Centre Street / Chambers Street			(40.713291,-74.004079)
Aaron Burr's Law Office		11 Reade Street	(40.713816, -74.004268)
Aaron Burr based his first law practice in Albany in 1782, but later opened the first of his many NYC law offices near Alexander Hamilton's home and law office at 33 Wall Street, at 10 Cedar Street, and lived upstairs. Burr’s numerous law office locations included Nassau Street, at 9, 23 or 73 Nassau Street; many of them just cubbyholes. After he won the VP election of 1800, Aaron Burr became America’s third vice president, serving 1801-1805. Burr’s victory was thanks in part to Tammany; John Adams might have been re-elected if he won NY State. Burr was historically noted as the first vice president not to win the presidency. Burr lived on Maiden Lane before moving to the Richmond Hill estate that George Washington once used as his headquarters. While Thomas Jefferson served as Secretary of State in 1790, he lived at a small rented house at 57 Maiden Lane. In 1929, the Home Insurance Company unveiled a plaque honoring Thomas Jefferson on their high rise headquarters building at 57 Maiden Lane. America's first legal “dream team” consisting of Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Brockholst Livingston (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court) defended carpenter Levy Weeks, who most likely killed Gulielma (Elma) Sands and dumped her body in the Manhattan Well on Spring and Greene Streets. Thanks to this dream team, Weeks was acquitted of her December 22nd, 1799, murder. The back story was that after three years of staying at her cousin Catherine Rings’ apartment, Elma Sands was to be wed to Levy Weeks, who also was living in the building. Witnesses saw Weeks’ brother Ezra’s sleigh near the well, and other witnesses heard a girl scream “Murder!” The Weeks brothers were doing construction for Alexander Hamilton at the Hamilton Grange in Harlem Heights, a connection that led to his defending Weeks. After the judge freed Weeks, Catherine Rings rose from her courtroom seat, pointed to Hamilton and cursed him, saying, “If thee dies a natural death, I shall think there is no justice in heaven.” Four years later on July 11th, 1804, Catherine Rings must have been celebrating Hamilton's death from the hands of another lawyer at her cousin’s murder trial. Burr was indicted in both New York and New Jersey for murdering Hamilton, but the charges were dismissed or resulted in acquittal so he was never jailed or even fined. After he left the vice presidency in 1805, Burr wanted to secede from America and form his own monarchy in western North America. Wanting to lead an insurrection into Spanish possessions in Mexico got him arrested in 1807 for treason, but he was acquitted once again. Burr’s self-exile to Europe lasted several years, but he returned to practice law again. At the age of 55, Burr re-opened his NYC law offices in June 1812. His offices on Reade Street just east of Broadway were where A.T. Stewart's Marble Palace building now stands. A later Burr law office was located by the Collect Pond, at 11 Reade Street just west of Centre Street, right across from the main water pump of his Manhattan Company. Burr’s few remaining friends moved him to the Jay House on Bowling Green after his quick marriage to Madame Jumel. When the Jay House was torn down in 1836, Burr moved to Port Richmond, Staten Island. After a long rich life, Burr died in comparative obscurity and poverty on September 14th, 1836. He was 80 when his story ended. Aaron Burr's daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston, who owned the old carriage house (between 7th Avenue and West 4th Street), still haunts the One If By Land, Two If By Sea restaurant at 17 Barrow Street.
