Could they have all been photographed, what a reflex of modern society
would such a picture-gallery afford!
The old Dutch traders, with the instinct of their Holland habitudes,
clung to the water-side, and therefore their domiciles long extended at
angles with what subsequently became the principal avenue of the
settlement; and until 1642 Pearl Street was the fashionable quarter.
Meantime, where now thousands of emigrants daily disembark, and the
offices of ocean steamships indicate the facility and frequency of
Transatlantic travel, the Indian chiefs smoked the pipe of peace with
the victorious colonists under the shadow of Fort Amsterdam, and the
latter held fairs there, or gathered, for defence and pastime, round the
little oasis of the metropolitan desert where carmen now read "The Sun."
No. 1 was the Kennedy House, subsequently the tavern of Mrs.
Koch,--whose Dutch husband was an officer in the Indian wars,--and was
successively the head-quarters of Clinton, Cornwallis, and Washington,
and at last the Prime Mansion; and farther up was Mrs. Ryckman's
boarding-house,--genial sojourn of Irving, and the scene of his early
pen-craft and youthful companionships, when "New York was more handy,
and everybody knew everybody, and there was more good-fellowship and
ease of manners.
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