The proposed openin’ of a continuous street from Lafayette place to the Brooklyn Bridge suggests naturally the big times that have been made over the openin’s of new streets and thoroughfares in the past.
There was a time, in the history of New York, when the Bowery was more of a street–a more important avenue–than Broadway itself. In fact, it was at the one time seriously proposed to unite the Bowery and Broadway by extendin’ Broadway into the Bowery, makin’ the former thoroughfare take a bend, a turn, right into the latter and end there, so as to make Broadway really a feeder to or a branch of the Bowery. Of course, as we all can see for ourselves now, this idea came to nothin’. Of course as we all can argue now, the very idea of joining the two great thoroughfares was absurd. But nevertheless for many years this grand combination scheme, this Broadway-Bowery combination, was generally discussed by a good many serious and sensible people.
In early times a road called the Sand Hill road extended from the Bowery across in the direction of what is now Broadway, runnin’ through Washington Square and adjacent localities, like Waverly place, etc. This Sand Hill road began at about Sixth street and the Bowery now and cut across. After a while, enterprisin’ people began to talk of buildin’ along this Sand Hill road and improvin’ it. And then, later on, it was proposed to lay the whole section lyin’ along this road into streets and buildin’ lots. A good deal of fuss was made over this idea. It was hooted at almost, as wildly absurdly chimerical; the papers made fun of the projectors of the scheme. It seemed a good deal wilder waste of money than the million or so sunk in improvin’ the desolate sands of Coney Island. But the men who had taken up this idea of gettin’ rid of that “old landmark,” “the Sand Hill road,” and putin’ regular streets in its place, were not to be laughed out of their ideas–not to be dissuaded from it by newspaper articles. They had “the courage of their convictions.” They were not at all influenced by a lot of rubbish that was then talked and published about “removin’ the old landmark,” but they agitated the matter till at last the city fathers passed the necessary ordinances, and the old Sand Hill road was blotted out forever.
The openin’ of Sixth street at the terminus of this old Sand Hill road was regarded as a “public outrage” by many, and influential citizens protested against it just as influential citizens protest protested against the surrenderin’ of the streets to the L roads, but manifest destiny and the city authorities were against the influential protester protesters, and Sixth street was opened and marked the dawn of a new era of City progress.
The openin’ of Beekman street from Pearl to Water street marked another era of local Improvement. This openin’ at the time was looked upon as one of the great events of the age. Buildin’s were torn down to permit this openin’ and their sacrifice was looked upon by some as a piece of wanton barbarity, but by most as signs of a wise liberality. The openin’ itself was one of the political issues of the time; now it has been long entirely forgotten.
The opening of Spring street under its present name and in its present shape was still another epoch of improvement. What was afterwards called Spring street was originally called Bannon Street, and as such is known in the earlier records and documents. The name of Spring street was unknown till a comparatively recent period. The name Bannon street was derived from a man named Bannon who kept a big “garden,” in its time the biggest in the city, on the line of the street. Bannon’s Garden had plenty of ground and several neat buildin’s erected on ‘em. It presented a truly rural appearance and was quite a fashionable resort for ladies and gentlemen in the summertime. In the dog days, or the dog nights rather, the wealthy New Yorker used to take his girl to Bannon’s just as the same party takes his girl now to Long Branch or Long Beach for an excursion. This Bannon’s Garden was about all there was to the present Spring street, just as a block or two of “Sugar-loaf Hill” was all there then was of the present Franklin street.
One of the projects which were talked and written about a good deal in their time, but resulted in nothin’, was the havin’ a big public square like Tompkins Square, or Washington Square, at the junction of Eighth street and Broadway, takin’ in the present Clinton place, Astor place and Lafayette place. This was certainly a fine location for a public park, though rather too close perhaps between the Washington and Tompkins Squares.
But the project which caused the most fuss in its time, met with the most opposition, and yet which accomplished the greatest amount of good for the City of New York, was the proposition for drainin’ the Lispenard meadow, which at one time occupied the present heart of the metropolis, fillin’ the space now occupied by the Eighth Ward. When it was proposed to drain these meadows and reclaim this land, property owners made a fuss. “Let the meadows be a swamp, what mattered it anyway?” they said. New York is big enough and the taxes are high enough, and so why not let well enough alone.
It seems hardly credible that at one period almost the whole Eighth Ward of this great city was under water, but it seems less credible than a proposition to drain this water off, should have been met with opposition–opposition, too, not from fools, or the rabble, but from hard-headed, hard-workin’ property owners, men who might well be supposed to understand alike their own interests and those of the city they live in. But such were the facts. And in this respect history is constantly repeatin’ itself, for since the drainin’ of the Lispenard meadows to the present time, there has hardly been an “improvement” of any kind agitated but has been opposed on all sorts of grounds by that clan of conservative property-holders who are opposed to spendin’ any money on improvements of which they do not receive the direct and immediate benefit.
But even this class of curmudgeons often have shared in the blessin’s which they did all they could to deprive ‘emselves and other people of. A man called Erwindt, a Dutchman, had a piece of ground near these Lispenard meadows which he paid twenty dollars for, and which he thought dear at that. He fought long and hard against any “improvements” in the neighborhood of his land which involved any outlay on his part. He called and really considered the drainage of the Lispenard meadows “an outrage,” and yet his great-grandson the other day sold these twenty dollar lots for over $15,000, nearly a thousand times more than their original cost, and it was this very drainin’ of these old Lispenard meadows which formed the first step in the improvements which have brought about this stupendous rise in prices. Verily, the history of real estate in Gotham is very curious and instructive.
[Editor’s notes: The Native American origins of Sand Hill Road was described in Reginald Bolton’s Indian Paths in the Great Metropolis, 1922.
A comprehensive article on Lispenard Meadow’s can be found on Sergey Kadinsky’s Hidden Waters Blog, “Lispenard Meadow, Manhattan.”
