Frankfort Street / Pearl Street		(40.709595,-74.001854)
Beekman's Swamp	Beekman Street just West of Pearl Street	(40.708475, -74.003456)
Leather production required tanneries to create tan pits where the hides were soaked and treated with lime. These tan pits that were by Wall Street were moved to the Collect Pond and Beekman’s Swamp in 1720. Beekman's Swamp was bought by Jacobus Roosevelt in 1732 or 1734 for 200 pounds. This swamp on the site of Beekman's farm was also called the Kripple Bush (tangled briars) and the Old Man's Swamp. Beekman's swamp was used as a garbage dump by 1780. William Beekman (born Wilhelmus Hendrickse Beekman) came from the lower Rhine region (Niederrhein) of Germany, sailing to the U.S. from Holland in 1647 on the same boat as Peter Stuyvesant. He married and moved to Corlaer's Hook. Stuyvesant made him resident treasurer of the Dutch West India Company. Beekman bought land in 1670 from Thomas Hall, whose house was at the corner of Pearl and Beekman. Beekman joined the militia and rose to lieutenant by 1673. Between 1681 and 1683, he served as deputy mayor of NYC. On July 28th, 1686, he bought land along the Hudson (now called Rhinebeck) from the Esopus Indians. In 1700 a hotel opened in Rhinebeck called the Beekman Arms Hotel. It’s still operating today, making it the oldest continuously operating hotel in the U.S. The high-profile loyalist William Walton had his house about 100 yards away from the old swamp. He was the nephew of Cornelia Beekman.
Black Ball Line Pier	Beekman Street at the East River	(40.706685, -74.002308)
The Black Ball Line Pier on the East River was at the foot of Beekman Street. Overall, in its first year of operation after opening October 5th, 1817, the Black Ball Line packet ship averaged 43 days westbound (to Liverpool, England) and 25 days eastbound (to South Street, NYC). The Black Ball Line sailed on the first day of each month. New York Quakers Isaac Wright, Francis Thompson, Benjamin Marshall, Jeremiah Thompson, and Wright’s son began the Black Ball Line, which flew a flag with a black ball on a red background. They began with four ships, the Amity, the James Cropper, the Pacific, and the William Thompson. In 1821 the Black Ball Line added four more ships to sail on the 16th of each month. The Red Star line started in 1821 with four ships that sailed the same route on the 24th of each month. Sixteen large ships participated in the company’s weekly schedule of ocean crossings from NYC to England. The Black Ball line lasted until 1881.
Cornelius Dircksen's Ferry	Pearl and Dover Streets	(40.709383, -74.001667)
The closest Manhattan land to Brooklyn was at Peck's Slip. The farm of Cornelis Dircksen (Cornelis Dircksen Hoagland or Hoochlandt) started just north of the Water Gate at Pearl and Wall Streets and went up to Peck's Slip. Landowner, farmer and inn owner, Dircksen ran the first ferry service across the East River. He rowed his canoe or small rowboat from Peck’s Slip at Pearl and Dover Streets to a landing by the Wallabout settlement in Brooklyn. In 1637 or 1638 (one or two years after the Dutch settled in Brooklyn), Dircksen’s small skiff could be summoned by a toot from a horn. Dircksen employed another ferryman on the Brooklyn side to respond to a horn hung there. Dircksen's Manhattan horn hung against one of his trees by NYC's old waterfront at Pearl and Dover Streets. The trip across the river first cost settlers 3 stuyvers in wampum (about 6 cents). For some reason Dircksen charged Native American Indians double. In 1642, Cornelius Dircksen expanded and started a real ferry service from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. His business outgrew the rowboat and canoe so he upgraded to sailboats, which ran from Peck's Slip in Manhattan to what was to become Fulton's Landing in Brooklyn (Breuckelen). He doubled the per-person fare for a one-way voyage to 6 beads of wampum; 12 beads for the Indians. The director, city council members, and other NYC officials rode free. When city officials started drafting rules and regulations, the fares were raised to 15 cents and 30 cents for Indians. Dircksen's Inn on the Manhattan side was a ferry house run like a tavern. Dircksen owned 33 acres of land in Brooklyn by Fulton's landing, which he sold to Willem Thomassen in 1643 for 2,300 guilders. When a tavern on the Brooklyn side became extremely popular, Dircksen was angry that he was left with just his inn on the Manhattan side. Dircksen would cancel ferry runs during big storms with strong winds, and in winter he would continue service until big cakes of ice blocked the river. A NYC law went into effect that called for Dircksen's ferry to remain docked whenever the sails on the Battery windmill were brought inside. In 1655, ferryman Egbert Van Borsum leased the ferry (for three years, then renewed it until at least June 15th, 1663) from Governor Stuyvesant for 300 guilders per year and opened the first ferry house tavern inside a wooden building by the road to the ferry. Egbert died shortly before the British took over NYC on September 6th, 1664. By 1664 Harmanus Van Borsum (the son of Egbert) became the ferryman who responded to the sound of the long metal ferry horn. By 1700, a stone ferry house and tavern was built by the New York Corporation to replace the Borsums’ old wooden one. The Brooklyn Stone Ferry House and tavern was burned down in 1748 by those protesting New York Corporation's ownership of Brooklyn property and shoreline. For 20 years the Brooklyn Ferry used rowboats, pirogues (types of canoes), and barges. Horse boats (horses on treadmills between two twin boats) were used between 1814 and 1824, until steamboats returned the horses on solid ground.
