Park Row / Spruce Street		(40.711809,-74.006051)
Brooklyn Bridge	Walkway entrance on Park Row between Frankfort and Chambers Streets	(40.712313, -74.004743)
The East River was one of the craziest stretches of saltwater navigable on earth. NYC's large harbor made this island surrounded by docks the greatest city in the New World. Technically not a river, the East River is a turbulent tidal strait. Bad weather always stopped passage across; people and parcels were often delayed, and goods spoiled. Brooklyn had 400,000 residents when the idea of a bridge was first proposed to the State Legislature in 1802. John Roebling, owner of a wire-rope company in Trenton, was famous for his bridge designs over the Delaware (1848), Niagara (1855), and Ohio (1867) rivers. While impatiently waiting for the Fulton Ferry, Roebling worked out the plan for a suspension bridge with four steel cables and giant granite towers. In 1855, when he proposed building the first bridge over the East River, he envisioned it an artistic national monument as well. Roebling and Wilhelm Hildenbrand completed plans for the bridge in a remarkable three months. The cold reaction from NYC officials led Roebling in 1867, to The Brooklyn Eagle, whose publisher William C. Kingsley had political connections. New York State Senator Henry Murphy, also a former mayor of Brooklyn, drafted a bill to allow the bridge to be built by a private company. In 1866, the construction bill passed the New York State Legislature. The New York Bridge Company was formed and incorporated in 1867, with $4.5 million in funds available. The money was raised from an enabling act that Brooklyn contributed $3 million, while Manhattan added its $1.5 million. Roebling’s design was finally approved in June 1869 when the City Council got the thumbs up from the Army Corps of Engineers. Congress passed a construction bill and it was signed by President Ulysses S. Grant (the eighteenth president of the United States). The last legal hurdle was overcome on June 21st, 1869, when the War Department approved the Brooklyn Bridge project. On July 6th, 1869, the Fulton ferry crushed John Roebling's foot, while he was standing on a cluster of piles at the outboard end of the Brooklyn's Fulton Street slip, where he was trying to determine the location of the Brooklyn tower. His foot was caught between the collapsing piles and the fender rack, and the injury infected John's toes to the point of amputation. Toeless John Roebling refused further medical treatment except for water therapy (where water was continuously poured over the wound). The accident gave the 63-year-old Roebling incurable tetanus (“lockjaw”), and his blood was poisoned with gangrene, so in just a few weeks after his injury became fatal on July 22nd, 1869. His oldest son (out of nine children) Washington A. Roebling took over the project as chief engineer. The first $3.8 million was spent just purchasing the land for both approaches to the bridge. The ground for the Brooklyn Bridge was broken on January 3rd, 1870, but the foundations took three years to dig. Workers had to endure being placed into airtight pneumatic caissons sealed with pine tar and almost a half-block wide. The caissons were sunk into the East River by putting stones on top of them, which eventually created the foundations. To anchor each of the four cables, four 16-by-17-ft. cast-iron anchor plates (21 ft. thick) were constructed, each weighing 46,000 pounds (23 tons). Workers using shovels and buckets cleared away layers of silt under the East River until they hit bedrock. It was the first time dynamite was used to construct a bridge. Workers paid $2.25 a day had to dig 44½ feet below the river on the Brooklyn side before they hit bedrock. More agonizing was the fact that they had to dig twice as deep below the Manhattan side, 78 feet below the silt and quicksand. On October 12th, 1872, the first worker died from caisson illness. Soon over a hundred workers were unable to work. Finally, when two more of the sandhogs died, Washington Roebling decided to stop digging; compacted sand was good enough. History proved him right, and recent tests show he was still 30 feet away from bedrock on the Manhattan side. Caisson disease killed 20 workers and left 35-year-old Washington Roebling paralyzed. It’s caused by the altered nitrogen levels in the blood from the changing air pressure. Washington's wife Emily made daily visits to the bridge to oversee the operation, helping Washington direct the construction of the bridge from their new Brooklyn Heights home overlooking the site. Emily studied mathematics, calculated the curve of the wires, checked the strength of materials and supervised the project for the next 11 years. Roebling used field glasses and a telescope to watch the progress. Once the foundations were done in 1873, it took four years to construct the anchorages, and have the four massive steel cables supported by the two 273-ft. Gothic granite towers. Only Trinity Church was higher than these twin towers, which held the weight of the cables downward pressure. The Brooklyn tower was finished in May 1875; two months later, the Manhattan side was completed. The neo-Gothic towers are made of limestone, granite and Rosendake cement. In August 1876, when the two anchorages were linked, a mechanic named Farrington crossed the East River on a chair tied to the rope. Until the Brooklyn Bridge project, weaker iron wire was used for suspension cables in bridge construction, Roebling introduced the use of steel for his four cables. Roebling's invention and manufacturing of steel wire cable changed the suspension bridge business and made this longer bridge possible. By February 1877, a temporary footbridge 135 feet over the East River was finished, and work started on spinning the four cables. Over 14,400 miles of wire were used to spin these four 15½-inch cables consisting of 19 strands each, which added up to 21,432 steel wires in each cable. When finished, the strength of each cable could now hold 11,200 tons. At 6,016 feet (including approaches), Brooklyn Bridge (known at the time as the Great East River Bridge, or Great Bridge) was not only NYC's first bridge over the East River but also the longest suspension bridge in the world. It opened on Queen Victoria's birthday May 24, 1883, in front of 14,000 invited guests. Emily Roebling was given the first ride over the bridge with a rooster (a symbol of victory) in her lap. Governor Grover Cleveland, Mayor Franklin Edison, and President Chester Arthur met Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low at the Brooklyn side tower. President Arthur continued on to Washington Roebling's home after the event. The bridge opened to the public (150,300 people on the first day) at 2 p.m. May 24th, 1883, bringing in the Brooklyn Bridge’s first $1,503. The bridge was opened to vehicles at 5 p.m the same day, 1,800 vehicles crossed on the first day at 5 cents a car ($90 more) Getting across the Brooklyn Bridge was just a penny toll for pedestrians until 1910 when it was made free, Soon the bridge had elevated trains (September 1883), trolley lines, horse-drawn vehicles and livestock stomping across it. On Memorial Day, May 30th, 1883, one week after the Brooklyn Bridge opened, a woman on the Manhattan steps fell after a large gust of wind, and a scream started a rumor that the bridge was collapsing. Panic crushed 12 people to death, while three dozen more were seriously injured. The following year citizens’ fears that the bridge was not strong enough were squashed when P.T. Barnum took 21 elephants across the bridge (led by the famous Jumbo). The BRT elevated trains on the bridge were stopped in 1948, and the streetcars took over their tracks before they too were removed in 1950. Poets and artists had a new inspiration, but 27 people died during its 14 year construction; its creator John Roebling included. The one-mile Brooklyn Bridge was finished in 1883, which helped made Brooklyn part of NYC by 1898. With Tweed as one of the six executives of the Brooklyn Bridge company, it was amazing it only cost $15 million to build. Contractor J. Lloyd Haigh switched the wires used over its stone towers leading to a $9 million renovation in 1948.
