and the
Bloomingdale Road on the west. There was no
traffic on the Avenue save the drovers who fol-
lowed the old dirt road on their way to the
Bowery market. From the Boston Post Road,
long lanes led to the residences of gentlemen, who
had country seats on the East River; and similar
lanes led from the old Bloomingdale Road to
the estates on the Hudson.

Of these old houses at least two remain, in
excellent preservation, to tell the tale of former
style — Claremont in Bloomingdale and " Smith's
Folly," or the Jeremiah Towle house, in York-
ville, near the end of the Queensborough Bridge.
Bloomingdale may have been beautiful in the

CENTRAL PARK EAST 335

correct suburban fashion, on the high banks of
the noble Hudson; but Yorkville had mystery
and interest of a richer flavour, commanding the
passageway to the Sound, bordering on the tur-
bulent waters of Hell Gate, and overlooking the
islands in the East River.

The boundaries of Yorkville have been vari-
ously described. From all accounts the nucleus
of the village seems to have lain along the old
Post Road between Eighty-third and Eighty-
ninth Streets; while its expansions included the
district east of Fifth Avenue to the river from
Fifty-ninth to One Hundredth Street. The
nomenclature of the features of the East River
shore is romantic and suggestive. Kip's Bay
indented the eastern bank of the river at about
the location of the present ferry slips at Thirty-
fourth Street; it was here that the British landed,
when they took possession of the city, on Sep-
tember 15, 1776, while the quick-witted wife of
the owner of Incleberg prepared a feast for their
detention. Until 1851 the old farmhouse of
Jacob Kip, who gave his name to the bay, stood
on Second Avenue near Thirty-fifth Street.

During two wars with England fortifications
occupied the vicinity of the rocky cove on the
eastern edge of the Duffore Farm, near Forty-

336 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

fifth Street, known as Turtle Bay. Its high, pre-
cipitous banks made it a safe harbour for small
craft, and the British established here a magazine
of military stores during the troublous times pre-
ceding the outbreak of the Revolution. This was
raided by a chosen band of the Sons of Liberty,
led by John Lamb and Marinus Willett.

Horace Greeley's country home looked out over
Turtle Bay, a rambling frame structure, buried
in shrubbery and shaded by fruit trees, and only
accessible by a long lane turning in from the
Boston Road, down which rattled the hourly
stage to the city. Time has removed this inter-
esting landmark, together with the historic Beek-
man house, which stood for more than a hundred
years, overlooking Turtle Bay, west of Avenue
A, near Fifty-first Street. James Beekman built
the house in 1763; it was a plain but massive
structure, with two stories and a basement, and
its gardens extended to the Post Road. Clinton
and Carleton occupied it as headquarters during
the Revolution, in which it figured prominently,
as the scene of the condemnation of Nathan Hale;
and beneath its roof Andre passed his last night
in New York before setting out for West Point
upon the errand which cost him his life.

We have in the journal of Madame Riedesel,

CENTRAL PARK EAST 337

wife of the Hessian general who surrendered at
Saratoga, a description of the Beekman house,
which she occupied in 1780. " The spacious
rooms,' ' she says, " were adorned with black
marble mantels bearing elaborate carvings of
scroll and foliage. The fireplaces were orna-
mented with Dutch tiles, representing Scriptural
subjects." Amongst the quaint relics of the
New York Historical Society is the drawing-
room mantel, with some of the Dutch Scripture
tiles, saved from the old Beekman house, torn
down in 1874.

The site of the estate still retains a certain
curious character. A steep incline leads up the
hill, and Beekman Place preserves the historic
name and commands an extensive view of the
East River from a high bluff, for the river shore
is bold and rocky, and the current too swift to
admit of docks.

The old Shot Tower, near the ferry to Black-
well's Island, keeps vigil over a disordered board-
yard, concealing every trace of the cultivated
grounds which surrounded the " Spring Valley
Farmhouse," built about two hundred years ago,
and, until recently demolished, known as the
oldest building on Manhattan. A perfect speci-
men of Dutch architecture of two centuries ago

338 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the house was built by David Duffore, or de Voor,
to whom the Spring Valley farm was granted by
Governor Andros, in 1677. After the Revolution
it bore the names of Odell and Arden, and later
became the Brevoort estate. The curious brick
tower near the ferry slip looked down, in its
day, upon the sleek property of the Dutch settler.
Erected in 1821, it replaced a tower of Revolu-
tionary days, and was used during the Civil
War. De Voor's Mill Stream, or Saw Mill
Creek, ran from the high ground of upper Cen-
tral Park, and was crossed at Seventy-seventh
and Fifty-second Streets by two " Kissing
Bridges."

In close proximity to one of the detested gas
tanks of modern city architecture, near the ter-
minal of the picturesque Queensborough Bridge,
on an eminence from which the streets have been
levelled at any cost to surrounding property,
stands a quaint house with two wings and a
receding entrance between them. Rough, heavy
stones indicate ancient masonry, and the quiet
pastoral air of retirement presents as pretty a
paradox as you will find in rambles about New
York. Still strangely occupied as a residence,
the house has served in various capacities since
more than a century and a quarter ago it was

CENTRAL PARK EAST 339

erected as a stable to the manor house of Peter
Pra Van Sant, who owned the farm, extending
from the old Post Road to the river!

Accounts of this interesting relic differ, some
say that in 1795 the whole Van Sant property
passed to Colonel William Smith, the son-in-law
of President Adams, a soldier of Revolutionary
fame — adjutant general under Lafayette, aide-
de-camp to Washington; and, after the close of
the war, secretary of the legation to England,
where he met and married Abigail, the accom-
plished daughter of John Adams, then minister
to Great Britain. Others say that Smith built
the house in 1799 as a present to his bride,
sparing no expense in the construction and ap-
pointments, but that before it was well finished
Smith failed in business, and this gave to the
house the name " Smith's Folly." At all events
the property passed to Monmouth C. Hart when
Smith was obliged to sell, and Hart completed it
and opened it as a road-house, in which capacity
it served until 1830. It was readily accessible by
means of one of the long lanes turning in from
the Boston Post Road, and formed an important
stopping place for travellers in the early days.
Its character is picturesque, and Jeremiah Towle,
who frequented it in its tavern days, was so

340 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

pleased with its unusual features that when it
came upon the market, on the death of Hart, in
1834, he bought the house for his residence. It
was occupied by his family as late as 1906.

The old Schermerhorn farmhouse, until 1914
a landmark of this region, dated back to colonial
days. It was built in 1847 by Symon Schermer-
horn, one of the old Dutch family of that name
settled in Albany. Standing on a bluff, over-
looking the East River, on land now included
in the grounds of the Rockefeller Institute, the
old house bordered Jones' Wood, the ninety-
acre farm of Samuel Provoost, the first bishop of
New York and president of Columbia College.
The bishop had a cousin, David Provoost, a Revo-
lutionary soldier with a rare talent for smuggling
which won him the nickname of " Ready Money
Provoost." He used to hide his booty in " Smug-
glers' Cave " on the shore of the bishop's farm,
or in a cave at Hallett's Point, Astoria.

There was an old house at Horn's Hook,
belonging to Mrs. Provoost, taken by Archibald
Gracie, who built on the site the so-called
" Gracie House," now included in the East
River Park. This house in its day saw inter-
esting life and extended princely hospitality, for
its owner was a merchant and shipowner of

CENTRAL PARK EAST 341

wealth and had excellent connections in this
country; his son married the daughter of Oliver
Wolcott. Josiah Quincy describes a dinner which
he attended in the Gracie House in 1805. Wash-
ington Irving was a frequent visitor, and the
exiled king of France, Louis Philippe, is said
to have been entertained here.

Before the rocky bottom of the river was blown
up at the point where the Harlem and East River
tides collide in their rapid action, the waters of
Hell Gate were a formidable feature of the
navigation at this point. The Gracie House over-
looked this prospect, and Quincy speaks of the
shores of Long Island as full of cultivated lands
and elegant country seats. John Jacob Astor's
villa adjoined the Gracie estate, and Washington
Irving describes this delightful retreat, " opposite
Hell Gate," where he retouched and perfected
his " Astoria," written at Astor's request.

The spectacular entrance of the Queensborough
Bridge, uniting New York with Ravenswood, in
the borough of Queens, has made terrific changes
in this once peaceful locality. One of the most
cruel is the partial destruction of that charming
realization of Pomander s Walk, the Riverview
Terrace, a row of dwellings built directly on the
top of the rocks facing the river, and cut off from

342 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

all contamination by gates at each end, guarded
by a private watchman. Perhaps I feel towards
this pretty block with especial tenderness, from
personal associations, for a certain house in the
terrace, held by an early schoolmate of my father,
figures in my earliest and latest recollections of
New York. This charming old gentleman has
been one of the stoutest defenders of his rights
against the invasion of the enterprises connected
with the construction and maintenance of the
bridge, which has taken to itself half of the
houses. The bridge has brought many annoy-
ances but contributes an amazing note to an
already exhilarating view of the river, the island,
and the passing craft.

XVII
CENTRAL PARK WEST

Bloemendaal

Broadway in its pushing American way has
gobbled up all the pretty highways of the ancient
town and outlying villages which it overtook in its
reach for the far north. Its ambition was not
satisfied until it made good Lafayette's facetious
question concerning its ultimate destination — " Do
you expect," asked he, when shown the plans for
continuing the main thoroughfare of the city be-
yond Madison Square, " that Broadway will reach
to Albany?"

In its steady march towards the accomplishment
of that feat, the original Heere Straat was early
lost in the Breedeweg of the Dutch settlers, while
in later years the Kingsbridge Road, designating
the old Post Road to Albany, has disappeared
from the modern map in company with Blooming-
dale Road, which it joined at One Hundred and
Forty-seventh Street, continuing along the west-
ern route of the island. Broadway supplants all

343

344 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

of these — appropriates the ready-made pieces and
links them together — and by that summary process
becomes — vain boast — " the longest modern street
in the world."

Bloemendaal, which bestowed its charmingly
suggestive name — the vale of flowers — borrowed
from a beautiful village near old Haarlem, upon
the roadway that traversed its tract of fine estates,
extended vaguely in Dutch days from the out-
skirts of the Bossen Bouwerie to Claremont, and
contained a number of stately mansions, of which
scarce one stands to-day. I remember with what
vigour of impression a very old lady of my ac-
quaintance, not so many years ago, described her
sensations on discovering that an apartment house
in which she was living, on the west side of the
park, was built on the very site of her father's
estate in Bloomingdale, a rich farm that extended
to the river. Here she had spent a happy youth
in the days when Spring Street bounded the north-
ern limit of the actual city; and here, by the
caprice of fortune, she was condemned to pass a
colourful old age, " boxed up," as it were, on her
own father's territory, now strangely perverted
to the modern idea of living, " as they call it," for
living to her had meant, in this same locality, a
vastly richer, more expansive state.

CENTRAL PARK WEST 345

The picturesque Bloomingdale Road was opened
in 1703, extending from Madison Square to One
Hundred and Fourteenth Street, and following
in a large measure the line of present Broadway.
Included in the district covered were the small
hamlets of Harsenville and Striker's Bay, while
the village of Bloomingdale proper centred about
One Hundredth Street. Up to the outbreak of
the Civil War each of these hamlets had a sem-
blance of village life, of which vestiges remained,
indeed, until all local personality was swallowed up
in the " improvements " following in the wake of
the elevated road, whose immense effect was to
annihilate distance and to destroy independence
in these former centres by making all look easily
and profitably to New York's city market, as
the logical source of interest and supply.

The peculiar conflict of incompatible neighbour-
hoods that occurs at Columbus Circle finds its
most agreeable outlet in the three smart blocks,
known as " Central Park South," that contain
some of the oldest and most comfortable of New
York's apartment houses, as well as the most
modern and exotic of studio buildings. " The
Gainsborough," built by a syndicate of artists, is
readily distinguishable for its interesting front, built
largely of glass, to afford light for the painters,

346 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

but allowing also generous space for the handsome
Mercer tiles, of which the ornamental upper
facade is constructed. These tiles are the unique
product of Henry C. Mercer, of Doylestown,
Pennsylvania, who, having established himself in
the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch country, has
devoted a lifetime of study and research to redis-
covering the process of pottery and tile-making,
which the industrious German settlers had im-
ported and practised over a century ago.

The great charm of the building rests, however,
upon the " Festival Procession," a joyous frieze
in four parts, extending across the front, and
which, including the bust of Gainsborough over
the entrance, is the work of Isidore Konti.

The much discussed monument to " the valiant
seamen who perished in the Maine " occupies an
important setting at the Merchants' Gate to Cen-
tral Park, just off Columbus Circle, and repre-
sents the combined invention of H. Van Buren
Magonigle, architect, and Attilio Piccirilli, sculp-
tor. Comparatively unknown to the outside world,
every sculptor values the exquisite workmanship
of the " Piccirilli Brothers," from whose studio
and workshop in the Bronx has issued many a
masterpiece of marble carving. There are six
brothers, all of whom learned the trade carried

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DETAIL OF FRIEZE, GAINSBOROUGH BUILDING
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DETAIL OF FRIEZE. GAINSBOROUGH BUILDING
ISIDORE KONTI, SCULPTOR (PAGE 346)

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CENTRAL PARK WEST 347

by them to such high perfection; while Attilio and
Furio went further and became accomplished
sculptors themselves. In the Maine Monument,
therefore, as well as the Firemen's Memorial on
the Riverside Drive, one sees the creation of At-
tilio Piccirilli, carried out by the brothers in their
most accomplished style.

Civic indifference towards sculpture reached
a sort of climax with the unveiling of the Maine
Monument and the more than usually stupid snap-
shot criticisms of the press roused a storm of pro-
test from the sculptors of the country, demanding
intelligent criticism as the first step towards ad-
vancement in every phase of public betterment.
The Maine Monument suffered more than most
from a perverse misconception of its intention,
from certain railing criticisms and heedless witti-
cisms of the fun-loving paragraphers, who do so
much to shape public opinion.

Piccirilli and Magonigle won the contest for the
monument over forty-six competitors, and for the
sculptor, at least, the work became a labour of
love, for he spent over twelve years in toiling at
his task, in creating from the marble these sympa-
thetically chiselled figures, among which are some
— notably the reclining representations of the At-
lantic and Pacific Oceans — that stand amongst

348 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the best sculpture that the city offers. The criti-
cism has been made, with some justice, that the
architectural mass is too great and the crowning
note inadequate, but sculptors have rallied to the
defence of Piccirilli, and claimed for him the con-
sideration deserved for his " high-minded conse-
cration, and skill in the handling of marble, here-
tofore unknown in this country."

Promenades in the arid region west of Columbus
Circle, made formidable and forbidding by the
heavy obtrusion of the elevated road, which, mak-
ing its way through narrow streets, so darkens and
threatens the passage practically condemned to its
use, lead the persevering pedestrian to a strange
and gloomy church, whose immense importance
and interest is comparatively unknown and un-
appreciated.

Where Ninth Avenue merges its identity with
Columbus Avenue, behind the rush and roar of
two lines of elevated trains, stands the substantial,
stone structure of the Paulist Fathers' Church,
one of the most romantically interesting and in-
herently foreign of the churches of New York.
The order of the Paulist Fathers, the sole religious
body of priests of American origin, was founded
in 1858, by five converts to the Roman Catholic
faith. These were Isaac Hecker, of the Brook

CENTRAL PARK WEST 349

Farm community of transcendentalists ; Clarence
Walworth, Francis Baker, George Deshon, and
Augustine Hewit. Founded for parochial, mis-
sionary, and educational work, the Paulists do not
take the usual vows of religious orders, but, pro-
fessing to follow the example of the apostle Paul,
they live the life imposed by such vows in absolute
strictness.

The Church of the Paulist Fathers represents
in its impressive interior the results of many ex-
periments in decoration. O'Rourke was the first
architect of the building, which was about ten
years under construction, the clergy having first
occupied it in January, 1885. The first blow to
the church was the erection of the elevated road
across its face before the edifice was well under
way. Things had gone too far to make possible
a change of location, and the only thing to be done
was to make such alterations in the original plan
as would ameliorate the painful conditions imposed
by the noisy railroad. The architect had con-
ceived it as a Gothic church, but the exigencies
of the situation carried the builder away from the
original idea and the result is something between
Gothic and Romanesque. The Gothic windows
that were to have lined its sides were done away
with, in order to eliminate as much as possible the

350 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

noise of the passing trains, and this has made place
inside for the altars in the side aisles, now a feature
of the interior; while outside it was intended to
fill the depressions, indicating the place of the
windows, with sculpture.

Father Hecker, who was the executive force in
the conception of the church, had unbounded am-
bitions for the beauty of his scheme. It was his
purpose to have the decorations throughout under-
taken by the famous trio of artists of whom we
have talked so much — White, La Farge, and Saint
Gaudens — and the interior owes its undoubted
distinction to the enthusiasm of the three, though
La Farge is there most in evidence.

Stanford White designed the facade, and built
the high altar and the two side altars to the right
and left, dedicated to St. Joseph and the Virgin.
The high altar, in Siena marble, onyx, and ala-
baster, dominates the dusk interior. The design
is pure, and parts of the alabaster are over-
laid with gold to give warmth; while a charming
variety in its severe character is introduced in the
three adoring angels, in bronze, which surmount
the whole. These are the work of Frederick Mac-
Monnies, and his first commission. Inconspicuous
as they are, they show White's infinite care in the
detail of his work, and his appreciative use of the

THE PACIFIC, DETAIL OF MAINE MONUMENT
BY ATTILIO PICCIRILLI

THE MAINE MONUMENT, COLUMBUS CIRCLE
H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE, ARCHITECT
ATTILIO PICCIRILLI, SCULPTOR (PAGE 347)

CENTRAL PARK WEST 351

young sculptors just back from European study.
Another handsome detail is the exquisite bronze
lamp, in the design of four angels supporting a
globe, by Philip Martiny.

La Farge's work in the church, though already
prolific, was to have been much more extensive;
he was to have made all the windows, and many
panels for the spaces, now bare, left by the elim-
ination of the windows of the clerestory. As it is
his work may be readily distinguished, and though
much has since been done to detract from the
beauty of his unified scheme of decoration, the in-
terior stands an imposing monument to his genius.

La Farge at the time that the Paulist Fathers
called his talents into requisition was just back
from Japan, and very much under the Japanese
influence. The entire colour scheme of the church
is his, and he made the best of the decorations as
well as the twenty-two Romanesque windows that
give to the upper part of the church its distinctive
character. La Farge and White made many
changes in the architecture, both apparent and
real, in an effort to do away with the pointed
Gothic of the original plan. It is rather amusing
to notice the trick by which, in these windows,
La Farge deceives the eye; the geometric design,
of which the basic colour is brown, is carried out

352 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

in rich blues and yellow greens, and follows an
apparently curved line, whereas in reality the
window is pointed and the artist has cleverly con-
cealed the point by filling in the top with indigo
glass. Considered just as colour, the windows are
splendid, though not strictly ecclesiastic; the two
jewelled windows in the sanctuary are particularly
effective and characteristic, and were to have bal-
anced the three central figure windows, designed
by La Farge but unfortunately never placed.
The conventional substitutes are of foreign manu-
facture.

La Farge planned to decorate the whole of the
sanctuary and finished the composition on the left-
hand side, consisting of " The Angel of the Moon "
surrounded by five lesser luminaries in circular
panels, as well as the five corresponding designs
for the opposite wall, whose central figure, " The
Angel of the Sun," is the work of an alien hand
and disastrously out of tone with the rest. The
priests evidently had troubles of their own with
their temperamental decorator and one can build
up the situation, with all its strains, from the ex-
isting facts. La Farge made " The Angel of the
Sun " and two nine-foot panels for the sanctuary,
but they were never placed. Even when he of-
fered them to the church for the price of installa-

CENTRAL PARK WEST 353-

tion, they were not accepted. After his death his
executor offered them for a nominal sum and they
were refused; and when, after his death, they
appeared in the catalogue of the sale of the
painter's effects, no effort was made to secure
them, though they brought an insignificant sum.