Walton House	326 Pearl Street, SE side of Dover Street	(40.709365, -74.001549)
It could be said that the elegant three-story Walton House led to the Stamp Act and in turn the American Revolution. British officials who were entertained at the residence surmised that a colony so rich it could build such a fancy place could also afford to pay a stamp tax. This Franklin Square area was the most aristocratic part of NYC so it was also the ideal place to open the Bank of New York. The yellow-brick and brown-trimmed Walton House at 67 St. George Square (326 Pearl Street) was the location of NYC's (and America’s) first bank. The Bank of New York was founded in March 1784 and opened to the public on June 9th, 1784, a few months before the British left NYC (November 25th, 1784, celebrated as Evacuation Day for decades). It was a private bank without a charter, but it had a constitution written by Alexander Hamilton. The Bank of New York (founded in March 1784) was the first bank in NYC and the country until 1792, when the Federalists also opened a branch of the First Bank of the United States (whose headquarters in Philadelphia opened December 12th, 1791). From June 9th, 1784 to 1799, no other political party member could get access to funds like the Federalists could. The Bank of New York was first located in the Walton House, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge and north of Dover Street. It moved to Hanover Square three years later, and then to the NE corner of William and Wall Streets in 1791. On December 10th, 1853, a fire destroyed the Franklin Square Hotel at 328 Pearl Street as well as the magnificent Walton House.
Harper and Brothers	331 Pearl Street, close to the SW corner of Frankfort and Pearl Streets	(40.709467, -74.001532)
Franklin Square (Pearl and Cherry by Dover) was the location of book publishers Harper and Brothers between 1854 and 1920. The Harper and Brothers building was built in 1854 by James Bogardus. James and John Harper were brothers from Brooklyn who started their printing business in 1817 as J & J Harper. In 1825, their brothers Wesley and Fletcher joined in to create Harper and Brothers. Their first publishing success came in 1836 with an anti-Catholic book, “Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures.” By 1844, James Harper’s anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic stance got him elected mayor of NYC. The Harper and Brothers book and magazine publishing firm founded Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1850), Harper's Weekly (1857) Harper's Bazaar (1867), and Harper's Magazine. In 1962, the publishing company became Harper & Row after they merged with Row, Peterson & Company. Then they merged with William Collins publishers in 1990, forming Harper Collins. It’s been owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation since 1987.
Washington's 1st Presidential Mansion	1 Cherry Street, east side of Pearl and Cherry Streets under the Brooklyn Bridge	(40.709538, -74.001431)
Cherry Street once started just north of the NE side of Dover and Pearl Streets at Franklin Square, and 1 Cherry Street was the address of George Washington's first Presidential Mansion (that New Yorkers call The Palace). Congress rented the Franklin mansion for Washington’s Executive Mansion (for 900 pounds a year) from April 23rd, 1789, to February 23rd, 1790. Franklin Square was named after Quaker Walter Franklin, and after Washington slept there, it was named St. George Square. The white colonial home where Washington resided was built in 1770 for wealthy merchant Walter Franklin, who made his fortune being an importer. Upon his death on June 8th, 1780, the three-story mansion was taken over by Samuel Osgood when he married Franklin's widow. Osgood, who later became the first Postmaster General of the United States, stayed elsewhere in NYC when Washington came to town. The Franklin Mansion was torn down in 1856 to widen Pearl Street, and some of the land was used for a coal yard. Some of the timber from the Franklin Mansion was made into a chair for the president of the New York Historical Society. The site of 1 Cherry Street (right under the south side of the Brooklyn Bridge) is just north of the east side of Pearl and Dover Streets. On April 30th, 1899, the Mary Washington Colonial Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a plaque commemorating George Washington's first Presidential Mansion, on an anchorage supporting one of the big stone arches on the south side of the Brooklyn Bridge (opened in 1883). The plaque is basically not visible to the public these days, both because of steelwork attached to support the bridge and a metal fence that the Department of Transportation put up after 9-11 for security reasons. DeWitt Clinton would later reside in the former