Horace Greeley Statue	East side of City Hall Park	(40.712922, -74.004921)
Horace Greeley (1811-1872) founded and edited The Tribune newspaper for 30 years in his fight for social justice. Greeley was a social reformer who was for labor unions and women's rights but against railroad monopolies and slavery. Greeley ran for President in 1872. In 1890, John Quincy Adams Ward’s bronze Horace Greeley statue (with a base by Richard Morris Hunt) was first placed up in front of the old Tribune Building on Park Row, but a 1915 ordinance deemed it too large for that site so it was moved to the east side of City Hall Park in 1916 (behind the east side of the Tweed Courthouse). Ward is well known for the 1882, George Washington statue on the steps of Federal Hall (now the Subtreasury) on Wall Street. Greeley's successor at the Tribune, Whitelaw Reid, commissioned the statue (cast by Henri & Bonnard Bronze Company) which was dedicated on May 31st, 1894. A different Horace Greeley statue created by Alexander Doyle in 1892, sits by 6th Avenue and Broadway just south of 33rd Street in a triangular park called Greeley Square. Greeley was famous for saying “Go West, young man,” in his promotion of westward expansion in a July 13, 1865 editorial. This quote popularized by Greeley may have really been written by John Babson Lane Soule, a newspaper writer from Indiana in 1851. Some claim that Soule first used this famous line in an editorial in the Terra Haute, Indiana, Daily Express newspaper. But it seems like the famous quote was paraphrased from a statement in the Aug. 25, 1838, issue of the New Yorker newspaper where Greeley was first quoted as saying "If any young man is about to commence the world, we say to him, publicly and privately, Go to the West". During the Draft Riots, Greeley ate at Windust's restaurant while hiding under a table after the mobs chased him and his assistant. Greeley was the only presidential candidate who died during the electoral process (which ended with his loss in a landslide on November 5th, 1872, to Ulysses S. Grant). Greeley is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
New Gaol	West side of Park Row by Frankfort Street	(40.712403, -74.005352)
The first NYC structure to be built as a jail was the New Gaol. Built in 1757 for under $12,000, just east of the first Almshouse in the 9-acre City Hall Park, the New Gaol was built at the same time the first upper barracks were built in the northern side of City Hall Park by Chambers Street. In 1764, a public whipping post, stocks, a cage, and a pillory were added opposite the jail. The New Gaol eventually stood in line with both City Hall and the Bridewell Prison. It became the Debtors' Prison in 1772, and then the Provost in 1776 when the British had patriots and officers imprisoned inside its walls, and Provost Marshal Cunningham had his office in the New Gaol, thus the name. The entrance to the prison was from the south. American Army officers and the top local well-known patriots found their way inside the Provost. Cells were so crowded that imprisoned patriots lying on the floorboards had to all turn over all together at the call of right-left. Thousands of Americans starved, about 275 others poisoned or executed. When friends or relatives brought goodies for one of the prisoners, Cunningham would usually eat it in front of the prisoner. Sergeant O'Keefe was Cunningham's sadistic jailer. On Evacuation Day, as he was leaving, some prisoners asked what would become of them. O'Keefe replied, "You may all go to the devil!" One prisoner replied back, "Thank you, we have had too much of your company in this world, to follow you to the next." Cunningham confessed on his deathbed that he starved 2,000 Americans to death. After the Revolutionary War ended, the building reverted to a debtor's prison. An 1830 remodeling (the third floor was cut off, and a copper roof was added) made it fireproof. In 1830, the New Gaol became the old Hall of Records after a $15,000 tune-up, but in 1832 when cholera hit NYC, the building was used as a hospital. In 1833, the renovations were complete and it was later taken over by the register, comptroller, and street commissioner. In 1869, the building finally became the Register's Office, whose staff filled the whole fireproofed building with land and legal records. The legal records were eventually transferred to the Hall of Records (Surrogate Court House) on the northwestern corner of Chambers and Centre Streets. The New Gaol building was torn down in April 1903 (to make room for the subway), exposing the basement dungeons where so many patriotic Americans were imprisoned during the Revolutionary War. When this three-story, 60-by-75-ft. building that stood 135 feet east of City Hall was demolished, it was the oldest municipal building in NYC.