Fortunately they did not go far afield. The
Brooklyn Institute acquired them, and they hang
in the central corridor of the Museum, where,
splendidly lighted, they may be studied and ap-
preciated, though it should be remembered that
they were painted for a shadowy interior, and not
for close inspection, but rather in a large way that
they might carry well. Some day, perhaps, the
Bacchante-like atrocity that usurps the place in-
tended for the true Angel of the Sun may come
down and La Farge's figure be given its proper
setting.

Before taking orders, Father Searle, one of the
congregation of Paulist priests, was a distinguished
astronomer, and it was according to his idea that
La Farge decorated the vaulted blue ceiling with
the stars and planets in their true astronomic re-
lation, as they appeared on the night of St. Paul's
conversion. This ceiling, which from the artistic
point of view is rather a failure, La Farge took
pains to leave in obscurity, another effect gained

354 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

by the dark blue tops to the Romanesque windows.
La Farge's work in the church dates from about
1886.

Taken all in all, and including the tragic mis-
takes of the later decoration, all of which is most
unworthy and trivial, the Church of the Paulist
Fathers is one of the most interesting of the dec-
orated churches of New York. Wandering about
in the dusk of its chapels, one discovers many
things which show that the intention of the donors
and of the priests was for the best. Robert Reid
painted the panel in the first chapel on the left,
representing the Martyrdom of St. Paul; opposite
is a Crucifixion by the Marquise Wentworth, a
pupil of Bonnat; in the Annunciation Chapel is
a charming figure of the Virgin, by Bela Pratt;
and in a corner near the south entrance is a bronze
replica of Michelangelo's Madonna, of Bruges.
The inlaid baptistry was the gift of Augustin
Daly.

But apart from its beautiful or interesting con-
tents, the church has a deeply religious atmos-
phere, a character of its own, and an air of having
been used and loved. I am sure that it has a place
in this strange, paradoxical community in which
it finds itself, that it offers itself as a tangible
symbol of consolation to the workers who hurry

CENTRAL PARK WEST 355

in and out of its hospitable doors. The feet of the
little Bruges Madonna and Infant have been al-
most kissed away, and the old wooden floor is
dusty with the tread of worshippers. The interior
is strangely vast, strangely silent, and filled with
suggestion; bare and remote of aspect, it is remi-
niscent of certain gloomy churches of Italy, and
this bareness and pervading sense of solitude is
not without a very definite and appealing charm.

XVIII

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS

Not the least of the charms presented to the
loiterer by the district known as Columbia
Heights is the delightful means of approach.
When one turns through many busy byways, from
the banal city straggling northwest from Columbus
Circle into the romantic windings of the Riverside
Drive, the whole face of nature assumes a different
aspect. This priceless view of the Hudson, thus
revealed, saved by some miracle from the base
uses of commerce, yet terribly menaced by rail-
road encroachments, as we are daily reminded, is
one of the enchanting reserves of New York, the
one instance, as one might say, in which advantage
has been taken of the inherent beauty of the island
formation. This tantalizing sample of what might
have been done for the protection of the whole
circumference stretches away from the turn-in
at Seventy-second Street through Washington
Heights and Inwood to the brink of Spuyten
Duyvil Creek.

356

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 357

The top of the lumbering motor bus, in all winds
and weathers, is preeminently the place from which
to enjoy the unfolding loveliness, both of nature
and of art, presented by our curious, conglomerate
city as the feature of its northwestern boundary.
One should know it well and know it at all seasons
to get the full flavour of the view, so charming
in the morning, so dazzling at mid-day, so minor
in its Whistlerian envelopment at dusk, so brilliant
in its contrasts at night.

From the height of the heavy vehicle one towers
above the hill-bound river, which lies flat at the
bottom of the gorge its course has cut through
the surrounding hills, like a fine old chart. The
craft is different from the panting, steaming
things rushing distractedly about through the
waters of the East River and the Battery. It
belongs to the pleasure-boat variety — the sloops,
yachts, and launches of the leisure class — and it
lies mostly at anchor, with a peacef ulness ; while,
at rare intervals, the Albany boat slips lightly
through the waters, with its freight of sightseers;
for the palisades of the Hudson are still amongst
the wonders of the western world.

In summer the bus route lies through the tree
tops, the intervals of the drive happily relieved
by fine sculpture, placed admirably in the grassy

358 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

slopes that link the Riverside Park with the ter-
races of the residences and palatial apartment
houses facing the river, making distinguished notes
of interest. Franz Sigel, the German-American
general, who rendered valuable service to the
North in the Civil War, is honoured in the bronze
equestrian statue, mounted on a simple granite
pedestal at the head of a flight of steps leading to
One Hundred and Sixth Street. The statue is
by Karl Bitter, finished and placed ten years ago.

Jeanne dArc has been so adequately sculptured
as an equestrienne by her compatriots, Dubois and
Fremiet, that their portraits impose a certain style
upon any later sculptor attempting a representa-
tion of the legendary figure. Anna Vaughan
Hyatt's monument to her memory, forming
one of the sculptural features of the Drive,
contributes, however, a remarkably compact and
sculpturesque idea of the French heroine in her
sainted character. The statue has the Gothic
spirit, the decorative quality of the French monu-
ments of the period to which it relates; its model-
ling is virile and strong, while to the whole har-
mony of effect the unusual pedestal brings a
decisive character both satisfying and pleasing.

To these two embellishments of the terraces
sloping down to the Drive, Piccirilli and

EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF TEANNE d'aRC, BY ANNA VAUGHAN HYATT
RIVERSIDE DRIVE (PAGE 358)

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 359

Magonigle, more happily in combination this
time, contribute a third — the handsome monu-
ment to the " Firemen " of New York, dedicated
in 1913, and containing much beautiful sculpture.
The monument is in the form of a sarcophagus,
of which the side facing the Drive bears an ex-
quisite low relief, whose subject is " The Call to
the Fire," while at the ends are groups of
" Memory " and " Duty." With the passing of
the fire horses, in growing favour of the motor
vehicles for quick transportation of men and ap-
paratus, we are losing a strong picturesque touch
in city life, and the relief, which records the
moving and stirring scene of magnificent horses
straining every muscle in an effort at incredible
speed while the firemen lean far over the shafts
to give fullest rein to their powers, will soon
have an historic as well as an artistic interest.

The motor bus combines convenience with ad-
venture. It opens a direct way to Grant's Tomb,
to Claremont, and to the historic Jumel Mansion,
on Washington Heights; it takes one within a
stone's throw of Columbia University and easy
access of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the
Divine.

One's sense of having left New York behind
grows when, ascending the steep slope from the

360 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Riverside Drive, one arrives at the summit of the
Morningside Heights, overlooking the deep park,
which dips down again to the lower level on the
east side of the island. The topography of the
country has here been in a measure preserved to
the immense advantage of the new city that has
grown up about the University and the Cathedral,
and it is with less difficulty that we can reconstruct
its primitive condition; for certain landmarks still
stand to indicate the outstanding features of its
colonial history.

We are now upon famous ground associated
with Revolutionary days, and though names have
been changed it is easy to recognize in Cathedral,
Columbia, and Morningside Heights the area com-
prised, in those days, under the general title, Van
de Water Heights, the territory occupied by the
British during the Battle of Harlem Heights,
fought on the high ground and in the valley over
a widespread field between the two encampments.
The American forces were scattered over the Har-
lem Heights as far as Washington's headquarters
in the Jumel Mansion, overlooking the Harlem
River, above Harlem Plains. This was then the
house of Roger Morris, a royalist, and had been
seized by the Continental troops in the summer of
1776 for Washington's military occupancy. Hav-

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 361

ing the " most commanding view on the island,"
nothing better for the purpose could have been
devised.

We are to remember that Washington's army
had been disastrously worsted on Long Island, and
landing at Kip's Bay in a state of panic, was in
frantic flight before the enemy, when, thanks to
Mrs. Murray's strategic inspiration, General Howe
and his officers were diverted from pursuit and
kept wining and dining at Incleberg, on the
bold word of a charming hostess that the Ameri-
cans had long since escaped beyond possibility of
capture. All this time, as we know, Washington
and Putnam, almost within earshot of the tea-
party, were exerting superhuman efforts to rally
their disordered troops in Robert Murray's corn-
fields, close by the house, somewhere between the
present Grand Central Station and Bryant Park.

The thing seems nearly incredible, but it was
almost as Albert Herter pictures it in his tapestry
in the Hotel McAlpin — Howe and his subordinates
yielding to the blandishments of this remarkable
woman while Washington's army files silently by
in full view of the enemy. How marvellous she
must have been — what courage, what nerve she
displayed, knowing full well the frightful risks!

After the retreat of the American army from

362 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Long Island, we are to remember, Washington
retired to the Apthorpe Mansion, in a stretch of
country overlooking the Harlem River. Its site
is pointed out between Ninety-first and Ninety-
second Streets, just west of Columbus Avenue.
The situation was well fortified, but Washington
knew well that it could not be held long against
a British attack, and so he sent the main body of
the army to Harlem Heights at the northern end
of the island, and left only a force of four thou-
sand men, under General Putnam, in New York.
It was these men that Putnam was trying to lead
to the main body of the army, under cover of Mrs.
Murray's hospitality. Washington came to the
rescue, and the two generals met where two roads
crossed, close by the present intersection of Broad-
way and Forty-third Street.

When the British realized that the patriots had
joined the main army and were safely encamped
within a mile of the Roger Morris house, they
spent the night along Apthorpe Lane and threw
up fortifications just north, extending across the
island from Hoorn's Hoek to Striker's Bay.

The first line of works thrown up by the Ameri-
cans was at about One Hundred and Forty-
seventh Street, and the hill as far south as the
" Hollow Way," the valley through which Manhat-

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 363

tan Street now passes, was occupied by Washing-
ton's army. " Generally these were the posi-
tions of the two forces on September 16, 1776.
On that morning Colonel Thomas Knowlton, who
had seen service at Lexington, Bunker Hill, and
Long Island, was directed by Washington to make
a reconnaissance of the enemy's position. Mov-
ing southward with his Connecticut Rangers along
the westerly side near the Hudson, they were
screened from view by the woods covering Hoog-
landt's farm. It was not until they reached Nich-
olas Jones' farmhouse, about sunrise, that the
British pickets, light infantrymen, were encoun-
tered. Evidently stationed on the Bloomingdale
Road at about One Hundred and Fourth Street,
their regiments were encamped a short distance
to the south. During the brisk skirmish which
now took place, the woods along the dividing line
between the Jones and Hooglandt farms echoed
the sharp firing from both sides. The forces were
so disproportionate as to numbers, and the object
of the movement had been so far attained that
Knowlton ordered a retreat, which was effected
without confusion. He had, however, ten killed
in action. They fell back along the line of the
road, closely pursued. The enemy halted at the
elevation known as * Claremont,' from which point

364 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

they could catch glimpes of General Greene's
troops on the opposite slopes.

" This was the third time within a month that
the British had scattered or driven Washington's
men with ease, and it only remained on this occa-
sion for their bugler to sound the contemptuous
notes of the hunt across the Hollow into the Amer-
ican lines. To quote one of the latter's officers:
* The enemy appeared in open view and in the
most insulting manner sounded their bugle hor.ns
as is usual after a fox chase; I never felt such a
sensation before — it seemed to crown our dis-
grace.' Washington had gone down to the ad-
vanced position and heard the firing. He was
urged to reinforce the Rangers, but was not im-
mediately persuaded of the advisability of forcing
the fighting. Eventually he determined on a stra-
tegical plan, viz.: to make a feint in front of the
hill and induce the enemy to advance into the
Hollow, and second, should this prove successful,
to send a strong detachment circuitously around
their right flank to the rear and hem them in. This
plan succeded in so far that the enemy, seeing the
advance, promptly accepted battle, ' ran down the
hill and took possession of some fences and
bushes,' from which vantage a smart fire was be-
gun, but at too great distance to do much execu-

FIREMEN S MONUMENT, RIVERSIDE DRIVE
H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE, ARCHITECT
ATTILIO PICCIRLLI, SCULPTOR (PAGE 35Q)

DUTY, BY ATTILIO PICCIRILLI
DETAIL OF FIREMEN'S MONUMENT

• • •«.»«

, • » • • >

• «. « ,♦>

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 365

tion. The flanking party, composed of Knowl-
ton's Rangers, now back at the lines, was rein-
forced by three companies of riflemen from the
Third Virginia Regiment under Major Andrew
Leitch. In some unlucky manner the attack was
premature * as it was rather in flank than in rear.'
Both the brave leaders fell in this engagement,
Knowlton living but an hour. . . . Nothing
daunted by the loss of their commanders, the
Rangers and riflemen pressed on. The British,
who had been inveigled into the Hollow Way, had
in the meantime been put to flight by use of ar-
tillery and were pushed back towards their camp
along the line of the road to a buckwheat field on
top of a high hill. Heretofore the manoeuvring
had taken place largely on the Hooglandt farm;
the main action was then transferred to Van de
Waters' Heights.

" The general limits of this * hot contest ' were
the high ground extending from Columbia Uni-
versity around westward and northerly to Grant's
Tomb and Claremont. The fighting grew into a
pitched battle, lasting from noon until about two
o'clock; nearly 1,800 Americans were engaged,
composed of commands representing New Eng-
land, Maryland, and Virginia, with volunteers
from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

366 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

" The enemy finally retreated, followed in close
pursuit, and the day was won. The route crossed
an orchard just north of One Hundred and Elev-
enth Street and terminated in the vicinity of Jones'
house, where Knowlton first found them in the
early morning. It was considered prudent to
withdraw, and late in the afternoon the troops
returned to camp, rejoicing in a success they had
not anticipated. It is estimated that about thirty
men were killed and not over a hundred wounded
or missing. A total British loss of 171 was re-
ported. This action put new courage into the
patriots and exerted a wide influence over subse-
quent events."

This account of the Battle of Harlem Heights
follows that of Henry P. Johnston, professor of
history in the College of New York, and is quoted
from an article contributed by Hopper Striker
Mott to the " Historical Guide to the City of
New York." * The Bloomingdale Dutch Re-
formed Church at One Hundred and Sixth Street
and Broadway occupies the site of Nicholas Jones'
house, near which began and ended the Battle of
Harlem Heights.

This whole historic region, until lately wild and
uncultivated, was given a new impetus when, at

* Compiled by Frank Bergen Kelley.

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 367

about the same time, it was decided to locate the
Cathedral and Columbia University upon the high
ground overlooking both the Hudson and the
Sound. That part of the old Van de Water
Heights to which the Episcopal Cathedral now
lends its name was acquired by the church in 1887,
and the vast edifice was begun in 1892, and now,
after a quarter of a century of slow progress, the
crypt, the ambulatory, and the choir are prac-
tically completed, and huge in themselves, give
some hint of the intended dimensions of this great
Protestant enterprise.

Heins and La Farge, the latter a son of the
painter, John La Farge, won the competition for
the plan of the Cathedral over twenty-five archi-
tects, in 1891. Perhaps the greatest success in
American church building of the generation in
which this competition was held was the Trinity
Church of Boston, which had been built by Henry
H. Richardson some fifteen years previous. A
freely treated Romanesque influence preponder-
ates in all his style, and as many of our younger
architects were trained in his atelier, his influence
was widely felt. Hardly one of the competitive
designs for the Cathedral of New York failed to
show the influence of his works, and this was
natural, for Trinity, in its day, was considered the

368 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

great masterpiece of its generation, and its favour-
able impression was deepened by the same archi-
tect's designs for the Cathedral of Albany. Heins
and La Farge fell easily into the style which Rich-
ardson had introduced, and the Cathedral is com-
monly called Romanesque, and Romanesque it
started out to be ; but upon the death of the senior
partner, Mr. Heins, the contracts for the building
were ended, and upon the completion of the choir,
by Mr. La Farge, his firm retired from the work,
and Ralph Adams Cram was appointed supervis-
ing architect. This change of architects accounts
in part for the mixture of Byzantine and Gothic
details, such as the windows, the pulpit, and high
altar, in the Romanesque style of the building;
and, as the work advances, other more important
departures from the original scheme are to be
expected. In cathedrals of the old world, whose
construction occupied several centuries, such com-
binations of styles were inevitable and logical; the
Romanesque melted into the Gothic, the Gothic
into the Renaissance, as a church grew from one
century to another, and each part represented the
age in which it was conceived. But in the case of
the Cathedral, where every detail is repeated from
classic models, or based upon established orders,
and nothing is characteristic of its own day and

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 369

place, this anachronistic mixture seems unneces-
sary, though criticism of the incomplete edifice
is premature.

If in the process of building the Protestant
Cathedral the style was changed from Romanesque
to Gothic, the latter appears only in the upper
structure. The crypt is Romanesque, gaining a
certain romanticism from the currently accepted
story that it was hewn out of solid rock. Its chief
treasure, the famous Tiffany Chapel, shown at the
Columbian Exposition of 1893, was originally
purchased by Mrs. Celia H. Wallace, of Chicago,
who gave it to the Cathedral at a time when the
crypt was the only portion of the edifice where
services could be held. It has lately been removed
to Mr. Louis Tiffany's estate at Oyster Bay,
where, restored to its pristine loveliness, it is set in
a private chapel built for it.

The Tiffany Chapel constitutes an enduring
and elaborate monument to its maker, Louis C.
Tiffany, and the native New York product of
his unique glass industry, developed through years
of research and experiment. The altar is of white
marble, enriched with mosaic, the emblems of the
four evangelists being composed of pearl and
semi-precious stones. The reredos, in iridescent
glass mosaic, presents a design of the vine and

370 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the peacock, a bird found in late Roman churches,
notwithstanding its bad repute as the emblem of
vanity, and the companion of Juno. A series of
arches with ornament in relief, overlaid with
gold and set with jewel-like glass, represent
the ciborium; these arches are supported by
mosaic-incrusted columns. Pendent lamps add
to the brilliancy of the altar, which glowed in
the mystic light of the crypt like something
supernatural, and the effect was gorgeous and
impressive.

The choir was completed by Grant La Farge
after his partner's death, and is the part now used
for services, representing less than half the ulti-
mate structure in length and breadth. Its striking
feature is the eight Maine granite pillars set in
a semicircle about the altar, each pillar a memo-
rial. The altar is of Vermont marble, the reredos,
surmounted by a cross, is of Pierre de Lens rest-
ing on a base of Numidian marble. In the centre
a figure of Christ is by Leo Lentelli, who also
made the sixteen angels in the reredos, while Otto
Jahnsen is the sculptor of the other figures, repre-
senting the apostles, prophets, etc. Near the front
of the altar, imbedded in the marble floor, is a
square red tile, fourteen inches square, brought
from the ancient Church of St. John the Divine

ENTRANCE GATE TO THE BELMONT CHAPEL, CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE
HEINS AND LA FARCE, ARCHITECTS (PAGE 374)

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 371/

at Ephesus, built by Justinian in 540 A.D., over
the site of St. John's grave.

The dome of the Cathedral was self-supporting
at all times during the advance of the roofing
and bore the weight of the workmen, still consid-
ered an architectural feat, for, since the building
of the cupola of the Duomo in Florence, the con-
struction of a dome has presented a pretty prob-
lem to architects.

Vasari's racy account of Brunellesco's final
triumph over the doubts and misgivings of the
syndics and superintendents of Santa Maria del
Fiore, who hesitated to entrust so grave a
matter to one who pretended that a dome could
be built without scaffolding, without a column
in the centre, without a mound of earth inside
to support the workmen, contains a rare de-
scription of the difficulties which the building of
the first dome since the days of the ancients pre-
sented.* He pictures the conclave of wiseacres
assembled to discuss the ways and means of erect-
ing the cupola upon Arnolfo's cathedral. Bru-
nellesco, having aspired to the joy of completing
this edifice for many years, and having worked out
the correct method according to the builders of
ancient Rome, whose fragmentary record he had

* Vasari' " Lives." Vol. I.

372 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

exhaustively studied, had prepared in secret a
perfect model of the dome, but feared to show
it, knowing the jealousy and dishonesty of his
rivals.

