iEx SItbrtB SEYMOUR DURST IVhen you leave, please leave this hook Because it has been said "£ver' thing comes t' him who waits 8:xcept a loaned book." AvRRY Architectural and Fine Arts Library Gii-T OF Seymour B. Durst Old York Library i Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/voluinecommemoratOOdurs m i I 1 1 I I I i Second City of tb« Cdorld | York;? January) a 1898 I I I I I I I I i Copyright, i8$8, by "Che Republic Press 1 ! H Volume Commemorating the Creation of Cbc Second City of the (Horld by the ConsoUdatioti of the Communities Hdjacent to )Vcw York Rarbor under the )Vew Charter of the City of )Vew Yo^k JVcw Yor^i Cbc Republic press 1898 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Historical Retrospect of the Discovery, Settlement and Growth of THE City of New York 9 The Nine Leading Cities of the World— Discovery and Settlement of Man- hattan Island— The Dutch Regime— The Mayors of New York — The Directors- General and Governors of New Netherlands and New York— The English Period — Brooklyn and her Chief Magistrates— The Borough of Queens and the Mayors of Long Island City— The Boroughs of Richmond and the Bronx— Recapitulation. CHAPTER 11. The Origin and Development of the Idea of Municipal Consolidation AND the Causes Leading Thereto 19 Jealousy Between New York and Brooklyn— Brooklyn City Charter Opposed on Account of the Manifest Common Destiny of New York and Brooklyn, but Obtained in 1834— Municipal Union Proposed and Defeated in 1851 and 1856 — The Metropolitan Police Act — Andrew H. Green's Influence— Considerations Leading to Consolidation — Mr. Green's Historic Communication of 1868 — The Municipal Union Society of the City of Brooklyn and the County of Kings, in 1874— Opposition in New York— Annexation on the North— Bill for an Inquiry Commission Lost in 1889, but passed in 1890 — The Inquiry Commission and its Operations— Consolidation Bill Defeated in 1891— Referendum Bill Defeated in 1892 and Again in 1893, but Passed in 1894 — The Consolidation League of Brooklyn— Consolidation Indorsed at the Polls in November, 1894— The League of Loyal Citizens— Bill for the Drafting of a Charter by the Inquiry Commis- sion Defeated in 1895 — Legislative Inquiry Committee in 1896 Hears Pros and Cons and Recommends Consolidation— Consolidation Act Becomes a Law in 1896. CHAPTER III. History of the Framing and Adoption of the New City Charter and a RfisuME of its Provisions 127 Personnel of the Charter Commission— Informal Conference at Governor Morton's — Organized June 25, 1896— Sub-Committee on Draft— Tentative Draft and Public Hearings— Divergencies of Opinion and Mutual Concessions in the Commission — Charter Reported to the Legislature February 18, 1897 ; passed March 33-25 ; Vetoed by Mayor Strong ; Passed over the Veto and Signed by the Governor May 4, 1897— A Review of the Charter. vi Contents. CHAPTER IV. PAGE The Passing of the Old Regime and the Inauguration of the Second City of the World , 166 Celebrations on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1897, in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens— Installation of Mayor Van Wyck and the New Administration, January 1, 1898— The Vote by which the New Mayor was Elected— Biographical Sketches of the Chief Magistrate and Other Leading Officials in the Greater City of New York. CHAPTER V. The Judicial System of New York, with Some Account of the Metro- politan Bar 192 Two Streams of Influence in the Legal System of New York— Methods in Vogue During the Dutch Period — A Mild Form of Feudalism— Schout, Burgo- masters and Schepens— The Court of Burgomasters and Schepens, Mayor's Court and Court of Common Pleas— Proprietary Government of the Duke of York — The Duke's Laws — New Courts Established — Legislative and Judicial Functions of the Court of Assizes— Ducal Proprietorship Abolished— Judicial Establishment Remodeled in 1691— Eighteenth Century Growth— The American Revolution— Corporate Existence of New York— Courts of the Nineteenth Cen- tury — Courts of the City To-Day — The First Lawyer — Leading Legal Lights of the Past— The Present Bench and Bar of New York. CHAPTER VI. The Origin and Development of Mercantile Accounting as a Degreed Profession in New York 337 Bookkeeping of the Ancients— Altered Conditions of Modern Times— Vast Commercial Progress of the United States and What it Involves— Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales— American Association of Public Accountants— The New York School of Accounts— The Law of 1896 Creating the Degree of "Certified Public Accountant "—National Society of Certified Public Accountants — The Institute of Accounts — New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants — General Observations on the New Profession, with Biographical