Mould Fountain	Southern triangle of City Hall Park by Broadway and Park Row	(40.712144, -74.007141)
In 1871 the old Croton Fountain was replaced by the ornate granite Victorian Mould Fountain designed by Jacob Wrey Mould. Installed in front of the old Post Office, it was referred to as Mullet's monstrosity. When they were first planning to tear down the post office in 1920 (it didn't happen until 1938), they moved the Jacob Wrey Mould fountain to Crotona Park in the Bronx. The Delacorte Fountain replaced it, until Rudy Giuliani brought it back in 1999. Now lit by four gas candelabras and underwater lighting, it makes a night time trip to City Hall Park worthwhile. The homeless Jack London, who once slept in City Hall Park, would have enjoyed its waters. The 1873 Bethesda Fountain (also called the Angel of the Waters) in Central Park was created by Emma Stebbins and co-designed by Jacob Wrey Mould. Stebbins was the first woman allowed to create a major NYC public work. Its four cherubs represent Peace, Health, Purity, and Temperance. The late 1960s brought so many peaceniks to its waters that Newsweek in the late 1960s called it Freak Fountain. It was constructed in Central Park to celebrate the completion of the Croton Aqueduct in 1842.
City Hall Post Office	Broadway and Park Row	(40.711906, -74.007694)
The City Hall Post office (Mullet’s Monstrosity) opened in 1878. It was an elaborately colonnaded, French Second Empire baroque structure with a mansard-roof that looked like a wedding cake. No one seemed to like Alfred Bult Mullett’s post office at the triangular tip of City Hall Park, and as early as 1920 the city tried to demolish it. Mullet’s Monstrosity was finally torn down in 1938 to make the park nicer and beautify City Hall for the 1939 World’s Fair visitors. The first letter from America was postmarked August 8th, 1628, from Manhattan in New Netherland to Hoorn by North Holland, in the Netherlands. In 1633, Richard Fairbanks' tavern in Boston became the first official site of mail delivery, 40 years before a mail run started between NYC and Boston. Boston set up the first organized postal system in the American colonies in 1677. Before the public mail service started, before any post offices were opened, Dutch schoolmasters delivered invitations to funerals, and Indians were used to send messages into the interior of the New World. These Indians traveled on foot and canoe, and were paid only when they returned with a response letter. After 1672, trusted Indians carried the mail to Albany in winter. Under English rule, Vlieboat skippers took mail up the Hudson during the summer months, up to Albany (where Fort Orange was). These NYC's Dutch vlieboats (the English called them flyboats) took 10 days to three weeks for the one-way trip. The foot post workers were used in the winter to deliver mail north from NYC to Albany, when the river froze over they skated most of the way. In good weather, the first regular NYC horseback mail to Boston (which started in 1672) took almost a week on this once-monthly trip. Riders had to stop to sleep and eat so if conditions were good they could do the whole 230 miles in a week. Governor Francis Lovelace announced the NYC to Boston horseback mail run on Dec 10th 1672, it was called monthly but went over three weeks, the first mail was delivered by January 22nd, 1673. It took the post rider two weeks to do the run from NYC to Boston. Old Boston Post Road is part of today's Route 1.
Woolworth Building	233 Broadway	(40.712301, -74.007983)
The 60-floor Woolworth Building, built between 1911 and 1913 at 233 Broadway, was the world’s tallest (792 feet) for 16 years, from 1913 to 1929, before 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building were built. F.W. Woolworth didn’t like buying anything on credit so he paid for construction in cash (dollars, not in 5 and 10-cent pieces). The Woolworth Building was built for $13,500,000-$15,500,000, and that’s a lot of nickels and dimes. It was known as the Cathedral of Commerce, but ironically it was constructed on the site of The New York Call, a Socialist newspaper once located at 6 Park Place. Cass Gilbert had this Gothic Revival structure clad in lightweight, fire-resistant terra-cotta. Over the Woolworth Building's 27-story base is a white terra-cotta tower with a Gothic top and spire, complete with gargoyles. The Woolworth Building’s inside was built to fit the design of the outside terra-cotta panels. The marble-lined executive offices were located on the 24th floor. A dark half floor built on the 26th floor was accessible only through a small door. Still preserved is F.W. Woolworth's private office, which is coated in marble in French Empire style. In 1945, the famous Woolworth Building 58th floor observation deck closed. The building became a National Historic Landmark in 1966. The Woolworth Building's vaulted mosaic-covered ceilings, arched entryways, gargoyles, turrets, and pinnacles are Gothic Revival at its finest. Other Gothic Revival buildings in NYC include Trinity Church (1846), Grace Church (1846), St. Patrick's Cathedral (built 1858-1878), St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church (1902), and one of the spookiest, the Smallpox Hospital on Roosevelt Island (1856). The Woolworth Building was the company's headquarters all the way up until Woolworth's bankruptcy in 1997.
