New York Times Building

On the triangular block between Broadway and Seventh Avenue is the high building of the New York Times, from which the open space from Forty-third to Forty-seventh streets gets its name of Times Square. The plot was occupied with a block of two-story buildings, containing a private school and several quiet stores, which seemed to be almost out of the business of the vicinity. About 1890, a hotel-keeper named Regan erected a building on the south side of the plot and ran it with a bar and famous Rathskeller.

 In 1900, the underground railway was commenced, and The Regan building was one of the earliest of the skeleton, steel and concrete construction, and its demolition after about ten years of existence was watched by the architects and civil engineers with a great deal of interest in order to see the effect upon the steel framing. As it was torn to pieces, it was found that everything was as good as the day it was put into the building. An immense, deep hole in the solid rock was necessary for the new building; for the subway was to pass under it, and its foundations were to carry not only the Times building itself, but the tracks of the subway also, and to be able to withstand the vibrations of the passing trains. In many respects therefore, the building is one of the most wonderful in New York; and until the Singer building was erected, it was the highest structure in the city, if we figure from the lowest foundations, where the presses are located to the top of its high tower.

Long Acre Square

For many years before this open space became Times Square, it was the location of businesses connected with the manufacture and repair of carriages and harness; and in imitation of the locality in London devoted to similar activities, it was popularly, though not officially, known as "Long Acre Square." Then it became devoted to the automobile industry, but now even that has departed to the section above.

A Revolutionary Event

On the fifteenth of September, 1776, the British landed at Kip's Bay from Long Island with the intention of cutting off the American Army, then in full retreat. The greater part of the army was well up on the Bloomingdale Road, but Putnam with four thousand troops was still in the city. Washington despairingly attempted to prevent the landing of the British on the shore of the East River, but his troops fled almost before a shot was fired. Word had been sent to Putnam to join the chief, and he hurried his troops out of the city. Guided by Aaron Burr over the Middle Road from the fortifications above Canal Street, he managed to escape the cordon of British troops being thrown across the island and joined the chief on the Bloomingdale Road at this point, barely getting through in the nick of time. A tablet to commemorate this joyful meeting of the two generals was erected on the west side of the square some years ago by the Sons of the Revolution.

Farm Lands

The section of Broadway from Forty-fifth to Seventy-first Street was laid out and widened under a series of acts beginning about 1845 and extending to 1869. For some time after the earlier of these dates, the Bloomingdale Road was a country lane, lined with farm lands and homesteads. Continuing above on the east side as far as Sixty-fifth Street we find farms belonging to Medeef Eden, Emmet (to about Forty-ninth Street), Andrew Hopper, Cornelius Harsen, Deborah Burton, Catherine Cosine, Jane Ackerman, Rachel Cosine, and John H. Tallman. On the west side for the same distance were farms belonging to John Jacob Astor, (a portion of the Eden farm on which the Hotel Astor now stands), Francis Church, Philip Weber, Andrew Hopper, Striker, Jacob Hayes, John Cosine, Hegeman, Sarah Slack, and Havemeyer. Many of these farms extended down to the Hudson River even in 1800, and most of them had originally done so, but had been divided up among new owners; and even the names given here might not answer for a different period.

Old Hopper Farm

During the spring of 1910 real estate interests were especially active in connection with the old Hopper farm which was on both sides of the road. The first of the name was Andries Hoppe, who came to New Netherlands in 1652. His son, Mathjes Adolphus Hoppe, bought a farm extending diagonally across the road between Forty-eighth and Fifty-fifth streets down to the shore of the Hudson River. His heirs inherited the property , which in time became divided up among them and passed to other owners. One of the old Hopper homesteads stood for a century and a half at Fiftieth Street and Broadway until 1883, when William H;. Vanderbilt bought the property, and the old house was razed to make way for the American Horse Exchange. Andrew Hopper (1736-1824), for whom this house had been built by his father, John Hopper, the second owner, was a merchant of New York, having a place of business in Chatham Street. His town house was at Ann Street and Broadway, the Hampden Hall of the Liberty Boys, which later became the site of Scudder's and Barnum's museums.

