Nooks and Corners of Old New York Part 8

[Sidenote: Union Road]

At a point just behind the house numbered 23 Eleventh Street, midway of the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Union Road had its starting-point. It was a short road, forming a direct communicating line between Skinner and Southampton Roads. Skinner Road, running from Hudson River along the line of the present Christopher Street, ended where Union Road began; and Union Road met Southampton at what is now the corner of Fifteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. This point was also the junction of Southampton and Great Kiln Roads.

Evidences of the Union Road are still to be seen in Twelfth Street, at the projecting angle of the houses numbered 43 and 45. It was just at this point that Milligan's Lane ended. On Thirteenth Street, the course of Union Road is shown by the slanting wall of a big business building, numbered 36.

[Sidenote: First Presbyterian Church]

In Twelfth Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, is the First Reformed Presbyterian Church. The congregation was started as a praying society in 1790 at the house of John Agnew at No. 9 Peck Slip. In 1798 the congregation wors.h.i.+pped in a school house in Cedar Street. They soon after built their first church at Nos. 39 and 41 Chambers Street, where the American News Company building is now. It was a frame building, and was succeeded in 1818 by a brick building on the same site. In 1834 a new church was erected at Prince and Marion Streets. The foundation for the present church was laid in 1848, and the church occupied it in the following year.

[Sidenote: Society Library]

The New York Society Library, at 107 University Place, near Fourteenth Street, claims to be the oldest inst.i.tution of its kind in America. It is certainly the most interesting in historical a.s.sociations, richness of old literature and art works. It is the direct outcome of the library established in 1700, with quarters in the City Hall, in Wall Street, by Richard, Earl of Bellomont, the Governor of New York.

In 1754 an a.s.sociation was incorporated for carrying on a library, and their collection, added to the library already in existence, was called the City Library. The Board of Trustees consisted of the most prominent men in the city. In 1772 a charter was granted by George III, under the name of the New York Society Library.

During the Revolutionary War the books became spoil for British soldiers. Many were destroyed and many sold. After the war the remains of the library were gathered from various parts of the city and again collected in the City Hall. In 1784 the members of the Federal Congress deliberated in the library rooms. In 1795 the library was moved to Na.s.sau Street, opposite the Middle Dutch Church; in 1836 to Chambers Street; in 1841 to Broadway and Leonard Street; in 1853 to the Bible House, and in 1856 to the present building.

[Sidenote: Great Kiln Road]

At the point that is now Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street, then intersected by the Union Road, the Great Kiln Road ended. Its continuation was called Southampton Road. From that point it continued to Nineteenth Street, east of Sixth Avenue, and then parallel with Sixth Avenue to Love Lane, the present Twenty-first Street.

The line of this road, where it joined the Great Kiln Road, is still clearly shown in the oblique side wall of the house at the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street. Here, also, it has a marked effect on the east wall of St. Joseph's Home for the Aged. The first-mentioned house, with the cutting through of the streets, has been left one of those queer triangular buildings, with full front and running to a point in the rear.

[Sidenote: Weavers' Row]

When the road reached what is now Sixteenth Street, a third of a block east of Seventh Avenue, it pa.s.sed through the block in a sweeping curve to the present corner of Seventeenth Street and Sixth Avenue. The evidence of its pa.s.sage is still to be seen in the tiny wooden houses buried in the centre of the block, which are remnants of a row called Paisley Place, or Weavers' Row. This row was built during the yellow-fever agitation of 1822, and was occupied by Scotch weavers who operated their hand machines there.

The road took its name from Sir Peter Warren's second daughter, who married Charles Fitzroy, who later became the Baron Southampton.

[Sidenote: Graveyard Behind a Store]

In Twenty-first Street, a little west of Sixth Avenue, is the unused though not uncared-for graveyard of the Shearith Israel Synagogue. The graveyard cannot be seen from the street, but from the rear windows of a nearby dry-goods store a glimpse can be had of the ivy-covered receiving-vault and the time-grayed tombstones.

When this "Place of Rest" was established the locality was all green fields. The graveyard had been forced from further down town by the cutting through of Eleventh Street in 1830. Interments were made in this spot until 1852, when the cemetery was removed to Cypress Hills, L. I., the Common Council having in that year prohibited burials within the city limits. But though there were no burials, the congregation have persistently refused to sell this plot, just as they have the earlier plots, the remains of which are off Chatham Square and in Eleventh Street, near Sixth Avenue.

[Sidenote: Love Lane]

Abingdon Road in the latter years of its existence was commonly called Love Lane, and more than a century ago followed close on the line of the present Twenty-first Street from what is now Broadway to Eighth Avenue.

It was the northern limit of a tract of land given by the city to Admiral Sir Peter Warren in recognition of his services at the capture of Louisburg.