St Paul's Church	West side of Broadway and Ann Street	(40.711221, -74.009008)
NYC's oldest church, oldest original standing structure, the city's only remaining colonial church and its oldest public building in continuous use -- St Paul's Church is all of these. Beside a brownstone tower, the architect Thomas McBean constructed the Georgian-styled church using local Manhattan schist and brownstone quoins. The woodwork, carvings, and door hinges are all handmade. Fourteen 1802 cut-glass chandeliers that originally held candles still hang in St Paul's Church, and it still has its original 1804 organ case as well. The French architect Pierre L'Enfant (who planned Washington, D.C., and tried to plan a NYC park around the Collect Pond) designed its interior. Over the altar of St Paul's Church is L'Enfant’s "Glory," with carved images depicting clouds and lightning over Mt. Sinai. It also has a triangle with the Hebrew word for "God" and illustrations of the two tablets of Ten Commandments. On the church exterior, L'Enfant carved iconography showing the birth of a new nation, depicting an eagle pulling back the night to expose 13 rays of the rising sun. St Paul's Church was built between 1764 and 1766 at 209 Broadway, six blocks north of Trinity Church as a branch of Trinity Church. Its steeple and tower were started December 1st, 1794, and finished by 1796. Besides calling people to church, St Paul's bells were rung to warn citizens of fire or invasion. St Paul's Church was fiercely loyal to the British Crown, even during the American Revolution. Thanks to a miracle and lots of citizens with water buckets, the church was spared during the 1776 fire. During the two years that NYC was America's capital, George Washington attended services at St. Paul's while Trinity Church was rebuilt. After his inauguration April 30th, 1789, Washington went to St. Paul’s Chapel for a special service. His pew is still on display on the north aisle with a painting of the Great Seal of the United States hanging above it). First New York State Governor George Clinton's pew is in the aisle on the south side with the Arms of the State of New York above it. Many old 18th century tombstones can be seen on the front and side of St Paul's, which fronts the Church Street side and not Broadway. The area west of St. Paul’s Church was called the Holy Ground and a huge red light district in NYC. The city's first red light area was around the Fort (of course). Heavily walked by girls of the streets was Marketveldt Street, which was once was called Pettycoat Lane for its action. The notorious streetwalkers of Corlear's Hook at the eastern end of Grand Street were the gals that were first called hookers. When the World Trade Center came down September 11, 2001, a tree in the churchyard shielded the blast and saved St. Paul's Church.
Loew's Bridge	Broadway between Fulton and Ann Street	(40.710929, -74.00904)
Loew's Bridge was a $14,002 lacy Gothic pedestrian overpass built over Broadway by St. Paul's Church, just south of City Hall by Fulton Street. Proposed by Alderman Charles E. Loew and opened on April 15th, 1867, this elaborate iron bridge was placed at the city’s busiest, most dangerous spot. John Nicolas Genin, owner of a hat shop on the sunny SW corner of Broadway and Fulton Street, petitioned the Common Council to give his shop more and safer access. Stoplights and traffic cops were still decades away, and Broadway was crazy busy with mounted horsemen, carts, and wagons. Genin ran for NYC mayor as an Independent candidate in 1854. He first received fame for bidding $225 for a ticket to Jenny Lind's first American concert, which was promoted by P.T. Barnum. On July 21st, 1868, Loew's Bridge was deemed a street obstacle and a failure to public convenience. It also cast a dark shadow on the business of Knox the Hatter at 212 Broadway (NE corner of Fulton). At the time the oldest hatter in NYC, Charles Knox's hat store was rebuilt after it was destroyed in Barnum's Museum fire of 1865. Knox didn't like the loiterers, and he claimed the Loew's Bridge blocked the air into his store that was already on the shady side of Broadway. Knox sued the city for $25,000 in damages, and with the support of other mad hatters on Broadway's shady east side of the iron structure, he had the bridge closed in December 1868 and dismantled. Knox was later known as Arnold Hatters until they went out of business recently.
Barnum's American Museum	East side of Broadway and Ann Street	(40.711175, -74.008576)
Phineas Taylor Barnum's first museum opened in 1841 after he took over Scudder’s Museum on the corner of Ann Street and Broadway (before the 315-ft. St. Paul Building was built in 1898). This five- or six-story structure was said to be the first granite building in NYC, but P.T. Barnum's American Museum burned down on July 13th, 1865, after a fire started in the engine room that created steam heat? for the aquarium. The museum opened America's first public aquarium in1856 or 1857, called Barnum’s Ocean and River Gardens. Just after 1861, Barnum presented the first exhibit of Beluga whales. Housed in a brick and cement tank in the American Museum’s basement, the Belugas quickly died so more were obtained and put in a glass tank on the second floor. P.T. Barnum's impresario gig was with Jenny Lind. He introduced America to the Swedish Nightingale in 1850 with two sold-out concerts at Castle Garden (formerly the old West Battery and then Castle Clinton). At Sandy Welsh's place in the basement of the American Museum, famous politicians and warhorses Elijah Purdy, Robert Morris, Lorenzo Sheppard, and Rococo Levi met often. Barnum once spent time in prison after he was accused of libel while working for a country newspaper. Barnum's fabrications started in the fall of 1835 when he bought a slave, Joice Heth, for $1,000 and billed her as George Washington’s 161-year-old nurse. She had papers stating she was 54 when she was sold to Washington’s father on February 5th, 1727). Barnum started a seven-month tour centering on Heth at Niblo's on August 10th, 1835. Barnum made $1,500 a week exhibiting her as the first President’s 161-year-old mammy. After Heth died, an autopsy in front of 1,500 paying customers on February 25th, 1836, revealed she was actually only about 80, just not well preserved. Another early Barnum fabrication was the Fijee Mermaid, not really a mermaid, but two creatures stuffed and stiched together; half monkey (upper body) and half fish (lower). Barnum's Little Woolly Horse was another one