Notices of Some of its Members. CHAPTER VII. The Practice of Medicine in New York and the Rise of the New School 366 High Degree of Development of Medical Science in America— Its Humble Beginnings 270 Years Ago— Diversified Occupations of the Early Physician- Crude and Elementary Character of Primitive Practice— Spirit of Scientific Inquiry Awakened — Auspicious Opening of the Nineteenth Century — The Introduction of Homeopathy in 1825— Vicissitudes of the Early Disciples of Hahnemann — Pioneers of the New School of Medicine— Growth of Homeopathy —Homeopathic Institutions in Manhattan Borough — Advent of Homeopathy in Brooklyn in 1840 — Persecution of Medical "Heretics" did not Prevent their Multiplication — Homeopathic Institutions of Brooklyn — Prominent Physicians and Surgeons of the New School in the Greater City of New York. Index of all Individual Names Appearing in this Volume 415 INTRODUCTION. ON January 1, 1898, the cities, towns and villages, upon and clustering about the Island of Manhattan, were united into one municipality, under the historic title of the City of New York, and this vast com- munity became in name and effect, as for years it had been in fact, the Second City of the World. When, in the race for municipal premiership, New York, with her 3,500,- 000 inhabitants, world-wide commerce, great intellectual resources, high social refinement, splendid architectural development, and commanding position as the financial center of the New World, passes in rank the city of Paris, and yields the palm of precedence only to the ancient city of London, the incident not only signalizes the growth of the city, but assumes a character of inter- national significance. An event so remarkable in its antecedents and far- reaching in its consequences, so grand in its magnitude and extraordinary in the manner of its accomplishment, has no parallel in municipal history ; and both justice to the present and duty to the future generations demand that the more important facts of this historic achievement be recorded. The greatness of New York is partly the product of natural forces and conditions ; but it is pre-eminently the creation of the leaders of action of the past and present generations, who, at each stage of her career, have possessed the sagacity to discover, and the energy to utilize, opportunity for the benefit of their fellow- men ; and it is chiefly to record in some suitable manner the labors of those creative and executive minds in the living generation that the following pages are written. New York City, August 1, 1898. The Publishers. " UNION. NOW AND FOREVER. ONE AND INSEPARABLE."— TTebj^cr. " SHE IS A MART OF NATIONS . . . THE CROWNING CITY, WHOSE MERCHANTS ARE PRINCES. WHOSE TRAFFICKERS ARE THE HONORABLE OF THE EARTH. "-isaia/i. CHAPTEE I. HISTORICAL RETROSPECT OF THE DISCOVERT, SETTLEMENT AND GROWTH OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. THERE are but nine cities in the world witli a population of over 1,000,- 000 inhabitants, namely : London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Canton, Chicago, Vienna, Tokio and Philadelphia, ranking in the order named. Five of them — London, Canton, Berlin, Tokio and Vienna — are the capitals of ancient empires, proud, warlike and imposing. One, the City of Paris, was long under monarchical rule. The other three, however, are situated in the United States of America, the land of free institutions, whose progress has amazed the feudal empires of the earth. London, with the advantage of her cis-At- lantic situation 3,700 miles nearer the seat of original civilization than New York, has been nearly nineteen centuries attaining her leadership with a pop- ulation of 4, 500, 000 ; but so great have been the strides of New York, now pressing on her heels, that fifty years hence, if both cities maintain their present rates of progress, the primacy will cross the ocean and the Metropolis of the New World will hold the trophy of victory. The City of Paris, founded before the Christian era, now, at the end of nineteen hundred years of growth, lapses into third place, with a polulation of 2,500,000. Berlin, whose trustworthy history begins A. D. 1237, at the age of six hundred and sixty years, ranks fourth, with a family of 1,700,000. Canton, whose origin is buried in the obscurity of antiquity, ranks fifth, with an estimated popula- tion of 1,600,000. Onr young American city of Chicago, not yet one hun- dred years old, occupies the highly creditable position of sixth, with a popu- lation of 1,500,000. Vienna has required about nineteen centuries to earn seventh place, with 1,375,000 inhabitants. Tokio has taken at least seven hundred years to develop the popiilation of 1,250,000, which gives her eighth place. And Philadelphia, which