Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [464]
Though heavy guns sometimes caved in the parade-ground’s surface, exposing the yellow-shrouded corpses of fever victims, it quickly became a plebeian gathering spot, attracting visitors from nearby Greenwich. Almost immediately, however, developers began raising handsome new town houses along the square’s southern border. Then, from 1828, northside farmers and estate owners began subdividing their property and erecting aristocratic rowhouses. In 1831 Sailors’ Snug Harbor leased a northside stretch from Fifth Avenue to University Place to developers, imposing restrictions to guarantee homogeneity. By 1833 another Greek Revival terrace had emerged, spanning r to 13 Washington Square North, known collectively and colloquially as “the Row.”
Washington Square, like its Hudson Square prototype, drew posh residents. Many decamped uptown together from homes near the Battery. Bankers and merchants predominated, including former mayor Allen, who arrived in 1835. Most families came from New England or Scottish backgrounds and worshiped at the Presbyterian Church on Christopher Street.
Rising out of Washington Square like a thermometer from its bulb, Fifth Avenue was not yet an address to boast about, having only recently graduated from open stream to muddy rutted road. In 1824 Fifth was opened to 13th Street, covering over the Minetta Waters that continued (as they do today) to course beneath its surface. The road reached 21st Street by 1830, and 42nd by 1837, but remained sparsely populated, certainly by gentry. The first sign of its future eminence was the construction in 1834, by Henry J. Brevoort Jr., of a Greek-ornamented mansion (perhaps designed by Town and Davis). It lay at the northwest corner of Fifth and Ninth Street, in the midst of what remained of the farm that Henrick Van Brevoort had bought back in 1714, and it represented the profits the family had accrued by selling off portions over the years and investing the proceeds in the stock market.
SECOND CITY
New York’s gains, at first, seemed Brooklyn’s loss. Manhattan’s expansion had created a powerful up-island real estate lobby of landowners, speculators, developers, and politicians, and this phalanx was determined to thwart any move by New York’s increasingly feisty neighbor to lure potential customers across the East River.
One mechanism for stanching any such outflow lay in New York’s continuing control of the river and its ferries. Under its colonial charter, the municipal corporation’s boundaries lapped to the shores of Long Island. It also had exclusive authority to license ferries across the East River. It used this to ensure that its lessees remained untroubled by competitors, thus allowing them to keep both their fares and payments to the city high.
Brooklyn villagers pleaded with New York’s Common Council to award leases to men who would run the ferry as a public utility instead of charging whatever the monopolized traffic would bear. They petitioned as well for boats to go to new locations, like Atlantic Street. Manhattan dismissed such requests. As one alderman baldly admitted in 1834, he legislated for New York, not Brooklyn, “and if I shall think that the establishment of this ferry will abstract from the southern extremity of New York and centre of its commerce of population which would otherwise reside upon this island, I am bound to vote against it.”
In 1834 Brooklyn abandoned direct appeals and turned to the state for support. Fashioning novel legal weaponry, the villagers attacked New York at a vulnerable spot, the independent authority of its venerable municipal corporation. Chancellor Kent had justified its right to control water traffic as being in the interest of the public, by which he meant residents of the city. But Brooklynites argued that the “public” encompassed the entire state and that the ferry’s paramount function was to serve