Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [95]
The condition of the streets was another story. Dr. Bullivant agreed (in 1697) that “most of theyr new buildings are magnificient enough, ye fronts of red and yellow (or Flanders) brick looking very prettily.” But, he added caustically, “theyre streets are Nasty and unregarded, ye which they excuse at this time, saying the Multitudes of buildings now going forth are ye Occasion.” Improvements were nonetheless underway. In 1691 the Assembly resolved that, for the “Encouragement of Trade and Commerce,” streets, lanes, and alleys should “be conveniently regulated” and empowered the municipal corporation to lay out new ones. It did so in 1691, 1694, and again in 1700—mostly in the area below Wall Street, with the addition of some roads in the Out Ward after 1707.
The most important new street was built on landfill adjacent to the Town Dock. In 1686, intending to raise cash for the payment of its debts, the Common Council began the process of selling “water lots” along the East River shore to merchants who agreed to fill them in. In 1691, when the town again needed funds for a new market house and ferry house, and later in the decade, when it built the new City Hall, additional lots were sold along the waterfront between the old Stadhuis and Fulton Street. But this time the Common Council attached strings. Purchasers were required to fill in their lots and erect on each a stone- or brick-fronted building at least two stories high—after which the entire stretch of new-made land was to be designated Dock Street. By 1692 purchasers were hard at work, filling in their lots with dirt obtained by digging and leveling as much of “the hill by Mr. Beekmans” as belonged to the city. Increasingly, the city gave preference in the sale or lease of water lots to inhabitants (usually wealthy) who owned property fronting the new lots.
Dock Street’s residents, like those along other roadways, were also required to pave the section of street in front of their house, at their own cost, with “good & sufficient peeble Stones,” and to pull up any “poysonous and Stinkcking Weeds” (Broadway residents had to plant trees as well). By 1707 most of the city’s major thoroughfares were covered with cobblestones, except in the middle, where a gutter or channel was left to funnel off rainwater. Residents of Broad Street had petitioned the city for a “Common Sewer” in 1696, but when the parsimonious Common Council discovered that a proper sewer would cost £865, they promptly dropped the matter. As a result, the channels on Broad and elsewhere were constantly clogged with dirt and refuse, much of the latter dumped there by householders themselves, in lieu of paying cartmen the prescribed fee for taking it away. Official scavengers were employed from time to time to tackle the problem, but without notable success.
The streets presented other perils—being run down by galloping horses, for example, or bowled over by the ever ubiquitous pigs (whenever they weren’t rooting about in the city graveyard). At night, footpads were so common that pedestrians were obliged to travel in pairs. Finally, in 1697, the magistrates—remarking on “the great Inconveniency that Attends this Citty, being A trading place for want of Lights”—ordered that every house have a light “hung out on a Pole” from an upper window “in the Darke time of the Moon.” When homeowners objected to the expense, the magistrates retreated to a requirement that only every seventh house need present “A Lanthorn & Candle,” and only in winter, the cost to be shared by the owners of the other six.
In 1684, moreover, the Common Council instructed the constables in each of the five wards south of the Fresh Water Pond to hire eight citizens as watchmen. This “Constables Wattch” was a more substantial force than in other colonial (or most English) towns. Besides patrolling the streets at night, staffs in hand, the watchmen were to ensure that no violations of the drinking laws occured during Sunday worship. In 1685