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Page 19 text:
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into adolescence. Governors came across the Atlantic to set up one kind of government after another, following the didtates or perhaps whims of that noble sovereign, James II. At first absolute government was the order of the day. Then, with a new monarch in the throne, a new governor restored the popular assembly mode of self-government. Political strife permeated the air over Manhattan--but the Village slept on. In a later day engineers with vision were to build the Erie Canal, then the New York Central Railroad, thus making the Hudson Valley a main highway to the Great Lakes and the rapidly growing West. West Street was to become a docking place for the Cunard and the WhiteXStar steamers, bringing new faces and new fashions into the Village. But from the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, when that Irish lad who died a Vice Admiral of the Red Squadron brought the first taste of lavishness and splendor in country homes to the natives of the Village, any Dutch farmer or English colonist living in the vicinity of Minetta Creek would have looked with surprise at a visitor's query concerning local news, while he slowly replied: Why, nothing ever happens around here! In this period, between the time of the institution of British rule and the building of Commodore Peter Warren's Greenwich mansion Cin 17741 on a farm of almost three hundred acres in celebration of his marriage to Mistress Susannah DeLancy, the globe kept spinning on its axis and travelling over its orbit with an unperturbed calm- ness equal to that of the lethargic quiet and peace of Greenwich Village. While Milton was receiving ten pounds for his Paradise Lost, and was planning Paradise Regained, while Charles II was spending his exile in France, living with his uncle Louis XIV who had declared L'etat, c'esZ moi, while Art and Literature and Science flourished as never before in an age where giants named Pascal, Corneille, Racine and Moliere swayed the people with their writings, the Village slept on. While England saw Butler, Pepys, Dryden, Addison, Steele, Pope, Defoe, Johnson and Goldsmith, the Village saw men. From this time on the Village was the center of acitivities fast and furious, the Village A - f nothing. But when, in 17 39, New York faced if - vim: --:WE A Aw up its Erst smallpox epidemic, the Village woke u 19. New York was fleeing before a wave of sick- I I A 'Ir ness which threatened to inundate the lower part of Manhattan. Security seemed to lie in the sandy marshes around Minetta Creek, away uptown, in the country-thus did the Village become a health resort for the afflicted. Aroused ,,.. 5 1, R up into astivity, an awakened Village began to take is notice of what was going on in the affairs of l'.l'Qlj'A -I '-i. 5 75' ' 'lsai I f ,,,,,. f ,.f.,,, ,'-i . . iiiyxi sria V - hi5f0fY Was bemg Written- .-i'.-f ' .'-,: 2 ..,. Aia:-frr'l'i3'fT?i??ff5'5'5 This Admiral Peter Warren, whose monu- :pi ment in Westrninster Ahhey, executed bY 'uli 'lii iliii i uliiil 4 1 Roubiliac, shows Hercules placing Sir Peter's .,,- aa', 2 l i ' 15 9-K fi VNIL -xo eg, as 2.523 f J 5 44159, + - 'fri ' in 'J1iE'?f'ffr
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Page 18 text:
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one. Wrapping his buckskins tightly about him, Keeya-Meeka stepped bravely forth from the tent of his fathers, gone in the snows of many moons, alone in the wailing wind, alone with that Voice in the night. Alone he had gone, and alone he returned, after much time had passed in anxious waiting. And after he returned, the voice was heard no more, for both wind and night had fled to other worlds, Keeya-Meeka had met the Moose-that-talked, and strange was the tale he brought back to the Sappokanikans. The voice had spoken of a new race of men, the Doh-Utch, that was soon to come from the land of sunriseg a race that would be favored by the Gods in its battles with the Sappokanikans. And when the final peace pipe would grow cold, the Sappokanikans would be no more. The many mighty warriors believed the word of their leaderg packing their sleds, they turned their faces towards the Land of Eternal Snows and departed into a country where none could follow . . . departed into a land where they dwell to this day in happiness and joy, guided by the great spirit of Keeya-Meeka. However, a few Red Men remained behind, for they did not believe the prophecy of the Voice that spoke in the night. They remained in the Village of Sappokanikan until the year of 1600, when the Doh- Utch, or Dutch adventurer, Peter Minuit, traded Manhattan Island away from them for some sixty guilders or twenty-four dollars' worth of glittering little trinkets. ' This Peter Minuit, a bustling believer in progress and the supremacy of the white man's civilization, set himself up as the first governor of the Island. From the day he set apart Sappokanikan Village as a farm for the Dutch West India Company until this thirty-fourth year of the twentieth century, that little bit of the world extending from the North River