The year I began New York life, some thirty-five years ago, John McComb ended it. He died. I remember that considerable stir was made over his death, too, and yet his very name now is unknown to hundreds of thousands of people who daily look at the great work he left behind him. For to John McComb New York city is indebted for one of its very finest public buildin’s–perhaps the very finest–the City Hall–the old City Hall, as we already call it now.
John McComb and Renwick, the two architects, left New York city a great deal better and handsomer than they found it. To Renwick the metropolis is indebted for the present Grace Church, and to McComb it owes not only the City Hall but various other buildin’s, which, in their time, were creditable specimens of native architecture, such as the old Government House, old St. John’s Church, the old Murray and Bleecker Street Churches, and old Washington Hall, all favorites in their time.
McComb was a New Yorker born and bred, educated in New York, proud of New York, a great believer in New York.
As such, he warmly advocated the great Erie Canal, which, in its time, helped New York along more than any other mortal enterprise. As such he earnestly advocated steam navigation on the Hudson. And although it is hard to believe such a state of affairs possible now, he was laughed at and written against for his advocacy of these two improvements. But he lived long enough to laugh at those who laughed at him, and to be universally honored in the great city which he had done his best to serve.
He will always deserve well of posterity for the City Hall. New Yorkers don’t even to-day appreciate this buildin’ as it deserves. Strangers are charmed with it constantly. It has been praised in print by such critics of the beautiful as Edward S. Wilde and Richard Grant White. Even “Bull Run Russell” and Oscar Wilde have called it splendid. But the average New Yorker has never bothered his head about it, and the reminiscences I am givin’ in this chapter will be new to ninety-nine out of every hundred of my readers.
And to John McComb, and to him only, is New York indebted for this truly beautiful buildin’, and all he got for buildin’ it was six dollars for every workin’ day during the ten years it took to build it. Think of a first-class architect to-day workin’ for six dollars per diem. And McComb worked day and night. He ate, drank and slept at City Hall from the time it started till completed. Many a day he forgot his meals, and many a night he forgot his sleep, superintendin’ the details of this structure, which, for its time, was as big a work as the Brooklyn Bridge in its time.
McComb never traveled. He never saw personally the great structures of Europe, but he produced a buildin’ which combined many of the excellences of many of the finest buildin’s abroad.
He had views and plans of all the leadin’ public structures of England and the continent, and copied from ‘em, and put their strong points together, evolvin’ from the whole a new and really original structure.
He copied some of the elevations from Inigo Jones’s design at the palace at Whitehall, then he copied from the Adam Brothers’ plans for the Register’s office at Edinburgh. He got the idea of the main staircase from the Assembly Rooms at Glasgow. He took other points from another famous British architect, Sir William Chambers, and so on.
Altogether, for less than half a million of dollars, Mr. McComb erected a much finer buildin’ than the new Court House, which cost about twenty times more.
There was a great deal of fuss and squabble over the buildin’ of the old City Hall. At one time it looked a good deal as if there was goin’ to be no City Hall at all. There was an “economy” party in politics then as now–a pennywise and pound foolish party, who held a dollar so close to their official noses that they couldn’t see that they would lose ten dollars by tryin’ to save this one. On five different occasions work was stopped on the buildin’. Once there was a crisis caused by “hard times,” and there was another crisis caused by flush times. At one time, that is, the city authorities thought they were too poor to complete the buildin’, and at the other period times were so “flush” and wages so high that the laborers would not work for the city’s one dollar and a quarter a day, which is all the city paid in those days.
Altogether, the City hHall took thirteen years in gettin’ to be what it is. That is, it took two years to get plans for it and eleven years to carry the plans out. And even after Mayor Livingston laid the cornerstone there was any amount of circus for a while.
The greatest obstacle in the way of erectin’ the building were the economical people, who grumbled at its cost, and who, not havin’ the slightest idea of what a great city New York was goin’ to be, objected to each and every item of expenditure. But McComb, who could write as well as build, got up a report, which was fathered by Alderman Van Zandt, in which he spoke so eloquently and sensibly of New York’s future greatness that he finally induced the city authorities to let him have his own way, and a very nice way it was.
At last, spite of bogus economy, panics, strikes, delays, chances, politics, weather and the rest, the big buildin’, the biggest buildin’ New York has then undertaken, was finished, and John McComb lived to see its success, differin’ in this respect from Roebling the elder, of the Brooklyn Bridge.
At last the Common Council, Mayor, Clerk and Comptroller celebrated the glorious Fourth in the then new City Hall, which was as much finer than the old and precedin’ City Hall as New York to-day is finer than New York was then.
By the by, the oldest City Hall, which originally stood at the corner of Wall and Nassau streets, near where the Sub-Treasury buildin’ is now, was sold at auction durin’ the erection of the present buildin’, and the proceeds were devoted to the fund for its successor.
When the City Hall was finished, to tell the simple truth, it did look far too fine for its neighboring building’, and for the rest of the city. Just to think of it. A lot of little wooden shanties then stood at the corner of Ann street and Broadway, where Barnum afterwards built his museum, and Trinity Church was an ugly old edifice with a wooden spire. Grace Church was downtown near the Battery, and was, if anythin’, uglier than Trinity, and the Park Place Hotel was the “swell” hotel of the town, which only had two theatres, both of ‘em downtown. In fact, there was no uptown at all. No wonder, then, that the economy party had had their misgivin’s.
But time rapidly vindicated the judgment of McComb and of the “expansive and expensive party,” as they had been styled; and to this day the City Hall remains, and I hope will long remain, a monument alike of taste and liberality. Some of the carvin’ in the City Hall done by Mr. Lemaer two generations ago, is unsurpassed today either in America or Europe.
McComb, naturally enough, was very proud of his work, and wanted to make it even finer, as years rolled on. He tried to get the arms of the United States and of the State of New York worked into or upon two big blocks, but here the economy party again objected, as it would cost nearly $9,000. So that idea fell through.
Then he proposed to provide a bell, and to put a big clock in the cupola. This was also objected to, but was carried through, spite of the opposition. But the cupola got on fire, some sparks flyin’ about at the cable celebration, and the clock was destroyed, and after a while the big bell was removed. In removin’ the bell a good deal of the cupola was broken, and to this day has never been replaced.
Taken altogether, New York has reason to be proud of its Old City Hall and of the man who built it.
[Editor’s notes: The writer of the above column (or the typesetter) mangled the name of Charles-Honoré Lannuier, the cabinetmaker who provided many of the finely carved furnishings for New York City Hall (as seen in the above photo of the Governor’s Room).
Fireworks were sent off from City Hall in 1858 to celebrate the laying of the Atlantic telegraph cable, and caused a fire that damaged the cupola.]