To the solemn conclave therefore had been
invited the most distinguished and experienced
masters of architecture in France, Germany,
Spain, and England, together with those of Tus-
cany; all the best Florentine artists; and a select
number of the most capable and ingenious citi-
zens. And " a fine thing it was," says Vasari, " to
hear the strange and various notions then pro-
pounded." Brunellesco's claims were set aside as
those of a madman, while the assemblage discussed
the possibilities which occurred to them — the cen-
tral pole to support the weight, the elaborate fab-
ric of scaffolding, within and without, etc. — while
the most ingenious method suggested, whose art-
lessness gives the crowning touch of piquancy to
the anecdote, was that the entire space under the
proposed dome should be filled with earth upon
which the workmen could stand in safety during
the operation of building. It was further devel-
oped that the enormous expense of getting rid of
the earth could be dispensed with by the simple
device of mingling in it small coins (quatrini),
so that when the cupola was finished and the

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 373^

mound no longer needed, the poor Florentines
could be depended upon to carry it away promptly
and gladly for the sake of the prizes contained
therein.

But Brunellesco had rediscovered the secrets of
the ancients, and his knowledge still serves the
architecture of the present day ; and yet the build-
ing of a great dome, such as covers the choir of
the Cathedral, is a marvellous achievement. The
ceiling is to be covered with gold mosaic, which
will, in a measure, ameliorate the startling bril-
liancy of the series of nine windows that are to fill
the ambulatory. Three are now placed. The sub-
jects are drawn from the Book of Revelation,
and the entire contract is in the hands of Ernest
R. Powell, of London. The Barberini tapestries,
which adorn in a wholly irrelevant manner the
present interior, in an attempt to soften its unfin-
ished bleakness, are interesting in themselves and
are from the Palazzo Barberini at Rome, having
been produced by the manufactory formed by the
cardinal of that illustrious family, early in the
seventeenth century.

Opening upon the ambulatory close, about the
sanctuary, are the seven Chapels of the Tongues,
in which, following the ardent wish of Bishop
Potter, services are conducted in different Ian-

374 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

guages. These are all memorials, designed by
different architects. The first was given by Mrs.
Potter, in memory of her husband, Henry Codman
Potter; while his children erected the handsome
memorial to their father, the chief ornament of
the church, as it now stands. This consists of a
recumbent figure of the bishop, reposing upon a
sarcophagus of Siena marble, made by James
Earle Fraser, sculptor, and Henry Bacon, archi-
tect. The chiselling of the figure, in white marble,
is very beautiful, and the monument a dignified
and impressive work.

Of the chapels, besides this one, dedicated to St.
James, Henry Vaughan was the architect of St.
Boniface and St. Ansgarius, the latter a memo-
rial to the late William R. Huntington, of Grace
Church; Carrere and Hastings designed the
Renaissance chapel of St. Ambrose; Cram and
Ferguson the French Gothic chapel of St. Martin
of Tours; and Heins and La Farge made the
St. Columba and St. Savior, the latter given by
August Belmont in memory of his wife, Bessie
Morgan Belmont. The entrance gate to the
Belmont chapel is a magnificent piece of work,
and the large window is distinguished and suitable.

The architectural scheme includes an extensive
series of external sculptures by Gutzon Borglum.

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 375

Across the street from the Cathedral, in the
chapel of St. Luke's Hospital, is a large and
interesting window by Henry Holiday, the dis-
ciple of Burne-Jones, erected to the memory of
Adam Norrie and William Augustus Muhlenberg,
the founder of the hospital, by Gordon Norrie.
Though there are many windows by Henry Holi-
day in New York, none so handsomely presents
the English glass, in its best period, as this
" Christ the Consoler and the Seven Acts of
Mercy." The groups of sufferers are types rather
than symbols, but attention may be called to the
archangels Gabriel and Michael, who stand as
supporters on each side of the throne; the former,
who announced the birth of the Saviour, appears
as the bringer of good, with the accompanying
words, " Immanuel, God with Us"; and the
latter, who overcame the devil, as the banisher
of evil, with the words, "Deliver Us from
Evil."

A few years ago Morningside Park received an
important memorial statue to Carl Schurz, our
Prussian statesman, journalist, and general, who
came to this country at the age of twenty-three
years and rendered distinguished service to the
Union Army in the Civil War, serving at the
battles of Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg,

376 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

and Chattanooga. This portrait statue, with ex-
edra and two reliefs, has been considered the most
perfect achievement of Karl Bitter, and perhaps,
as the complete work of his hand, best represents
that sculptor in the city. The monumental char-
acter of the figure, achieved without loss of per-
sonal interest, is sufficiently compelling to arrest
the eye of one who looks among the chaff of our
innumerable portrait statues for the occasional
grain of wheat; but the real importance of the
monument, in which lies its peculiar claim to atten-
tion, is contained in those astonishing reliefs so
eloquently cut into the hard, black granite at the
ends, of the exedra. There is nothing like them
in American art, and they repeat with the vigour
and assurance of original conception the suggestion
of those primitive Egyptian and Assyrian silhou-
etted animal forms, the types of such art. Their
subjects relate abstractly to the great human in-
terests of Schurz' life — the freedom of slaves and
the enlightenment of a people—but our absorbed
attention is not for subject, but for the charm of
those flowing contours, the strength and vivacity
of accent, the beauty and purity of line, suggested
in its delineation.

Carl Schurz faces the termination of the street
that leads back to Columbia University, and turns

RECUMBENT FIGURE, BISHOP HENRY CODMAN POTTER
CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE
JAMES EARLE FRASER, SCULPTOR (PAGE 374)

RELIEF. CARL SCHURZ MONUMENT. MORNINGSIDE PARK
KARL BITTER, SCULPTOR (PAGE 376)

;:•••

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 377

his back upon the intimate beauties of Morning-
side Park, that climbs the precipice upon whose
summit the statue rests. There is a commanding
view here of the vast city from which the Morn-
ingside Heights detaches itself, encompassing
within itself that miniature city included in the
great composition of the Columbia University, to
which, following the direction indicated by the
monument, we are now to turn.

Columbia, with her vast resources, seems to have
found a permanent resting-place in a situation
that combines at once the advantages of the coun-
try with a ready accessibility to the heart of the
city. Yet the move was considered radical enough
when first contemplated, in 1891.

Columbia had already made one northward
move before the drive of the city's growth; its
first site was upon a grant of land bestowed by
the Trinity Church corporation, lying between
Murray and Barclay Streets, and extending from
Church Street to the river. During the time that
de Lancey governed the province the founding
of a college was considered, and money for the
purpose raised by lotteries, while preliminary
classes were held in the vestry of Trinity Church.
Finally, in 1754, a royal charter was granted by
George II to " King's College," and two years

378 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

later the corner-stone of the first college building
was laid. A tablet near Broadway and Murray
Street marks the first home of our great Uni-
versity.

It was a small group of New Yorkers who
founded King's College, at a time when Manhat-
tan Island had fewer inhabitants by some hundreds
than Columbia has now students, and but thirteen
of the founders held academic degrees. Never-
theless they drew a charter whose liberality in
times of bitter religious controversy and narrow
intellectual outlook showed remarkable breadth
and an extraordinary confidence in the future.
The first class, numbering seven students, grad-
uated in 1758; Hamilton, Livingston, and Jay
were early graduates, and De Witt Clinton was
the first student to enter college after peace, fol-
lowing the Revolution, was declared. The year
of the founding coincided with that in which the
Colonial Congress met at Albany to discuss the
Colonial Union, and the little college caught the
spirit of the day and played its brave part in the
founding of the republic. The schools were closed
during the war, and upon reopening, in 1781, the
name " Columbia," coined by the patriots and
popularized in a Revolutionary song, was adopted,
in place of " King's," in vindication of our glorious

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 379

independence. The old iron crown that once
formed the finial of King's College is treasured
in the library of the new University.

Columbia outgrew its first habitat after a cen-
tury of occupancy, and spent the next forty years
in a semi-temporary location at Forty-ninth Street
and Madison Avenue. The new site, on Morning-
side Heights, encumbered at the time of its pur-
chase by the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane,
did not come into the possession of the University
until October, 1894, three years after its acquisi-
tion by the trustees. The interim was employed
in raising the necessary funds for the change, and
in considering the architectural schemes presented
by various architects for the new building, with
the result that the Renaissance plan recommended
by Charles F. McKim and his partners was
selected, and Mr. McKim's devoted share towards
making the University what it is to-day is recorded
in the inscription placed in his honour in the South
Court: De super artificis spectant monumenta per
annos.

We have spoken a great deal of the contribution
of Stanford White towards the making of New
York, and the time has now come to dwell per-
haps a little more in particular, upon the work
of the distinguished senior partner of the firm,

380 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Charles Follen McKim, of whom the University
Library was the first great monumental work, and
McKim's own child. McKim, like White, had
been reared in the atelier of H. H. Richardson;
if White was Richardson's first assistant in the
building of Trinity Church, Boston, McKim
worked on the winning design, and there is no
doubt that to this earlier architect, who with Hunt
had been the dominant man in the profession in
America, the young firm owed much of its thor-
oughness and skill.

Richardson was the first architect of note in
America, in the past generation, to lay supreme
stress upon the importance of the material in con-
struction. McKim, trained in his office, learned
this side of the profession, and his firm carried on
and developed the traditions, sparing themselves
neither time nor expense to insure solid work per-
fectly carried out. This firm, as we know it, was
formed in 1879, and as one writer has said, the
conditions which faced Sir Christopher Wren,
when, after the great fire of London, he was called
upon to plan the rebuilding of that city, were in
many ways similar to those which confronted the
young firm of McKim, Mead, and White when
they began the transformation of New York from
a very ugly and commonplace town to the brilliant

SETH LOW MEMORIAL LIBRARY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
CHARLES FOLLEN MCKIM, ARCHITECT (PAGE 383)

ALMA MATER, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH. SCULPTOR (PAGE 384)

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 381

city of to-day. McKim departed from the Roman-
esque style which Richardson had introduced, and
which he alone handled with any distinguished
success.

The early work of the young architects natu-
rally was domestic. They built many private
houses, of which one of the most beautiful is the
Kane house at Fifth Avenue and Forty-ninth
Street. Of their clubs, the Century is the oldest,
and was almost wholly the design of White, and
a striking example of his skill, presenting to Forty-
third Street a simple balanced facade of stone,
brick, and terra cotta. This was one of the first
buildings in the United States in which the long,
thin " Roman " brick was used and may be said
to have created the fashion. The Harvard Club
is a beautiful example of Georgian architecture,
while the University and Metropolitan Clubs,
credited respectively to McKim and White, are
in effect monuments to their mastery of design.
It is interesting to note that the chef d'oeuvre of
the firm, the Boston Public Library, stands oppo-
site Richardson's masterpiece, Trinity Church, in
Copley Square, and these two monuments make
the distinction of that locality.

McKim's individual skill in design is wonder-
fully exemplified in that pure architectural gem,

3S2 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the Morgan Library; his intensely practical re-
sources, in the Pennsylvania Terminal. In the one
we see the essence of restraint and discrimination,
the elegance of a casket destined to hold the treas-
ures of a multimillionaire bibliophile; in the other
the monumental gateway of a great city. In the
Pennsylvania Terminal the suggestion of style
came from the great Roman baths, and the marvel
is that so huge a scheme, so monumental in char-
acter, should combine so many impressive and
practical features. When we know that McKim
was excluded from the final competition for the
New York Public Library because he refused to
sacrifice architectural beauty to convenience, the
Terminal becomes the more important as showing
how in the lapse of years the architect developed
the power to combine the two. The only real in-
convenience of the station is, perhaps, that one
may well miss the train long after having arrived
at the main portal, so much ground has to be
covered on foot after entering the building, but
given a moderate allowance of leisure nothing
could be more admirable that the silent way in
which, entering what the French so picturesquely
call the Salle des Pas Perdus, particularly appli-
cable to this vast apartment where footsteps are
eaten up by the lofty space and all sound becomes

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 383

negligible, all the necessary features of departure
and arrival are spread before one in logical
sequence. Again the concourse with its accessible
exits, its facilities for disbursing crowds without
confusion or disorder, its quiet apertures for
descending to the trains arriving and departing
through the tunnel, is a very great feat of plan-
ning, indeed almost flawless, so far as is humanly
possible. The very decorations of the building,
confined to great decorative maps of the country,
handled by that master of flat surfaces, Jules
Guerin, contribute the crowning note of utility
made beautiful, a thing so rare in New York as
to merit profound study. This was McKim's last
work; he died, in 1909, while the Terminal was
under construction.

The Columbia Library, then, was McKim's first
monumental work, conceived as the axis of the
whole symmetrical system of buildings which react
to its integral beauty. It remains, within and
without, a most complete and consistent modern
edifice. The library was the gift of the president
of the University, Seth Low, and constitutes a
memorial to his father, Abiel Abbott Low, a
citizen of Brooklyn and merchant of New
York. The Chamber of Commerce preserves his
portrait.

384 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Built of grey limestone, its commanding dome
and noble portico carrying the note of resemblance,
its architecture, true to the tenets of its designer,
follows the most perfect of prototypes. The Villa
Rotonda, of Vicenzo, was the model, and how
closely it follows Palladio's masterpiece may
readily be determined by a comparison of the
library with the handsome painting of the classic
edifice in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn
Museum.

The approach to the library, through the South
Court, which is, of course, the entrance to the
whole compact scheme of the University buildings,
is made the more impressive and memorable by
the presence, on the steps, of French's " Alma
Mater," a figure at once commanding and winning.
Mr. French devoted a large part of the years
1902 and 1903 to this statue, for which the model
was Miss Mary Lawton, the American actress,
whose personality may be traced, with almost the
fidelity of portraiture, in many of the sculptor's
statuesque figures. The setting is superb, both
for the sculpture and the library. The large court,
in the Italian style, with its paved esplanade, its
granite wall and balustrade on three sides, and the
great stone vases, flowers, shrubs, and exuberant
fountains, gives poise and dignity, while from it

FOUNTAIN OF THE GOD PAN, WITH EXEDRA, CAMPUS OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
GEORGE GRAY BARNARD, SCULPTOR (PAGE 386)

DETAIL OF BARNARD S
FOUNTAIN OF PAN

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS 385

wide steps lead to the library grade, ten feet above
the street.

A striking note of unity is achieved through the
fact that the other buildings of the group have all
the same base line as the library, which is 150 feet
above the Hudson, and the same cornice line, sixty-
nine feet higher. All the buildings open upon the
campus, which gives to the effect a security simi-
lar to that of a walled city. As the buildings
included in the plan are filled in the purpose of
the original conception gains coherence. The large
scale provides for spacious interiors, and the whole
mass of the composition makes a strong centre in
the arrangement of the Heights, not merely effec-
tive in itself, but important as a basis for the
architectural development of the entire surround-
ing district.

The colour decoration of the library represents
the taste of the same artist whose murals furnish
the important interior feature of the Custom
House, Elmer E. Garnsey, who has made of this
one of the most perfect examples of its kind. The
interior of St. Paul's chapel, recalling the early
Renaissance churches of Northern Italy, consid-
ering its Italian chancel furniture, its fine organ,
and minor details of equipment, together with its
architectural beauty, becomes one of the most

386 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

precious artistic possessions of the University.
The three interesting windows are by John La
Farge.

Practically all of the art treasures of the campus
and interiors have come to the institution by gift.
he Marteleur, one of Constant Meunier's forceful
presentations of workmen, came to the University
from the class of 1889, and was purchased from
the exhibition of the Belgian sculptor's works held
in one of the halls, in 1914. George Gray Bar-
nard's spirited fountain of Pan, piping to the birds
which bathe in the basin below him, was presented
in 1907 by Edward Severin Clark. This recum-
bent statue, with its mysterious expression, its
oddly perverse legs, with inverted joints, has much
charm of surface modelling, while its polished
black bronze makes an effective note in a seques-
tered corner of the campus.

XIX

INWOOD

Manhattanville to Kixgsbridge

When Gouverneur Morris, Simeon de Witt,
and John Rutherford, a century ago, with square
and ruler marked the monotonous future of the
island city, they laid upon her a curse against
which succeeding generations seem to have been
powerless. " Straight-sided and right-angled
houses were " the most cheap to live in," they
decreed, and so the " dry-goods-box-set-up-on-
end " style of architecture, which Hopkinson
Smith so picturesquely anathematized, has fol-
lowed up the course of subway development,
presenting its be windowed faces, " like so many
underdone waffles," from Battery Park to Harlem
Creek and on beyond throughout the parallele-
pipeds of the Bronx.

While mighty engineers burrowed and blasted
their terriffic trail through the gneiss and trap-rock
of the substratum, pick and shovel made sum-
mary disposal of the features overhead; hill was

387

388 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

dumped into dale as the shortest cut to the desired
dead level of civilization, and the ponderous steam-
roller, following in their train, crushed and flat-
tened any obdurate remnants of variability in a
landscape of whose handsome topography we have
even yet dramatic evidence.

At this, the eleventh hour, there has arisen a
sort of desperate movement to " save the pieces."
Inherent beauty, driven before the hand of prog-
ress, even as the American forces were pushed
by British invasion in Revolutionary times, has
found its last etape where Washington defended
his last stronghold, on the ultimate heights at the
extreme northern end of the island.

The busy and impatient are hurled the length
of Manhattan and on to the Bronx through the
serpentine tunnel, coming up twice for air only
to observe the wreck of the country-side, the
levelling of high places, the filling in of hollows.
Factories, electric light plants, monster gas tanks
blot out views that once inspired poets, painters,
and novelists. Automobilists speeding along the
driveway bordering the Hudson have a scarcely
richer impression of the touching reserves of this
last stand which beauty makes in the upper, inac-
cessible reaches of the island.

Where the land narrows, with the bend of the

INWOOD 389

Harlem River, above Manhattanville, the succes-
sion of promonotories, each capped with its fine
old country-seat, bespeaks a remoter time when,
behind their own teams of blooded horses, the gen-
tlemen of Inwood, Kingsbridge, and Washington
Heights drove to business over the ten or twelve
miles of indifferent roadway that lay between their
estates and the heart of the little city. Several
of the historic mansions which figured in Revo-
lutionary history have recently been rescued and
preserved to future generations; others on the
blissful highroad to rack and ruin stand on lonely
forgotten crags, overlooking the dismal streets
below, graded in the accepted fashion and dark
as sunless ravines.

Nor are remnants of vulgar village life wanting
in this region. The Harlem goats, once the sport
of comic weeklies, have been crowded out; but I
have seen at least two cavorting on the slopes of
the Bolton Road at Inwood — their coarse hair
heavily matted with burs, feeding on the tradi-
tional tomato tin, garnished with old newspaper,
as happy and care-free as though they were not
the last of their once prolific race.

Only the pedestrian can get the full flavour of
this rough, inaccessible wooded country bordering
the convolutions of the old Spuyten Duyvil Creek,

390 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

a region replete with suggestion, readily recon-
structed by the fertile imagination, for little has
happened to disturb its pristine state since the first
white man, presumably Henry Hudson, stepped
ashore to barter with the native Indians under
the famous Tulip Tree, still standing and still
blossoming, at the base of that wooded knoll.

The Indian name of the stream connecting the
East and North Rivers was Muscoota, but from
earliest times the part of the Harlem River nearest
the Hudson was called Spuyten Duyvil Creek.
Some say the name referred to a spring of water
which " spouted " from the hill near the end of
the island, and of which mention is made in sev-
eral of the early English grants. Before the con-
struction of the ship canal, which simplified the
tangle of tributaries by a deep short-cut through
the mesh, the tides used to race through the creek
with great rapidity. Receding they left a marshy
bed criss-crossed with rivulets; but when they met,
rushing simultaneously up the Hudson and Har-
lem Rivers, the tide rips thus formed caused great
turbulence in the creek and the water was dashed
into the air to incredible heights, with an effect
similar to that noticed at Hell Gate before the
blasting out of the big rocks in the channel. Racy
titles seem to have been the fashion for these nat-

INWOOD 391

ural disturbances, and this may have been the
" spouting " or " spiking devil," if that be the
true significance of the name.

