Then the
"Middle Road" of the beginning of this century will reappear,--the
traces of a wheat-field on the site of St. Paul's, still a fresh
tradition; Oswego Market, opposite Liberty Street, is alive with early
customers; the reminiscent beholds the apparition of Rutgers's orchard,
whose remaining noble elms yet shade the green vista of the City
Hospital, and which was a place for rifling bird's-nests in the boyhood
of his pensive companion, whose father played at skittles on the Bowling
Green, hard by the Governor's house, while the Dutch householders sat
smoking long pipes in their broad porticos, cosily discussing the last
news from Antwerp or Delft, their stout rosy daughters meanwhile taking
a twilight ramble, with their stalwart beaux, to the utmost suburban
limit of Manhattan, where Canal Street now intersects Broadway,--then an
unpaved lane with scattered domiciles, only grouped into civic
contiguity around the Battery, and with many gardens enhancing its rural
aspect. Somewhat later, and Munn's Land Office, at the corner of what is
now Grand Street, was suggestive of a growing settlement and the era of
speculation; an isolated coach-factory marked the site of the St.
Nicholas Hotel; people flocked along, in domestic instalments, to
Vauxhall, where now stands the Astor Library, to drink mead and see the
Flying Horses; and capitalists invested in "lots" on Bayard's Farm,
where Niblo's and the Metropolitan now flourish; the one-story building
at the present angle of Prince Street was occupied by Grant Thorburn's
father; beyond lay the old road leading to Governor Stuyvesant's
Bowerie, with Sandy Hill at the upper end.
Pages:
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210