It was the first real home of opera in America. General Lafayette was received there in 1824, and there Samuel F. B. Morse first demonstrated the possibility of controlling an electric current in 1835. Jenny Lind, under the management of P. T. Barnum, appeared there in 1850. In 1855 it became a depot for the reception of immigrants; in 1890 the offices were removed to Ellis Island, and in 1896, after many postponements, Castle Garden was opened as a public aquarium.
State Street
State Street, facing the Battery, during the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, was the fashionable quarter of the city, and on it were the homes of the wealthy. Several of the old houses still survive. No. 7, now a home for immigrant Irish girls, was the most conspicuous on the street, and is in about its original state. At No. 9 lived John Morton, called the "rebel banker" by the British, because he loaned large sums to the Continental Congress. His son, General Jacob Morton, occupied the mansion after his marriage in 1791, and commanded the militia. Long after he became too infirm to actually command, from the balcony of his home he reviewed on the Battery parade grounds the Tompkins Blues and the Light Guards. The veterans of these commands, by legislative enactment in 1868, were incorporated as the "Old Guard."
The "Stadhuis"
On the building at 4 and 6 Pearl Street, corner State Street, is a tablet which reads:
1636 1897
ON THIS SITE STOOD THE "STADHUIS"
OF NEW AMSTERDAM——ERECTED 1636
THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE IN LOVING MEMORY
OF THE FIRST DUTCH SETTLERS BY THE
HOLLAND DAMES OF THE NEW
NETHERLANDS AND THE
KNIGHTS OF THE LEGION OF THE CROWN
LAVINIA
KONIGIN
It was set up October 7, 1897, and marks the supposed site of the first City Hall. What is claimed by most authorities to be the real site is at Pearl Street, opposite Coenties Slip.
Whitehall Street was one of the earliest thoroughfares of the city, and was originally the open space left on the land side of the Fort.
The Beaver's Path
Beaver Street was first called the Beaver's Path. It was a ditch, on either side of which was a path. When houses were built along these paths they were improved by a rough pavement. At the end of the Beaver's Path, close to where Broad Street is now, was a swamp, which, before the pavements were made, had been reclaimed and was known as the Sheep Pasture.
Petticoat Lane
Marketfield Street, whose length is less than a block, opens into Broad Street at No. 72, a few feet from Beaver Street. This is one of the lost thoroughfares of the city. Almost as old as the city itself, it once extended past the Fort and continued to the river in what is now Battery Place. It was then called Petticoat Lane. The first French Huguenot church was built on it in 1688. Now the Produce Exchange cuts the street off short and covers the site of the church.
Broad Street
Through Broad Street, when the town was New Amsterdam, a narrow, ill-smelling inlet extended to about the present Beaver Street, then narrowed to a ditch close to Wall Street. The water-front was then at Pearl Street. Several bridges crossed the inlet, the largest at the point where Stone Street is. Another gave Bridge Street its name. In 1660 the ways on either side were paved, and soon became a market-place for citizens who traded with farmers for their products, and with the Indians who navigated the inlet in their canoes. The locality has ever since been a centre of exchange. When the inlet was finally filled in it left the present "Broad" Street.
Where Beaver Street crosses this thoroughfare, on the northwest corner, is a tablet:
TO COMMEMORATE THE GALLANT AND PATRIOTIC
ACT OF MARINUS WILLETT IN HERE SEIZING
JUNE 6, 1775, FROM THE BRITISH FORCES THE
MUSKETS WITH WHICH HE ARMED HIS
TROOPS. THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY
THE SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE
REVOLUTION, NEW YORK, NOV. 12, 1892
On one side of the tablet is a bas-relief of the scene showing the patriots stopping the ammunition wagons.
Fraunces' Tavern
Fraunces' Tavern, standing at the southeast corner of Broad and Pearl Streets, is much the same outwardly as it was when built in 1700, except that it has two added stories. Etienne De Lancey, a Huguenot nobleman, built it as his homestead and occupied it for a quarter of a century. It became a tavern under the direction of Samuel Fraunces in 1762. It was Washington's headquarters in 1776, and in 1783 he delivered there his farewell address to his generals.
Pearl Street
Pearl Street was one of the two early roads leading from the Fort. It lay along the water front, and extended to a ferry where Peck Slip is now. The road afterwards became Great Queen Street, and was lined with shops of store-keepers who sought the Long Island trade. The other road in time became Broadway.
On a building at 73 Pearl Street, facing Coenties Slip, is a tablet which reads:
THE SITE OF THE
FIRST DUTCH HOUSE OF ENTERTAINMENT
ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN
LATER THE SITE OF THE OLD "STADT HUYS"
OR CITY HALL
THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE BY
THE HOLLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER, 1890
The First City Hall
This is the site of the first City Hall of New Amsterdam, built 1642. It stood by the waterside, for beyond Water Street all the land has been reclaimed. There was a court room and a prison in the building. Before it, where the pillars of the elevated road are now, was a cage and a whipping-post. There was also the public "Well of William Cox."
Beside the house ran a lane. It is there yet, still called Coenties Lane as in the days of old. But it is no longer green. Now it is narrow, paved, and almost lost between tall buildings.
Opposite Coenties Lane is Coenties Slip, which was an inlet in the days of the Stadt Huys. The land about was owned by Conraet Ten Eyck, who was nicknamed Coentje. This in time became Coonchy and was finally vulgarized to "Quincy." The filling in of this waterway began in 1835 and the slip is now buried beneath Jeanette Park. The filled-in slip accounts for the width of the street. For the same reason there is considerable width at Wall, Maiden Lane and other streets leading to the water front.