At low tide there was a natural ford through
the creek used by the Indians and early settlers,
referred to in old deeds and records as " the wad-
ing place." Before the first King's Bridge was
built this was freely used; the only other means
of communication between the island and the main-
land was by ferry. Frederick Philipse, the Dutch
millionaire, one of the backers of Captain Kidd,
built the first bridge, in 1693, and outraged the
farmers of Westchester County by charging them
toll for the crossing, until these, grown tired of
paying their money into the coffers of the manor
lord of Yonkers, built the Free Bridge across the
foot of Two Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street,
in 1758; and a boycott of King's Bridge soon
forced a remission of the toll.

These bridges facilitated Washington's retreat
to White Plains, whither he withdrew the main
body of the army after the success of the Battle
of Harlem Heights, leaving Fort Washington
garrisoned by a force of a few thousand men, in
command of General Magaw. It was well that he
had not to repeat the perilous experience incident
to his evacuation of Brooklyn after the Battle of

392 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Long Island. This had been done by pressing
into service every available craft that had either
oars or sails, and was an undertaking fraught with
romantic and thrilling incident.

Once safely landed on Manhattan Washington's
idea was at once to continue the retreat and to
place his forces intact beyond immediate danger,
for Howe, with his fleet and drilled soldiers, had
still the situation in his hands, had he taken the
prompt measures that were daily and hourly
anticipated by the patriots. But congress would
not consent to the surrender of New York, and
while the British commander dallied with his
opportunities on Long Island, Washington was
forced to an ordeal of nerve-racking inaction and
suspense. He established his own headquarters
in the beautiful colonial house, built by Roger
Morris for his bride, Mary Philipse, a daughter
of the lord of the manor, who built the King's
Bridge.

This house was then in the first decade of its
adventurous history, for 1765 has been fixed upon
as the probable date of its construction. The plan
of the house is Georgian, but of a peculiar English
type seldom seen in this country. Its distinguish-
ing architectural feature is the deep octagonal
drawing room projecting from the rear of the

1 > »

I

"the old tulip tree: inwood

after painting by ernest lawson (page 3qo)

INWOOD 393

broad entrance hall, entered from a pillared porch,
baronial in character. Its was a period of honest
construction, and though the severe plainness of
the interior has been thought to suggest haste
in its erection, time was taken to line the outer
walls with English brick, and the house was built
to last.

Roger Morris was a colonel in the British Army
garrisoned in New York, and his town house stood
at Whitehall and Stone Streets, its site now cov-
ered by the east wall of the Custom House. This
then was his luxurious country-seat, built upon
land given to Mary Philipse by her wealthy father,
as part of her munificent wedding dowry. Roger
Morris and Mary Philipse had been married, in
1758, in the old Philipse manor house, at Yonkers,
and the marriage settlement was a curious old-
fashioned deed, entailing her estates upon her
unborn children. But this heritage was diverted
by the events of the Revolutionary War; Roger
Morris and his wife and all of her family were
" loyalists," as the favorable term goes, " royal-
ists," the patriots called them, and Roger Morris
fled at the approach of the American soldiers,
while his wife occupied the house until late in the
month of August of this eventful year, when,
finding it likely to become a theatre of war, she

394 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

left hastily and found a refuge with the Tories.
At the close of the Revolution her estates were
confiscated and she went with her husband back
to England.

Roger Morris was an Englishman born. He
came to this country as aide-de-camp to General
Braddock, under whom Washington also served
in a similar capacity in the French War. Much
has been made of the romantic story of the court-
ship of Mary Philipse by these two soldiers, and
of Washington's unsuccessful suit when he had
to offer only the modest prospects of an humble
surveyor; and if this be true it is possible that
he felt a certain grim satisfaction in ousting the
happy pair, and taking military possession of their
nest, so favourably situated for its new purpose.
Their drawing room became his Council Chamber.
He slept in the room directly over it and the small
antechambers, one each side, were occupied by his
aides, of whom one was Alexander Hamilton.

The house, with its " one hundred and thirty
acres of arable pasture land, and five acres of best
salt meadow," was described in those days as " sit-
uate on the narrowest part of York Island,'' and
commanding the most extensive view on Manhat-
tan, overlooking the city, ten miles distant, the
high hills on Staten Island, more than twenty

INWOOD 395

miles away; to the left, Long Island, the Harlem
River, Hell Gate, and the Sound; and to the right
the noble Hudson, with its palisades and pictur-
esque shipping. The Jumel family, who after-
wards occupied it, boasted that seven counties
could be seen " from the gallery under the
portico."

Washington's military occupation of the house
lasted only from September 16 to October 21, but
it continued to figure in the history of the war,
and during the British occupation of the island
it was the headquarters off and on for a long
period of Lieutenant-General Knyphausen, the
commander of the Hessian troops. Its subsequent
history up to the time when, in 1901, the mansion
and what was left of the large estate were pur-
chased by the city, does not belong to our present
story. Indeed, it has been so admirably immor-
talized in a recent* edition de luxe, written and
published by its present custodian, Mr. William
Henry Sheldon, that the curious reader who would
follow the vagaries of Stephen Jumel and his spec-
tacular wife, Eliza, or Betsy Bowen, cannot do
better than read this remarkable book.* Suffice
for us to know, in passing, that Betsy Bowen, of
doubtful parentage and adventurous history, hav-

*"The Jumel Mansion," by William Henry Sheldon. 1917.

396 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

ing, in 1804, tricked Stephen Jumel into becoming
her legal husband, urged him to buy for her the old
Morris house, which John Jacob Astor was offer-
ing for sale, in 1810. It was lavishly refitted by
Stephen Jumel, who was a man of taste, and con-
sidered " the most luxurious country-seat in all
New York."

Madame Jumel spared no expense in her efforts
to be recognized by New York society, and failing
to get her footing here, sailed to Europe in her
husband's own ship, the Eliza, named for herself,
and commenced that life in Paris of which accounts
are so confusing and so little reliable. She re-
mained Jumel's wife for twenty-two years, until
his death in 1832, when Aaron Burr fell a victim
to her charms, or her money, and became for a
brief space her aged and troublesome husband.
The ceremony that made her Madame Burr, a
title which she found useful during her last trip
to Paris, in 1853, took place in the small parlour
to the left of the entrance. Her life spanned
almost a century; born a year before the Declara-
tion of Independence, she died in 1865, in Wash-
ington's bedchamber, looking very much as she
does in the full-length portrait which hangs in
the hall of the mansion, demented, and " powdered
and rouged to the end." Stephen Jumel had

INWOOD 397

been modestly interred in the consecrated ground
of the old St. Patrick's Cathedral in Prince Street,
and just in front of an iron gate, opening from
the stone flagging of the Mott Street entrance, is
the horizontal marble slab, which once bore the
inscription to his memory, and of which now the
single word, " Stephen," is barely decipherable and
rapidly going. The slab rests on marble posts, in
the graceful style of its epoch, raised three feet
above the damp old ground of this forgotten
cemetery attached to the Cathedral, where had
been solemnized the hasty marriage of Betsy
Bowen and Stephen Jumel. Madame Jumel, on
the other hand, lies in a stately tomb, overlooking
the Hudson, in Trinity Cemetery.

The Jumel ownership fixed the popular name
to the house, which no amount of restoration and
activity on the part of the colonial societies in-
terested can dislodge ; and in this there is a certain
justice, for had not Stephen Jumel and his eccen-
tric wife rescued the property, already famous
through its Revolutionary history, it would doubt-
less have continued the road-house that it became
after it was taken by the government. Washing-
ton, in his journal under the date of July 10,
1790, refers to his second visit to " the house,
lately Colonel Roger Morris' but confiscated and

398 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

now in possession of a common farmer." So
that its deterioration began at once in true New
York fashion, and posterity can only be grateful
to its vain and ambitious chatelaine, who preserved
its beauty during the best part of a destructive
century. The stories invented by this extraordi-
nary lady, and recounted by her after she had lost
her reason, have invested the mansion with an
aroma of romance and mystery, very fascinating
to dwell upon. They stimulate the imagination
and lend color to the facts, themselves sufficiently
strange, so, though crushed to earth, may they
rise again in all their charming mendacity!

There is nothing legendary, however, in the
quite as thrilling story of Washington's occupa-
tion of the Roger Morris house, and his camp
of eight thousand untrained soldiers successfully
manipulated through the amazing Battle of Har-
lem Heights. The general importance of the
" affair " at Harlem Heights is picturesquely
coloured by its local interest. Coming as it did
immediately after the calamity on Long Island,
it served as a prelude to the brilliant exploits of
the American army at Trenton and Princeton;
and being the only contest within the limits of
Greater New York that resulted in victory for
the Americans, it has peculiar charm for its citi-

INWOOD 399

zens. We know by all sorts of practical means,
such as the mass of Hessian buttons and military
relics dug up throughout the whole territory lying
north of Van de Water Heights, during recent
excavations, that the fighting was widespread;
and gazing at the very ground on which this battle
was fought, and tracing the outlines of the earth-
works at Washington Heights, where our soldiers
were finally defeated, in a second engagement
with General Howe's superior forces, augmented
by the hated Hessians, examining the military hut
reconstructed from old materials, the pile of shot
found at Fort Independence on the Kingsbridge
Heights, one can put one's self in live touch with
this critical and tempestous moment of Revolu-
tionary history.

Imagination is the better served since nothing
formal has been done, beyond the almost too clean
restoration of the Dyckman house, with its flut-
tering flag, to induce the reverential spirit. If
the recent Rockefeller purchase of Fort Tryon,
with the fifty-seven acre tract, comprising the
Billings, Hays, and Sheafer estates, and consti-
tuting the northern outwork of the defence, is
really to become park land, the place will lose its
fascinating casual quality, which now makes ex-
cursions to this region of rare antiquarian interest.

400 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Through the grounds now occupied by Trinity
Cemetery was constructed one of the southern
outworks of Fort Washington, and this was the
first portion to fall in the assault led by General
Knyphausen, the leader of the Hessian troops.
They are described as advancing from Kings-
bridge in two columns, wading across the marshy
land about the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and scaling
the precipitous rocky hill, now traversed by the
Bolton Road. So steep was the acclivity in places
that the soldiers had to pull themselves up by aid
of the bushes, and loaded down with the extraor-
dinary paraphernalia of the German infantry,
they successfully stormed the bluffs in the face
of heavy odds and with heavy losses.

There are neutral-minded people who can find
it possible to admire the pure soldiery and disci-
pline of the hired troops who assisted the British
and the colonial " royalists " in this attack and
capture. But the rage of our own people against
the mercenaries was of such endurance that their
name became a by-word in certain sections, carried
no doubt into the Southern vernacular by the
Maryland troops who survived the contact. I can
remember my mother, in moments of righteous
wrath, when she always reverted to her Baltimore
type, hurling the epithet as a final expression of

INWOOD 401

denunciation and contempt. " That Hessian! "
she would say of a local miscreant, with fine scorn
and blazing eyes, a century and more after the
word had lost is specific significance.

Washington Heights have become accessible
only since the building of the subway. Before
that the surface cars went no further than Man-
hattanville, and from there it was an exhilarating
tramp for the adventurous through the Hollow
Way to the Hudson, along the railroad tracks
to Jeffrey's Hook, now known as Fort Washing-
ton Point, the place where Washington crossed
to and from Fort Lee, directly opposite on the
palisades.

From this point one has a choice of two roads,
the river road, sheltered on the right by the high
cliffs, or the highway, known as Fort Washington
Avenue, over the backbone of the island. This
roadway, in the old days, led through one private
estate after another and still retains enough of
its rural character to invite exploration, especially
on those cold, sunny days in early spring, or late
winter, when the New York climate seems to
present its most alluring character. The James
Gordon Bennett estate occupied a part of the land
upon which the fort was situated. Audubon Park,
further south, was famous as the residence of the

402 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

ornithologist, his estate, Minniesland, lay above
One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, between
Amsterdam Avenue and the river, and is best
commemorated by the handsome group of build-
ings given by Archer M. Huntington, of which
the central feature is the Hispanic Museum.

Some of the mansions in the upper part of the
old park have been turned into road-houses where
one can almost induce the illusion of European
charm in dining in the open and looking out over
the finest of prospects.

North of Inwood the greater part of the land
belonged to the Dyckman property, of which the
only tangible vestige is the so-called Dyckman
House, upon which one comes suddenly and unex-
pectedly after descending the hill through the
rambling village of Inwood, into the gorge cut by
Broadway, not far from the twelfth milestone.
The house, very much renovated and spruced up,
stands on high ground, from which the street has
been levelled and graded, and after years of uncer-
tain existence rests in tolerable security as city
property. The builder of the house, William
Dyckman, was a grandson of the original settler,
who came over from Westphalia, in 1666, and
built a house on the Sherman Creek, to the north-
west of the present dwelling, near the Hudson

Reproduced by courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America

THE DUCHESS OF ALBA, BY GOYA
HISPANIC MUSEUM (PACE 402)

<-_«»»• *

INWOOD 403

River. The Dyckmans became staunch patriots,
in recognition of which William Dyckman was
exiled for seven years during the British occupa-
tion, and his first house burned.

Of the very few houses still standing in New
York built before 1800, the Dyckman House is
one of the oldest and quaintest. Its proportions
are unpretentious, for it was a simple farmhouse;
but the two Dyckman daughters, who presented it
to the city, in 1916, have spared no trouble or
expense in outfitting it with family heirlooms and
Revolutionary trophies found in the neighbour-
hood, and in making the house as homelike and
intimate as a public museum can hope to be.

The Van Cortlandt Mansion does the same edu-
cational work on a larger scale, presenting, by
means of period furniture, costumes, kitchen
utensils, and the like, a faithful reproduction of
the simple, comfortable living of our forefathers.
The house, with its terraced garden leading down
to the lake front, has the unique advantage of
preserving all of its setting, of which the Dyck-
man House, as well as Claremont, the Jumel
Mansion, and Hamilton Grange, have been ruth-
lessly shorn. There is an interesting relationship
through several of these houses, of which the par-
ent may be said to be the manor house at Yonkers.

404 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Philipse not only gave the land upon which the
Roger Morris house was built, he owned the estate
upon which the Van Cortlandt house stands,
having sold it to Jacobus Van Cortlandt, who mar-
ried his step-daughter, Eva. The house built by
their son Frederick is reputed to be modelled
after the style of the Philipse homestead. In
1884 the entire Van Cortlandt estate, with other
property, amounting to over a thousand acres, was
acquired by the city and formed into Van Cort-
landt Park, stretching east of Broadway and up
to the city line.

XX

BROOKLYN

The Sculpture of Frederick MacMonnies

Some intelligent person has discovered that
" Good times are from within." Taking this
statement with its largest suggestion of philo-
sophic truth, it goes without saying that the source
upon whose fertility ultimate dependence rests,
in one's quest for pleasure, must be furnished and
replenished constantly if it is to be drawn upon
with any hope of adequate response.

It must be confessed that Brooklyn herself puts
her case badly. The town has practically never
been laid out. It started out a few years later
than New York with an half dozen or more little
settlements; a main street developed from the
straggling path that led up the hill from the early
ferry; little by little these settlements became
united, until, after nearly two centuries of exist-
ence, they achieved in their combined strength the
dignity of a city.

These little villages had been the unconscious

405

406 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

outgrowth of the farms that lined the East River
shore, with the central village of Breuckelyn, lying
about a mile above the ferry. None of them had
definite form. Each had crooked streets and
lanes, created merely as convenience demanded
communication between the burghers' houses and
the narrow lane, now Fulton Street, that con-
stituted the main artery of simple traffic.

When Brooklyn was granted her charter as a
city, in 1834, it is amusing to read that the pre-
occupation of Mr. Henry E. Pierrepont, who was
" appointed to lay out a new city/' was to estab-
lish a beautiful cemetery to rival Mount Auburn,
which he had seen and admired during a recent
visit to Boston. The wooded heights of Gowanus
appealed to him as presenting the most favourable
features . for his scheme ; and how hungry was the
population for something beautiful we may know
when we read that the cemetery became, in a sense,
its first public park, and that the young folks of
the early Victorian era promenaded with their
lovers amongst the graves of the dead, over the
superb hills of Greenwood, overlooking the bay
and the Sound.

Prospect Park came into existence some forty
years later, and after that something wonderful
happened to Brooklyn. There was a great period

BROOKLYN 407

of renaissance, a strong civic movement headed
by men of character and remarkable taste. These
men constituted the Park Commission, and they
gave to the city what is to-day its finest asset —
the sculpture of Frederick MacMonnies.

The few grains of wheat that Brooklyn
yields to the sympathetic search of the loiterer
are of a quality whose superiority is inversely
proportionate to its quantity. To arrive at that
good time that lies within, and by grace of which
one may have wonderful emotions in these ugly
crowded streets and along the sordid water front,
it is well to saturate one's self with the literature
of the subject before taking the plunge.

There is no more romantic reading in fiction
than the story of the Battle of Long Island
enacted along the heights of the present city, from
its lead in from the distant Gravesend Bay, across
the plains of Flatbush, over the hills of Gowanus,
through Prospect Park, to its final vital moment
of retreat from the locality of the Fulton Ferry.

The story of the Prison Ship Martyrs, glori-
ously commemorated by that magnificent monu-
ment on Fort Greene, is one of the most moving,
tremendous tales of heroic bravery that the world
has known. Stanford White's great column rises
literally superior to the sordid environment with

408 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

a sublime architectural message that grips one in
majestic vindication of the wrongs and sufferings
of these noble Revolutionary victims upon whose
principles the foundation of our republic rests.

Ernest Poole has made vivid the story of the
harbour, the Heights, the docks. The charming
old residence section built along the bluff over-
looking the harbour is still comparatively intact,
while the aroma of some of Brooklyn's great
intellects lingers in the Plymouth Church, where
Beecher held the multitude for religion, by the
simple power of his oratory, during forty years;
in some of the quainter and more dilapidated of
the small frame dwellings, built no doubt, in part,
by Walt Whitman, in the early days when he aided
his father in master-carpentry.

While the richest treasure of the city is Mac-
Monnies' group of sculpture at Prospect Park,
there are also Proctor's " Panthers " at another
entrance, and Shrady's noble equestrian statue of
Washington at Valley Forge, isolated on the
Williamsburg Plaza, but making another point
for pilgrimage. And thus one seems to see,
through the dull ramifications of a straggling
endless suburban city, a sort of skeleton, with the
old Borough Hall in the centre, that might be
held in the case of some wisely directed heaven-

WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE, BY HENRY MERWIN SHRADY
WILLIAMSBURG PLAZA, BROOKLYN, (PAGE 408)

BROOKLYN 409

sent calamity that would raze block after block
of undesirability and wipe out whole sections,
leaving for future splendour a nucleus of . such
features as might be marked for passover.

The fact of MacMonnies' birth on the Brooklyn
Heights must be understood as the last reason for
his being chosen to make for his native city that
important group of sculpture that marks the
formal entrance to Prospect Park. It was merely
by a fortuitous chain of circumstances and the
settled evidence of his entire capability that the
interesting commission, including the quadriga,
the two groups for the arch, the four eagles on
the standards of the plaza, marking the vestibule
to the park, the equestrian statue of General
Slocum on the Eastern Parkway, and the stand-
ing figure of General Woodward, was awarded
by the Park Commission to Frederick MacMon-
nies at the outset of his brilliant career. To this
was added later the portrait statue of James
S. T. Stranahan, within the entrance to the park,
the " Horse Tamers," two companion groups of
rearing horses, at one of the southern exits, and
the little Duck Boy Fountain, in the Vale of
Cachemere.

MacMonnies was born before the close of the

410 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Civil War. His birthplace was one of the agree-
able old houses near the water front; his boyhood
was spent in one of those beautiful country places,
now included in the borough and planted thick
with stupid hives of a swarming population.
What incentive there was in the New York and
Brooklyn of the pre-Centennial period to suggest
to a boy an artistic career it is impossible to imag-
ine, and the sculptor himself has amusingly de-
scribed the city of his early recollection as in the
first enthusiastic grip of the brown-stone blight,
where the ambition of every house and every
street was to duplicate its neighbour; a state of
intellectual torpidity with which its citizens were
well satisfied. It must be said that the country
contributed to this complacence, and that brown-
stone fronts were considered the quintessence of
elegance; they were liberally copied by other
cities, the rage for this unpleasant substance ex-
tending as far as the Pacific coast, where, in
San Francisco, some early houses still remain
to bear witness to its potent influence.

