Greenwich Village | Page 7

is to be finished in the same style as the front of the Bowery Theatre,
and each to have a grass plot in front with iron railings."
This promise of theatrical architecture seems a curious inducement, but
it must have been effective, for many exclusive families came--no,
flocked,--to live in the houses!

In 1830 there was a grand celebration there in joint honour of the
anniversary of the British evacuation and the crowning of Louis
Philippe in France. Everybody sang patriotic French and American airs,
sent off fireworks, fired salutes and had a wildly enthusiastic time.
Incidentally, there were speeches by ex-President Monroe and the Hon.
Samuel Gouveneur. Enoch Crosby, who was the original of Fenimore
Cooper's famous Harvey Birch in "The Spy," was present, and so was
David Williams, one of the captors of Major Andre,--not to mention
about thirty thousand others!
This year saw, too, the founding of the University of the City of New
York, on the east side of the Square,--or rather, the Parade Ground, as it
was then. That fine old educational institution came close to having its
cornerstones christened with blood, for it was the occasion of the
well-known,--shall we say the notorious?--"Stonecutters' Riots." The
builders contracted for work to be done by the convicts of Sing Sing
Prison, and the city workmen, or Stonecutters' Guild,--already strong
for unions,--objected. In fact, they objected so strenuously that the
Twenty-seventh Regiment (now our popular Seventh) was called out,
and stayed under arms in the Square for four days and nights; after
which the disturbance died down.
The next important labour demonstration in the Square was in 1855,
when, during a period of "hard times," eight thousand workmen
assembled there with drums and trumpets, and made speeches in the
most approved and up-to-date agitator style, collecting a sum of money
which went well up into four figures!
In 1833 society folded its wings and settled down with something
resembling permanence upon the corner of the "Snug Harbour" lands,
which formed the famous North Side of Washington Square. Of all
social and architectural centres of New York, Washington Square
North has changed least. Progress may come or go, social streams may
flow upward with as much speed, energy and ambition as they will; the
eddies leave one quiet and lovely pool unstirred. That fine row of
stately houses remains the symbol of dignified beauty and distinction
and an aristocracy that is not old-fashioned but perennial.

Such names as we read associated with the story of Washington Square
and its environs! Names great in politics and patriotism, in art and
literature, in learning and distinction, in fashion and fame and
architecture. Hardly one of them but is connected with great position or
great achievement or both. Rhinelander, Roosevelt, Hamilton,
Chauncey, Wetmore, Howland, Suffern, Vanderbilt, Phelps,
Winthrop,--the list is too long to permit citing in full. Three mayors
have lived there, and in the immediate vicinity dwelt such distinguished
literary persons as Bayard Taylor, Henry James, George William Curtis,
N.P. Willis (Nym Crynkle), our immortal Poe himself, Anne
Lynch,--poetess and hostess of one of the first and most distinguished
salons of America--Charles Hoffman, editor of the Knickerbocker, and
so on. Another centre of wit and wisdom was the house of Dr. Orville
Dewey,--whose Unitarian Church, at Broadway and Waverly Place,
was the subject of the first successful photograph in this country by the
secret process confided to Morse by Daguerre.
[Illustration: OLDEST BUILDING ON THE SQUARE. On this
moment of writing it is still standing on the south of Washington
Square.]
Edgar Allan Poe lived with his sick young wife Virginia, on Carmine
Street, and lived very uncomfortably, too. The name of his
boarding-house keeper is lost to posterity, but the poet wrote of her
food: "I wish Kate our cat could see it. She would faint."
Poor Poe lived always somewhere near the Square. Once in a while he
moved away for a time, but he invariably gravitated back to it and to
his old friends there. It was in Carmine Street that he wrote his "Arthur
Gordon Pym," with Gowans the publisher for a fellow lodger; it was on
Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place that he created "Ligeia" and "The Fall
of the House of Usher." After Virginia's death, he took a room just off
the Square, and wrote the "Imp of the Perverse," with her picture (it is
said) above his desk. It was at these quarters that Lowell called on him,
and found him, alas! "not himself that day." The old Square has no
stranger nor sadder shade to haunt it than that of the brilliant and
melancholy genius who in life loved it so well.

Poe's friend Willis published many of his stories and articles in the Sun,
still a newcomer in the old field of journalism. Willis