was once the leading city of America, ranks at the end of two hundred and sixteen years, the ninth city of the world and the third in America, with a population of 1,150,000. Only two hundred and seventy years ago, when all but the three American 10 New York: The Second City of the World. cities above named were hoary with age, the site of New York City was a primeval wilderness. In less than two and three-quarter centuries, the lair of the wild beast has been transformed into the seat of a high civilization. A feeble tribe of dusky savages has been supplanted by a mighty people. Where the fragile canoes of the forest's children were moored upon the beach, titanic ocean steamships are tethered ; and in place of the little clusters of bearskin wigwams soar the thirty-story edifices that crown the work of modern architectural science. The limitations of the period of human life, which permit the individual himself to observe but a small portion of any great historical movement, render it impossible, without assiduous study of the past and the exercise of a lively imagination, to comprehend the magni- tude of this magical change, whose results stand to-day an unparalleled monu- ment to the genius of the people by whom it was accomplished. The growth of New York City, embraced as it is, wholly within the bounds of authentic history, must for that reason, as well as for many others, always serve as the subject of profound study by those cities of the Old World whose origin is lost in obscurity, and whose growth, extending over many centuries, has been the result of the passive accretions of time rather than of active and intentional direction. With especial interest must we be regarded by Italy and France, Portugal and Spain, England and Holland — the countries which gave birth and encouragement respectively to those early plowmen of seas who first furrowed the waters of our bay and opened the channel for subsequent history. New York does not enjoy the prestige of being the oldest city in the United States. That distinction belongs to St. Augustine, by a priority of some sixty years. Nor was it until several years after the settling of Jamestown, Va. , in 1607, that any definite attempt was made to settle in this vicinity. On Sep- tember 2, 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the employ of the Dutch, first came in sight of Staten Island, the southernmost point of the present city of New York. On the 12th he proceeded through the Narrows into the upper bay and first gazed upon the queenly Island of Manhattan. After spending three weeks in a vain search up the Hudson for a passage to Cathay, he returned to the Old World. During the next ten years no organized effort at settlement was made, although the advantages of the region for trading pur- poses were not neglected. It was in connection with this transitory inter- course, that the name New Netherlands was first officially applied to this region, in a traffic charter issued to a company of merchants and shippers under date of October 11, 1614. In 1620, the Mayflower, with its precious human burden, set out for the Hudson Eiver, but, either by design or accident was diverted from its intended course and landed at Plymouth, Mass. Thus the permanent planting of civilization within the territory of the present State of New York was further deferred for a few years, and even then it was destined to take place in the more remote soil of the present city of Albany. The Settlement of Manhattan Island. 11 In 1623 thirty families of Protestant Walloons were conveyed to this country in the ship New Netherland and most of them settled 150 miles up the Hudson at a place which they named Fort Orange. A few men were left on Manhattan Island, but if they remained there, they constituted only a traders' settlement. For two or three years, these settlers lived nomi- nally under the administration first of Director May and then of Director Verhulst, but as those worthies appear to have confined their activities chiefly to the settlements on the Delaware, there may be said to have been no govern- ment here at all. In May, 1626, however, occurred two momentous events in the history of the City and State. On the fourth of that month, Peter Minuit, the first Director-General of New Netherland, arrived at Manhattan Island with the necessary officers for a fully equipped government, and from that date the Colonial history of the State of New York begins. (By one of those striking coincidences of chronology, so marked as to seem almost Providentially ordered, it was on the same day of the month in the year 1897, that the new charter of the Greater New York became a law. ) Two days later, on May 6, 1626 (according to Mrs. Lamb's "History of the City of New York"), occurred "one of the most interesting business transactions which has ever occurred in the world's history. " It was the purchase of Manhattan Island from the wild men for a quantity of beads and baubles valued at sixty guilders (about twenty-four dollars). Of this remarkable transaction, celebrated alike in his- tory and painting, indisputable documentary evidence exists in the so-called Schaghen letter, which now reposes in the archives of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Upon land thus honorably and peaceably acquired, was founded, under the name of New Amsterdam, the City which is destined, fifty years hence, to become the greatest that the world has known. The Dutch regimS was short- lived, but was long enough to infuse into the social and political structure some of the elements which have contributed most powerfully to its substan- tial development. Minuit's Director-Generalship lasted till 1633, by which time the English were claiming proprietorship in the Island by right of Ca- bot's discoveries. Then followed the administrations of Wouter Van Twiller, 1633-1637 ; William Kieft, 1637-1646, and Peter Stuyvesant, 1646-1664, in the latter of which we find the little City reaching out, and in 1658 resolving to settle New Harlem "for the promotion of agriculture, and as a place of amuse- ment for the citizens of New Amsterdam." In August, 1664, Dutch authority was abruptly terminated by the appearance of an English fleet, and on the 29th of that month, Kichard Nicolls, by right of conquest, became the first English Governor of the City and Province, which were named New York, in honor of James, the Duke of York. New York was already a cosmopolitan City, eighteen languages being spoken at that time. On June 12, 1665, Governor Nicolls ordained that "all the inhabitants of New York, New Harlem and the 12 New York: Hie Second City of the World. Island of Manhattan are one body politic under tlie government of a Mayor, Alderman and Sheriff, ' ' and appointed Thomas Willett to head the illustrious list of chief magistrates, of which Mayor Yan Wyck, a gentleman of Dutch ancestry, is last. MAYORS OF NEW YORK. Mayor. Term. 1— Thomas Willet 1665 2— Thomas Delavall 1666 8— Thomas Willet 1667 4— Cornelius Steenwyck 1668-1670 5— Thomas Delavall 1671 6— Mathias Nicolls 1672 7— John Lawrence 1673 8— William Darvall 1675 9— Nicholas de Meyer 1676 10— S. Van Cortlandt 1677 11— Thomas Delavall 1678 12— Francis Rombouts 1679 13_William Dyer 1680-1681 14— Cornelius Steenwyck 1682-1683 15— Gabriel Minvielle 1684 16— Nicholas Bayard 1685 17— S. Van Cortlandt 1686-1687 18— Peter de la Noy 1689-1690 19 — John Lawrence 1691 20— Abraham de Peyster 1692-1695 21— William Merritt 1695-1698 22— Johannes de Peyster 1698-1699 23— David Provost 1699-1700 24— Isaac de Riemer 1700-1701 25— Thomas Noell 1701 -1 702 26— Philip French 1702-1703 27— William Peartree , 1703-1707 28— Ebenezer Wilson 1707-1710 29— Jacobus Van Cortlandt 1710-1711 30— Caleb Heathcote 1711-1714 31— John Johnson 1714-1719 32— Jacobus Van Cortlandt 1719-1720 33— Robert Walters 1720-1725 34— Johannes Jansen 1725-1726 35— Robert Lurting 1726-1735 36— Paul Richards 1735-1739 37— John Cruger 1739-1744 38— Stephen Bayard 1744-1747 39— Edward Holland 1747-1757 40— John Cruger 1757-1766 41— Whitehead Hicks 1766-1776 42— David Matthews, tory 1776-1784 43— James Duane 1784-1789 44— Richard Varick 1789-1801 45— Edward Livingston 1801-1803 46— De Witt Clinton 1803-1807 Mayor. 47— Marin us Willett.. 48— De Witt Clinton.. 49— Jacob RadclifE.... Term. 1807-1808 1808-1810 1810-1811 50— De Witt Clinton 1811-1815 51 — John Ferguson 1815 52— Jacob Radclifl 1815-1818 53— Cadwallader D. Colden 1818-1821 54— Stephen Allen 1821-1824 55_William Paulding 1825-1826 56— Philip Hone 1826-1827 57— William Paulding 1827-1829 58— Walter Bowne 1829-1838 59— Gideon Lee 1833-1834 60— Cornelius W. Lawrence 1834 1837 61— Aaron Clark 1837-1839 62— Isaac L. Varian 1839-1841 63— Robert H. Morris 1841-1844 64— James Harper 1844-1845 65— William F. Havemeyer 1845-1846 66— Andrew H. Mickle 1846-1847 67— WilUam V. Brady 1847-1848 68— William F. Havemeyer 1848-1849 69— Caleb S. Woodhull 1849-1851 70— Ambrose C. Kingsland 1851-1853 71— Jacob A. Westervelt 1853-1855 72— Fernando Wood 1855-1858 73— Daniel F. Tiemann* 1858-1860 74— Fernando Wood 1860-1862 75_George Opdyke 1862-1864 76— C. Godfrey Gunther 1864-1866 77— John T. Hoffman 1866-1868 78— T. Coman (Acting) 1868 79— A. Oakey Hall* 1869-1872 80— William F. Havemeyer 1873-1874 81— S. B. H. Vance (Acting) 1874 82— William H. Wickham 1875-1876 83— Smith Ely* 1877-1878 84— Edward Cooper* 1879-1880 85— William R. Grace* 1881-1882 86— Franklin Edson* 1883-1884 87— William R. Grace* 1885-1886 88— Abram S. Hewitt* 1887-1888 89— Hugh J. Grant* 1889-1892 90— Thomas F. Gilroy* 1893-1894 91_William L. Strong* 1895-1897 92— Robert A. Van Wyck* 1898 ♦ Living, January 1, 1898. Chief Magistrates of City and State. 