Franklin house at 1 Cherry Street. In 1786, Washington's neighbor at 5 Cherry Street was John Hancock, who became president of the Continental Congress. In 1818, years after Hancock moved out, Boss Tweed's parents lived at 5 Cherry Street and then moved to 13 Cherry Street for several years, next to Samuel Legget's house (the first home in NYC to have gas). Boss Tweed was born on Cherry Street April 3rd, 1823. That whole area was torn down in the 1880s to make room for the Brooklyn Bridge. By then, the neighborhood was far from the most aristocratic part of Manhattan, and actually quite the opposite. The area now called Cherry Hill became part of the notorious Fourth Ward, replete with brothels, taverns and boardinghouses. Charley Monell’s Hole in the Wall was one of the more insane locations of that district. It employed 6-foot-tall Englishwoman Gallus Mag as a bouncer who bit off the ears of troublemakers with her filed teeth. Charley Monell had only one arm, but with Gallus and his other helper, Kate Flannery, he was in good hands. In 1869, Sadie the Goat joined the Charlton Street Gang, whose headquarters were at a low gin mill on the Hudson off Charlton Street. She was a Fourth Ward character for years until a fight with Gallus Mag ended with one of Sadie’s ears bit off and added to Gallus Mag's pickled collection behind the bar at the Hole in the Wall. Sadie got her severed ear back and wore it in a locket around her neck. Slobbery Jim and Patsy the Barber, both members of the Daybreak Boys, also had a big fight at the Hole in the Wall bar over the 12 cents they killed a German over. The approximate site of the old Hole in the Wall bar is now the Bridge Cafe. After George Washington moved from this first Presidential Mansion, he stayed at the 1786 Macomb Mansion at 39-41 Broadway from February 23rd, 1790, until he left for Philadelphia, in late August 1790. Alexander Macomb's Mansion later became a fine hotel. The site at 39-41 Broadway could have been the site where Adrian Block built four small huts for his crew in 1613-1614. Block's ship supposedly caught fire right off a bay in the Hudson River by the World Trade Center site. A bigger and more easily navigable bay where his docked boat probably caught fire was off the East River by the Collect Pond stream, which ended up being named Old Wreck Brook. From Boston, Washington returned to NYC on April 14th, 1776, and moved into Richmond Hill on the corner of Varick and Charlton Streets. The house on the hill was built by Major Martier, an English officer, in 1766. It was also the home of Vice President Adams and then Aaron Burr (until his duel with Alexander Hamilton). Burr sold it to John Jacob Astor. Washington used the Roger Morris house in Harlem as his headquarters after the Battle of Brooklyn Heights. The Morris house became the Morris-Jumel Mansion after it was forfeited because of Morris's ties to the British crown. It was then bought as well by John Jacob Astor and sold to Stephen Jumel. After Jumel died, his widow who wiped him out financially married Aaron Burr for an extremely short time until he tried wiping her out her fortune.
Cow Foots Hill	Pearl and Cherry Streets	(40.709629, -74.001492)
Cow Foots Hill, by the old intersection of Pearl and Cherry Streets, was under the southern side of the Brooklyn Bridge, a few blocks north of Golden Hill where Frankfort met Pearl, just west of Cherry Street. A pleasure garden from 1670 was established by Englishman Richard Sackett at the top of this or another hill on Cherry Street. At Sacket's the English customers liked to drink West India Rum and toast Queen Anne. Its main attraction was an orchard of cherry trees locals called the Cherry Garden.
Samuel Leggett's House	7 Cherry Street	(40.709621, -74.000709)
The first gas-lit house in Manhattan, the three-story brick home of Con Edison founder and president Samuel Leggett was once at 7 Cherry Street (now under the Brooklyn Bridge just east of Pearl Street). It was serviced by a gas pipe from the Pearl Street headquarters of the New York Gas Light Company, NYC’s first gas company. The company that would become Con Edison would light 17,000 homes. Gas pioneer Leggett was only 41 when his home got gas, and before then New Yorkers used oil lamps. On March 26th, 1823, the New York Gas Light Company was chartered and obtained the right to make, manufacture and sell gas made out of coal, oil, tar, peat, pitch, or turpentine. Leggett, who was a Quaker born October 4th, 1782, also headed the Franklin Bank, which opened in 1817 on nearby Franklin Square (Pearl and Dover Streets). Leggett died January 5th, 1847, and is buried in the Flushing Quaker Meeting House in Flushing, Queens. He left his fortune to his six sons and seven daughters.
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