Dr. Moffat, who in the patent medicine line, was as well known in his day as Dr. Brandreth or Sarsaparilla Townsend, erected on the corner of Broadway and Anthony, now Worth street, a fine building on the ruins of the old Porter House. This old Porter House was a tumble-down lookin’ wooden structure, which, in its time, had been quite a popular public house. But for years it had outlived its popularity, and it was only and justly regarded as an unsightly structure, a disfigurement to the locality. Its business had so far fallen behind hand that its lessee could no longer pay its rent, and had been dispossessed by the owner, who was anxious to have the house torn down and be replaced by a splendid marble buildin’. But somehow the occupant of the old Porter House, who was quite an old woman, continued to defy the Hebrew owner, and spite the dispossess, remained in possession by trick and device, and through the agency of a young lawyer, who exhausted in behalf of his poor client every possible technicality by which she could hold on and stay on the premises–winnin’ thereby for himself a tremendous prestige from all non-paying tenants, of which class there are always a large number in New York who seem to be able to find money for lawyers even when they can’t find any for landlords. But at last the lessee and the lawyer got to the end of their tether, and the owner got in his fine work, obtainin’ an order of peremptory dispossess from a judge of the Supreme Court. Armed with this document and accompanied by a procession of fifty laborers as well as several police officers, the owner, one fine mornin’, went to the old Porter House.
The landlady and two roughs, to whom she was in the habit of givin’ free liquor and lodgin’ in exchange for doing her rough work, tried to prevent the owner’s entrance into his own place. But the roughs were arrested by the police, the landlady was taken out of the house bodily, and her household goods were unceremoniously put out into the street. Then the owner of the property gave the sign and the gang of laborers at once set to work tearin’ down the house. They began about eleven o’clock, and before six that evenin’ there was nothin’ on the site of the old Porter House but a big hole that had been in the cellar and some bits of wood. The old Porter House had been torn down and “wiped out” completely in less than seven hours.
In the mornin’ there had stood there a landmark–a well-known tavern. In the evenin’ there was no landmark, no tavern–only a heap of ruins. The quickest demolishin’ of a house, I believe, known in the whole history of New York.
This Doctor Moffat, for whom the marble buildin’ erected on the site of the old Porter House was put up, became also the possessor of the old Woodlawn mansion, on the Bloomingdale road, which was, in the very old times, a famous resort known as Strawberry Hill. The Strawberry Hill Hotel was for nearly eighty years a popular ridin–out-to place for young people.
On the old Bloomingdale road also stood a house which was currently reported to have been in part made out of a ship’s cabin, and a pirate ship at that, although just how the pirate ship got to be settled on dry land reports differed greatly. At any rate the old wooden house had a very cosy and cabin-like look, and presented, durin’ its later years, quite a contrast to the fine buildin’s by which it gradually got to be surrounded. Year by year it, and the land belonging to it–some twenty-five acres–became more and more valuable. But the party who owned the property lived in the little “cabin home” and had become devotedly attached to the old homestead. He was repeatedly offered large prices for his property, but he wouldn’t sell, nor would he tear down, rebuild, or “improve.” “The old house must last my time,” said old Isaac Varian, and he kept his promise. He resisted all offers and propositions, stood all sorts of argument and ridicule, was misunderstood and called hard names, but he persisted in holdin’ on. The old house lasted the old man’s time, for he died under its humble roof. Isaac Varian was the old gentleman’s name, and it deserves to be held in honor. One of his sons, Isaac L. Varian, became Mayor of New York; another son, George W., became an alderman. The old homestead was destroyed years ago. Not a trace of the old “cabin home” remains; and it is all for the best, as finer and more useful buildin’s have taken its place. But still I honor old Isaac Varian for not lettin’ the old home go in his time.
This Varian homestead was one of the last old houses or homesteads in New York left standin’. There are really very few old things now in New York. There are very few old graveyards left, even. The modern New Yorkers are not a very reverential set, and don’t enthuse over their past.
But for that matter, the forefathers of the present New Yorkers, the old Knickerbockers ‘emselves, didn’t always show much reverence for their past or for even their present graveyards.
One old graveyard of the old Knickerbockers was only discovered by the merest accident some twenty-five years ago.
Some workmen were excavatin’ the cellars of some buildin’s being put up on the west side of Broadway, near Morris Street, when one of them threw up with his shovel a skull. Another workman about the same time threw up some bones. Then a third man dug up some skulls. It was plain enough that the men had come across some old buryin’ ground. But what buryin’ ground? the buryin’ ground of whom? These questions were eagerly asked in the papers the next day.