13 DIRECTORS-GENERAL, GOVERNORS, AND ACTING (iOVERNORS OF NEW NETHER- LAND AND NEW YORK. UP TO THE ACHIEVEMENT OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. DUTCH. Inducted. Peter Minuit 1626 Wouter Van Twiller 1633 William Kieft 1638 Peter Stuyvesant 1647 ENGLISH. Richard Nicolls 1664 Francis Lovelace 1668 DUTCH. Admirals Evertzen and Binckes 1673 Anthony Colve 1673 ENGLISH. Sir Edmund Andross 1674 Anthony Brockholls 1680 Thomas Dongan 1682 Sir Edmund Andross July, 1688 Francis Nicholson October, 1688 Jacob Leisler 1689 Henry Sloughter March, 1691 Richard Ingoldsby July, 1691 Benj. Fletcher 1692 Earl of Bellomont 1698 John Nanfan 1701 ENGLISH. Inducted. Lord Cornbury 1702 Lord Lovelace 1708 Robt. Hunter 1710 Peter Schuyler 1719 William Burnet 1720 John Montgomery 1728 Rip Van Dam 1731 William Cosby 1733 George Clarke 1736 George Clinton 1743 Sir Dan vers Osborn Oct. 10, 1753 Sir Charles Hardy Oct. 12, 1753 Robert Monckton Oct. 26, 1761 CadwalladerColden Nov. 15, 1761 Robert Monckton 1762 Cadwallader Colden 1763 Sir Henry Moore 1765 Cadwallader Colden 1769 Earl of Dunmore 1770 Sir William Tryon 1771 Cadwallader Colden 1774 Sir William Tryon 1775 Although after the achievement of American Independence, gubernatorial influence upon the development of New York City was less marked, we append, as a matter of record, a list of the GOVERNORS AND ACTING GOVERNORS OF NEW YORK STATE. AFTER THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Elected. Washington Hunt, whig 1850 Horatio Seymour, dem 1852 Myron H. Clark, rep 1854 John A. King, rep 1856 Edwin D. Morgan, rep 1858 Horatio Seymour, dem 1863 Reuben E. Fenton, rep 1864 John T. Hoffman, dem 1868 John Adams Dix, rep 1872 Samuel J. Tilden, dem 1874 Lucius Robinson, dem 1877 Alonzo B. Cornell,* rep 1879 Grover Cleveland,* dem 1882 David B. Hill,* dem 1885 Roswell P. Flower,* dem 1891 Levi P. Morton,* rep 1894 Frank S. Black,* rep 1896 * Living, January 1, 1898. Elected. George Clinton 1777 John Jay, fed 1795 George Clinton, rep 1801 Morgan Lewis 1804 Daniel D. Tompkins, rep 1807 John Taylor, pro tern 1817 De Witt Clinton, dem 1817 Joseph C. Yates, rep. 1822 De Witt Clinton, dem 1825 Nathaniel Pitcher, dem 1828 Martin Van Buren, dem 1828 Enos T. Throop, dem 1829 William L. Marcy, dem 1830 William H. Seward, whig 1838 William C. Bouck, dem 1842 Silas Wright, dem 1844 John Young, whig 1846 Hamilton Fish, whig 1848 In 1668 Nicolls was succeeded by Sir Francis Lovelace, but on July 30, 1673, was forcibly relieved by the Dutch, who sailed into the harbor to re-. U New York: The Second City of the World. possess their "own. " Admirals Evertzen and Binckes assumed temporary authority until Anthony Colve was made Governor ; New York became New^ Amsterdam again ; and the old form of government was restored for a brief period. On November 10, 1674, the City was restored to the English, with Sir Edmund Andross for Governor, and again and for all time became the City of New York. During the ensuing 110 years of English dominion, while the Mayoralty changes thirty-five times, the Governorship had thirty- one incumbents, as will be seen from the preceding list : The period of English dominion was marked by several distinctively pro- gressive steps, one of which was the meeting on October 17, 1683, of the first representative legislative assembly of the people of New York ; and another the signing on April 27, 1686, of the Dongan Charter, drafted by Mayor Nicholas Bayard and Kecorder James Graham, one of the most liberal char- ters ever acquired by a colonial city. In 1730, George II. granted the Montgomery Charter, which remained operative during the continuance of English i^ossession. The changes made after the Eevolution will be referred to in connection with the charter of the greater City, which was approved May 4, 1897. Meanwhile, the territory surrounding Manhattan Island was receiving its accessions of population and municipal privileges. The Borough of Brooklyn was settled by the Dutch almost simultaneously with Manhattan. It is prob- able that when the Walloon families settled at Fort Orange in 1623 and a few on Manhattan Island, some took up their abode across the East Eiver at the place now called the Wallabout, from the Dutch "Waelenbogt, " meaning "Walloon Bay. There was born on June 6, 1625, Sarah de Eapalje, the first female child of European parents within the bounds of New Netherland. On November 26, 1646, Breuckelen (Brooklyn), was granted municipal privi- leges, that is, the people were allowed to elect two Schepens with full judicial powers, and a Schout who should be subordinate to the