of his skyrockets or advertisements to attract attention to his real oddities. Barnum's biggest attraction was Jumbo the elephant; his smallest at 25 inches was 15-pound General Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton), discovered at the age of 5 in 1842. Commodore Nutt was Barnum’s second midget. Barnum also made Siamese Twins Chang and Eng famous. During the Draft Riot (July 13-16, 1863), mobs attacked P.T. Barnum’s Museum of Oddities two years before the building on Broadway and Ann Street would burn down completely. After that disastrous fire on July 13th, 1865, P.T. Barnum's American Museum moved to another site at 539–541 Broadway (NW corner of Spring Street), this second location was called Barnum and Van Amburgh Museum and Menagerie Company (539 Broadway, between Spring and Prince Streets). Barnum's second museum, which offered daily educational performances, took over the building that once housed the former Chinese Rooms (1851), Broadway Casino (1852), Buckley's Minstrel Hall (1853), and Melodeon Concert Hall (1858-1861). Barnum had partnered with the Van Amburgh Menagerie Company to enable even larger animals (elephants, rhinos. lions, tigers, leopards) to be exhibited. Barnum's New Museum, or Barnum and Van Amburgh Museum and Menagerie Company, opened September 6th, 1865, but it also burned down May 3rd, 1868, after a fire in the basement restaurant. Two more Barnum locations followed, one on 14th and 3rd Avenue and then the last by Madison Square Park. Barnum's Circus, Museum and Menagerie on 14th Street (across from the Academy of Music, by 3rd Ave.) caught fire at 4:10 a.m. December 24th, 1872, once again burning all the animals to death. P.T. Barnum’s Traveling Worlds Fair, Great Roman Hippodrome and Greatest Show On Earth opened in April 1871 in Brooklyn before traveling from Maine to Kansas. Barnum was over 60 when he went circus. When Grand Central was built in 1871, Barnum took over the previous passenger train depot site, and in April 1874, Barnum's 8,000-seat Hippodrome (first called Barnum's Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome) opened on Madison Avenue between 26th and 27th Streets. This Barnum venue included chariot races, Wild West shows, waltzing elephants and circus acts galore. The Hippodrome then became Gilmore's Garden, and in 1879, the site of the first Madison Square Garden, which featured track cycling events. Stanford White opened the second Madison Square Garden, also at 26th and Madison Avenue in 1890, with 17,000 customers on opening night to witness horse shows, a new tower, and classy rooftop garden. Madison Square Garden moved to 50th Street and Eighth Avenue in 1925 and hosted wrestling and boxing matches mostly. In 1881, Barnum merged his circus business with James A. Bailey. In 1882, Barnum and England's Jumbo the elephant paraded around NYC streets. In 1884, P.T. Barnum took 21 elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge led by the famous Jumbo. Barnum never said, "There's a sucker born every minute." The line was uttered by one of his competitors named David Hannum. In late 1869, Barnum offered Hannum $50,000 for the Cardiff Giant, but he wouldn’t sell. Barnum carved a giant of his own and proclaimed that Hannum sold him the real giant and was exhibiting a fake. Hannum sued and issued the famous quote to refer to the people who paid to see Barnum's fake giant. In court, George Hull, an archeologist who originally sold Hannum the giant for $30,000, stepped forward and admitted that the giant was a hoax. Barnum could not be sued for calling it a fake when it was a fake after all, and the lawsuit was thrown out of court. Hannum was quickly forgotten, and Barnum was remembered for the famous quote. NYC's first museum was the Tammany Museum, which first opened in 1783 in a room in the second City Hall (at Wall and Broad Streets). The Tammany Museum featured a live lion, American Indian artifacts, art prints, and farming equipment. The museum moved in 1810 to 39 Park Row (the old 21 Chatham Street) where it became Scudder’s Museum. John Scudder may have originally been a partner of Barnum’s. The museum moved to the north side of City Hall Park in 1817, taking over the yellow two-story Almshouse building (also called New York Institution) before moving to the NE corner of Broadway and Ann Streets where the first Barnum Museum would locate. Barnum's American Museum opened in 1842 on the corner of Ann Street and Broadway.
Hampden Hall	East side of Broadway at Ann Street	(40.711231, -74.008605)
The Liberty Boys bought a building in the Spring Garden on the east side of Broadway at Ann, where Barnum would build his first museum. This new Liberty Boy clubhouse was named Hampden Hall in honor of a great English patriot. An attempt to topple the fifth Liberty Pole was made on March 29th, 1771, but the alarm rallied enough patriots to save Hampden Hall from being burned down, and the fifth Liberty Pole survived.
Park Theatre	21-25 Park Row	(40.711477, -74.007275)
The Park Theatre was built between May 5th, 1795, when the cornerstone was laid, and opened on January 29th, 1798, at 21-25 Park Row, by Nassau Street overlooking City Hall Park. The first play was Shakespeare's "As You Like It." America's first grand Italian opera opened at the Park Theatre on November 29th, 1825, with Rossini's "Barber of Seville." On February 14th, 1842, the theatre was converted into a ballroom for a party honoring Charles Dickens; 2,500 people attended. The Park Theatre, NYC's fourth theatre, could seat 2,400 customers, and it even had a coffee room. A large glass chandelier hung from a great vaulted dome. The theatre burned down in 1820, was rebuilt the following year, but burned down again for good on December 16th, 1848.
Windust's Restaurant	5 to 11 Park Row	(40.711272, -74.007951)
The entrance was at 5 Ann Street, but Edward Windust's restaurant (1824-1865) extended down to Park Row (5-11 Chatham Street). Customers included Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert E. Lee, Miles O'Reilly, Horace Greeley and many actors and actresses from the nearby Park Theatre. Windust's first restaurant was on 149 Water Street, but he didn’t find business there to his liking so he moved next to the famous Park Theatre. Windust lived next door at 11 Ann Street, and in 1865 opened the Athenaeum Hotel at 347 Broadway by Leonard Street. During the Draft Riots, Horace Greeley ate at Windust's Restaurant while hiding under a table after he and his assistant were chased by the mobs.