African American Burial Ground		Between Chambers, Duane, Broadway and Centre Streets	(40.714323, -74.003896)
The first African American Burial Ground (originally referred to the Negroes' Burial Place) was largely forgotten in the history books and old maps until 1991. This seven-acre, low-lying site was used as a cemetery for slaves from 1640 until 1790, and the grounds still hold an estimated 20,000 bodies. Less than 420 of them (almost half children) are preserved at Howard University after the Federal Office Building (first called Foley Square Project federal building, now called the Ted Weiss Federal Building) at 290 Broadway (between Duane and Reade Streets) uncovered this part of NYC that was almost written out of history. It’s shocking that even though there were still enough historical references to the burial grounds, the builders could were unaware of the facts. Even though the old Negroes' Burial Grounds were covered up by 25 feet of fill (NYC first landfill project), it’s very likely that remains were first discovered under A.T. Stewart's Marble Palace when it was constructed in 1846, and possibly under the federal building next to 290 Broadway between Worth and Duane Streets. Blacks were buried alongside whites during the Dutch era, but after the British took over NYC in 1664, things changed. In a resolution described in the vestry minutes of October 25th, 1697, Trinity Church introduced formal policies restricting burials of Negroes that took effect four weeks later. Seventy years later in 1767, Trinity's vestry designated a burial ground for Negroes on a piece of the church farm until August 19th, 1795. The site on Anthony Rutgers' land was bounded by Church, Reade, and Chapel (the former name for West Broadway between Warren and Canal) Streets. This forgotten lot is parallel to the current African Burial Ground, just a few blocks west. The first recorded burials in the current African Burial Ground graveyard were as early as 1640 when the first African farms were established, but the 21 Africans executed after the April 6th, 1712, slave revolt got the historic recognition as being first. Records show a 1722 law prohibiting night funerals of slaves south of the Collect Pond. In March, 1741, thefts and suspicious fires led to a famous trial near the Great Negro Plot where 13 Negroes were sentenced to be burned at the stake and 17 hanged, and these famous bodies were also buried in the Negroes' Burial Ground. The 1755, the Maerschalck Plan map marked the site of the burial grounds. Burials at the Negroes’ Burial Ground ended in 1790, and the subdivision of the land for real estate interests over it began in 1795. The site is America’s oldest African American cemetery, and NYC's only subterranean landmark that can't be seen. The northern part of the City Hall Park was used as a potter's field for the poor who died in the old Almshouse, as well as a mass burial site for American prisoners abused by the British. The burial grounds lie mostly east of Broadway and south of Duane Street to Vesey Street. The African Burial Ground Interpretive Center is located on the 34th floor of the Federal Building at 290 Broadway. It features “Unearthed,” a finished bronze with patina sculpture by Frank Bender; “America Song,” a concrete, granite, stainless steel, and fiber optics sculpture by Clyde Lynds; “The New Ring Shout,” a terrazzo and polished brass multilayered work by Houston Cronwill, based on the historical ring shout dance of celebration performed throughout North America and the Caribbean; “Africa Rising,” a bronze sculpture with wool and silk fibers by Barbara Chase-Riboud, dealing with the transport of Africans to America, and their bondage and struggle for freedom; “Renewal,” a silkscreen on canvas mural by Tomie Arai commemorating the African Burial Ground site; and an untitled painting transformed to glass mosaics by Roger Brown. On the outside part of the historic site is a 25-foot granite monument, titled the Door of Return. The monument includes a map of the Atlantic and was created by Haitian-American architects Rodney Leon and Nicole Hollant-Denis, who based the name on the Door of No Return. That’s what they called the slave ports on the West Africa coast where so many slaves were transported. The one-block remainder of Elk Street has been officially renamed African Burial Ground Way. On April 19th, 1993, the African American Burial Ground site was designated the 123rd National Historic Landmark. The second African American burial ground is hardly mentioned in articles about the first burial ground located by City Hall. The second one existed from 1795 to 1843 in the area of the B and D subway train route near what used to be the Grand Street shuttle from West 4th Street. The old site lies under the M'Finda Kalunga Garden in the Sara Roosevelt Park between Stanton, Rivington, Chrystie and Forsyth Streets. In 1827, the Protestant Episcopal St. Philip’s Church (now in Harlem) obtained ownership of this second graveyard at 195/197 Chrystie Street and supposedly disinterred and re-buried most of the remains in the St. Philip's plot in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn.
Chambers Street Wall		Chambers Street from East River to Hudson River	(40.713139, -74.004083)
In 1653, Wall Street actually had a wall that followed a fence to keep animals from the crops outside the city limits. The wall was erected to address the threat of New England attacks on the old city that was packed together south of Wall Street (they never anticipated attack from British ships). This famous Wall Street wall was not the only wall in NYC's history; the city was actually walled twice. A few years after the military started using City Hall Park for a parade ground in the 1730s, NYC created its second wall in 1745, a year after the French declared war on the British. This palisade of 14-foot cedar logs zigzagged across NYC from the foot of Chambers at the Hudson River (still called the North River at that point) to just north of Mr. Desbrosses’ house at 57 Cherry Street by the East River. The Desbrosses house was the northern-most home in NYC limits at the time (before the Kips Bay homes). The wall went westerly from the Desbrosses house to Katy Munz's home by Catimut's Hill, and then just north of Chambers Street to the North River (Hudson). Katy Munz was known as Aunt Katy and had a tea garden between Pearl and Chatham (Park Row) Streets, just east of Gallows Hill. Besides a barricade against the French, this second wall also protected the town from angry Indians who didn't take slaughter lightly. Thanks to blunders by governors such as Willem Kieft's February 25th, 1643, slaughter of Native Americans at Corlear's Hook and Pavonia (Jersey City), NYC was only too aware of the hostility in the air. One of the Chambers Street wall’s six blockhouses was on the site of A.T Stewart's Marble Palace on the NE corner of Broadway and Chambers. The gate at this main blockhouse allowed entry to Broadway by City Hall from the wilderness on the other side. The six blockhouses had portholes for cannons. There were four strong gates on the Chambers Street Wall, Broadway, Greenwich Street, Pearl Street and the Post Road (Park Row, then called Chatham Street). Other blockhouses were situated at Pearl Street by Madison Street (then called Bancker), and by Chambers between Church and Chapel Streets (West Broadway). Within the wall was a four-foot high by four-foot wide platform where soldiers could shoot their muskets through perforated holes to defend the city.