Sherifi" at New Am- sterdam. Thus we find that the recent consolidation of Brooklyn with Man- hattan is but the reunion of a tie formed in the earliest history of the two communities. Brooklyn received a Dutch charter in 1653, and an English charter in 1665. This latter grant continued in force throughout the colonial and revolutionary period. In 1661 Director-General Stuyvesant granted charters to five Long Island villages, and so the population continued to spread and grow until Brooklyn and her environs had a population of 5, 000 at the close of the eighteenth century, and of 1,180,000 at the time of the recent con- solidation. The most dramatic historical occurrence within the territory of Brooklyn was the battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776, when the Ameri- cans, after a long and brave struggle, saved themselves from annihilation by retreating under cover of night to Manhattan Island. Like New York, Brooklyn remained in the hands of the British until the close of the war and suffered severely, but the place recovered quickly after peace was declared, Historical Revieio of the Boroughs. 15 and in 1811 boasted of a population of 4,402. Communication between New York and Brooklyn was conducted by primitive means until May, 1814, when the first steam ferryboat began to make regular trips; and while steam ferries multiplied as time advanced, it was not until May, 1883, that the first, and at this writing only, bridge was opened between the two Cities. The preliminary work for a second bridge across the East Kiver is now in progress. In 1816 Brooklyn was incorporated as a Village, and soon was knocking at the door of the Capitol for a City Charter. The opposition to the granting of this Charter, on the ground that Brooklyn properly belonged to New York, is alluded to more at length hereafter. This opposition was overcome, however, and in 1834 the Village secured the coveted privileges and became a City with George Hall as first mayor. Since its incorporation it has had the following chief magistrates. MAYORS OF BROOKLYN. George Hall 1834 Jonathan Trotter 1835-1836 Jeremiah Johnson 1837-1838 Cyrus P. Smith 1839-18-11 Henry C. Murphy 1842 Joseph Sprague 1843-1844 Thomas C. Talmage 1845 Francis B. Stryker 1846-1848 Edward Copeland 1849 Samuel Smith 1850 Conklin Brush 1851-1853 Edward A. Lambert 1853-1854 George Hall 1855-1856 Samuel S. Powell 1857-1860 Martin Kalbfleisch 1861-1863 Alfred M. Wood 1864-1865 Samuel Booth 1866-1867 Martin Kalbfleisch 1868-1871 Samuel S. Powell 1873-1873 John W. Hunter» 1874-1875 Frederick A. Schroeder* 1876 1877 James Howell 1878-1881 Seth Low* 1882-1885 Daniel D. Whitney* 1886-1887 Alfred C. Chapin* 1888-1891 David A. Boody* 1893-1893 Charles A. Schieren* 1894-1895 Frederick W. Wurster* 1896-1897 ♦Living, January 1, 1898. In 1840 Brooklyn covered twelve square miles and had a population of 30,- 000, and fifteen years later absorbed the City of "Williamsburg, which had had a separate existence for three years. The town of Bushwick was annexed at the same time. The towns of Flatbush and Gravesend were annexed in May, 1894, New Utrecht on July 1, 1894, and Flatlands on January 1, 1896, so that the City was then co-terminous with King's County. At the time of its consolidation with New York the City was second in size in the State and fourth in the United States, having an area of 46,080 acres, and a population of 1,180,000. It casts 200,000 votes, and sends twenty -one Members of As- sembly and seven Senators to the Legislature at Albany, and five Members of Congress to Washington. As a Borough it sends to the Municipal Assembly nine Councilmen and twenty-one Aldermen. It has 1,503 miles of streets. The assessed value of its real estate is $555,310,997, and of its personal property $27,536,636. Its debt is $57,000,000, and its annual budget $15,- 000,000. Brooklyn was popularly known as the "City of Churches." It has been more distinctively a city of homes than New York. Its population 16 Neiv York: The Second City of the World. is more homogeneous than that of Manhattan Island, and contains a large proportion of iDeople of New England origin who have given the City a high and conservative character. Brooklynites have always boasted of their social and intellectual superiority ; but as the Borough is a great dormitory where thou- sands of men who find employment on Manhattan Island sleep and keep their families, and as it also contains some extensive and beautiful cemeteries, the Manhattans answer their boast by facetiously alluding to Brooklyn as a pleasant and quiet place in which to live, sleep or be buried. Old Brooklyn possessed most of the features of old New York at the time of Consolidation — beautiful public parks, monuments and buildings, an Academy of