Theatrical Enterprises

The first theatrical enterprise to locate in this vicinity was the large structure on the east side of Broadway between Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth streets, erected by Oscar Hammerstein upon the site of a building which had been the armory of the Seventy-first Regiment. Under one roof, there were a great music hall, a concert hall, and a theatre, the intention being to admit to all for one entrance fee. It was known as Hammerstein's Olympia, and the first performance was given in the Lyric Theatre on November 25, 1893. The management passed from Hammerstein; and the music hall part became the New York Theatre in December, 1898, while the Lyric became, on August 29, 1899, the Criterion, under the management of Charles Frohman.

Within the last few years, a new course has been pursued in theatrical management in New York and throughout the country. The tendency has been for a great many theatres to come into the control of a few managers or firms, constituting what has been termed the "Theatrical Trust"; so that dramatic companies outside the combination have sometimes had difficulty in getting into New York houses. Another marked change has been the increase in the price of seats, and the elegance of the newer theatres. It is a far cry from the thirteen, twenty-five, and fifty cents of the best theatres of half a century ago to the dollar, dollar and a half, and two dollars of the present; and these prices are nearly always supplemented by an additional dollar paid to the ticket speculators who manage, notwithstanding the advertised efforts of the box-offices, to get the best seats in the house before any one else has a chance at them.

On the streets opening out of Times Square, and within a radius of half a mile, are numerous theatres erected within the past five years. Among those on Broadway itself, are the Globe, above Forty-sixth Street, the Astor, at the corner of Forty-fifth Street, and the Gaiety, at the corner of Forty-sixth--all on the west side; Cohan's, on the east side between Forty-second and Forty-third streets, and still others are projected for the immediate future. To be bromidic: "It's hard work to keep track of them; they spring up like mushrooms, almost in a single night."

With so many theatrical enterprises located on Broadway, it is natural that plays should be written about the great thoroughfare. Two of them--comedies, of course--are The Man Who Owns Broadway, and Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway. Numerous songs have sounded the glory of the street and have become popular. When the American fleet on its world encircling cruise of 1908-9 left New Zealand, the farewell song of our English cousins of the Antipodes was Give my Regards to Broadway, a song that stirred the heart of every American sailor, as he remembered, or anticipated, the joys of the great highway. There is the Majestic at Fifty-eighth Street, the Circle at Sixtieth, the Colonial at Sixty-second, and the Lincoln Square where Broadway crosses Columbus Avenue at Sixty-Sixth. The houses are generally devoted to vaudeville, light opera, moving pictures, and similar entertainments that do not call for anything from their audiences except laughter.

Fashionable Restaurants and Hotels

Among the fashionable restaurants and hotels located here for several years are Shanley's, Rector's, Churchill's, the Hotel Cadillac, and the Hotel Astor. Several of these are putting up new buildings, so that in another year or so there will be a group of some of the finest hostelries in New York. The side streets contiguous to Times Square are also devoted to restaurants and theatres. The celebration of New Year's Eve in this neighborhood has become, so it is stated in the daily papers and by those who have been present, a grand orgy after midnight, putting to blush the wildest capers of the Moulin Rouge, Maxim's and other notorious places in Paris. For this occasion it is necessary to engage tables a long time ahead, and in the way of drink nothing but champagne is served upon the night of the thirty-first of December.

A) Hotel Rector
Rector's new hotel and restaurant at the southeast corner of Forty-fifth Street was opened on the twenty-seventh of December, 1910. It cost upwards of three millions of dollars, but its construction is remarkable for the speed with which the old buildings were torn down and the new one erected and furnished--all within a period of eleven months.

B) Hotel Astor
The most prominent building on the west side of the square is the Hotel Astor, situated on the old Eden farm and belonging to the Astor estate. It was opened in September, 1904, by William Muschenheim, formerly steward, or commissary, at West Point, who had for several years previous run a restaurant, very popular with college and similar societies, called "The Arena," in West Thirty-second Street near Broadway. Mr. Muschenheim has one of the finest private collections of maps, documents, papers, and prints relating to old New York to be found in the city, and many of these are exposed on the walls of the hotel. The hotel is probably the most popular and moderate priced of the really first-class hotels in New York. It has sheltered many ambassadors, special embassies, and distinguished foreigners, and is the favorite banqueting place of many societies, including some composed entirely of women.