City Hall Park Almshouse		City Hall Park West of Frankfort Street	(40.712705, -74.006041)
City Hall Park Almshouse was built by the Common Council in 1734-35 on the site where the current City Hall stands. This first almshouse was a two-story brick building used by all types of indigent citizens, including vagabonds, rogues, paupers, disorderly persons, parents of bastard children, tramps, trespassers, runaway servants and beggars. The Almshouse had a cemetery to its east (uncovered in 1999) just beyond the workhouse’s fence. City Hall Park was one of NYC's early areas of prostitution; so was the area around Trinity and St. Paul's Churches. In 1796, a second Almshouse was built to replace the older Almshouse that was torn down just to its south. This second Almshouse was built off the south side of Chambers Street in six connected, three-story buildings (that were destroyed by fire in 1857 and where the Tweed County Court House is today. In 1812, Almshouse's six-bed infirmary and other functions moved uptown to what would become Bellevue (then called the Public Work House and Home of Correction) at 26th Street and 1st Avenue. A homeless Jack London slept on the benches of City Hall Park in the 1890s before writing The Call of the Wild. London liked being close to Newspaper Row, where he could buy defective bound books for a few cents from pushcart men. He spent his days reading and nights performing and writing while living as a hobo in the park. Jack London committed suicide at the age of 40. In 1817, a city soup kitchen and dispensary were constructed on the SW corner of Centre and Chambers Streets, and by 1835 the dispensary was shared with a hook and ladder fire company. The Fire Department kept control of that City Hall Park corner with a series of firehouses until 1906.
Civic Fame Statue		Chambers and Centre Streets	(40.712929, -74.003583)
On the top of the Municipal Building (one of the largest government office buildings in the world) is Adolph A. Weinman's giant 25-foot statue, “Civic Fame.” The statue is holding a five-point crown representing and celebrating NYC's five boroughs. It is NYC's second largest statue after the Statue of Liberty. Built in 1914, the Municipal Building is engraved with the words Civic Duty, Civic Pride, Executive Power, Guidance, Progress and Prudence just above the ground floor colonnade. Chambers Street once passed through the classical colonnade, which also framed the entrance to the lower east side slums. A German-born sculptor, Adolph A. Weinman also designed the Liberty Dime and the half dollar.
Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank		49 - 51 Chambers Street	(40.713881, -74.00543)
The old Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank Building at 49-51 Chambers Street was built between 1908 and 1912. After 1965, 49-51 Chambers Street was filled with city offices and is now a NYC Landmark. This Beaux-Arts/Art Nouveau limestone building was the first H plan skyscraper, giving light and air to most of its offices. Several stained glass skylights shine down on the banking hall with its marble walls and floors. The architect of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, Raymond F Almirall built the bank to serve NYC's working class immigrants, and it was used mostly by Irish Catholics who transferred funds from their main office in Dublin. By 1925, the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank had assets of over $290 million and became the largest savings bank in America. The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank moved in 1932, east of Fifth Avenue on 42nd Street. The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie was filmed in this double towered old bank on Chambers Street.
Hall of Records		31 Chambers Street	(40.713467, -74.004342)
A Beaux Arts-styled building built between 1899 and 1907 at the NW corner of Centre Street, 31 Chambers Street was the old Hall of Records, and the structure since 1962 has been called Surrogate's Court. Construction cost $7 million and has housed the Municipal Archives since 1950. The archive’s collections of over two million pictures and photographic items date back to the early 17th century and take up 160,000 cubic feet of space. It is America’s main source for family history. Since 1984, its master records, drawings, manuscripts, negatives, certificates, books and photos have been copied onto silver-halide microfilm and taken off-site to a secure, climate-controlled facility. These second generation research tools are used for public access in the Municipal Archives Reference Room and for interlibrary loaning. These records would one day also make many great city-based apps.