And it was some time before they were answered. Of course, there was a good deal of interest manifested about the matter, and all sorts of theories got into circulation. But it was not until the late D. T. Valentine, for so many years the clerk of the corporation, took hold of the matter and investigated it in earnest, that the bottom facts were gotten at.
The skulls and relics found there were ascertained to be the remains of those who had been buried in an old Dutch buryin’ ground which had been turned into buildin’ lots and sold at auction to the highest bidder, after a cold business fashion which would have made even a Yankee ashamed of the transaction.
Among those put to rest in this discarded and desecrated old graveyard were Van Cowenhoven, who carried on a big brewery at the corner of Pearl and Broad streets; Thomas Hall, an Englishman who owned at one time the whole of what is now Beekman street; De Hart, a rich merchant who had a splendid residence on Hanover Square, and Capt. Richard Morris, the first of the old Morris family.
Rich and great as these men had been in their day and way, they had been treated like so many dogs after their death. Their burial place had been sold, turned into “real estate,” built on, and then forgotten, till one day, by accident, several generations after their death, their bones had been disinterred by a laborer’s shovel. Such is human wealth and greatness. The moral is old and ghastly.
Talkin’ of bein’ “forgotten” puts me in mind that not only the men of the olden times, and their last restin’ places, but the very names of the streets or places they used to walk or ride, or do business, or enjoy ‘emselves in, are “forgotten.”
True, some of those old names still survive in an altered form, but then how few there are who know anythin’ about the alteration even.
What we call Maiden Lane now was called Love Lane, in the olden time, and has quite a romantic record. Its original Knickerbocker title was the “Maedge Paltje” or the Maiden’s Path, and so called because it was the favorite path or lane for a New York girl to meet her lover on, accidentally on purpose, and take a stroll with him.
Two or three generations later, when this Maiden’s Path was all built up and the maidens, all havin’ become mothers or grandmothers, had passed away, the girls have the period chose another “love lane,” so called, which extended near the present line of East Broadway, from what is now Chatham Square eastward. This Love Lane was a little shaded path runnin’ through the estate of old Col. Rutgers and beside it bubbled a brook which emptied into the East River. Fancy a brook bubblin’ along that busy, crowded locality to-day.
The story goes that old Colonel Rutgers employed a gardener who had been very unhappily married and had learned from his own experience to regard matrimony as a terrible mistake or almost unpardonable folly, which he felt it his duty to set his face against. This gardener had also high ideas of his own importance as general guardian of the Rutgers grounds. Well, one afternoon this matrimony-hatin’ and “airy” gardner came across a young man and a maiden walking through the Rutgers grounds evidently “spoonin’;” not only trespassin’ on the Rutgers estate, but contemplating matrimony in “the near distance,” availin’ ‘emselves of the opportunities afforded by the Rutgers grounds for courtship. No wonder the gardener was mad. No wonder he waxed wroth at the couple–not only trespassers, but arrant fools. No wonder he brought ‘em up with as much pompous dignity and righteous wrath as if he had been a park policeman, before Colonel Rutgers himself, and made a complaint against ‘em.
But, to his mingled wonder and horror, Col. Rutgers, instead of reprimandin’ the starin’ sentimental couple, absolutely smiled on ‘em, patted the maiden on the cheek, and gave her permission to walk with her sweetheart through the grounds–a permission which not only she but other maidens were not slow to avail ‘emselves of. This kindness made Col. Rutgers deservedly a popular favorite, but it preyed upon the old gardener so. It seemed to him so terrible thing to thus indirectly encourage alike vagrancy and matrimony, that it served to shorten the old man’s days.
After all, New York, bein’ although huge, still very human, must always have its sentimental as well as its fashionable or a business thoroughfares. Just as the second Love Lane (through the Rutgers estate) took the place of the former Maiden’s Path downtown, so now the ramble in Central Park takes the place of the East Broadway love lane, and perhaps some day when the Ramble becomes too public, the love lane or maiden’s path of the future New York will be found somewhere north of Harlem River. Everythin’, even love, is “goin’ up town.”
[Editor’s notes: There were several generations of Isaac Varians, all of them butchers (no seamen, so where the ship cabin story came from is a mystery). It was Isaac Varian II that purchased the land on which the Varian House was built. It was Isaac Leggett Varian (Isaac IV) that was mayor of New York, 1839-1841.
The patent medicine “Phoenix Bitters” and “Vegetable Life Pills” were developed by Dr. John Moffat (1788-1863). The Moffat Building at Broadway and Anthony Street and Woodlawn were developed by his son, William B. Moffat (1818-1862).]