Other Points Of Interest

The triangular block at Forty-seventh Street, Broadway and Seventh Avenue, now occupied by Floyd & Co., Auctioneers, was formerly the site of St. Martin's Hall, inaugurated February 11, 1850, for lectures, assemblies, and other social affairs for the up-town folks. The plot cannot long remain in its present condition, and a theatre or hotel will some day soon occupy the site. Above Forty-seventh Street, the thoroughfare is in a transition state; there are carriage factories and showrooms, automobile ware rooms, apartment houses, hotels, vacant lots, and some of the old buildings, including several cottages of the days when this was a country road. The site at Numbers 1634-1642, on the old Hopper farm, was occupied by the American Horse Exchange until 1910, when the Winter Garden Theatre was erected by the Shuberts. The Exchange was from 1883 the up-town Tattersall's where horses of the best breeds, carriages, and harness were sold, usually at auction. At the northeast corner of Fifty-sixth Street is the modern Tabernacle, first opened for service in March, 1905, and the legitimate successor of the other two which have stood on Broadway; it is a very ornate building, the corner-stone of which was laid in 1903. At Number 1684, the Metropolitan Roller Skating Rink has been in operation since 1906. The building which it occupies has been an armory of one of the city batteries, a bicycle academy, and various other things during the past thirty years.

The Old Guard

At the northwest corner of Forty-ninth Street, the Old Guard had its armory from 1898 to 1908. This is not a part of the regular military force of the State, but it has peculiar privileges, and is usually detailed as an escort for any distinguished person who reviews parades or processions. From a social standpoint, it ranks higher, possibly, than any other military organization in the city, and it partakes more nearly of the nature of a social club than do the regular regiments. The vast majority of the rank and file of the national guard organizations are young men, while those in the Old Guard have passed the meridian of life, having seen active and strenuous service elsewhere. The City Guard was formed in 1833, and at the same time a rival organization, called the Light Guard, was formed out of the old Blues, dating from 1762. After the Civil War, the survivors of the Two organizations united to form the Old Guard on April 22, 1868. The distinctive white uniform and great bearskin hat always attract attention, and the veterans are held very high in popular estimation.

Columbus Circle

At Fifty-ninth Street is the entrance to Central Park, and where Broadway, Eighth Avenue, and Fifty-ninth Street cross is an open space called "The Circle". Its centre is occupied by a fine column and base called the Columbus Statue, presented to the city by the Italian residents in 1892 in commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by their fellow countryman, whose statue surmounts the column.

The Boulevard

The Western Boulevard, or simply the Boulevard, as it was commonly called, was the work of the Tweed ring; and the highway was opened in 1868. The assessments levied upon the property owners contiguous to the old Bloomingdale Road were more than many of them could pay, and they either lost their property or it became heavily encumbered. Like all the work of the ring, the construction was a gigantic steal; but Tweed certainly showed great foresight in laying out this fine thoroughfare, lined with trees whose price to the taxpayers was enormous. The new Boulevard followed the general direction and bed of the old road, though it did not follow all its windings. As most of the farm lands and estates abutted on the Bloomingdale Road, we find that many of them will be found on both sides of the modern thoroughfare. The new thoroughfare was known as the Boulevard until January first, 1899, when the board of aldermen changed its name to Broadway throughout its length to Kingsbridge.

As the downfall of the ring occurred shortly after the opening of the Boulevard, it was left for many years in an unpaved state, and was, in consequence, a mudhole in wet weather where vehicles frequently became stalled, and in dry weather the dust was terrific. When the Twenty-second Regiment marched to its new armory in 1891, one could hardly see the soldiers for the clouds of dust.

The first paving of the street was ordered from Fifty-ninth to Seventy-ninth streets in 1890; and all kinds of materials have been used--macadam, asphalt, and brick. The paving was done in sections as the needs of the rapidly building locality required, the last being completed in 1907. When the section as far as One Hundred and Sixth Street was finished in 1896, the street became the favorite route of the wheelmen, who turned through the last named street to Riverside Drive and so on to Grant's Tomb. It is now a finely paved, asphalt brick pavement and is a much patronized route for automobiles.