Manhattan Company		North side of Chambers between Elk and Centre Streets	(40.71352, -74.004613)
Aaron Burr's scheme to start a bank to rival Alexander Hamilton's Bank of New York (established March 1784; opened June 9th, 1784) exploited the city's water needs. The Manhattan Company put its water pipes only in neighborhoods they could profit off. In 1799, Aaron Burr's Manhattan Company used the yellow fever epidemic and newly invented steam engines to gain exclusive water supply rights to Collect Pond. The first meeting of the directors of the Manhattan Company was held at Edward Barden's Tavern on April 11th, 1799. Daniel Ludlow was chosen president of the Manhattan Company. The Manhattan Company's reservoir, located on the north side of Chambers between Elk and Centre, was constructed in front of its well (on the west side of Centre Street between Reade & Duane Streets) by the southern side of the Little Collect Pond. Burr had $2 million of capital ready for this ambitious project. The Manhattan Company also had a sneaky clause permitting the company to use surplus capital to purchase stocks, and invest in other lines of business and moneyed transactions. It worked and this clause paved the way to NYC's second bank with the approval of the Legislature and Governor Jay’s signature. The Bank of the Manhattan Company (eventually Chase Manhattan) started business at 40 Wall Street September 1st, 1799. On the seal of the Manhattan Company was the Greek sea god Oceanus. The Manhattan Company doomed the tea water pumps and any attempt to construct a more reliable supply of water. In 1800, the Manhattan Company wells first brought water to a mere 400 upper-class home subscribers through its six miles of wooden (pine) pipes (an idea stolen from Christopher Colles). By 1836, the Manhattan Company expanded up to Bleecker Street with a total of 25 miles of pipes in NYC, which supplied 2,000 homes. Years later 40 miles of its badly built pipes brought its muddy water to over 50,000 citizens. Citizens above Grand Street on the east side were so disgusted by the water, they wouldn’t patronize the Manhattan Company, and no water pipes were ever built in that part of NYC. Firefighters couldn't even access Manhattan water to extinguish fires in that part of town. Manhattan Company's hollow log-based waterworks were often offline because the water was often causing clogs, leaking or contaminated. The Croton water in 1842 killed the water monopoly of the Manhattan Company, but until 1925, Chase Manhattan Bank's charter forced it to pump water twice a week from the well on the NW corner of Reade and Centre (across from Burr's law office 11 Reade). The Federalists Bank of New York (founded 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). The Bank of New York was first located at the three-story Walton House at 67 St. George Square (now 326 Pearl Street) just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Bank of New York in the Walton House opened up a few months before the British left NYC on November 25th, 1784. From June 9th, 1784 to 1799, no other political party member could get access to funds like the Federalists could. Burr's Manhattan Company Bank was run by Democrats (who at the time were called Republicans), the minority political party in that era of NYC. To combat the Manhattan Company Bank, Hamilton opened up the Merchants Bank in 1804, directly next door at 42 Wall Street. In the autumn of 1805, all the banks moved out of lower Manhattan due to yellow fever. The Manhattan Company bought land east of the Bowery by the East River, somewhere in the East Village or Lower East Side. In the two years between 1833 and 1835, Greenwich Village property values rose 400 percent. The Merchants Bank of New York and The Bank of the Manhattan Company merged on March 29th, 1920. It looked like even in death, Burr won another duel with Hamilton. In 1955, the Manhattan Company merged with Chase National to create the Chase Manhattan Bank. Burr's and Hamilton dueling pistols are on display at the executive conference floor of the JP Morgan Chase bank at 277 Park Avenue.
New York Institution		Chambers Street between Broadway and Centre Street	(40.713727, -74.005639)
In 1812, Almshouse functions moved uptown to what would become Bellevue, at 26th and 1st Avenue. Until it was torn down in 1857, the vacated Almshouse building was the New York Institution, housing such other institutions as the NY Historical Society, Lyceum of Natural History, American Institute, City Library, Academy of Arts, Academy of Painting, the Deaf & Dumb Institute, and John Scudder's American Museum. Scudder's Museum occupied the top floor of the western side of the New York Institution between 1816 and 1824. In a northeast basement room of the old vacated Almshouse, The Bank for Savings in the City of New York operated as the first savings bank established in the State of New York. A meeting on March 26, 1819, launched the Bank for Savings, which opened Saturday evening at 6 p.m. July 3rd 1819, at the New York Institution. Two years later the Chambers Street Bank moved across the street to 41 Chambers, where they installed Gayler's great iron chest, which at the time was the biggest safe (10 feet high, 21 feet wide) in the U.S. The Chambers Street Savings Bank moved west to another part of Chambers Street in 1843 (on the site of the first Unitarian Church) before moving to 67 Bleecker Street in 1856.
