NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY)

 - Class of 1934

Page 23 of 336

 

NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY) online collection, 1934 Edition, Page 23 of 336
Page 23 of 336



NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY) online collection, 1934 Edition, Page 22
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Page 23 text:

their streets to flow, like spring freshets, around such obstructions which could not be surmounted. In a later day, when the creative mind of an O. Henry, a Dean How- ells, a Walt Whitman, or a Richard Harding Davis sought refuge from the monotony of meticulous, man-made Manhattan streets they appreciated and came to live in the crazy-quilt pattern of the Village lanes, places, and squares. The evolution and growth of the Village as a community was recognized by New Yorkers to such an extent that in 1810 a line of stage coaches began to operate be- tween the City and the Village. Although perhaps not as elaborate as the Fifth Avenue Buses which now do an about face in Washington Square, still those buses of a cen- tury ago were noble carriages in their own right. Of brightly painted wooden exte- riors, and decoratively lined interiors, they assured as much comfort as did the straw- covered floors assure warmth to the adventurous passenger embarking upon a sojourn away from the city, up into that new little town of Greenwich Village, That stage line was not a misplaced venture on the part of its owners, for, in 1822, another smallpox epidemic broke out in the City, causing every known sort of vehicle adaptable for transportation to triple in its value. A Vesuvian volcanic eruption could not have made New Yorkers flee into the open country any faster than they fled before the epidemic. John Lambert, writing a sketch of New York in 1807, de- scribed the sickness as follows: As soon as this dreadful scourge made its appearance in New York, the inhabitants shutiup their shops and flew from their houses into the coun- try. Those who cannot go far, on account of business, removed to Greenwich, a small 'village situated on the border of the Hudson River, about two or three miles from the town. Here the merchants and others have their ojices and carryl on their concerns with little danger from the fever, which does not seem contagious beyond a certain distance. The banks and other public ojices also remove - he e e their business to this place, and markets are regularly established for the supply of the in- habitants. Very few are left in the confined parts of the town except the poorer classes and 1 the negroes. The latter, not being ayfefted by the fever, are of great service at the dreadful crisis, and are the only persons who can be found to discharge the hazardous duties of at- tending the sick and burying the dead. Upward of 20,000 people removed from the interior parts of the city and from the streets near the water-side in 1806. Although this graphic description seems, to the modern eye, unwarranted, it must be remembered that all this occurred before the 19 V 096 NIP? -cl L J fi 't Ml ' eral -4 at

Page 22 text:

that a place of public execution be established, some ingenious mind, adting under the influence of the gruesomeness of P0tter's Field, suggested that there could be no bet- ter place for a public gallows than this selfsame field. And so here it was that high- waymen, horsethieves, and even later a negress, Rose Butler, swung at the end of a rope while a delighted audience looked on with sadistic glee, meanwhile, members of the nimble-fingered gentry picked pockets. More and more figures of national prominence came to live in Greenwich Village. Adams, the Vice-President, took up residence on Richmond Hill, which we now call MacD0ngal Street 5 Aaron Burr, indidted as our country's great conspirator, and killer of Hamilton in that notorious duel, lived on this estate of the Vice-President on Richmond Hill. It was from this house that Burr went forth on July 11, 1804, to fight the duel with Hamilton. Having been defeated in his attempt to secure the governorship of New York through the efforts of Hamilton, Burr had challenged his opponent to this duel. Crossing the Hudson to the foot of the Wiehawken Heights, Burr mortally wounded Hamilton at the first shot, thus ending simultaneously, both the life of a great Bgure in American history, and his own public career. 4. HE MODERN visitor is amused by the twisting and turning of the Village Streets. The contrast between the military-like regularity and precision of the more recently built thoroughfares and the whimsicalities of Fourth Street, which pursues its shadow across Tenth Street and Eleventh Street, and finally catches up with itself at Twelfth Street is not as strange in origin as may be supposed. There was a very good reason, away back in those early days, for the Village streets to have been fashioned as they were. Working under the intimidation of small-pox and yellow fever, which had brought the new settlers to Greenwich Village, the self-appointed road engineers chose to build their streets along the meandering cowpaths already in existence rather than delay intravillage communication by clearing thickets or filling in the sand marshes which stood in the way of restilinear streets. Houses were popping up on either side of a lane. Financiers of the Bank of New York, equally susceptible to disease with the lesser city folk, came rushing to the health resort, bought eight lots fronting a nameless lane and eredted a row of mansions for their families. This invasion by the monied men of N ew York is recorded in the Village by the name given to that lane . . . it is now Bank Street. It was more expedient to take whatever lanes and paths were in existence, and build roads or streets on them than it would have been to deliberate, legislate, and make elaborate plans for more efficient thoroughfares. The human interest story did creep into the docu- mentary evidence of the old Village, as far as this street problem is concerned. It is recorded that in 1800, that doughty burgher, Brevoort, imbued with a patrician pride which clung to things traditional, chased a party of surveyors OH his estate with a wicked-looking blunderbuss in order to prevent them from putting Eleventh Street through his property. So it was that the builders, confronted with natural or human obstacles, permitted U81 fee 4 N6 VN if fs 11 .. 4 Tr Els Messrs.- - e-:en+x