The Armory

The armory of the Twenty-second Regiment of Engineers of the National Guard is on the east side of Broadway;, between Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth streets. The regiment was organized in April, 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War and had its quarters at Seventh Street and Hall Place; it occupied its armory in Fourteenth Street near Sixth Avenue in 1864. The present armory was occupied in 1891. The regiment was mustered into the service of the national government during the Spanish War, and became an engineer regiment on February 20, 1902. A new armory, the corner-stone of which was laid December 19, 1909, is now in course of construction on Fort Washington Avenue at One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street at a cost of about a million of dollars; and the members of the regiment hope to occupy it in the spring of 1912.

Bicycles and Automobiles

The construction of the elevated roads in 1880, and the running of the surface cars made the section west of Central Park more easily accessible than in the days of the stages, and building operations began. Previous to 1880 and even for some time after that date the vacant lots were occupied by squatters, whose ram-shackle structures, goats, and multitudinous children added what we may now consider as a picturesque touch to the scene. Some of the children of these squatters have become rich through the increase in value of the lots which their fathers had the foresight, or good luck, to buy in those early days. About 1890, the bicycle was in its glory; and for nearly a decade the smooth asphalt of the Boulevard attracted the devotees of the wheel, the favorite ride being as far as Clarement and Grant's Tomb.

 The annual parades of the wheelmen were beautiful sights, especially at night, when countless lights flickered along the roadway as the silent vehicles speeded swiftly along. Many shops and buildings were erected to accommodate the wheelmen and their needs; and there is no doubt that the desirability of this locality as a residence section was thus brought to the attention of many thousands and helped in its development. Now, alas! the wheel has departed; and where once bicycle shops abounded, we find their places taken by many more shops and garages for the sale and repair of the automobile. Where, in the nineties, the bicyclist had constant views of open spaces and truck gardens, now the autoist, as he dashes madly along, sees solid blocks of great hotels and apartment houses, with private houses only on the side streets.

Subway Railroad (Construction)

The subway railroad is directly responsible for this; and as it belongs to this period of Broadway's development subsequent to 1895, a brief account of it may be given here. The idea of an underground railway was of old date. It was in 1890 that the first rapid transit commission was appointed by Mayor Hugh J. Grant; it reported in 1891 that the tunnel franchise should be sold to the highest bidder, but capitalists were afraid to back the scheme on account of its uncertainty and the vast amount of capital involved. In 1894, the legislature created the Rapid Transit Board, which, fortunately, was composed of men of unimpeachable integrity and enterprise with no interest or concern in politics, and they went at the matter in a business-like way. 

The plans for the tunnel, drawn by the engineer, William Barclay Parsons, were approved by Mayor Strong in 1897; and the congested condition of the traffic lines due to the influx of visitors on Grant's Day, April 27, of that year, showed the absolute necessity of immediate relief. The contracts were let to John B. McDonald on February 21, 1900, and work was begun shortly afterwards, four and one half years being the time allowed for the completion of the work and the running of the trains. The section of the road under Broadway begins at Forty-second Street and continues to One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street, rejoining Broadway again at Two Hundred and Eighteenth Street and continuing over it as an elevated structure to the terminus at Two Hundred and Forty-second Street abreast of Van Cortlandt Park. The road is four tracks as far as One Hundred and Third Street and two tracks beyond.

During the nearly five years that the underground was building, Broadway was a sight to be remembered, as the work was done from the surface and the street and the car tracks had to be supported by temporary bridges of planks; and it was no unusual thing for a vehicle to fall into the excavation. As a result of this excavation, the trees planted by the Tweed ring, which had by this time begun to beautify the thoroughfare, were badly injured, and in many cases destroyed completely. In May, 1910, the central plots of the street were fenced in, sodded, and set out with plants and shrubs. In the Washington Heights section the cut was so deep that the work was done entirely below the surface by regular subterranean miners brought from the mining places of the world, and the surface was undisturbed.

Subway Railroad (Its opening)

The subway was officially opened to the public from Brooklyn Bridge to Broadway, and One Hundred and Forty-fifth Street on October 27, 1904; to One Hundred and Fifty-Seventh Street, November 12, 1904; to Two Hundred and Twenty-first Street, March 12, 1906; to Two Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, January 14, 1907; to Two Hundred and Thirtieth Street, January 27, 1907; and to Two Hundred and Forty-second Street, its present northern terminus at Van Cortlandt Park, August 1, 1908. At its lower end, it was opened to Fulton Street, January 16, 1905; to Wall Street, June 12, 1905; and to the Bowling Green and the South Ferry, July 10, 1905. In the Washington Heights section, some of the stations are so deep that elevators carry the passengers to and from the surface.