Music and several theatres, public libraries, schools and institutions of art and science, great department stores, factories, elevated railroads, political rings, etc. — but generally on a smaller scale than New York. It has many attractions as a place of residence, owing to its greater area, higher elevation, lower rents, and other physical, social and economic conditions. The Borough of Queens is the queenly borough of the City in area, with her 79,347 acres, and she led to the municipal nuptials a retinue of 140,000 people. The oldest towns of the Borough date back to the ancient Dutch regime and possess the varied and romantic history of their contemporaries. The early settlers had little peace. When the English and Dutch nations were not actually at war, the Dutch government of New York and the English government of New England were contending for the right to rule the towns of what is now Queens Borough. The Dutch ruled the western end of Long Island and the English the eastern end. Both claimed Queens, the English finally taking Oyster Bay and the Dutch Hempstead, Flushing, Jamaica and Newtown. Queens Borough claims as one of her historical heirlooms the fact that her people were the first Americans to resist unjust taxation by the English. In 1670 a levy was made on them for money to repair forts in New York, but the tax was not collected, and historians say of this stand that "it was the first open manifestation in this country of a spirit of resistance, which led, a century later, to the American Revolution. ' ' Queens County had only one City to be merged into the greater municipality, namely. Long Island City, with a population of 48,000. This City consisted of three com- munities — Astoria, Eavenswood and Hunter's Point — so distinct and separate that in common parlance their connection with each other was generally ignored, and they were referred to by their former names. Astoria, form- ing the eastern shore of the famous Hell Gate, contains many charming resi- dences and old buildings. Eavenswood lies between Astoria and Hunter's Point, and is composed almost entirely of suburban residences. Hunter's Point is a great oil refining depot, with factories extending for more than a mile along the river front. The western terminal of the Long Island Eailroad is here, and the place is one of bustling activity. These three communities are separated by intervals of thinly settled territory which afi'ord room for a Historical Review of the Boroughs. 17 large population in the future. The Mayors of Long Island City since its incorporation have been : MAYORS OF LONG ISLAND CITY. Abram D. Ditmars 1870 1872 George Petry 1883-1886 Henry S. De Bevoise 1872-1875 Patrick J. Gleason* 1887-1892 Abram D. Ditmars (resigned) 1875 Horatio S. Sandford* 1893 1895 John Quinn 1876 Patrick J. Gleason* 1896-1897 Henry S. De Bevoise 1876-1883 •Living, January i, 1898. The assessed valuation of real property in the Borough of Queens, as given by the County Clerk, is $86,205,017. The debt of the various corporations that make up the borough is estimated at over $7, 000, 000. The Borough of Kichmond (Staten Island) has the distinction of being the first soil of New York City to be pressed by the foot of the white man, Hud- son having landed there before he entered the upper Bay. It was early settled by the Dutch, and was for years the object of dispute between the colonies of New York and New Jersey. She adds a population of 70,000, and an area of 37, 760 acres to the greater City. Staten Island was the seat of important mili- tary operations during the Kevolutionary War, and Lord Howe's headquarters (the Billop House) is still standing in Tottenville as a reminder of that inter- esting period. During one winter of the War, Staten Island was firmly joined to Manhattan by ice, and cannon were dragged across the Bay which has never been frozen solid within the memory of any living person. The villages of Huguenot and Nieuw Dorp signify by their names their origin in the early settlement made by French refugees and Dutch emigrants. In the old Mora- vian cemetery, in a magnificent mausoleum, lie the remains of Commodore Vanderbilt, his son, William H., and other members of that noted family. The house in which the old Commodore was born still stands in Port Kich- mond, and the home of Aaron Burr stands in a fair state of preservation in West New Brighton. Fort Wadsworth and the Sailors' Snug Harbor are also among the interesting institutions of the Island. The Borough of the Bronx, including, as it does, the lower end of West- chester County, abounds with historic riches of Colonial and Eevolutionary times. The first purchase of lands north of the Harlem Eiver was made by the West India Company in 1639. Two years later Herr Jonas