Scudder's Museum	21 Chatham Street (37 or 39 Park Row)	(40.711744, -74.006277)
Dr. John Scudder was a traveling organ-grinder who collected oddities while on the road. In 1810, he bought the Tammany Society Museum (NYC's first museum, which started in 1783) from Gardner Baker, who had acquired the museum in 1808 when it was located in a room in the City Hall on Wall Street. The original Tammany Museum featured a live lion, American Indian artifacts, art prints, and farming equipment. Scudder moved the museum to 21 Chatham Street (now 39 Park Row) in 1810, and called it the Chatham Museum. Also known as Scudder's American Museum, it featured stuffed animals, a live anaconda, and an alligator. In 1816, the second version of Scudder's Museum opened off Chambers Street on the north side of City Hall Park. It was located in the upper west end of the New York Institution building (the former Chamber Street Almshouse). The Chambers Street Almshouse, the second almshouse built in City Hall Park, consisted of six three-story buildings remodeled after the paupers moved out and renamed New York Institution. Scudder died in 1822, and his son (also named John) took over the museum at the New York Institution. In 1824, Scudder's Museum moved to a five-story building at the southeast corner of Broadway and Ann Streets. Here, Barnum's American Museum opened in 1842, with John Scudder as a partner, before the 315-ft. St. Paul Building was built in 1898. The American Museum was the first marble-fronted structure built since the third (and present) City Hall, and NYC's first granite building in NYC. For $12,000, P.T. Barnum became the proprietor of the American Museum after signing a 10-year lease with the owner of the museum building, Francis W. Olmsted, on December 27th, 1841, and agreeing to buy the entire failing collection from Scudder's daughters in 1840. Barnum started out exhibiting an old woman he was passing off as George Washington's nurse at a Chatham Square coffeehouse at Bowery and Division Street. In the basement of the Scudder Museum at 11 Park Row (then called Chatham Street) was an 1832 restaurant run by Alexander Welsh. The main attraction was its turtle soup, which suggested the restaurant’s name, Terrapin Lunch. The restaurant afterwards moved down Park Row to 66 Chatham Street.
Ah Ken's Cigar Stand	Park Row by the City Hall Fence	(40.71239, -74.00507)
In 1858, Cantonese tobacconist Ah Ken set up his small cigar stand on Park Row by the City Hall fence while living in a house on Mott Street. His cigars sold for 3 cents each. This businessman was the first Chinese immigrant to permanently stay in NYC (well, besides the murderer Quimbo Appo, a China-born sailor turned tea merchant, who came to NYC in the 1840s, and was famous for his interracial marriage and called the Chinese devil man). Ah Ken also became landlord to many Chinese immigrants who came afterwards. William Longford, John Occoo and John Ava were cigar makers who formed a monopoly after Ah Ken started the cigar craze in Chinatown. The first Chinese gangster who came to NYC was Cantonese businessman Wah Kee. Wah Kee came from San Francisco in 1866, and sold fruits, vegetables and curios until he realized he could make more money above his store with gambling and opium. Wah Kee's sucess, by 1880, led many more Chinese immigrants (especially Cantonese) to NYC's Chinatown. Many of the Chinese who worked on the transcontinental railroad found themselves unwelcome on the West Coast so they settled in NYC. The first freight cars from the West Coast arrived in New York in 1870. By 1900, more than 6,300 Chinese residents were living in Chinatown, which consisted of Mott, Pell and Doyers Streets. In 1899, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion acts, which banned their naturalization into America. Thanks to Wah Kee, the Chinese Tongs made Chinatown the opium center of NYC.
Mercantile Library	135 Nassau Street	(40.711248, -74.006706)
The Mercantile Library at 135 Nassau Street, at the SW corner of Beekman, was founded in 1820 to help merchant-clerks educate themselves. The Mercantile Library Association opened in 1821 with 700 books, and by 1839 it had 18,000 volumes. By 1871, it was the fourth largest library in America after the Library of Congress, Boston Public Library, and NYC’s Astor Library. In 1855, the Mercantile Library took over the Astor Place Opera House and remained there until the building was razed in 1890. Edgar Allan Poe rented space here to write, and Emerson, Thackeray and Twain gave speeches. Members could pre-pay for a service to get home delivery of books. They used adhesive delivery stamps that were put onto the book request forms, and library messengers first delivered the books by horse and wagon. The initial cost for delivery was a 6 cents stamp, then it started using a 5 cent stamp. By 1870, the Mercantile Library used post office boxes to collect delivery request forms, and it cost 7 cents (or 20 for $1) to get the post office wrapper and stamp. By 1874, the delivery rate was raised to 10 cents, and home delivery continued until the 1930s. After that the books began shipping by regular mail through the Post Office. The Center for Fiction was founded in 1820 as a result of the Mercantile Library’s dedication to the art of fiction books before public libraries were created. This nonprofit institution was classified as a public charity by the IRS. In 1932, when this cultural institution was the nation's largest lending library, it moved up to 17 East 47th Street, its home ever since then.