Page 24 text:

control of smallpox by vaccination, and the protestion against yellow fever by a system of quarantine. The authorities did trace this latter disease, which they called the great sickness, to a vessel which had docked in the harbour at the time of the outbreak, having recently arrived from St. Thomas. One thing is definite: the' mor- tality Was so great, that a tremendous panic seized the inhabitants of the city. The effeets of these pestilences are seen in I-Iardie's description of the speedy exodus in the summer of 1882: Saturday, the 24th of August, our city presented the appearance of a town besieged. From daybreak till night one line of carts, containing boxes, merchandise, and effects, was seen moving towards Greenwich Village, and the upper parts of the City. Carriages and hacks, wagons and horsemen, were scouring the streets and filling the roadsg persons with anxiety strongly marked on their countenances, and with hurried gait, were hustling through the streets. Temporary stores and offices were erected, and even on the ensuing day QSundayJ carts were in motion, and the saw and hammer busily at work. Within a few days thereafter the Custom-house, the Post-opice, the banks, the insurance-offices, and the printers of newspapers located themselves in the Village or in the upper part of Broadway, where they were free from the impending danger, and these places almost instantaneously became the seat of im- mense business usually carried on in the great Metropolis. He adds: the Rev'd Mr. Marselus informed me that he saw corn growing on the present corner of Hammond and Fourth Streets on a Saturday morning, and on the following Monday Sykes Zee Niblo had a house erected capable of accommodating three hundred boarders. Even the Brooklyn ferry-boats ran up here daily. . 5. INETEENTH century Greenwich Village is perhaps the most interesting of all. In 1802 Thomas Paine, alleged Infidel, Weary of a life-long struggle, indicted as a sceptic and an unbeliever, his Age of Reason completed, came to the village to die. Greenwich Was to him a sanctuary and an escape from the turbulent political world which had failed truly to appreciate his greatness. This Englishman of scanty fortune but liberal ideas, a friend of Franklin and a believer in democracy had, by publishing his pamphlet Common Sense, made tens of thousands throughout the colonies ready to declare themselves independentg this man whose pamphlet had made Washmgton declare enthusiastically that Common Sense was of sound dottrine and unanswerable reasoning, and of whom Edmond Randolph, the first attorney general of the United States, made the statement that the declaration of the independence of America Was due, next to George III, to Thomas Paine, this Infidel was to live almost in obscurity for seven years, dying in the Village on the 8th of June, 1809. He had lived on Bleecker Street, then called Herring . . . after his death -4 20 od' vN '4- f 1 P T 5 Y? Rf' lf

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NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY) online collection, 1929 Edition, Page 1

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NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY) online collection, 1930 Edition, Page 1

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NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY) online collection, 1933 Edition, Page 1

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NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY) online collection, 1936 Edition, Page 1

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NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY) online collection, 1937 Edition, Page 1

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NYU Washington Square College - Album Yearbook (New York, NY) online collection, 1944 Edition, Page 1

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