Fifth Avenue eBook

Arthur Bartlett Maurice
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 270 pages of information about Fifth Avenue.

Fifth Avenue eBook

Arthur Bartlett Maurice
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 270 pages of information about Fifth Avenue.
it.  Of the house in Greenwich Village on land that is bounded by the present Charles, Perry, Bleecker, and Tenth Streets, Janvier wrote:  “The house stood about three hundred yards back from the river, on ground which fell away in a gentle slope towards the waterside.  The main entrance was from the east; and at the rear—­on the level of the drawing room and a dozen feet or so above the sloping hillside—­was a broad veranda commanding the view westward to the Jersey Highlands and southward down the bay to the Staten Island Hills.”  After Sir Peter Warren went away the Manse became the home of Abraham Van Nest, and stood there more than a century.  Not until 1865 did it entirely disappear.

In 1745 Warren played a part in the Siege of Louisbourg that won him promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral of the Blue, and his knighthood.  New York, for his share in the exploit, voted him some extra land.  In August, 1747, he was in command of the “Devonshire” at the naval battle off Cape Finisterre, capturing the ship of the French Commodore, “La Joncquiere.”  Then came his recall to England, where, on account of his vast wealth and famous achievements, he was a conspicuous figure.  One of his daughters, Charlotte, married Willoughby, Earl of Abingdon.  Another, Ann, became the wife of Charles Fitzroy, Baron Southampton.  The youngest, Susanna, after her mother, was wedded to Colonel Skinner.  New York’s affection and esteem for Sir Peter Warren extended to his daughters and through them to their husbands.  The old name of Christopher Street was Skinner Road.  There was a Fitzroy Road that ran northward from Fourteenth Street.  Then, still existing, is Abingdon Square, and Abingdon Road, better known as “Love Lane,” was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present Twenty-first Street.  It is to the past rather than the present that the student of the Avenue turns in contemplating the stretch between Fourteenth and Twenty-second Streets.  Here and there an historical point may be indicated.  On Sixteenth Street, a few yards to the west, is the New York Hospital, the oldest in the city.  It received its charter from George the Third some years before the first gun was fired in the War of the Revolution.  It was not regularly opened until 1791, but the building, then at Broadway and Duane Street, served as a place for anatomical experiments.  In 1788, the story is, a medical student threatened a group of prying boys with a dissected human arm.  Soldiers were needed to quell the resulting riot.  The reddish brick hospital of today dates from 1877.  A chapter in the story of the New York Hospital as an institution concerns the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, for which the land was purchased in 1816, and the building completed in 1821.

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Fifth Avenue from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.