Brick Presbyterian Church	NE Corner of Beekman and Nassau Streets	(40.71124, -74.006267)
The Brick Presbyterian Church and graveyard were at the NW corner of Beekman and Nassau Streets (now under the Pace building) from 1766 until 1856. During the American Revolution, the British used the church as a prison and hospital. This location was also where Cornelius Van Tienhoven (who probably faked his own death like Kenneth Lay) had his home in 1646. The hat and cane of drunken swindler Cornelius Van Tienhoven were found along the Hudson River on November 18, 1656, and the suicide of this fugitive of justice was doubted by many (he most likely escaped to the Caribbean where his brother resurfaced). Cornelius Van Tienhoven was famous for leading 80 men to what is now Hoboken NJ, in New Netherlands worst Indian massacre in history. Beekman Street marked the northern boundary of the yellow fever quarantine. Infected parts of the city were chained off and then watered down with fire hoses to clean up the abandoned contagious area. NYC once burned tar in the streets to replace the air of sickness. Sniffing camphor-soaked sponges was all the rage in 1795 to avoid the fever. Citizens also drunk vinegar to fight off sickness. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and head of a U.S. Army medical team, thought yellow fever was caused by rotting coffee, but he also thought rotten vegetables caused fevers. Rush believed the state of the blood vessels based on race, nationality, diet and morals caused yellow fever. The real culprit of the viral disease called yellow fever was the infected female Aedes aegypti mosquito (no longer found in NYC).
Tammany Museum	37 or 39 Park Row	(40.71176, -74.00632)
NYC's first museum, the Tammany Museum opened in a rented upper room in NYC's second City Hall (located at Wall and Broad Streets) after New York became America’s capital in 1790. The Tammany Museum, the second museum in America, was first run by the Tammany Society, also known as the Columbian Order. It celebrated the early history of America, featuring Indian artifacts like belts, tomahawks, wampum beads, pots, earthen jars and hieroglyphic writings on bark, skins and stones. The museum also contained art prints, farming equipment, and also exhibited a live lion. John Pintard was the Tammany member who first organized the museum. He was also known for personally organizing the New York Historical Society in 1804. Pintard started promoting the museum on August 10th, 1789, and the Tammany Museum was officially established in June 1790. By May 21st, 1791, public visiting days at the Tammany Museum were on Tuesdays and Fridays. In 1794, the collection outgrew the City Hall space so it was moved south down Broad Street to a brick building called the old Exchange Building. On June 25th, 1795, the museum was presented to its director and keeper, Gardiner Baker, because the Tammany Society lost interest in maintaining the museum. By the end of 1795, Baker's Tammany Museum (also called the American Museum) had over 500 American history books in their library room covering the development of America from economic, religious and political perspectives. Other exhibits included waxwork displays, paintings, Native American artifacts, fossils, coins, insects and live animals. When Baker died of yellow fever on September 30th, 1798, the Tammany Museum ended up in the hands of W.J. Waldron in 1800. Waldron auctioned off the museum collections, and many were bought by Edward Savage for his museum. In the 1820s John Scudder bought these old Tammany Museum items for his American Museum. In 1810, the museum moved to 39 Park Row (the old 21 Chatham Street) when it became the Chatham Museum, a.k.a. Scudder’s Museum. On certain days Scudder opened the museum free to NYC's poor. The Scudder’s American Museum then moved to the north side of City Hall Park in 1817 (until 1830), taking over the yellow two-story Almshouse (also called New York Institution) building, before moving to the NE corner of Broadway and Ann Streets. The Scudder’s Museum featured stuffed animals, a live anaconda, and an alligator. The museum merged with the Grand Museum in 1820. Dr. Scudder died in August of 1821 or 1822 (although some historical sources claim he died in 1832), and the museum was taken over by his son and widow. Scudder's widow and heirs priced the museum’s holdings at $15,000. After moving out of the New York Institution in 1830, the museum finally moved to the upper portion of the new building at the NE corner of Broadway and Ann Street, 13 years before Barnum took it over. The new building was owned by Francis W. Olmstead. A year later, in 1831, Schuyler's Exchange Lottery moved into the store floor of the museum. Other owners like Pearle's Museum became involved with the American Museum until P.T. Barnum acquired it on December 27th, 1841, and merged it with his Museum of Wonders. America’s first museum opened in Philadelphia in 1784 on Arch Street by Pierre Eugene Du Simitiere. Also called the American Museum, it charged admission of 50 cents to view American Indian artifacts and antiquities and browse through books and prints. In 1785, when Du Simitiere died, artist Charles Willson Peale started his famous Philadelphia museum, which featured a lecture room.
Monkey Hill	William Street and Park Row	(40.71259, -74.003617)
Monkey Hill was on William Street by the second Printing House Square on Park Row, which was once called Newspaper Row. Monkey Hill is now under and just north of Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Lantern Club	William Street and Park Row	(40.712655, -74.003552)
The Lantern Club of writers and journalists started their first clubhouse in 1893 on the top of Monkey Hill, over an old William Street ironmonger's shop. Monkey Hill was located behind the Municipal Building by the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, not far from Newspaper Row. William Randolph Hearst bought Monkey Hill around 1898, which led to the Lantern Club moving to Captain Kidd's old home at 126 William Street. (Kidd reportedly also lived at 56 Wall Street, and 119-121 Pearl.) Irving Bacheller was the president of the Lantern Club. Stephen Crane contributed almost half its publication, the Lanthorn Book, with his story, “The Wise Men.” The Lanthorn Book (limited to 125 signed copies) was written after the move to William Street, and was alternately called “Being a Small Collection of Tales and Verses Read at the Sign o' the Lanthorn.” Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt would visit the Lantern Club occasionally.