Palmo Opera House		39-41 Chambers Street	(40.713671, -74.005022)
On the former site of the First Reformed Presbyterian Church (1800-1834), and the public baths called Stoppani's Arcade Baths, was the Palmo Opera House. This intimate three-story opera house with a wrought-iron balcony was located at 39-41 Chambers Street (opposite the Tweed Court House) from 1844 to 1876, but only until 1846 as the opera house opened by Ferdinand Palmo, the rich owner of the Cafe des Mille Colonnes, on Broadway between Hospital and Duane Streets. That corner starting in 1828 was the first place that sold roasted chestnuts. Also close by in a Broadway store window, the first sewing machine was exhibited and demonstrated. The Cafe des Mille Colonnes opened on July 9th, 1842 by a Frenchman named Pinteaux. Palmo also made money earlier from a restaurant on the corner of Broadway and Reade Street, called Palmo's Garen, selling ices and booze. The first performance was I Puritani on Saturday evening, February 3rd, 1844. The day before a public rehearsal was performed for the press, politicians, policemen and musical people. On March 3rd, 1847, Palmo featured the first performance of an opera by Verdi in America, I Lombardi. After two years of operation, the theatre with a horseshoe-shaped auditorium was deemed too small for opera. Ferdinand Palmo lost everything and became a cook and bartender until he died on September 5th, 1869. In April 1846, Edwin Pearce Christy started performing his minstrel skills with his band of six singers at the Opera House. Christy's Minstrels then moved to Mechanics Hall between February 15th, 1847, and July 15th, 1854. The Christy's Minstrels bought the Steven Foster song “Old Folks at Home” for their exclusive use and specialized in performing Foster's works. Edwin Pearce Christy retired as a performer in 1855, but worked as a manager and licensed the name to a group that performed as blackface minstrels. He committed suicide in NYC on May 21st, 1862. On July 10th, 1848, this old opera house turned into a variety house became one of NYC's favorite playhouses for the next four years when Wallack's Theatre took over. Burton's Chambers Street Theatre featured musicals, comedies and artist model shows that exhibited almost nude actors and actresses. In 1856 or 1860, William E. Burton (1804-1860) left Chambers Street between Broadway and Centre Street and moved his theatre to the Metropolitan on Broadway. Before being demolished in 1876, the old opera house became a minstrel hall and then lastly a federal courthouse.
Rhinelander Sugar House Memorial		East of Centre Street, just north of Brooklyn Bridge	(40.712536, -74.00371)
Behind the Municipal Building subway arcade is a prison window monument fashioned from the one window and surrounding original bricks left from the old Rhinelander Sugar House that stood until 1896. The 1893 Rhinelander Building survived as a loft building until it was torn down in 1968 because it was in the way of the $58 million police headquarters building at One Police Plaza. Sugar houses made good strong prisons because of their thick stone structure with small windows and low ceilings. The British used three NYC sugar houses as Revolutionary War prisons: Van Cortlandt’s Sugar House, Livingston Sugar House, and Rhinelander Sugar House. The Rhinelander Sugar House held captive 600 prisoners inside walls that once stored Caribbean sugar. All the window panes were shattered and replaced with iron grating. No blankets were given to the prisoners, and no fires were allowed even for warmth in winter. In the summer, captive prisoners lined the windows waiting for a gasp of fresh air. With no chairs or beds, the prisoners were forced to sit and sleep on vermin-filled beds of straw. Owned by William Rhinelander, Rhinelander Sugar House was built at the southwest corner of Rose and Duane Streets between 1763 and 1765, more than a decade before the war started. Rose Street was an extension of William Street. The Rhinelander brothers, William and Frederick, were two of America’s earliest shipbuilders. The Rhinelander mansion on William Street near Rose Street was built in 1770, and family remained in the mansion until 1830. Van Cortlandt’s Sugar House operated on the NW corner of Trinity's churchyard by Thames Street until 1852. Built in 1756, the five-story Livingston Sugar House on Liberty Street stood until 1840. The Morris-Jumel Mansion and the Dyckman Farmhouse were also used as prisons during the British occupation as well as dissenting churches, Columbia College, the hospital, and many deadly prison boats. The North Dutch Church on William Street and the Middle Dutch Church each held 800 American patriots. The Friends Meeting House was also used. For seven years NYC was used as a prison camp by the 25,000 British and Hessian captors who used the city as their command center. In 1776 3,000 prostitutes were sailed from Liverpool to NYC to keep the soldiers happy and warm. Warmth was especially needed during the winter of 1780 when it became so cold the harbor froze over. Food at the Rhinelander Sugar House prison for six days consisted of a moldy, worm-eaten loaf of bread, a quart of peas, one-half a pint of rice, and a pound and a half of pork. Prisoners were allowed to slowly starve to death in the years during the British and Hessian occupation between 1776 and 1783. American patriots were also poisoned, froze to death, or died of infection. British officials threw the 11,000 dead into common pits. Out of the 2,600 American prisoners captured at the battle of Fort Washington, 1,900 were killed in the 65 days that followed while held in these British prisons. Ghostly shadows were often seen for years after the British left NYC on November 25th, 1783.
