Tea-water, the 1741 Slave Insurrection, and Collect Pond

"Tea-water" is the name that eighteenth-century New York gave to potable water. It was, in other words, safe to use for making tea. In the days before the draining of Collect Pond (the area that includes Foley Square and past the Federal Courthouse to the north), such water was sold at a premium to those who could afford it. Often, it was sold in taverns built above spring water ponds, and one such tavern stood on the northeast corner of Greenwich Street and Murray in 1741. Greenwich Street was the western shoreline of Manhattan and led north to the village that bore the same name as the London suburb. Everything further west, including St. John's Manhattan campus, was created with landfill as more buildings rose and the North River, now better known as the Hudson, filled with tall ships.This was the very rural Out-ward of the city located to the west of the Common (now City Hall Park). The Common was much larger than the present City Hall Park, however, and was intersected by Broadway on the west and Chatham Street, now Park Row, on the east. According to Jill Lepore's marvelous book New York Burning, the tavern at Greenwich and Murray (then merely fields) was the possible meeting place of those who conspired to set fires at various places in the city. These included the royal governor's mansion at the Battery, located where the Custom House (which now houses the Museum of the American Indian) stands. The brackish, cholera-ridden Collect Pond required tea-water forays to outlying places like the disreputable tavern located in the field to the west of the Common. It threw together resentful slaves, poor whites, and a few greedy businessmen who sought to create chaos and snap up property along Pearl Street to the Battery. There were undoubtedly fires set throughout the winter and spring of 1741, and there were more than thirty slaves executed and buried in what is today the African Burial Ground on Duane Street. The irony is that there may never have been a slave "insurrection" at all, rather a terror campaign designed by have-nots to frighten the wealthy into selling their properties cheaply.Oddly, this entire event centers around the question of New York's water supply and its safety. The model system known as the Croton that New Yorkers enjoy today is a direct consequence of New York's eighteenth-century cholera epidemics. Its first "hydrant" or public tap stood where the Jacob Wrey Mould Fountain cools visitors to City Hall Park.

Newspaper Row

Park Row, paralleling Broadway on the east side of City Hall, has undergone a remarkable series of transformations. From a mere cowpath marking the boundaries of Dutch bouweries, or farms, it briefly became Chatham Street. New York was then a British city, and Chatham Street was a mere extension of the Broadway theatre district.

The Park Theatre, at 25 Park Row off Ann Street, was the focus of New York theatre activity in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. It survived from 1798 to 1820 when it burned down, then to 1848, when it burned down again! Ironically, it survived the 1835 fire that threatened St. Paul's Chapel and destroyed shops and warehouses from Pearl Street to Broadway. Only the carriage drive of the Park Theatre remains, marked with the enigmatic street sign "Theatre Alley," which continually puzzles even native New Yorkers.

In the years immediately before the Civil War, Park Row became informally known as "Newspaper Row" because all of the city's great dailies had their offices on Park Row opposite City Hall. In fact, the New York Tribune office, Horace Greeley's newspaper located where Pace University now stands, became the starting place of the nativist disturbances that ultimately became the Draft Riots of 1863. Greeley's statue is presently on the City Hall grounds immediately across the street.

The Transportaton Building

Quite literally, every foot of the City Hall area has enormous amounts of history attached to it. The challenge, particularly for young people raised on virtual everything, is to learn to feel that history when standing at a given site. For example, immediately across Vesey Street on the St. Paul's Chapel side of Broadway is the Transportation Building. This is a perfectly ordinary looking structure of early twentieth-century vintage. What it replaced was the Astor Hotel, the most luxurious hotel of the middle and late nineteenth century. It was on the steps of the Astor that Abraham Lincoln, on the way to his first inauguration, gave an impromptu speech to a New York street audience frightened about the impending dissolution of the Union. I think of this especially in these times when effective leadership seems so wanting. I sometimes ask my students to stand on the place where the Astor's steps used to be. Of course, I cannot know what they are feeling as they do this. Possibly, they just think they are humoring another of my eccentricities, but I like to think they feel something that ties their present to the nation's past.

City Hall Area

One thing I especially want students to notice is that three centuries of New York City history exist on the Broadway block between Fulton Street and Vesey. If you would like to comment on this observation or on the several suggested on your syllabus, do so. (Photo of St. Paul's Chapel from j.klo on flickr.com)