to University Place and from Fourteenth Street to Canal Street in New York City has indeed witnessed 'much which since has perished out of mind . . . Thirty-three years after Peter Minuit's shrewd transaction, Van Twiller, the second governor of New York, looking over his new domain, cast eyes upon the Village of Sappokanikan and saw that it was good. So he took it unto himself and soon turned the village into a private tobaccofarm, building his first house at Bossen Bouerie. The days of the Dutch, however, were numbered. In 1664 an English fleet, sent out by Charles II's brother, the Duke of York, followed the course traced by the Half-Moon and, sailing into New York Harhor, demanded the surrender of the feebly garrisoned Dutch fort on Manhattan Island. Outnumbered in every way, Peter Stuyvesant, director general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland and commander of the fort surrendered. In 1664, then, the English flag was hoisted aloft, and with that mania which inspires all conquerors to re-label the spoils of their victory, New Arnsterclam became New York and the Village of Sappokanikan became Grinnich, or Greenwich. 2. ROM THE time of the British conquest until nearly a century later the village of Greenwich slept in peaceful obscurity. During this period, which historians sometimes phrase as The Eftahlishment of the English, New York was slowly growing 44 fl-41 40,4 vN,,,?v 3 'tx 4 ' - -5 I-l :LL P 5-l'Q??f.f.'f A Cccv.Y-+
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Page 20 text:
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bust on its pedestal while a melancholy figure representing Navigation looks on with despair, also bore the marks of small-pox on his face. It is not known whether that great sailor caught the disease in New York, or whether he brought it aboard one of his many fine ships. What is known, however, is that in the early 1700's he came to New York in a frigate, the Solebay, and that he later returned with another frigate, the Launceston, a sloop, the Squirrel, and a sixty gun ship, the Superbe. He had been to the Leeward Islands and to Martinique . . . his ships had seen Gibraltar and Ca pe Finisterre. Can that intangible mysterious web of coincidence have so arranged it that the Renais- sance of the Village was to come from a microorganism carrying contagious feverish bacteria which left eruptions upon the skin? Is it possible that Sir Peter Warren had permitted this parasitic microorganism to stowaway, unsuspected, somewheres on one of his frigates? The fact remains that had not a smallpox epidemic broken out in New York, driving its citizens up into the healthy country of Greenwich Village in great numbers, there would never have been a Village. If New York had gone on developing slowly, as do all hamlets into towns, towns into cities, and cities into metropoli, that area called the Village would have submitted to the eve.r advancing carpet of concrete which turns a village lane into a street-and-sidewalks affair in exactly the same fashion as do today the suburbs of Long Island or the Bronx. When the city fathers want more territory, they simply annex another few lots, order that they be paved, and a new map of the city is drawn. But it was not so with the Village. The sudden influx of thousands of persons into this newly discovered health resort caused the Village to grow overnight. Spruce, balsam and pine trees which had stood in the Village for more than a century toppled and crashed to the ground, gleaming steel axes swung viciously in the feverish hands of a populace frightened into activity by an epidemic which threatened all who remained in the City. Branches lopped off, the trees became logsg the bark stripped off, logs were roughhewn into beams and rafters under the swinging axes. Split by wedges, the logs became rough floor and wall planks, sawn and split again, the planks became shingles. More and more houses were needed to shelter all who had participated in the exodus. There was no time to ponder upon style of veranda or design of gable. This was a life and death panic, a people were seek- ing to escape extinction. Thus did New York receive, simultaneously, the visit of Sir Peter Warren and a smallpox epidemic. Although Sir Peter's personal aEairs took him away from America, still he had one more contribution to make to our Village. His three daughters were to marry men whose names were to be carved on wooden street signs, guiding the new population of the Village towards it many destinations. Charlotte married Willoughby, Earl of Abing- don, leaving us Abingdon Square, Anne married Charles Fitzroy, and Susannah, the youngest, a William Skinner giving the Villagers Skinner and Fitzroy Roads. But at a later day the New American, anxious to obliterate anything which reminded him of the obnoxious Establishment of tbe English, changed Skinner Road to Cbristopber Street, and Fitzroy Road to Eigbtb Avenue. This was the second manifestation of relabeling the spoils of victory, an act which has persisted aggressions from time immemorial. .4 4 IIVIGJ -I od' V 'Ii- 'digit Blsiiatiff-
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