So immensely popular has the subway become since its opening that it is greatly overcrowded, and other lines and extensions are projected. There are many thousands of New Yorkers who see and know nothing of their city except in the neighborhood of their homes and places of business, between which they travel on the underground.

Wealthy Merchant Properties

In colonial days, many of the wealthy merchants had country-seats near the bank of the Hudson. Some of these gentlemen were loyalists during the Revolution and, in consequence, lost their property by confiscation; among the owners we recognize many Dutch and Huguenot names. The principal owners as far north as Ninety-sixth Street were John H. Tallman, Bogert, G. Kimberly, John Gottsberger, John Hardenbrook, Jacob Harsen, Sarah McGill, Stephen Jumel, Jacob Lorillard, Richard Somerindyke, John C. Vandenheuvel, John McVickers, Brockholst Livingston, James Hamilton, and David M. Clarkson.

There is one name among the owners of property here that was still more famous in colonial days, but which we do not find after the Revolution--that of Oliver DeLancey. He was a loyalist during that struggle and was made a brigadier, commanding a brigade of loyalists and refugees, recruited principally from the Tories of New York, Westchester, and Dutchess Counties, and from Connecticut, New Jersey, and Long Island. His house, a fine colonial mansion, faced the Bloomingdale Road near Seventieth Street; and in it De Lancey extended a generous hospitality to the best society of the province.

The Apthorpe House

The Apthorpe House stood until 1892 on the block between Ninetieth and Ninety-first Streets and Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues in the centre of a farm which originally consisted of two hundred acres. It was built about 1765 and was a fine mansion with columns in front. The gentleman who built the house was Charles Ward Apthorpe, a wealthy lawyer of New York, who, though a personal friend of Washington, was a loyalist of a mild type. In consequence, he lost his estates in Massachusetts, but his New York property was untouched as he died in the old mansion in 1797. 

It came into the possession of Brockholst Livingston, and later into that of Colonel Thorne, who had married Miss Jauncey, whose family were great landowners in this vicinity, and it continued to be the scene of social events for half a century longer, when it became a public house and picnic ground under the name of Elm, or Wendell Park. During the Civil War, the extensive property was used for encamping and drilling recruits before sending them to the front.

The Apthorpe house is also connected with the greatest name in American history. After the fiasco at Kip's Bay and the escape of Putnam's division on the fifteenth of September, 1776, Washington took up his quarters in the mansion. Preparations were made for supper, when the approach of the British was announced and the Americans made a precipitate retreat, leaving their meal to be eaten by Howe and his staff, who made the house their headquarters for several days.

The Orangemen Affair

The Protestants from the north of Ireland, commonly called Orangemen, held a picnic in Elm Park on the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, July 12, 1870. As they marched up the Boulevard, then in course of construction, some of the airs played by their bands aroused the ire of the Catholic Irish laborers upon the street, who began to stone the procession. A small-sized riot ensued, in which shots were exchanged and three persons were killed and several wounded, some of whom died afterward. The Orangemen announced their intention of parading in 1871, and the Catholic Irish threatened to break up the celebration. The parade was prohibited by the chief of police the day before which it was to occur. Upon this becoming known, several of the public business and commercial bodies held indignation meetings and asked: "If the Irish Catholics are permitted to parade unmolested on St. Patrick's Day, why have not the Protestant Irish an equal right to do the same thing under police protection?" Governor Hoffman was telegraphed for; and after consultation with leading citizens, revoked the police order prohibiting the parade and ordered out the militia to protect the paraders.