Inside the houses were as uninspiring as with-
out. Each one had the same engravings, the same
chromos, the same Rogers' groups.

The Metropolitan Museum was little more than
a struggling idea, and for sculpture presented a

BROOKLYN 411

nucleus consisting of one colossal bust of William
Cullen Bryant and a few minor atrocities. There
were no casts from the antique, and the Cesnola
Collection, with its rich revelation of beauty, was
still unknown.

The aridity of the streets, now lined with hand-
some shops displaying every form of objet d'art,
is inconceivable, and MacMonnies speaks feelingly
of frequent trips down to Washington Square to
feast his famished eyes on the little brass-lettered
sign affixed to the doorway of the Benedict, and
the only ornamental object of its kind applied to
the architecture of our city. This had been de-
signed by Stanford White and made by Louis
Saint Gaudens. It is still there, its beauty
enhanced by constant polishing, a charming little
relic — a first tiny wedge of good taste.

As a youth, MacMonnies went to Saint Gaudens
as " studio boy," working as apprentice pupil at
the time of that sculptor's greatest productivity;
growing up there under favoured circumstances,
for the studio was the resort of the best architects,
sculptors, and painters of the country. In Saint
Gaudens' atelier MacMonnies first came to the
notice of Stanford White, then a young man of
twenty-one years. MacMonnies thought him " as
old as the hills," and was amused to find in after

412 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

years, when they had become friends, that there
was but five years difference in their ages.

Saint Gaudens had already laid the foundation
of the young sculptor's taste, and under him Mac-
Monnies developed extraordinary manual skill.
His was a fine influence, everything he did had
taste and quality besides a fund of poetic feeling.
Stanford White took to MacMonnies from the
first and saw his possibilities with that unerring
instinct for selection that made him so valuable
a force in matters of art. In those early days he
turned over to the young student some of the
ornamental work on the Villard house, that great
palace of brownstone designed by White, at Fifty-
first and Madison Avenue. It is still a beautiful
house, but in those days it stood out as a pioneer
amongst fine things, and it created a new standard
of beauty.

Then MacMonnies went to Europe (in 1884),
and studied with Falguiere; and, working the
Beaux Arts, he twice won the price d 'atelier, the
highest prize open to foreigners. His first statue,
a Diana, won him an honourable mention at the
Salon of 1889, and then, through Stanford White,
came his first commission, the three adoring angels
for the Church of the Paulist Fathers, surmount-
ing the high altar designed by the architect. Small

BROOKLYN 413

commissions followed during the next few years,
when MacMonnies made, through White, the
" Pan of Rohallion," the " Boy with Heron," for
Mr. Choate, the spandrels for the Bowery Bank,
the angels for the Washington Arch, and the
West Point " Victory."

By this time the young sculptor began to get
his footing, and his first important public com-
mission, the statue of Nathan Hale, made in
Paris, in 1890, fixed his reputation for all time.
After this success he was awarded, at the sugges-
tion of Saint Gaudens, the famous Columbia
Fountain, for the Chicago Exposition, at which
so many of our present sculptors made their
debuts. The fountain, whose chief requisite was
to be " style," MacMonnies conceived as an im-
posing composition with twenty-seven colossal
figures, surmounted by " Columbia," enthroned
upon the central mass of a great white ship.

It was then, when the sculptor was not more
than twenty-seven years of age, that an extraor-
dinary thing happened in Brooklyn. Prospect
Park, which had been laid out about 1780 as a
place of recreation and amusement for its citi-
zens, became the centre of civic ambition, and a
group of broad-minded and remarkable men, con-
stituting the Park Commission, handed over to

414 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Frederick MacMonnies the inclusive scheme of
sculpture that was to make it notable among the
parks of the world. These men were Frank
Squier, Colonel Woodward, Mr. de Silva, Elijah
Kennedy, General Woodward, and Augustus
Healy. Convinced of his ability and confident of
the outcome, these gentlemen gave MacMonnies
perfect liberty, untrammelled and unhampered by
suggestion or criticism.

The Army and Navy triumphal arch, which
presented the base of operations, was already
standing, having been designed some years pre-
vious by John H. Duncan, architect. Its only
sculptures were the two equestrian reliefs of
Lincoln and Grant on the piers within the arch-
way. These stiff, archaic panels by Thomas
Eakins and William Rudolf O 'Donovan bear the
dates 1893-94. Mr. Eakins modelled the horses
and O 'Donovan made the riders, and there is a
quaint story of the two artists posing for one an-
other and of their exhaustive search for the right
horses, which ended in A. J. Cassatt lending his
celebrated mount, " Clinker," for Grant's horse,
while " Billy," upon whom sits, or rather is em-
bedded, Lincoln, was a western steed. The work
went forward in Mr. Eakins' improvised studio
at Avondale, below Philadelphia; there he made

PORTRAIT STATUE OF TAMES S. T. STRaNAHAN
BY FREDERICK MACMONNIES (PAGE 419)

•

BROOKLYN 415

many studies and fine casts for his part of the
reliefs, rather pluming himself upon making the
models with one bucket of clay; working con-
trary to all accepted methods, in sections, and
casting the parts and putting them together
afterwards.

Works of art they are not, though there is in
the modelling of the horses that sincerity which
characterizes everything that Eakins did in paint-
ing, and as the sculpture of a painter of very
remarkable accomplishment they possess much
antiquarian interest. We know that Eakins was
deeply scientific by nature, and that he had made
before he tackled this problem (1884) those won-
derful anatomic horses, owned by the schools of
the Pennsylvania Academy, and also that he
assisted Meybridge with his experiments in instan-
taneous photography, making exhaustive records
of equine motion. And all of this definite and
accurate information concerning the anatomy of
the horse comes out in these reliefs. But Eakins
went into the matter so thoroughly and conscien-
tiously that he lost sight of the bigger problem;
and as for O 'Donovan, he seems to have moved in
sublime ignorance of the fundamental facts of
sculpture and beyond the warmth of the sacred
fire of genius. His men are droll caricatures of

416 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the heroes they are supposed to represent. Lin-
coln sits stiffly, his right arm extended downward,
with the hand holding a quaint old top hat, as if
to catch the stones with which the bad boys of the
neigbourhood used to keep it constantly filled.

The arch was badly designed, and when it was
decided to add the quadriga to the top and the
reliefs to the piers a change of administration
enabled the Park Commission to engage Stanford
White as architect of the proposed features. He
built out the bases for the groups and tried to
make something of it, but the arch is a failure,
architecturally, despite MacMonnies' splendid
work. Had he been older and more experienced
he no doubt would have refused the commission,
realizing its difficulties. But he was under thirty,
and carried away by the opportunity to do big
things. Youth and exuberance conquered judg-
ment, and MacMonnies threw himself into the
designing and modelling of the three enormous
bronze groups — the quadriga surmounting the
arch, " The Army " and " The Navy," decorating
the piers facing the entrance to the park.

In this work MacMonnies showed the abundant
results of his study and experience abroad.
"Nothing finer than 'The Army,'" says Taft,
" has been done since Rude carved c Le Depart *.**

BROOKLYN 417

Yet, as he goes on to say, there is no tangible
point of resemblance. They have the same im-
pulse, the same effect of having been thrown off
by an irresistible force as from an inexhaustible
fountain of energy. They have abundance of
invention, genius for arrangement in which the
lines and contours seem to flow of themselves to
the proper balance, dexterity of surface modelling,
and a rich sense of beauty and strength.

The panels are treated as reliefs, though the
figures are largely in the round, and the two sub-
jects, while following the same effective massing
of light and shade and general weight and de-
sign present contrasting emotions. " The Army "
MacMonnies has said he conceived as an explo-
sion— " a mass hurled against a stone wall and
which, bursting in all directions, was petrified as
it flew." This effect is carried by the agitated
contour, bristling with bayonets carried by the
soldiers in active combat, dominated by the figure
of the officer with uplifted sword, whose fallen
horse gives bulk to the lower portion of the group.
The whole warlike message is emphasized by the
trumpeting figure of Bellona, on a great winged
steed which fills the upper part of the composition,
adding immensely to the colour and variety of the
bronze.

418 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

In " The Navy " MacMonnies pictures the re-
verse side of war, the quiet heroism wherein life
is laid down for country with none of the spec-
tacular accompaniment of active battle. The
moment is one of dramatic intensity augmented
by its simple reserve, its passive acceptance of
doom. The men are standing close together on
the deck of a sinking ship, awaiting their fate
with unflinching devotion to duty.

In the apotheosis of America, who, with battle
flag and draperies blown by the wind, stands erect
in her chariot drawn by four slender horses and
heralded by two winged Victories, which makes
the subject of the great quadriga that surmounts
the arch, there is no equivocal sentiment. Through-
out the sculpture on the arch one feels with full
force the fundamental elements of war — war
backed by a glorious cause; held by staunch men
and true; won through courage, devotion, hero-
ism, sacrifice; favoured by deities; exulted in
by gods.

In the spacious setting, with its two ornamental
pavilions, its four fluted columns, surmounted each
by a large bronze globe and eagle, we have White's
design — the eagles modelled by MacMonnies.

To the immediate left of the entrance, standing
as a welcoming host, is MacMonnies' bronze statue

BROOKLYN 419

of Brooklyn's " first citizen," James S. T. Strana-
han, during whose long administration as presi-
dent of the Park Commission Prospect Park was
created, and to whose suggestion is due the system
of boulevards and the Ocean and Eastern Park-
ways. MacMonnies describes him in words and
presents him in bronze as a delightful person —
polished, courteous, broad-minded, simple, unsel-
fish— the very acme of all that a citizen should be.
In the summer of 1891 his fellow citizens erected
" during his lifetime and unveiled in his presence "
(so runs the legend on the pedestal) this unusual
tribute to his worth. The sculptor himself drew
the veil from his work on this impressive occasion.
In this statue of a charming old gentleman,
sympathetically and simply done, . presenting him
as a figure true to its time, one feels the perfection
of the ideals for which those earlier American
sculptors heroically struggled. What Kirke Brown
and Ward hoped for the future of American
sculpture, MacMonnies has taken and enveloped
with his deeper sense of beauty and richer fund
of expression. The Stranahan statue epitomizes
the movement fathered by these pioneers in their
stand against the neo-classic, and as such its im-
portance as a veritable contribution to the sum
total of knowledge in the art of sculpture cannot

420 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

be overestimated. Of it Taft says, " Nothing
truer has been done in our day."

The personality of the man is the first and last
impression, and every phase of the enthusiastic
modelling has been so treated as to contribute to
that profound characterization, which is its most
striking attribute. The problem of the modern
costume has been faced squarely, even to the detail
of the quaint silk hat, held in the right bare hand.
The left hand is gloved and holds the other glove
and stick, while over the arm is thrown an over-
coat. The pose has the simplicity of greatness,
the costume is unconventional without the untidi-
ness suggested in Ward's Beecher, before Borough
Hall.

MacMonnies felt delight in the work, making
many studies of the model and bearing them away
to France, where the statue was completed and
cast, which partly accounts for the interesting
patine the bronze has gained through exposure.
After it was finished and unveiled, Stranahan was
so pleased with his effigy that he and his wife used
to drive down the plaza and he would be photo-
graphed standing beside the statue — they thought
it so like.

Within the park, bearing to the left from the
plaza entrance and following a devious and con-

BROOKLYN 421

fusing route through rose gardens and other
pretty features of this graceful enclosure, a path
leads unexpectedly down through dense foliage into
what is known as the Vale of Cachemere. Here
amidst laurel and rhododendron bushes lies, partly
concealed, a tiny lily pond, and in the centre of
this lily pond, its border strengthened and en-
riched by a stone parapet, designed by Stanford
White, one comes upon MacMonnies' radiant
Duck Boy Fountain, a diminutive ruddy bronze
figure of a baby holding a struggling mother duck,
from whose mouth, opened in distressed cries,
emits the sparkling stream of water. The baby
is very little and joyous, its head is turned to one
side, its small arms barely able to hold the captive
bird. He stands with one foot on the back of a
turtle, the heel of the other lightly touching the
ground. Four tiny ducklings stand, as it were,
on tiptoe, flapping their embryonic wings and
screaming in vain effort to reach their mother.
These, flattened against the yellow marble pedes-
tal, are united by festoons of water lilies. At
some distance from the boy, four turtles emerge
from the surface and throw jets of water upon
the group. The whole effect is very playful and
charming. The rich colour of the bronze is the
accidental patine of time, one of the most fasci-

422 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

nating qualities of bronze. In winter this figure
is taken in and the pond is used by the children for
skating.

Those stupendous groups known as the " Horse
Tamers " flank an exit at the opposite side of the
park, through which lies the favourite route to
Coney Island. These fantastic groups express
the exuberance of the sculptor's most prolific
period, when his genius bubbled forth almost un-
controllably, and he was ready for every difficulty.
For sheer manual* dexterity the things are amaz-
ing; for decorative value their force is overwhelm-
ing; yet these rearing chargers with their slender
riders seem to have come as easily from the
sculptor's brain as the little " Piping Pan of
Rohallion " or the charming fountains of the
Knickerbocker Hotel.

These, with the equestrian statue of General
S locum, the hero of Bull Run, and the standing
figure of MacMonnies' friend and patron, General
Woodward, constitute the sculptor's extraordinary
contribution to Brooklyn. " During the ten years
of his greatest activity," says Taft, " he created
more good sculpture than any contemporary —
more than most do in a lifetime." With the ex-
ception of the Nathan Hale before the City Hall
in New York, the flower of MacMonnies' work

THE HORSE TAMER, BY FREDERICK MACMONNIES
PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN (PAGE 422)

...

BROOKLYN 423

during the first decade of his productivity is
in Brooklyn. All of it was shown in Paris at the
different salons, gaining the sculptor, as a final
recompense, the Legion d'Honneur in 1896. It
is interesting to note that now, in his maturity,
MacMonnies is making for Princeton a battle
monument embodying the ideas of the Army and
Navy Arch reliefs, in which one sees the rich de-
velopment of his life and work, in a group sur-
mounted by the figure of Washington, which has
all the youthful enthusiasm, to which is added a
riper grasp of the essentials of form, balance, and
composition.

The firm of McKim, Mead and White gave
Brooklyn its beautiful museum building, a con-
sistent edifice devoted to art, natural history, and
ethnology, standing on Eastern Parkway not far
from the Plaza. The outside sculptures are by
Herbert Adams, Daniel Chester French, Henry
Augustus Lukemen, Kenyon Cox, Attilio Picci-
rilli, Karl Bitter, George T. Brewster, Edward
C. Potter, Janet Scudder, Charles Keck, Edmund
T. Quinn, John Gelert, and Carl A. Heber.

The outgrowth of the Brooklyn Institute of
Arts and Sciences, the museum is a composite of
the three departments mentioned and covers g,
wide field of activity. The art section contains

424 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

several features, notably the series of the " Life
of Christ," by James J. J. Tissot, presented, in
1900, by the citizens of Brooklyn; the collections
of water colours by Winslow Homer and John
Singer Sargent; the interesting panels painted
for the Church of the Paulist Fathers by John
La Farge; and Boldini's impressive portrait of
James McNeill Whistler.

XXI

BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS

The Battle of Long Island has left notable
traces throughout the city of Brooklyn, envelop-
ing its surface mediocrity with peculiar romance
and charm. One should look at a map to get the
features of the island well in mind. The hill
range which forms the backbone of Long Island,
and upon whose slopes Walt Whitman was born,
terminates on the west in Brooklyn Heights, and
forms the general line followed in the course of
that momentous first avowed battle of the Revolu-
tion.

We are to reconstruct for better understanding
the series of small towns and villages that lined
the coast, looking towards New York, and lying
upon the East River and the harbour. Since 1642
a public ferry has been established between Man-
hattan and Long Island, whose landing-places
were at Peck's Slip, in New York, and the foot
of the present Fulton Street, in Brooklyn. These
old villages, whose names in more or less cor-

425

426 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

rupted form are still preserved, were practically
contemporaneous, the land having been parcelled
out by the early governors to the Dutch settlers
and patroons.

The first settlement appears to have been at
Gowanus, to the south of the ferry; Van T wilier
appropriated a grant at Roode Hoek, so called
from its rich red soil — the name still preserved,
not only in the nomenclature of the coast line,
but in a small street, called Red Hook Lane, not
far from Borough Hall. Amongst the earliest
settlers were the Walloons, who came to America
in numbers early in the seventeenth century.
These were Huguenots, who had sought refuge in
Holland from religious persecution, and they
founded Waal-Bogt, or the Bay of the Foreigners
(corrupted to read Wallabout), a district lying
on the East River, above that deep indentation
where is situated the Navy Yard. Gravesend
was originally an English settlement, granted by
Kieft to Lady Deborah Moody, but the English
strain was soon lost, and the name s'Gravensande
(the Count's Beach) was taken from the Dutch
town on the river Maas. Ferry Village sprung
up about the neighbourhood of the ferry, while
Breuckelen received its charter about 1643, and
was a small central hamlet along the straggling

BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 427

country road, a mile above the ferry. About
twelve years previous to the Revolution this nar-
row lane became the first post road through Long
Island.

To cover the territory involved in the Battle of
Long Island one should grasp the essential land-
marks extending between Gravesend Bay, way
down below the Narrows, near Coney Island,
where Howe landed with his force of 20,000 men,
and Fort Greene Park, then Fort Putnam, where
Washington had concentrated 9,000 soldiers, con-
stituting one-half of the American army. This
high ground still commands an impressive view,
but in those days, before the city was built up, it
not only overlooked the city of New York and the
East River, it commanded an extensive range of
Long Island and the four ancient roads taken by
the British in their advance from Gravesend.

These four roads led away from the bay by
way of Bedford, Flatbush, Jamaica, and the shore
line to Gowanus, whence an inland road cut
across country to Brooklyn village. Washington,
Putnam, Sullivan, and Stirling were the heroes
of the battle, their names, simply, being inscribed
on a tablet at the intersection of Fulton Street and
Flatbush Avenue. Washington distributed his
scanty store of men as best he could, fortifying

428 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

three of the four means of approach; while Howe,
quickly recognizing the strategic importance of
the unguarded roundabout road by way of
Jamaica, took that himself, sending two High-
land regiments, under General Grant, by the
shore road and a column of Hessians, under Gen-
eral von Heister, by the middle pass.

To follow the course of the battle one must
follow the heights. Stirling formed a line all the
way from Battle Hill, in Greenwood Cemetery,
to Gowanus Bay; Sullivan held the roads through
the dense woods by way of Bedford and Flatbush.
Both came to grief and were outnumbered and
captured after a brave fight. A day of disaster
to the Americans closed with an exhibition of de-
voted bravery on the part of the Maryland Regi-
ment, which held back the British until their com-
panions could reach safety, and, as the phrase is,
" saved the American Army."

We read of Washington standing on Lookout
Hill, in Prospect Park, watching the advance of
the British against the inadequate forces under
General Stirling; of his amazement and emotion
when, instead of surrendering, Stirling turned
against the adversary to give battle. It was at
this sight that Washington is said to have wrung
his hands and cried: "Good God! What brave7

BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 429

fellows I must this day lose." The sentence is
inscribed on the pedestal of the Maryland Monu-
ment, designed by White, and erected in honour
of Maryland's Four Hundred.

The retreat after the battle carries the reader
across the heights into the old part of the town
along the bluff overlooking the river, and down to
the water's edge, a region in which all landmarks
have been obliterated ; yet the conformation of the
ground is the same, and one can picture the terri-
ble panic and confusion at the site of the present
ferry, where the troops were gathered to make
their escape in the motley assemblage of river
craft which Washington in secret had prepared for
them. The council which decided the retreat was
held in the old Pierrepont House, at the head of
the bluffs, at what is now No. 1 Pierrepont Place,
a handsome brown-stone residence still in the pos-
session of that family. This house occupies the
site of the original colonial dwelling.