Rotunda		City Hall Park's NE corner by Centre and Chambers Streets	(40.713144, -74.004362)
Built in 1816, to the west of the City Dispensary and east of the second Almshouse, the Rotunda opened in City Hall Park's NE corner in 1817. The Rotunda’s circular building housed NYC's first Art Museum, and it was often referred to as the Round House. Artist John Vanderlyn could use the Rotunda for nine or ten years rent free after it was built for his own personal showroom, but after that the building would become the property of NYC. It was paid for with the help of $6,000 contributed by 112 of his supporters. A protégé of Aaron Burr, Vanderlyn painted panoramas of Geneva, Paris, Athens, Mexico, Versailles Palace and Gardens, and even a few battle scenes for NYC's first art museum. He was the first American painter trained in Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. John Vanderlyn died in Kingston, NY, Sept. 23, 1852. After the Fire of 1835, NYC used the Rotunda as a post office for 10 years. The New York Gallery of Fine Arts used it until July 24th, 1848, when they were told to vacate, and the building was turned into public offices. The Rotunda was enlarged and squared off, lasting until demolition in May 1870. By the time it was razed, the Rotunda was flush against the Tweed Courthouse to its west and an alleyway between the firehouse to its east. One of the last tenants was the Croton Aqueduct Board, which had offices in the Rotunda for 20 years.
St. Andrew's Church		20 Cardinal Hayes Place	(40.713037, -74.002533)
The old Universalist Society Church built in 1818 was called Carroll Hall, and the Catholics bought it $5,400 in 1841. In 1861, it was remodeled and named St. Andrew's Church. Located at 20 Cardinal Hayes Place, St. Andrew's Church was the first parish church to have a businessman's noon mass and a 2:30 a.m. mass for local printers (and other late shift newspapermen). The first pastor to organize St. Andrew's Church, Father Byrne, was succeeded by Rev. John Maginnis, who led St. Andrew's Church services until 1850. It is said, that the church sits on a site where George Washington once lived.
Tweed Courthouse		52 Chambers Street	(40.713557, -74.005406)
The Tweed Courthouse at 52 Chambers now sits on the site of the second City Hall Park Almshouse. Ironically, Tweed was convicted in the structure that he was responsible for building, on the south side of Chambers Street just west of Centre Street. Originally budgeted at $250,000, the Criminal Courts Building (Tweed Courthouse), after over a decade of construction, ended up almost costing twice what U.S. spent to purchase Alaska in 1867. One carpenter nailed the NYC budget for $361,000 for one month’s work. It took 11 years (1861-1872) to finish the Tweed Courthouse with three quarters of the funds lining the pockets of the Tweed ring. During renovations of the Tweed Courthouse in 1999, they removed the cast iron and 18 layers of paint and put in new floors and roof. The Tweed Courthouse renovations bring its total cost close to $100 million. Republican Mayor Abraham Oakey Hall was part of Tweed’s ring; he was NYC mayor from 1869–1872. Boss Tweed engineered Hall into office in 1868 to provide himself with a free hand to steal from NYC. In 1871 Tweed got a hard time from his nemesis Thomas Nast, who drew political cartoons for Harper's Weekly to stir up the public (he also created the donkey and elephant political symbols). The New York Times joined in with the using ink as weapons to bring down the Boss. Boss Tweed also profited heavily on the construction of the old post office on the south side of City Hall Park.