In view of possible disorder, all of the Orange lodges, with one exception, gave up the idea of a parade and sought various picnic grounds outside the city. Escorted by five regiments, Gideon Lodge, with less than one hundred men, started on the designated line of march for Elm Park. The streets were filled with spectators, and there was no disturbance until the procession reached Eighth Avenue between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth streets; then a shot was fired as a storm of stones and missiles was hurled at the procession from the neighboring house tops. Two of the regiments fired volleys without authorization, and, as a result, fifty-four spectators were killed or mortally wounded, while many others received injuries. As is usual in such cases, among those hurt or killed were many innocent lookers-on. Three of the soldiers of the Ninth Regiment were killed, and many others received injuries from stones and brick-bats. The marks of the bullets are still discernible upon some of the houses in Eighth Avenue. These two affairs of 1870 and 1871 are known in the history of the city as the "Orange Riots."

Blomendaal To Bloomingdale

The Dutch, with fervent patriotism, having named the city at the lower end of the island New Amsterdam, proceeded to name places in the vicinity of New Amsterdam after home places of which they were reminded in this new land. Thus, a beautiful village near old Harlem called Bloemendaal and famous for its horticultural nurseries gave its name to this section not far removed from the New Harlem on the island of Manhattan; and it is only a step from Bloemendaal to Bloomingdale. Owing to the large estate of Jacob Harsen between Sixty-sixth and Seventy-second streets, it was also called Harsenville. Harsen's Lane led from within the present Central Park from Sixth Avenue, westward between Seventieth and Seventy-first streets to Columbus Avenue, and thence to the Bloomingdale Road half a block south of Seventy-second Street. Harsen's House was at Seventieth Street and the Bloomingdale Road. **

It must be remembered that these streets did not exist, even on paper, until the acceptance of Randall's map of 1821 by the commission of 1807; and that the actual cutting through of streets above Fifty-ninth, except in some few cases, did not begin until after 1860.

Bloomingdale Reformed Dutch Church

The Bloomingdale Reformed Dutch Church at Sixty-eighth Street and Broadway is the successor of the original church established near the same site in 1805. It probably owed its birth to the prevalence of yellow fever in the city and the desire of those who fled to this locality to have church services. In 1813, Andrew Hopper, of whom we have already spoken, was married here a second time. Some generous elder of the church society gave to it a large plot of ground for a parsonage, and its increment in value saved the church from extinction. When the Boulevard was opened, the old church edifice was in its path and had to be removed; but the immense value to which the parsonage lot attained enabled the church society to erect the present beautiful structure.

Rutgers Riverside Presbyterian Church

Rutgers Riverside Presbyterian Church is at Seventy-third Street. It was first organized in 1796 under the name of Rutgers Presbyterian Church and had its origin in the desire of expansion on the part of the New York Presbytery after the recovery of the city by the Americans from the British. A lot was donated by Henry Rutgers of the Reformed, or Dutch Church upon his property at the corner of Rutgers and Henry Streets; and a frame edifice was built and opened on May 13, 1798. By 1841, the congregation had so increased that a stone church was built upon the same site; twenty years later, the neighborhood had so changed and the congregation had grown so small that the property passed to St. Teresa's Roman Catholic Church, which still occupies the same site.

 Rutgers formed a union with the Madison Avenue Church of that time at the corner of Madison Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, which had been opened for public worship in 1844. In 1875, a new and larger structure was erected; but by 1881 the same conditions of change in population were met as in Henry Street, and the church was closed, to reopen six months later for a period of three years during which the church lost steadily. At the end of 1884, it was determined to close the historic church and dissolve the society, but another attempt to revive it was made in 1886. At the end of two years, it was seen that this effort also was fruitless, and it was determined to build west of Central Park. The church on Madison Avenue was sold to the Masons of the Ancient Scottish Rite; and the new chapel at the Boulevard and Seventy-third Street, under the name of Rutgers Riverside, was opened September 23, 1888, to be followed later by the present fine edifice, which was opened January 19, 1890.

Christ Protestant Episcopal Church

Christ Protestant Episcopal Church is also an historic church. It was organized in 1793 and was first placed on a site on Ann Street, which it vacated in 1823 to occupy a newly consecrated edifice in Anthony Street which had formerly been occupied by a theatre. The building in Ann Street was sold in 1827 to the Roman Catholics, then poor in wealth and population, and was long used by them as a church. The church in Anthony Street was completely destroyed by fire, July 30, 1847, but it was rebuilt and reoccupied until 1854, when the society moved to West Eighteenth Street, remaining there until 1859, when a new church was erected at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street. When this last edifice was burned in 1891, the society moved to its present location on the Boulevard. The original Ann Street structure was destroyed by fire in 1834.