According to the plan, none of the soldiers and
few of the officers knew what was in the wind
when, after dark, the latter were ordered to get
their regiments under arms for a night attack
upon the enemy. When the troops had fallen into
line, instead of marching towards the British camp,
to their surprise they found themselves descending

430 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the steep slopes that led down to the river, and
when it was understood that they were retreating,
panic the most violent seized them. The soldiers
crowded into an indistinguishable mass of officers
and privates, all obsessed by the one idea of get-
ting into the boats, which included every sort
of river craft, both sail and row boats, upon
which Washington could lay hands. From many
sources we learn that such disorder prevailed that
the soldiers in the rear actually climbed upon the
heads and shoulders of their forward comrades
and walked over them to the front, leaping pele-
mele into the boats, in spite of the threats and
entreaties of their officers, and crowding these to
such an extent that several boats were nearly
swamped. When driven at the point of the bayo-
net from some of the flotilla, the frightened sol-
diers poured instantly into others, from which
neither threats nor blows could finally dislodge
them.

Washington's anxiety for the safe retreat of
his army, so gravely jeopardized by this unseemly
panic, was fast exhausting his patience, and his
language is described as growing " as vehement
as his labours had been gigantic."

" At last his wrath at the insubordination and
perversity of the men leaped beyond the bounds of

PORTRAIT OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER, BY GIOVANNI BOLDINI
BROOKLYN MUSEUM (PAGE 424)

BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 431

his habitual prudence, and, seizing a huge stone,
which probably few other men in the army could
even have lifted from the ground, he raised it
aloft in both hands, and shouted: ' If every man
in that boat does not instantly leave it, I will sink
it to hell.' " *

The voice of the general is said to have been so
impressive and his gesture so threatening that the
boats were instantly vacated and the insubordina-
tion quelled. The retreat occupied the night;
Washington was the last man to leave the island,
and the watchers on the bluffs saw his boat for a
few moments in midstream in the growing dawn
before the thick fog that put the final touch of
security to the proceedings closed down over the
British camp and enveloped the river in impene-
trable mystery.

In a section of Brooklyn, rather off the beaten
track, above the old Huguenot settlement of Wall-
about, and on beyond the Brooklyn Navy Yard,
lies Fort Greene Park, a pretty patch of rescued
verdure rising to a noble eminence, upon which
stands the awesome monument to the Prison Ship
Martyrs of the Revolution. This monument, cer-
tainly one of the grandest of its type, was amongst

* " Historic and Antiquarian Scenes in Brooklyn." T. W. Field.
P. 92.

432 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

the last things that engaged the art of Stanford
White. He never saw it in the life, its corner
stone having been laid a year after his death, but
he realized it in all its poetic majesty and austere
aloofness from its crazy environment as perhaps
his most monumental and distinguished achieve-
ment.

The monument takes the simplest form. It
consists of a great fluted shaft of magnificent
granite rising straight and with pure lines into
the air; upon the top a square capital, ornamented
with walls of Troy, upon which rests a bronze urn.
This column, standing upon the highest point of
Fort Greene, is planted in the centre of a square
granolithic plaza, the ends marked by short shafts
ornamented each by an eagle resting against the
base. The approach is from the direction of the
sea, and consists of three flights of wide granite
steps with intermediate platforms, on the second
of which is the descent into the crypt, concealed
under the steps; and therein are contained the
bones of the eleven thousand prison ship martyrs
of baleful history.

The defeats of the patriots at the Battle of
Long Island and the subsequent capture of Fort
Washington gave the British between four and
five thousand prisoners, and this number was con-

BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 433

stantly increased by the arrest of citizens suspected
of complicity with the so-called " rebellion." The
prisons in the city of New York being entirely
inadequate to the situation, some transports that
had originally been used to bring cattle and other
war supplies out from England were pressed into
the abominable service. In all there were seven-
teen of these hateful prison ships, of which two
at a time were in service at Wallabout for the
reception of prisoners.

The conduct of the prisons by the British offi-
cials makes desperate reading. Our men were
thrust aboard these pestilential hulks in incredible
numbers; and here, in loathsome floating dun-
geons, denied air and light, scantily fed on poor,
putrid, often uncooked food; quartered with the
basest criminals, the sick with the healthy, were
subjected daily to intolerable insult and indignity.
They died by thousands, of scourges and starva-
tion, lying huddled together at night, the dead
with the living, until the rude morning cry,
"Rebels, bring out your dead!" ended their hor-
rid slumbers and brought them to the miseries
of another dreadful day. One of the prison ships
was burned, said to have been fired by the inmates
who preferred death to their long-drawn suffer-
ings ; but the human cargo was merely transferred

434 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

to another ship, increasing the misfortune of
both.

The most infamous of these ships was the
Jersey, or the Hell, as she was called from the
number of prisoners confined between her decks,
often as many as a thousand at a time; and we
read, in the memoirs of Silas Talbot, that of the
twenty thousand Americans who died on the
prison ships throughout the Revolution 11,644
found that relief upon the Jersey alone.

These men were constantly offered rations, and
freedom in the open air, if they would but enlist
in the service of George III — not necessarily to
fight directly against their own country, but for
service in foreign wars, thereby relieving soldiers
who could then be added to the British forces in
America. Their fidelity to their newly forming
country is without parallel in fhe history of the
world, and their grim staunchness forms the very
keystone of our republic. These devoted patriots,
taken from every one of the thirteen original
states, numbered more than were killed in all the
battles both by sea and land in the long and des-
perate struggle for freedom.

At the close of the war the survivors were re-
leased and the old Jersey sank in the mud of
Wallabout Channel, at a spot now covered by the

BROOKLYN'S BATTLE MARKS 435

west end of Cob Dock. For many years the bones
of the martyrs lay bleaching on the banks of the
Wallabout, where the bodies had been rudely
buried in shallow pits by the British. The whole
shore from Rennies Point to Mr. Remsen's farm
was a place of graves ; many prisoners were buried
in a ravine of the hill, and " it was no uncommon
thing to see five or six dead bodies brought on
shore in a single morning," writes J. Johnson,
Esq., of Brooklyn, " when a small excavation
would be dug at the foot of the hill, the bodies
cast in, and a man with a shovel would cover them
by shovelling sand down the hill upon them."
More than half the dead bodies on the other side
of the Remsen mill pond were washed out by the
waves at high tide during northeast winds. " The
bones of the dead lay exposed along the beach,
drying and bleaching in the sun and whitening
the shore."

This distressing state of affairs became a chronic
topic of complaint to congress; but while every
one agreed that " something should be done," the
only practical thing that was accomplished was
through the activity of John Jackson, a veteran
of the Revolution, who owned a farm adjoining
the spot where the Jersey disappeared from view.
While others talked, he collected the pathetic re-

436 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

mains of the soldiers with whom he had fought and
suffered, and when he had several hogsheads of
bones stored on his farm he made an offer to Tam-
many to give the land for a monument, if that
society would undertake its erection.

Tammany accepted the charge, set about col-
lecting the balance of the skeletons and, in 1808,
buried them with imposing ceremonies on the
Jackson farm in a temporary wooden tomb. This
became so dilapidated that, in 1873, the Park
Commission prepared a permanent and imperish-
able vault on Fort Greene, overlooking the scene
of suffering. The body of John Jackson, which
had been interred in the old wooden structure, was
transferred to the new, and rests with the remains
of those whose plight he had been the first to miti-
gate. Later the cause was espoused by the Society
of Old Brooklynites, whose members secured the
signatures of 30,000 citizens of New York and
Brooklyn to a petition asking congress for an ap-
propriation to build the present monument.

XXII
RANDOM DECORATIONS

Not to appreciate the thing at hand is the order
of our civilization. We rush madly about on
busy errands, absorbed in the commonplace, until
quite exhausted, and then — until now it has been
the custom — hie us to Europe to take, in great
gulps, all the aesthetics that can be crammed into
one short summer, on the theory that such things
are the inherent and peculiar dower of the old
country, and that while America is an excellent
place for dollars one must not trust its art.

But now that we are to be turned in upon our-
selves for higher development, it behooves us to
take stock of the art resources of the country, to
study and recognize the efforts of the earlier build-
ers of our cities — the architects, sculptors, and
painters, whose lives were spent in the considera-
tion of beauty in its relation to human life.

About the decorations of the public buildings
of New York an almost hostile indifference pre-
vails; when the subject does come into discussion,

437

438 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

current writers take perverse pleasure in holding
up to ridicule such attempts as are made to embel-
lish the city — to give it some other than a purely
commercial character. Of destructive criticism
there is an abundance; of intelligent appreciation
very little. That a building or a tower is the high-
est in the history of the world ; that a bridge is the
longest, a railway terminal the largest, or an hotel
the most expensive, is the kind of information
that with us finds ready credence; even a statue
can become famous in this land of superlatives if
only it can be said that it is " the greatest colossus
in the civilized world," and that the pedestal rests
securely upon a foundation which is " a monolith
of concrete reputed to be the largest artificial
single stone in existence."

These highly uninteresting and unimportant
facts are freely disseminated and become common
gossip; everybody knows them. But who, aside
from the cognoscenti, knows or cares that Kirke
Brown's Washington, in Union Square, ranks
amongst the few really great equestrian statues of
the world, and should be revered by all good
Americans, not only for the monumental charac-
ter which it immortalizes, but as the work of one
of the earliest American-born sculptors, and the
first to conceive an American school?

DETAIL OF EARTH PANEL IN THE DEY STREET FACADE OF THE
WESTERN UNION BUILDING, PAUL MANSHIP. SCULPTOR (PAGE 439)

RANDOM DECORATIONS 439

How many of the throng that presses daily
before the Stock Exchange stop to bestow a pass-
ing glance upon its handsome pediment, or turn
to do homage to Ward's great masterpiece upon
the steps of the Sub-Treasury? The Woolworth
Building is famous for its height; who ever con-
siders the beautiful detail of its lacy tower? One
who stops in the Hall of Records to admire the
rich stone mosaic of the entrance lobby, the work
of William de Leftwich Dodge, or upon busy Dey
Street to view the panels of the four elements,
made by Paul Manship, on the new building of
the American Telegraph and Telephone Com-
pany, does so at his own risk, and is looked upon
almost with suspicion by the preoccupied public,
scurrying along in quest of the chinking coin.

Yet how handsome are these things! One quite
longs to stem the tide, to take the passers-by gently
by the hand and deflect them from their frenzied
course; for within the monster edifice on Dey
Street is a frieze of putti in Paul Manship's most
delightful manner, while imbedded in the marble
floor, within the Broadway entrance, is a circular
device in bronze — a sort of seal of the company —
designed by the same clever artist. The " Genius
of Telegraphy," only very lately conveyed to the
pinnacle of the building, is by Evelyn Beatrice

440 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Longman — a strong and stirring figure sym-
bolizing the mysterious force behind the gigantic
operations of the service.

At the risk, indeed the certainty, of being con-
sidered a hopeless " nut," I penetrated the interior
of one of the great downtown banks one day in
search of certain decorative spandrels to which a
fellow artist had directed me. I encountered,
coupled with utmost kindness and attentive-
ness, a staggering vagueness, until I was finally
passed along to the treasurer of the company,
who received me and my curious tale with even
more tenderness and consideration, looking at me
with tired grey eyes and with a visible effort dis-
lodging his brain from really important matters.
"And what are spandrels?" quoth he, when I
had finished, with whimsical simplicity.

The eagerness to help in what most officials con-
nected with the various hotels, court-houses, thea-
tres, banks, and public buildings containing sculp-
ture or mural painting evidently consider a most
unnatural curiosity concerning objects which to
themselves are as so much masonry and wall-
paper, is truly pathetic. It is like opening the
eyes of the blind to call their attention to what
stands before them, while the information given
out in answer to questions is often alarming. I

RANDOM DECORATIONS 441

have been told, for instance, that some of the
windows in the Church of the Ascension were by
Saint Gaudens! When I asked at Saint Luke's
Hospital for the author of the beautiful window
in the chapel, which I afterwards verified as the
work of Henry Holiday, no one visible in the
institution had the faintest idea, nor was able to
lay hands on any data concerning it. When I
made inquiries in another church, currently, but
erroneously, reported to contain windows by
Burne-Jones, the young curate that was finally
persuaded to see me — in this case there was no
eagerness — seemed positively proud of his igno-
rance of matters that could only be interesting to
a builder, and with a supercilious lift of an eccle-
siastic eyebrow seemed to insinuate: "Who are
the Jones'? With Hendrick Brevoort buried in
our vestibule, what know we of such vulgarians? "
While not all of the best decorations and sculp-
ture done by American artists for America are
concentrated in New York, the city, especially if
one stretches a point to include the two court-
houses of Jersey City and Newark, which are
elaborately decorated, furnishes an interesting
field for the study of what the movement has ac-
complished in this country within the last quarter
of a century.

442 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

We have accepted the Centennial Exhibition,
of 1876, as the birthday of decoration in America
— the Columbian Exposition, of 1893, as its
official coming of age. This " coming-out party "
was presided over by a number of distinguished
architects, each of which introduced, as it were,
his own particular debutantes. George B.
Post brought forward Blashfield, Weir, Reid,
Simmons, Beckwith, Reinhardt, Shirlaw, and Cox
— all men of more or less distinguished accomplish-
ment in other fields of painting; and these were
the decorators of the eight small domes of his
Palace of the Liberal Arts. Richard M. Hunt
discovered the great natural ability of William
de Leftwich Dodge, who as a mere youth, fresh
from the Paris schools, had proven his fluency in
the painting of the famous panorama of the Chi-
cago fire, and for the architect he painted the enor-
mous dome of the Administration Building.

Some of these painters — notably Dodge, Reid,
Simmons, Cox, and Blashfield — received through
the experience gained in the exposition and their
attendant success a permanent bent for decoration,
for which immediately following the close of the
World's Fair there was a great demand. The
effect of the ephemeral work at Chicago was
deepened by the success of the two great libraries

RANDOM DECORATIONS 443

of Boston and Washington, decorated at about this
time, employing almost every mural painter of dis-
tinction of native birth and bringing to this coun-
try the work of the greatest of French decorators,
Puvis de Chavannes.

Paris had already set the admirable example of
securing for its public edifices a record of what
contemporary French painters could do in the
field of decoration, and most of our artists, trained
either under these or with them, came back filled
with a desire to express for America what their
French contemporaries had expressed for France
— to establish with some degree of permanence
the record of national achievement in the same
direction.

Perhaps the supply created the demand. Cer-
tainly the demand reached the supply, and Hunt
and Post, in their subsequent architectural ven-
tures, utilized the genius at hand with delightful
enthusiasm. The first private residence to be dec-
orated after the exposition was that of Collis P.
Huntington, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh
Street, built by George B. Post and decorated by
Blashfield, Francis Lathrop, Mowbray, and Ved-
der. Mr. Post secured much admirable decora-
tion for the Cornelius Vanderbilt house, across
the way, including Saint Gaudens' handsome

444 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

mantelpiece; and imported the wonderful Baudry
ceiling, afterwards presented by Mr. Vanderbilt
to the Century Theatre and installed in the foyer,
with accessories painted by James Wall Finn.
This ceiling panel, by the distinguished decorator
of the foyer of the Paris Opera House, is one of
the chief mural treasures of New York.

Through the younger Hunt, Blashfleld made
"The Sword Dance," a lunette for the Gothic
supper room of William K. Vanderbilt, and two
panels — " Fortitude " and " Vigilance " — for each
side of the chimneypiece ; and later, for Arnold
Brunner, he made the exquisite decorations for the
residence of Adolph Lewisohn, in Fifty-seventh
Street, all of which have been removed and in-
stalled in Mr. Lewisohn's new house, below Mr.
Frick's, on the Avenue. The ceiling panel, rep-
resenting " The Music of Antiquity," is placed in
the music room, and another panel, " Florentine
Dance," is in the great main hall.

Simmons' splendid " Justice," attended by " The
Rights of Man " and the " Fates," for the Crimi-
nal Courts Building, was one of the first mural
paintings to be placed in a public edifice in New
York. It was done in 1895, directly after the
success of the decorations of the World's Fair,
and in the full tide of enthusiastic production

THE MUSIC OF ANTIQUITY, CEILING DECORATION IN RESIDENCE OF
MR. ADOLPH LEWISOHN, BY EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELD (PAGE 444)

RANDOM DECORATIONS 445

which marks this artist's finest period. The Wal-
dorf-Astoria followed, and again the Appellate
Court, an example of overabundant enthusiasm.
Of it Mr. Blashfield has said, charitably: "We
tried so hard to give full measure that I fear we
overdid it."

The Appellate Court proved, amongst other
things, Mr. Mowbray's distinguished gifts in dec-
oration and brought him the opportunity of the
University Club, and subsequently, for the same
architects, the private library of J. Pierpont
Morgan, in East Thirty-sixth Street, whose quiet
and beautiful interior is greatly enriched by the
vaulted ceiling, with decorative paintings by this
artist. These, with the mosaic panelling of the
side walls, the pavimento of rare and costly mar-
bles, present an ensemble reminiscent of the old
world. With every resource at his command, the
elder Morgan withdrew from his deposit at the
South Kensington Museum two fifteenth century
chairs and a bronze bust of Pescari, assigned to
Benvenuto Cellini, which form the all-sufficient
furnishings of the loggia. The ceiling of the stock
room is a splendid example of Italian Renais-
sance from the Palazzo Aldobrandini, at Venice.

As the movement for decoration gained in popu-
larity, hotels, theatres, restaurants, and concert

446 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

halls became objects of the painters' skill. Many
of the most interesting of these, such as Blum's
panel for Mendelssohn Hall, Dewing's ceiling for
the cafe of the Hotel Imperial, Dodge's frieze for
the Cafe Martin, have been lost sight of in the
alterations or destruction of these buildings.

Of the many decorated theatres, the New
Amsterdam is famous for its proscenium arch,
designed by Robert Blum and carried out by A.
B. Wenzel. Blum died before the actual work
was commenced. The subject, " The Drama,"
is represented by a central figure of Lyric Poetry,
flanked on the left by Tradition and on the right
by Truth. The other principal characters are a
Jester, Chivalry, and a King, whose crown has
been taken away by Death. George Gray Bar-
nard and Hinton Perry made the sculpture for
the theatre. •

William de Leftwich Dodge is best represented
in the seven panels and colour scheme of the Em-
pire Theatre, designed by Carrere and Hastings,
one of the best decorated theatres in New York,
and especially interesting for the treatment of the
ceiling, which follows in conception the famous ceil-
ings of Tiepolo and Paul Baudry, the two masters
of foreshortening in architectural composition.

The essential spirit of true decoration, as de-

RANDOM DECORATIONS 447

duced from a study of the great mural painters
of the past, provides that walls should be so
treated as not to lose their sense of surface. In
other words, the subjects painted should be seen
to lie flat on the walls, like tapestry, and not in
the round, with distance and aerial perspective,
as in easel pictures. Tiepolo, the great Venetian
painter of ceilings, found that large ceilings or
domes with sufficient elevation could be effectively
treated as actual openings in the roof, and painted
many extraordinary rooms where the intention of
the ceiling was to deceive the eye, to produce the
effect of a continuation of the architecture of the
room and to show the sky above.

The ceiling of the Empire Theatre, like those
of the Italian prototypes, represents a balustrade
which appears to surround an opening in the roof;
and over this balustrade figures lean, looking down
into the theatre, while across the blue sky, beyond,
floats a symbolic figure. The illusion from all
sides of looking up through the balustrade is
created by making all the lines of architecture
converge to one vanishing point, so that nowhere
is there an effect of the structure falling over.
The Baudry ceiling in the Century Theatre deals
with the same problem, and Frieseke also tried it
in his ceiling for Wanamaker's Auditorium.