New York Eye Infirmary	83 Park Row	(40.712305, -74.004539)
On August 14th, 1820, two small rooms on the second floor of 45 Chatham Street (now 83 Park Row), a house across from City Hall became the first infirmary of Edward Delafield, M.D., and John Kearney Rodgers, M.D. Their first hours were noon to 1 PM Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. They performed the first congenital cataract operation in America. The second office for the New York Eye Infirmary opened in 1822, off Murray Street by Broadway across from Columbia College. The first employee was hired as both an apothecary and custodian of the medical instruments. He also applied the leeches. The third location of the infirmary was 139 Duane Street after leasing a building from New York Hospital in 1824-1826. The Infirmary moved a few times from 1826-1840, and then rented a building off Broadway at 47 Howard Street, from 1840-1845. The first permanent home of the New York Eye Infirmary was at a building they finally bought (instead of renting since 1820) at 97 Mercer Street, where they saw patients from 1845-1856. On April 25th, 1856, the Thirteenth Street and Second Avenue New York Eye Infirmary building was dedicated and opened. Edward Delafield himself gave the dedication address at this four-story brownstone, where 40-50 patients could be treated and bedded on its top three floors. The ground floor was used for the out-patient department. In 1864, it became known as the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary as the doctors also treated ear problems almost from the beginning of their practice. In 1873, the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary added a throat department, and in 1890, the School of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology was founded (even though they had been teaching and giving lectures since 1821). Three floors were added in 1890 in a remodeling handled by Stanford White. The New York Eye & Ear Infirmary's Schermerhorn Pavilion is one of the four Stanford White structures left standing in NYC (others are Washington Arch, Century Club, and the University Club). The North Building opened in 1968 on Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue, adjoining the 1856 building.
Beekman Street	Beekman Street between the East River and Park Row	(40.708206, -74.003574)
Beekman Street marked the northern boundary of the yellow fever quarantine. Infected parts of the city were chained off and then watered down with fire hoses to clean up the abandoned contagious area. NYC once burned tar in the streets to replace the air of sickness. Sniffing camphor-soaked sponges was all the rage in 1795 to avoid the fever. Citizens also drunk vinegar to fight off sickness. Mustard baths and treatment with smelly Asefetida was another remedy. Asefetida in the early days was probably the most adulterated drug in the world market, being well-known since the 15th century. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and head of a U.S. Army medical team, thought yellow fever was caused by rotting coffee, but he also thought rotten vegetables caused fevers. Rush believed the state of the blood vessels based on race, nationality, diet and morals caused yellow fever. The real culprit of the viral disease called yellow fever was the infected female Aedes aegypti mosquito (no longer found in NYC). Proof of the real cause of yellow fever emerged in 1900 when an infected mosquito was tested on William E. Dean, a soldier from Troop B, Seventh Cavalry. Dean was tested in Havana Cuba by United States Army bacteriologists Dr. James Carroll, and Dr. Jesse Lazear along with Cuban surgeon Dr. Aristides Agramonte in mid September 1900. These three doctors worked for the Yellow Fever Commission headed by 49 year old Major Walter Reed, who for his insight has the Army's leading medical center named after him. The first doctor to bring up the mosquito theory was Dr. Carlos Finlay a Cuban physician in 1881. Dr. Finlay was first called a crank and a crazy old man, but became the chief health officer of Cuba from 1902 to 1909. History books credit Walter Reed for the discovery but the real credit should go to this Cuban doctor who now has a monument in Marianao in Havana and a statue in Panama City.
Clinton Hotel	5 Beekman Street	(40.711394, -74.006782)
The Clinton hotel at 5 Beekman by Nassau Street was named after George W. Clinton, but it was made famous by the Leland family. The first Leland who worked at the Clinton was Major William W. Leland, but he died on August 9th, 1879 from eating unripe cherries when he was 59. Major Leland was best known for being an earlier proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel next to Niblo's Theatre on Broadway and Prince Street. William's dad Simeon Leland Senior was the Donald Trump of his time. Simeon in 1820, first opened a store in Landgrove Hollow, Vermont, a few years later he also opened the Leland Coffee House in the same town. Simeon Leland Senior started the family hotel business during the Revolutionary War by building and managing a hotel in Vermont, which was the headquarters of Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys. Preston Henry Hodges got his father Preston Hodges to buy the Clinton Hotel in 1832, they remained business partners until 1839. Preston Henry Hodges then took over the Carlton House and ran that hotel until 1857. Simeon Leland Junior became proprietor of the Clinton Hotel, but he sold it to his brothers Charles and Warren. Brothers Charles and Warren Leland controlled the Clinton Hotel for more than 20 years. Simeon Junior's son, Warren F. Leland was 16 years old when he started working for his uncles at the Metropolitan Hotel, which was also owned (since 1852) by his father Simeon Jr. and his brothers (Charles, William and Warren Leland). Simeon Senior's nephew, Lewis Leland, son of Simeon's brother Aaron, also worked at the Clinton Hotel in 1847 and the Metropolitan Hotel in 1852. Lewis Leland was good friends with Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). Lewis Leland died on May 8th, 1889 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Brooklyn. Warren Leland's wife, Isabella Cobb, and daughter died in a fire at the Windsor Hotel, another hotel Warren managed, on March 17th, 1899. As the hotel was at 575 5th Avenue (corner of East 47th Street) and it was St. Patrick's Day, the crowds watching the parade hampered the firemen's rescue efforts and about 90 people died. After his nervous collapse from the tragedy, Leland was found to have had appendicitis and died April 4th, 1899. The unidentified dead from the Windsor Hotel fire were buried in Kensico Cemetery in Flushing Queens. Two Delmonico restaurants also operated on Beekman Street, one at Nassau and the other at Pearl Street.
Pewter Mug	Park Row between Frankfort and Spruce Streets	(40.711906, -74.005569)
Next door to Tammany Hall was the Pewter Mug, one of the most celebrated taverns in the U.S. The owner, Thomas Dunlop, greeted the highest political officials who would make pilgrimages the Pewter Mug seeking public support and Dunlop’s endorsement.
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