Other Churches In The Area

The other churches in this vicinity south of Ninety-sixth Street are all of more recent organization. They are: Manhattan Congregational at Seventy-sixth Street, organized 1896; Roman Catholic Church of the Blessed Sacrament at the southeast corner of Seventy-first Street, organized 1887; the First Baptist Church at the northwest corner of Seventy-ninth Street, organized in 1891; and the Evangelical Lutheran church at the northeast corner of Ninety-fourth Street, organized 1897.

Open Space A Park Or Square

Wherever Broadway crosses one of the avenues of the island, we find at the crossing, or near it, an open space of a block or more to which the name of " Park," or "square" is given, and that the cross street is usually broader than those above or below it. This is the case at Fourteenth, Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, Fifty-ninth, Sixty-sixth, and Seventy-second Streets, where Broadway crosses University Place, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth (or Columbus), Tenth (or Amsterdam) Avenues respectively. To the space from Seventieth to Seventy-third Street, at the last-named crossing, has been given the name of Sherman Square in honor of the great General. In the triangular plot at the upper end of Sherman Square is a marble statue of Guiseppe Verdi, the great Italian composer. On the base of the pedestal are several marble figures representing some of the principal characters from his operas. The monument was built by subscriptions obtained from Italian residents, principally through the efforts of one of the Italian papers of the city, and was unveiled on October 2, 1906.

Colonial House Once Residence Of Edgar Allan Poe

As late as 1893, there stood on a height of rock on the south side of Eighty-fourth Street east of the Boulevard, where the cutting through of the street had left it, an old colonial house, once the residence of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he wrote "The Raven". Poe's wife Virginia was in poor health and the couple came here in 1844 and boarded with Mrs. Brennan in order that Mrs. Poe could get the pure, fresh air. In the olden time, before the surrounding land had been covered with modern dwellings, the house commanded a magnificent view both up and down the Hudson.

A Famous Mansion

Another famous mansion was a stone house standing at Seventy-ninth Street, between Broadway and West End Avenue. This was built about 1759 by John C. Vandenheuvel, a Dutch governor of Demerara, who came to New York to escape the fever and liked it so well here that he bought four hundred acres of land in this vicinity and built his country house upon it. The Vandenheuvel town-house was opposite the City Hall Park, between Barclay Street and Park Place. The property was vacated during the Revolution, and was sold by the Vandenheuvel heirs in 1827 to Harmon Hendricks, who leased it in 1833 to Burnham at a yearly rental of six hundred dollars. Burnham's near Seventy-fourth Street and the Bloomingdale Road, was the most famous road-house in this section from before 1820 until the proprietor opened the still more famous Mansion House in the old Vandenheuvel dwelling. After Burnham's occupancy, the property passed into the possession of a Frenchman named Poillon, who sold it in 1878 to the Astor estate. The old house stood until the spring of 1905, when it was demolished to make room for the enormous apartment house and hotel called the Apthorpe, which occupies the whole block in the middle of which the old house used to stand.

The Somerindyke House

The Somerindyke house, at Seventy-fourth Street and the Bloomingdale Road, was an interesting place, because here, so it has been frequently stated, Louis Philippe, afterwards king of the French, and his brothers taught school while in exile. Later authorities proclaim the story a myth, as the three noblemen while in this country drew upon the purse of their friend, Gouverneur Morris, for their expenses. When they returned to France and fortune, they forgot their generous American friend until he reminded them of the debt. Then they repaid, but treated the loan as a business transaction entirely. This aroused the ire of the old aristocrat, who could be as sarcastic in his old age as in his earlier days; and since they ignored the element of friendship which had entered into the loan, he demanded the interest and entered suit against them, and his heirs eventually received the money.

Belnord Apartment House

Occupying the entire block from Eighty-sixth to Eighty-seventh Street, and from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue, is the apartment house called the Belnord. It contains one hundred and seventy-six apartments, with from seven to eleven rooms each, and a corresponding number of bath-rooms. It is said to be the largest apartment house in the world, and contains a population of upwards of a thousand. It was opened in 1909.