448 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

The charm of mural painting in general does
not depend on brush technique, nor upon fidelity
in details, nor upon a literary subject. Designed
to be seen from great distance, composition, con-
struction, and colour are the vital considerations,
and it is most effective in the big and simple ren-
derings of thought to be conveyed. From the
distance seen, all small things disappear. The face
cannot be relied upon to express feelings or emo-
tions, which carry only through the gesture of the
whole figure, and it is much more important that
the head or hand should be in its right place than
that finger nails should be well drawn.

In the zeal for decoration which followed the
success of the Columbian Exposition's experiments
the special fitness of the artist for his task is not
always taken into account, and we have in New
York and throughout the country many examples
done by artists distinguished in other fields, which
fail for lack of experience with the metier.

Mr. Mowbray's frieze in the Appellate Court
is an excellent example of strictly mural painting;
Mr. Blashfield's pendentives in the dome of the
Hudson County Court House, in Jersey City,
and, above all, the decoration of the Criminal
Court Room of the Essex County Court House,
in Newark, by Henry Oliver Walker, fulfil ad-

DETAIL VAULTED CEILING WITH DECORATIVE PANELS, BY H. SIDDONS MOWBRAY
MORGAN LIBRARY (PAGE 445)

« . • • •

DRAWING FOR PANEL ON MORGAN LIBRARY (NOT EXECUTED)
BY ANDREW O'CONNOR, SCULPTOR (PAGE 445)

RANDOM DECORATIONS 449

mirably the mission of decoration. The render-
ing of the latter is as flat as tapestry, and the
picture, in beautiful colour, lies upon the surface
of the wall with all the effect of fresco. Mr.
Dodge's handsome frieze in the Hotel Devon, rich
in autumnal colouring, is preeminently the work
of a mural painter. Low-toned, harmonious, and
joyous, the groups of festival procession hand-
somely fit the place and make a rich, glowing
effect of warmth and comfort.

The seven carefully finished, exquisitely drawn
lunettes of the tea-room of the St. Regis Hotel,
by Robert Van Vorst Sewell, on the contrary, de-
feat the purpose of decoration. They " illustrate "
the story of Cupid and Psyche. The same is even
more true of Abbey's " Bowling Green," over
the bar of the Hotel Imperial, which is essen-
tially an illustration; while Maxfield Parrish's
popular " Old King Cole," that quaintly humor-
ous panel in the Knickerbocker bar, delightful as
it is, is illustration rather than decoration. His
panel over the mantelpiece of the " Meeting
House " has the same prodigality of finish, though
in this case the room is small and the mantel low,
so that though technically a decoration, the panel
has all the accessibility of an easel picture.

The Hotel Knickerbocker, besides its handsome

450 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

Parrish — of which Arnold Bennett, whisked there
immediately after his first arrival in this country,
said: " I found it rather fine and apposite," — con-
tains a fanciful decoration in high key by James
Wall Finn, " The Masque of Flora," and in the
dining room two small bronze fountains by Fred-
erick MacMonnies, designed for their setting, but
never properly attached, so that, instead of joy-
ously spurting, a dismal trickle , issues from the
aperture and the boys' gestures lose point.

C. Y. Turner and Kenyon Cox are represented
in the Manhattan Hotel, the former by a series of
historic panels, the latter by some overdoor
lunettes. These, of course, are very professional
in handling. Mr. Turner is better seen in the two
panels for the De Witt Clinton High School, illus-
trating the " Opening of the Erie Canal," realistic
scenes, educational in purpose, representing the
" Marriage of the Waters " and " Entering the
Mohawk Valley." Barry Faulkner's twelve pan-
els for the Washington Irving High School,
though inspired by the " Knickerbocker History
of New York," are treated in an allegorical and
conventional way, preserving the decorative quality
of the walls.

The decoration of the Delia R%obbia Room of
the Vanderbilt Hotel, done by Smeraldi, a clever

RANDOM DECORATIONS 451

Italian, in imitation of the famous Chambre des
Singes, of the chateau of Chantilly, is an example
of consistent and agreeable interior decoration,
charmingly adapted to its destination.

New York contains an important and imposing
decoration by Edwin Howland Blashfield in his
" Graduate," a large lunette in the great hall of
the City College, done in 1908, and representing
the artist's most mature period. The panel gains
distinction partly through Mr. Blashfield's choice
of a colossal figure for the central focus of the
composition, and partly by reason of the effective
arrangement of the light and the strong contrasts
of shadow.

Wisdom, the large central figure, presides, hold-
ing in her lap the earth, and turning towards the
spectator the Western Hemisphere. The light
which floods the centre of the canvas proceeds
from a fire burning on a low altar at her feet.
Above, in a semicircular arrangement of smoke,
which curls aloft from the fire, float Wisdom's
tributaries, with books and scrolls, and below her
pedestal, in a long, curved line, sit the symbolic
figures of the great centres of learning, the uni-
versities, personified by graceful and character-
istic feminine forms.

The Graduate stands before the throne of Wis-

452 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

dom, receiving from his Alma Mater the scroll
and carrying the torch of learning which he has
just lighted at the altar. To the right of these
two dark figures — the Graduate and the Alma
Mater — on a lower plane stands Discipline, clothed
in red, holding a sword and a scourge; she waits
to accompany the Graduate through life. To the
right and left of the centre sit groups of the
immortals, and below the composition is balanced
by larger groups of students, seen rather in the
literal vein, while the rest of the figures are
symbolical.

The loiterer genuinely interested in mural paint-
ing should not neglect to make the short trip
to Jersey City and Newark to visit the two
elaborately decorated court-houses of those cities.
There is nothing to compare with them in New
York in the magnitude of the undertaking, and
they contain a great deal that is interesting in its
bearing on decoration in this country.

The Hudson County Court House w^as designed
by Hugh Roberts, architect, and the general
colour scheme of the building was entrusted to
Francis D. Millet, whose work therein was fin-
ished a few months before he was lost on the
Titanic. The decorations include the dome, orna-
mentally treated and embellished with the signs of

Reproduced by courtesy of The "Meeting House

PROVING IT BY THE BOOK, DECORATION BY MAXFIELD PARRISH
IN THE MEETING HOUSE (PAGE 449)

RANDOM DECORATIONS 453

the zodiac, carried out by Aderente and Foringer,
who assisted Mr. Blashfield in his panel, " The
Graduate." The four figures of Fame, each
holding a shield, with a medallion portrait, are
characteristic examples of decoration by Mr.
Blashfield. The main rotunda contains four large
lunettes treated realistically, of which two are by
Millet and two by C. Y. Turner, and besides these
there are twelve tiny panels in monochrome, which
illustrate events in the history of Jersey City.
The vaulting of the corridor corners by Kenyon
Cox is conceived in a better spirit of classic deco-
ration and is rather fine in colour.

The intention of the painting throughout is
educational rather than decorative. It deals with
concrete facts of history, literally rendered, with
a wealth of circumstantial evidence, all of which
is very interesting from the standpoint of informa-
tion. This is notably true of Howard Pyle's his-
torical frieze in the Freeholders' Room, which con-
sists of three large panels depicting, with photo-
graphic accuracy, the " Arrival of the Half
Moon," "The Dutch Settlement," and "The
Coming of the English." Pyle has loaded the
spaces, just as he did his book illustrations, with
authentic details of costume and accessories, most
of which are invisible to the naked eye, but with-

454 A LOITERER IN NEW YORK

out which this master of detail would never have
been satisfied.

The Essex County Court House at Newark
was built by Cass Gilbert, architect, and the deco-
rations were supervised by Arthur R. Willet, who
planned the general colour scheme and made some
minor accessories. Mr. Blashfield made the pen-
dentives to the dome, and there are panels in the
various court rooms by Kenyon Cox, Will H.
Low, Francis D. Millet, Howard Pyle, Henry
Oliver Walker, George W. Maynard, and C. Y.
Turner. The exterior sculpture of the building is
by Andrew O'Connor.

These two court-houses represent the ultimate
fruition of that initial movement in decoration
which was started by the Chicago fair. The
genius and ability there discovered was all too
rapidly organized and turned to commercial ac-
count, so that the impetus given soon wore itself
out and resulted in the founding of no school of
American decoration, as might have been hoped.
There has been, so to speak, no suite, no succes-
sion, and with the passing of this generation of
mural painters none other is rising to take its
place.

INDEX

Abbey, Edwin Austin, 80
Abbott, Lyman, 213
Abington Square, 183
Academy of Music, 239
Adams, Herbert, 208, 276, 423
Adams, Mrs. Herbert, 244
Address, proclaiming independ-
ence, 131
Albany, 95

All Saints' Chapel, 109
All Souls' Church, 230, 232,

235, 250
Alley, Saul, 201
" Alma Mater," 384
" American Quarter," 179
American Telegraph and Tele-
phone Building, 439
Andre, 336
Andros, Edmund, 64
Appellate Court, 445, 448
Appellate Court House, 260,
261
Famous Three Panels, 264
Apthorpe Mansion, 362
Army and Navy Arch, 414, 415,

416, 417, 418
Astor Gallery, 269
Astor House, 120
Astor, John Jacob, 107, 124,
267, 287
villa, 341
Astor Library, 234
Astor Place, 166, 183
Opera House, 167
Astor, William Waldorf, 107,

268
Atterbury, Grosvenor, 141

Audubon Park, 401

Bacon, Henry, 374
Baker, James B., 121
Ball, Thomas, 110
Barclay, Anthony, 219
Barclay, Mathilda, 219
Barnard, George Gray, 386,

446
Barnum, P. T., 100
Barrett, Lawrence, 227
Bartholdi, Frederic, 20

statue, 20
Bartlett, Paul Wayland, 77,

289
Basilica di San Gio Battista

(in Monza), 231
Battery, 22, 23, 43, 90, 96, 97
Battery Park, 28
Battle of Golden Hill, 127
Battle of Harlem Heights, 360,

361, 362, 363, 364, 365,

366, 391, 392, 393, 394,

395, 398, 399, 400
Battle of Long Island, 407,

408, 425, 427, 428, 429,

430
prison ships, 433, 434, 435
retreat, 430, 431
Bayard, William, 183
Beatitudes, 218
Bedloe's Island, 20
Beecher, Henry Ward, statue,

245
Beekman, James, home, 336,

337
Beekman Place, 337

455

456

INDEX

Bellows, Henry Whitney, 231,
233
Memorial, 235, 250
Portrait bv Saint Gaudens,
234
Belmont Chapel, 374
Bennett, Arnold, 179, 252
Berkeley Square, 82
" Beth Haim," 186
Bigelow, John, 214
Billop, Christopher, Capt., 26
Bispham, William, 227
Bissell, George E., 88
Bitter, Karl, 92, 107, 122, 308,

331,358,376,423
Bleeker, Anthony Lispenard

113
Block, Adriaen, 39
Block houses, 39
Bloemendaal, see Bloomingdale,

240, 343, 344
Bloomingdale, 334

Dutch Reformed Church, 366
Road, 240, 334, 343, 345
Blashfield, Edwin H., 264, 269,
442, 443, 444, 448, 451,
453, 454
Blum, Robert, 446
Bolting Act, 64
Boorman, James, 201, 212, 213
Boorman, Miss, 212, 214
Booth, Edwin, 227
Borglum, Gutzon, 374
Borough Hall, 408
Bossen Bouwerie, 182, 183, 184,

200, 224
Boston Post Road, 63, 224, 225,
334, 339
Mile stones, 173
Bouwerie farms, 43, 48, 154
Bouwerie Lane, see Bowerv, 50,

154
Bouwerie Village, 153, 181
Bowdoin College, 112
Bowen, Betsy, 395

Bowery, see Bouwerie Lane,
50, 183, 239
Theatre, 174
BowTling Green, see " The
Plaine," 47, 80, 81, 85, 87,
89, 93, 96, 97, 120, 241
Breedweg, see Broadway, 53,

343
Breuckelyn, see Brooklyn, 406,

426
Brevoort, Hendrick, 216, 217

burial place, 441
Brevoort, Henry, 120, 217, 218,
219
farm, 215, 216, 221
House, 219
Brewster, George T., 423
Brick Presbyterian Church,

277, 278
Brides' Row, 202
Broad Street, 52
Broadway, 53, 81, 83, 96, 102,
113, 115, 117, 119, 120,
217, 239, 248, 343, 344
Bronx, borough of, 25
Brooklyn, 25, 405
Ferry, 60
Heights, 18
Institute, 353

Institute of Arts and Sci-
ences, 423
Museum, 423
Navy Yard, 431
Brown, Henry Kirke, 241, 242,
243, 245,* 438
" Angel of the Resurrection,"

242
De Witt Clinton statue, 242
Bryant Park, 286
Bryant, William Cullen, resi-
dence, 237
Bull's Head Tavern, 175
Burns' Coffee House, 126
Burr, Aaron, 396
home of, 189, 190

INDEX

457

Burr-Hamilton duel, 190
Buttermilk Channel, 23

Calder, 207
Canal street, 190, 191
Canova, 244, 247
Captain Kidd, 66

buried treasure, 67

hanged, 68
Carnegie, Andrew, mansion,

322
Carrere & Hastings, 177, 286,
288, 294, 309, 313, 323,
331, 374, 446
Castle Garden, 23, 99, 100
Castle William, 23
Cathedral of St. John the Di-
vine, 359, 370

architects, 368

Chapels of Tongues, 373

Dome, 371, 372, 373

location, 367
Cedar Creek, 225
Centennial, 246, 248
Central Park, 249

East, 318, 319, 320, 321

opening of, 325

South, 345
Century Theatre, ceiling panel,

444
Chamber of Commerce, 78, 120,
122

portrait gallery, 120, 121,
122, 123

souvenirs. 124
Chancellor Watts, statue, 88
Charles II, 64
Chase, William M., 225
Chatham Square, 126, 175
Chavannes, Puvis de, 443
Christiaensen, Hendrick, 38, 39
Christopher street, 183
Church of St. George, 224
Church of St. Nicholas, 89

Church of the Ascension, 116,

208, 209
"Church of the Holy Zebra,"

230
Church of the Incarnation, 281
Church of the Transfiguration,

283
City Hall, 132

building of, 137

Governor's Room, 141

original drawings, 133, 134,
135

Park, 125, 245, 248

portraits, 141, 142

restoration of, 140

selection of site, 139
City's collection of portraits,

145
Civil War, 98, 233, 234
Claremont, 334, 359, 363
" Claremont," Jumel, mansion,

403
Clinton, De Witt, statue, 121
Clinton, Gov. George, 115
Coentie's Slip, 51
Colden, Cadwallader, 122
Collect, 147

Collegiate Dutch Church, 89
Colleoni, Bartolomeo, statue,

243
Colonnade Row, 167
Columbia College, 213
Columbia Heights, 356
Columbia Library, 380, 383,

384
Columbia University, 377

First Commencement, 378

founding of, 377, 378

location, 367
Columbian Exposition, 108
Columbus Circle, 345
Constitution, frigate, 109
Cooper, Louise Fairleigh, 228
Cooper, Peter, house, 168

statue, 170, 250

458

INDEX

Cooper Square, 170
Cooper, Thomas Abthorpe, por-
trait, 228
Cooper Union, 168, 173
Cox, Kenyon, 423, 454
Cram, Raiph Adams, 368
Cram and Ferguson, 374
Croton Reservoir, 240
Cruger mansion, 237
Crystal Palace, 247, 287
Custom House, 46, 47, 74, 89,
90, 92, 94, 90

Collector's room, 89, 92

decorative panels, 93

paintings, 92

twelve heroic figures, 91

Davies Cox Memorial, 210

de Halve, Moen, 27

de Lancey, Etienne, 78, 120

de Lancey, James, 173, 174

de Lancey, Oliver, 183

de Lancey, Susannah, 182

de Peyster, Abraham, statue,

88 89 113
de Peyster,' John Watts, 89, 113
de Witt, Simeon, 323, 387
"Dead Man's Curve," 239
Declaration of Independence,

82, 131
18th Anniversary, 243
Delawares, 32
Dix, Morgan, 109
Dodge, William de Leftwich,

439, 446, 449
Dominink street, 198, 199
Donatello, statue of Gattame-

lata, 243
Dongan, Col. Thos., 64
Dongan Charter, 64, 125
Donndorf, Adolf, 248
bronze fountain, 248
Downtown streets, origin of, 72
" Diana " statue, 252
Duane, James, 225

Duck Boy Fountain, 409, 421

Duffore Farm, 335, 338

Duke of York, see James II,

26, 48, 55, 60, 64
Duke's Laws, 62
Duke's Plan, 48
Duncan, John H., 414
du Simitiere Collection, 57
Dutch Colonists, 153

Dominion, 38

governors, 22, 48

lands, government, 46

names changed, 55

retake New Netherland, 56
Dutch West India Company,

41, 184
Dyckman, William, 402, 403

house, 399, 402, 403

Eakins, Thomas, 414

Earl of Stirling, 112

East India Trading Company,

29, 31, 33
East River, 59, 225
Edict of Nantes, 111
Eiffel, 22
Ellis Island, 23
Elwell, F. E., 91
Empire Theatre, decorations,

447
English Dominion, 54, 55

Rule, 57
Ericsson, John, 101, 197

statue, 101
Erie Canal, 119

Faneuil, Benjamin, 111
Faneuil Hall (Boston), 111,

112
Faneuil, Peter, 111
Farragut, Admiral, statue, 249,

250, 251
Faulkner, Barry, 450
Ferry Village, 426

INDEX

459

Fifth Avenue, 219, 220, 221,
238, 286

architecture, 294

Hotel, 259
Fine Arts Building, 312
Finn, James Wall, 450
Fire of 1776, 106
Firemen's Memorial, 347
Firemen's Monument, 359
First Battle of Revolution, 127
First City Hall, 49
First Dock, 71, 72
First Dutch Governor, 41, 45
First homes, 39
First mail route, 63
First passenger elevator, 259
First Presbyterian Church, 217
First Semitic burying ground,

175
First ship, building, 39
First slave market, 68, 69
First tavern, 49
Fiske, John, 214
Five Points, 170, 171
Fleischmann restaurant, 218

" bread line," 218
Fly Market, 128
Foresti, Felix, 213
Forrest-Macready riots, 166
Fort Amsterdam, 46, 47, 89, 93
Fort Clinton, 99
Fort Columbus, see Fort Jay,

23
Fort Greene Park, 431
Fort Hamilton, 20
Fort Jay, 23
Fort Manhattan, 40
Fort Orange, 95, 96
Fort Wadsworth, 20
Fort Washington, 400, 401
Fountain of Abundance, 308
Fountain of Pan, 386
Franklin, Benjamin, 248

statue (by Plassman), 248

portrait statue, 248

Fraser, James Earle, 374

Fraunce, Samuel, 78

Fraunce's Tavern, 78, 79, 120

Frazee, John, 116

Frazee, William, 116

Free Bridge, 391

French, Daniel Chester, 90,

121, 423
French and Indian War, 182
Frick, Henry C, mansion, 323
Fulton, Robert, 113
Fulton Street, 115

Gansevoort Market, 181

Garibaldi, Giuseppe, statue,
203

Garnsey, Elmer E., 92, 93, 95,
385

Gelert, Johannes, 91

Gelert, John, 423

George III, burning of por-
trait, 132
destruction of statue, 132
statue, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 127,
241

Gerard, James W., 226

Ghiberti, 107, 108

Gilbert, Cass, 89, 454

Gilder, Richard Watson, 251

Gold Street, 128

Golden Hill, 128

Golden Hill Inn, 127, 129

Goodhue, Bertram, 296

Gorham Building, 272
Company, 239, 252

Government House, 89

Governor's House, 47

Governor's Island, 22, 23, 48

Governors' portraits, 145

Gowanus, 426

Grace Church, 217

Gracie, Archibald, 340

Gracie House, 341

Grafly, Charles, 91

4,60

INDEX

Gramercy Park, 223, 224, 225,

230
Gramercy Seat, 225
Grant's Tomb, 359
Gravesend, 426
Great Fire, 148
Great River, see Hudson River,

also, Groot Rivier, 30, 45
Great Bouwerie, 155
Greater New York, 24

founding of, 153
" Greek Slave," statue, 247
Greeley, Horace, countrv home,
336

residence, 236

statue, 150, 245
Green, Andrew H., 213, 326
Greenough, Horatio, 241
Greenwich Avenue, 184, 192
Greenwich Street, 97, 115, 116,