From this road, when the Warren estate was divided among the daughters of the Admiral, two roads, the Southampton and the Warren, were opened through this upper part of the estate.

The name Love Lane was given to the road in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and was retained until it was swallowed up in Twenty-first Street. This last was ordered opened in 1827, but was not actually opened until some years later. There is no record to show where the name came from. The generally accepted idea is that being a quiet and little traveled spot, it was looked upon as a lane where happy couples might drive, far from the city, and amid green fields and stately trees confide the story of their loves. It was the longest drive from the town, by way of the Post Road, Bloomingdale Road and so across the west to Southampton, Great Kiln roads, through Greenwich Village and by the river road back to town.

The road originally took its name from the oldest daughter of Admiral Warren, who married the Earl of Abingdon.

There are still traces of Love Lane in Twenty-first Street. The two houses numbered 25 and 27 stood on the road. The houses 51, 53 and 55, small and odd appearing, are more closely identified with the lane. When built, these houses were conspicuous and alone, at the junction where Southampton Road from Greenwich Village ran into Love Lane. They are thought to have been a single house serving as a tavern.

Close by, at the northeast corner of Twenty-first Street and Sixth Avenue, the house with the gable roof is one that also stood on the old road, though built at a later date than the three next to it.

The road ended for many years about on the line with the present Eighth Avenue, where it ran into the Fitzroy Road. Some years previous to the laying out of the streets under the City Plan in 1811, Love Lane was continued to Hudson River. Before it reached the river it was crossed, a little east of Seventh Avenue, by the Warren Road, although there is no trace of the crossing now.

[Sidenote: Chelsea Village]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Theological Seminary Chelsea Square]

Although Chelsea Village was long ago swallowed up by the city, and its boundaries blotted out by the rectangular lines of the plan under which the streets were mapped out in 1811, there is still a suggestion of it in the green lawns and gray buildings of the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which occupies the block between Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets, Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

Chelsea got its name in 1750, when Captain Thomas Clarke, an old soldier, gave the name to his country seat, in remembrance of the English home for invalided soldiers. It was between two and three miles from the city, a stretch of country land along the Hudson River with not another house anywhere near it. The house stood, as streets are now, at the south side of Twenty-third Street, about two hundred feet west of Ninth Avenue, on a hill that sloped to the river. The captain had hoped to die in his retreat, but his home was burned to the ground during his severe illness, and he died in the home of his nearest neighbor. Soon after his death the house was rebuilt by his widow, Mrs. Mollie Clarke.

The latter dying in 1802, a portion of the estate with the house went to Bishop Benjamin Moore, who had married Mrs. Clarke's daughter, Charity.

It pa.s.sed from him in 1813 to his son, Clement C. Moore. The latter reconstructed the house, and it stood until 1850.

Clement C. Moore's estate was included within the present lines of Eighth Avenue, Nineteenth to Twenty-fourth Streets and Hudson River.

These are approximately the bounds of Chelsea Village which grew up around the old Chelsea homestead. It came to be a thriving village, conveniently reached by the road to Greenwich and then by Fitzroy Road; or by the Bowery Road, Bloomingdale, and then along Love Lane.

[Sidenote: London Terrace]

In 1831 the streets were cut through and the village thereafter grew up on the projected lines of the City Plan. It was for this reason that Chelsea, when the city reached it, was merged into it so perfectly that there is not an imperfect street line to tell where the village had been and where the city joined it. There are houses of the old village still standing; notably those still called the Chelsea Cottages in Twenty-fourth Street west of Ninth Avenue, and the row called the London Terrace in Twenty-third Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

The block on which the General Theological Seminary stands was given to the inst.i.tution by Clement C. Moore, and was long called Chelsea Square.

The cornerstone of the East Building was laid in 1825, and of the West Building, which still stands, in 1835.

It was this Clement C. Moore, living quietly in the village that had grown up around him, who wrote the child's poem which will be remembered longer than its writer--"'Twas the Night before Christmas."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

III

III

[Sidenote: Oliver Street Baptist Church]

The Oliver Street Baptist Church was built on the northwest corner of Oliver and Henry Streets in 1795. It was rebuilt in 1800, and again in 1819. Later it was burned, and finally restored in 1843. The structure is now occupied by the Mariners' Temple, and the record of its burning is to be seen on a marble tablet on the front wall.

Oliver Street--that is, the two blocks from Chatham Square to Madison Street--was called Fayette Street before the name was changed to Oliver in 1825.

James Street was once St. James Street. The change was made prior to 1816.

Mariners' Church, at 46 Catherine Street, was erected in 1854, on the southeast corner of Madison Street. Prior to that, and as far back as 1819, it had been at 76 Roosevelt Street.

[Sidenote: Madison Street]