182, 194

Greenwich Village, 179, 181,

183, 184, 185, 186, 187,
189, 191, 195, 199, 200

Greenwood Cemeterv, 406
Grinnell, Moses H., 231, 232
Griswold, George, 201
Groot Rivier, see Hudson

River, 45
Guerin, Jules, 383
Gutenburg, portrait statue, 248

Haarlem, 43, 240
Hale, Nathan, 336
death of, 148, 149
statue, 148, 413
Half Moon, see de Halve Moen,
29, 30
landing of, 33
Hall of Records, see The Gaol,

147, 439
Hall, Valentine G., 227
Hamilton, Alexander, 109, 190,
195, 216, 394
monument, 112

Hamilton, Alexander, portrait,
122
statue, 121
Handlers Street (Broadway),

96
Hanover Square, 54
Harbours, 20
Harding, Chester, 242
Harlem goats, 389
Harper, James, Mayor, 258
Harsenville, 345
Hartley, J. Scott, 101
Hastings, Thomas, 203
Heber, Carl A., 177, 423
Heckewelder, Bishop, Mora-
vian missionary, 32, 37
Heere Gracht, 94
Heere Straat, see Broadway,

343
Heins and La Farge, 367, 374
Hell Gate, 99
Herald Building, 273
Hispanic Museum, 402
Historical Society, 84, 85
Hobart, John Henry, 110
Hoboken, 155
Hoffman Island, 23
Holiday, Henry, 282, 375
Hollev, Alexander Lyman, bust,

203
Hollow Way, 362
Hoorn's Hoek, 362
Horse Tamers, group, 409, 422
Hotel Imperial, 80

paintings, 270, 449
Hotel McAlpin, tapestries, 271
House of Refuge for Juvenile

Delinquents, 226
Hudson, Henrv, 27, 28, 29, 31,

33, 95, 390
death of, 31
Hudson, Hendrick, see Henry

Hudson, 31
Hudson Park, 192, 195
Hudson River, 28, 38, 45

INDEX

461

Hudson River Railroad Com-
pany, 196, 197
Huguenots, 111

Hunt, Richard Morris, 108, 297,
323, 327, 331, 442
memorial, 323
statue, 298
Huntington, Archer M., 402
Huntington, C. P., residence,

443
Huntington Close, 218
Huntington, Daniel, 123
Huntington, William Reed, 218
Huntington Memorial, 374
Hutton, Laurence, 227
Hyatt, Anna Vaughn, monu-
ment, 358

"Incleberg" (Robert Murray's

Manor), 266
Indian massacre, 43
Indian wars, 50
Inwood, 387

Tulip Tree, 390
Irving Place, 239
Irving, Washington, 120, 236,

287

Jack Knife house, 128
Jackson, Andrew, 82

statue, 241
Jaegers, Albert, 91
James II, 26
James, Henry, 44, 104, 203,

209, 230, 236
Jans, Annetje, farm, 199
Jans, Roelof , 61
Jauncey, James, 182
Jay, John, statue, 121
Jeanne d'Arc, statue, 358
Jefferson, Joseph, 227
Jefferson Prison, 186
Jersey City, Court House, 452
Jewish cemeterv, 187
John Street Theatre, 129

Johnston, John, 201

Jones, Nicholas, home, 366

Joost, Hartger, 47

Judson, Adoniram, 208
memorial, 208

Jumel, Madame, see Betsy
Bowen, 396

Jumel, Stephen, 395
burial place, 397
mansion, 359, 397, 398

Kane mansion, 381
Keck, Charles, 423
Kieft, Gove nor, 153, 184
Kieft, William, 49, 50
Kiefts Stadt Herbergh, 49
King's Bridge, 391

boycott of, 391
King's College, see Columbia

University, 377
Kip, Jacob, 335
Kissing Bridge, 175
Knickerbocker Trust Company,

2tl a

Knowlton, Colonel Thomas,

363
Knyphausen, Lieut. General,

395, 400
Konti, Isidore, 109, 308, 346

L'Enfant, French architect, 73
La Farge, Grant, 370
La Farge, John, 205, 208, 209,
210, 279, 280, 281, 285,
296, 350, 351, 367, 386

experiments, 210
Lafayette, 100

portrait, 142, 143, 144

statue, 20, 248
Latin Quarter, 180
Lawrie, Lee, 297
Lee, Colonel, 240
Lefferts, Charles M., 85
Leitch, Major Andrew, 365
Lemaire, John, 138

462

INDEX

Lenox Library, 322

Lenox, James, 288

Lenox, Robert, farm, 322

Liberty Pole, 127

Liberty, Statue of, 21

Lind, Jenny, 100

Lion de Belfort, monument, 20

Lispenard, Leonard, 191

Lispenard's Meadows, 183, 190

Litchfield Historical Museum,

85
Little Church Around the Cor-
ner, 283
Livingston, Robert, 66
Long Island, 23
" Long Room," 78, 80
Longman, Evelyn B., 439
Lord Bellomont, Governor, 66,

67, 68
Lovelace, Colonel Francis, 63,

95
Low, Seth, 383
Lower Bay, 15, 23
Lukeman, Augustus, 91
Lukeman, Henry A., 423

Madison Cottage, see Fifth

Avenue Hotel, 259
Madison Square, 223, 225, 238,

248, 249
Potter's Field, 258
Madison Square Garden, 252,

253
Madison Square Presbyterian

Church, 254, 255, 256
Magaw, General, 391
Maiden Lane, 128
Maine Monument, 346, 347
Manahachtanienk, see Manhat-
tan, 32
Manetta Brook, 183, 184, 191,

201
Mangin, Joseph F., 133, 134,

135
Mangin and McComb, 133, 134

Manhattan, 32, 33, 41, 44

area, 44
Manhattan Bridge, 176, 177
Manhattan building, 194
Manhattan Island, 94, 181

purchase of, 41, 42
Manhattoes, 43
Manitto, 34
Manship, Paul, 439
Marquand, Henry Gurdon, 332
Martinique Hotel, 271
Martiny, Philip, 121, 276,

351
Martyrs' Monument, 118
Maryland Monument, 429
Matthews, Brander, 227
Mauritius, see Hudson River,

45
May, Cornelius Jacobsen, 45
Maynard, George W., 454
Mayors' portraits, 145
McBean, 115
McComb, John, 195
architect, builder, 137
collection, 133
McDougal allev, 213
McKim, Charles Follen, 299,

379, 380, 381, 382
McKim, Mead & White, 270,

272, 275, 299, 331, 380,

381, 423
MacMonnies, Frederick, 148,

149, 150, 174, 205, 206,

207, 350, 405, 407, 408,

409
birthplace, 410
famous commissions, 413
first commission, 412
student days, 412
MacNeil, 207
Mercer, Henry C, 346
Merchants Exchange, 63
Mersereau, William H., 79
Metropolitan Museum, 237, 323,

325, 326, 328, 329

INDEX

463

Metropolitan Museum, archi-
tects, 330
collections, 332, 333
founders, 326, 327
medallions, 331
Metropolitan Tower, 253
Military Museum, 23
Millet, Francis D., 452, 453,

454
Milligan Place, 186
Mills, Clark, 241, 244, 245
Minto, farm, 214, 215
Minuit, Governor, 191
Minuit, Peter, 41, 46, 48
Mission of Our Lady of the

Rosary, 99
Mohicans, 32
Moore, Sir Henry, 113
Moore's Tavern, 84
Montgomery Charter, 65
Montgomery, General, 118
Monument Lane, 183, 200
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 224

library, 382, 445
Morningside Heights, 360
Morningside Park, 377
Morris, Gouverneur, 323, 324,

387
Morris, Roger, 393
home, 360, 362, 392, 394, 395

Washington's occupancy,
394, 395
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese,

142, 144, 202
Mould, Jacob Wrey, 231, 232
Mowbray, H. Siddons, 256,

263*, 302, 445, 448
Mural paintings, 443, 444, 445,

446, 447, 448, 449, 450,

451, 452
Murray, Mrs. Elizabeth, 361
Murray, Robert, farm, 266
Muscoota, see Spuyten Duvvil

Creek, 390

Museum for the Arts of Deco-
ration, 168

Narrows, 15, 20, 25, 28, 30

Nash, Thomas, 109

Nassau Street Theatre, 130

National Arts Club, 228, 230

National Sculpture Society, 247

Negro Plot, 69

New Amsterdam, 93, 95, 152

Theatre, decorations, 446
New Jersey, 25
New Netherland, 40, 41
New Street, 54
New York, 15

approach to, 24

first street lights, 68

port, 92

Public Library, 135, 287, 288,
289, 290, 291
paintings, 292, 293
Tilden's bequest, 229

marble cemetery, 161, 162,
163, 165

shield, 64

Tribune, 150

University, 202
Newark Court House, 452, 454
Newton, Caroline Clifford, 84
Niehaus, Charles H., 107
Nichols, Colonel Richard, first

English Governor, 62
No. 7 State Street, 97, 98
North River, see Hudson River,

45, 96, 113, 115
Nut Island, see Pagganck, 22

O'Connor, Andrew, 92, 252, 275
O'Donovan, William Rudolf,

414
Oldboy, Felix, 52
Olmstead, Frederick Law, 325
Onderdonck, Bishop, effigy, 109
Oyster Island, see Ellis Island,

23

464

INDEX

Paderewski, 204
Paggauck, 22
Fame, Tom, 188
Panthers, group, 408
Park Place, 119
Parrisb, Maxfield, 449
Passage to Indies, 30
Patcben Place, 180
Patroon farms, 153
Paulist Fathers, Church, 348,
354

Father Searle, 353

founding of order, 348
Pearl Street, 45, 49, 53, 94,

102
Pennsylvania Terminal, 382
Perry, Hinton, 446
Philipse, Frederick, 391
Pljilipse, Mary, 392, 393

courtship, 394
Piccirilli and Magonigle, 359
Piecirilli, Attilio, 347, 348, 423
Piccirilli Bros., 340
Pierrepont, Henry E., 400
Pierrepont House, 429
Pilot Commissioners, 99
Piracy, 65
Pitt Street, 126
Pitt, William, Earl of Chat-
ham, 126

statue, 81, 87
Players' Club, 227

art collection, 227
Plymouth Church, 408
Poole, Ernest, 408
Post, George B., architect, 75,

108, 442, 443
Potter, E. C, 423
Potter Memorial, 374
Potter's field, 201
Powell, Ernest R., 373
Powers, Hiram, 247
Pratt, Mathew, 122
Prince Maurice of Orange, 45
Prince of Wales, visit, 259

Princeton Club, 230
Prison ship martyrs, burial,
436

monument, 407, 431, 436
Prospect Park, 406

Vale of Cachemere, 421
Provoost, David, 340
Provoost, Samuel, 340
Public Library, see New York

Public Library, 240
Pulitzer, Joseph, memorial, 313
Putnam, General, 302
Pyle, Howard, 453, 454

Queen Anne, 110
Queens, Borough of, 25
Queensborough Bridge, 338,

341
Queen's Farm, 01
Quinn, Edmund T., 423

Randall, Capt. Thomas, 215
Randall, Richard Robert, 215
Randall, Robert, 249
Random decorations, 437
Red Cross Society, 234
Red Hook Point, 23
Renwick, James, 274, 295
Ren wick, James, Jr., 217
Renwick, William, 218
Reservoir Square, see Bryant

Park, 280
Revolution, 79, 118, 183, 330,
300, 392, 393, 394, 395,
390, 397, 398, 399, 400,
407, 425, 420, 427, 428,
429, 430, 431, 432, 433
first New York victory, 207
Rhind, Massev, 107, 108
Rhinelander, William C, 201
Richardson, Henry H., 282,

307, 380
Richmond, borough of, see

Staten Island, 25
Richmond Hill, 189

INDEX

465

River of the Mountains, see

Hudson River, 30
Riverside Drive, 356, 357, 358
Riverview Terrace, 341
Robbing Reef, 99
Roberts, Hugh, 452
Rogers, Randolph, 259
Roine, Jules Edouard, 218
Roode Hoek, see Red Hook

Lane, 426
Roosevelt, Theodore, birthplace,

237
Root, Elihu, 213, 214
Ruckstuhl, F. M., 91
Ruggles, Samuel, 225
Rumsey, C. C, 177
Rutgers, Anthonv, 191
Rutherford, John, 323, 387

Sailors' Snug Harbour, estate,

215
Saint Bartholomew Church,

274
bronze doors, 275
Saint Gaudens, Augustus, 170,

172, 205, 208, 234, 245,

246, 249, 252, 282, 292,

296, 311, 312, 350
Saint Gaudens, Louis, 91, 411
Saint John's Chapel, 189, 192,

193, 194, 199
Saint John's Park, 196, 213,

226
Saint Luke's Chapel, 196
Saint Luke's Hospital, 375

Norrie window, 375
Saint Mark's, burial ground,

157, 158
founding of, 157
trustees, 158

wardens and vestrymen, 157
Saint Mark's-in-the-Bowerv,154
Saint Paul, statue, 118
Saint Paul's Chapel, 106, 114,

115, 117, 118, 119

Saint Patrick's Cathedral, 135,

217, 295
Rose window, 296
Saint Regis Hotel, lunettes, 449
Saint Thomas' Church, 296
Salt River, see East River, 59
Salvation Armv, 237
Sargent (artist), 227
Schermerhorn, Symon, 340

farmhouse, 340
School, Miss Green's, 212, 213,

214
Schreyers' Hoek, 94
Schurz, Carl, statue, 375
Schuyler Collection, 135
Scudder, Janet, 423
Seaboard National Bank, 120
Second Avenue, 159

fashionable center, 160
Second Avenue Baptist Church,

161
Second Dutch governor, 48
Sequine's Point, 23
Seward, Governor, portrait

statue, 259
Sewell, Robert Van Vorst, 449
Shearith Israel Synagogue, 187
Sherman, General T., statue,

311
Shot Tower, 337
Sigel, General Franz, statue,

358
Simmons, Edward; 228, 264,

269
Simonds, George, 247
Slaves, freeing of, 70
Slocum, General, statue of, 409
Smeraldi, 450

Smith, Colonel William, 339
Smith, Mrs. Esther, school, 213
Smith's Folly, 334, 339
Societv, Sons of Revolution,

79
Sons of Liberty, 127
South worth memorial, 210

466

INDEX

Spring Valley Farmhouse, 337,

338
Spuyten Duyvil Creek, 389,
'390

origin of name, 391
Stadt Huys (City Hall), 51, 95
Stamp Act, 125
Stamp Act Riot, 81
State Prison, 135
Staten Island, 20, 23, 25, 99

boundary dispute, 25
Statue of Liberty, 99
Sterner, Frederick, 223
Stewart, Alex. T., 272

department store, 160
Stewart, William Rhinelander,

204
Stock Exchange, 75, 439
Stone Street, 54
Stranahan, James S. T., statue

of, 409, 419, 420
Street names, 53, 54
Striker's Bay, 345, 362
Studio building (10th St.), 209
Stuyvesant Square, 224
Stuvvesant, Peter, 50, 51, 154,
181

burial, 156

country seat, 155

death of, 56

Pear Tree, 155
Stuyvesant's house (White

"Hall), 94
Sub-Treasury, 73, 103
Subwav, change of topography,

388, 389
Suffern, Thomas, 201
Sweeney, Peter B., 326
Swinburne Island, 23

Taylor, Bavard, residence, 236
Tea Water Pump, 175
Temple Emanu-El, 294
Teutonic invasion in sculpture,
246

Thackeray, entertained, 226
Thalia Theatre, see Bowery

Theatre, 174
" The Age of Reason," 188
The Bowery, 154
" The Falconer," statue, 247
The Fields, see City Hall Park,

139
" The Gainsborough," 345
The Gaol, 146
The Old Town, 71
The Plaine, see Bowling Green,

47
The Plaza, 306

" The School for Scandal," 129
Theatre benefits, 131
Theatre Royal, see John Street

Theatre, 129
Theatres, 130
Thorwaldsen, 244, 247
Tiffany Building, 272

chapel, 369

Louis C, 256, 369
Tiffany's, 239
Tilden, Samuel J., 228, 229

presidential election, 229
Tombs, 147

Tompkins, John Almy, 141
Tompkinsville, 24
Tonetti, F. M. L., 91
Towle, Jeremiah, 339
Trinity Cemetery, 400
Trinity Church of Boston, 367
Trinity Church, 61, 62, 102,
103, 113, 114, 118

Churchyard, 88

graveyard, 110, 111

influence, 105
Trinity Parish, 189
Trinity Place, 113
Trumbull, John, 122, 141, 225
Tuckerman, Washington, 243
Turner, Charles Yardley, 264,

269, 271, 450, 453, 454
Turtle Bay, 336

INDEX

467

Tweed Ring, 247
Tweed, William M., 326

Union Square, 223, 238, 239,
240, 248

Union Theological Seminary,
213

United New Netherland Com-
pany, 39

United States Sanitary Com-
mission, 233

University Club, 299, 300, 301,
302, 303, 304
seal, 301

Unpopular Review, 181

Upjohn, R. N., 106, 109

Upjohn, Richard, 296

Upper Bay, 15

Upper Broadway, 240

Van Beuren, house, 221
Van Beuren, Mary S., 221
Van Cortlandt Manor, 78
Van Cortlandt, Stephen, 78
Van Courtland Mansion, 403
Van Courtland Park, 404
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, chateau,

311
pediment, 198
residence, 443
Vanderbilt Hotel, decorations,

451
Vanderbilt houses, 297, 298,

299
Van de Water Heights, 360
Van Dyke, Henry, 279
Van Hoboken, Hermanus, 155
Van Rensselaer, Mrs., 181
Van Sant, Peter Pra, 339
Van Twiller, Wouter, 22, 23,

48, 181
Vantine's, 239
Varick, Mavor, 191
Varick Street, 191, 192, 193,

195, 198

Vaughn, Henry, 374
Vaux, Calvert, 325
Vauxhall, burning of, 126
Verrazzano, Giovanni, 27

bust of, 28
Verrocchio, 243
Vesey, Rev. William, 105
Vesey Street, 105
Vespucci, Amerigo, 28
Vlacte, see City Hall Park, 125

Waddell, Coventry, 277
Waddell, Mrs. Coventry, 226
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 268
Walker, Henry Oliver, 264,

448 454
Wall Street, 50, 68, 87, 102
Wallabout, 426, 431
Wallaces Theatre, 239
Ward, John Quincy Adams, 73,

76, 244, 245, 249
Warren, Charlotte, 183
Warren, Commodore Peter, 182

183
Washington Arch, 183, 201,

204, 205
Washington, Georere, 114
equestrian statue, 238, 240,

242, 243, 245
statue, 73, 74, 408, 438
Washington, General, 215
Washington Heights, 44, 401
Washington Mews, 213, 216
Washington Parade ground,

201
Washington Square, 200, 201,

202, 203, 212, 215, 224, 236
Washington's Farewell, 79
Watts, John, 113
Weepers' Point, see Schreyers'

Hoek, 94
Weinman, Adolph, 256
Wenzel, A. B., 446
West Indies, 40

468

INDEX

West India Company, 46, 72,

152
Farm, 60
White, Gilbert, 271
White, Richard Grant, 132
White, Stanford, 204, 205, 206,

208, 230, 249, 250, 252,

273, 297, 302, 350, 407,

411, 416, 421, 432
Whitehall Street, 51
Whitehouse, William Fitzhugh,

108
Whitman, Walt, 425
Wickquaskeeks, 43
Willett, Marinus, 78
Willett, Thomas, 62

William Street, 54

Wilton, Joseph, 82

Wolf, Catherine Lorillard, 217

Wolf, John David, 218

Woodward, General, statue of,

409
Woolworth building, 193, 194,

439
Wren, Sir Christopher, 195

Ximenes, Ettore, sculptor, 28

Yellow fever epidemic, 185, 200
Yonkers (State), 96
Yorkville, 334, 335

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