Bronx arrived from Holland and purchased a tract of land corresponding to the territory now know as Morrisania. It is from this pioneer that the Borough receives its name. Most of this territory was embraced within the City limits of New York before the Consolidation. It has an area of 26,523 acres, and a popu- lation of about 150,000. In 1646 Adrian Von der Donck secured a tract ex- tending sixteen miles along the Hudson north of Manhattan Island and reach- ing east to the Bronx river, including the site of the present City of Yonkers and the entire southwestern part of Westchester County. The eastern por- tion of the Borough, bordering on Long Island Sound, was settled by Anne 18 New York: The Second City of the World, Hutchinson and her husband, who were driven from Boston about the year 1634. John Throckmorton and thirty-five families from New England settled Throggs Neck eight years later, and the northern part of what is now West- chester County was purchased directly from the Indians by Stephanus Van Cortlandt. RECAPITULATION. Borough. Acres. Population. Manhattan 13.487 1,960,000 Brooklyn 46,080 1,180,000 The Bronx 26,523 150,000 Queens 79,347 140,000 Richmond 37,760 70,000 Total 203,197 3,500,000 It is not our purpose to follow in detail the evolution of this great metrop- olis from its humble beginning as a little community of fur-traders. That has been done by others more fully than the limits or design of this volume will permit. But in order to appreciate the political, social and commercial development of modern New York, it should be noted, before concluding this brief retrospect, that up to the achievement of American Independence, the City and its neighbors were shackled in their growth by their political depen- dence on foreign governments, and much of their history was determined, not so much by their own inhabitants as by political conditions abroad. Believed from that incubus, American communities, under their own directing influ- ences, developed with extraordinary rapidity. Owing to geographical rea- sons, more potent in the past than at present, the municipalities about the port of New York grew up with more or less individuality, but nevertheless with a community of interest. With the advancements of science, which have transformed into avenues of communication and bonds of connection those geographical features which were formerly considered obstacles, barriers and natural divisions, the identity of the interests of these municipalities has become more apparent, and their Consolidation has been, not the conquest of one rival by another, but a family reunion of children of the same parent, who have grown up side by side, in earnest competition perhaps, but still in friendly intercourse, and who have mutually resolved to unite under a com- mon name for the better pursuit of their common aims. CHAPTER n. THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA OF MUNICIPAL CONSOLIDATION AND THE CAUSES LEADING THERETO. NO great moral, social, or political reform or readjustment is effected in an instant, and the change by which the communities adjacent to the port of New York were brought together under a single municipal government was no exception to the rule. It was the fruition of an idea which had been in process of germination and growth for three-quarters of a century at least, and which had for its aim the harmonization of rivalries and the equalization of burdens and privileges dating back to the very foundation of the City. Over two centuries ago New Amsterdam looked with jealousy upon her neighbor across the East Eiver and feared her as a dangerous rival for supremacy ; while those who dwelt in Breuckenland viewed with envy the rich and exclu- sive commerce which the inhabitants of Manhattan enjoyed. The Dutch pioneers had not lived on Manhattan and Nassau (Long) Islands twenty-five years before the little cloud of dissension, no bigger than a man's hand, appeared on the horizon, in the form of a petition addressed "to the Noble, High and Mighty Lords, the Lords States-General of the United Netherlands, our Most Illustrious Sovereigns," and dated "July 26, 1649, in New Amsterdam on the Island Manhattans in New Netherlands. ' ' Among other things, the petition- ers humbly besought "their High Mightinesses to be pleased to determine and so to establish and order the Boundaries of this province, that all cause of difference, disunion and trouble may be cut off and prevented; that their High Mightinesses' Subjects may live and dwell in peace and quietness, and enjoy their liberty as well in trade and commerce as in intercourse and settled limits." Less than a score of years after this petition was offered, the people of Brooklyn were engaged in strenuous efforts to protect themselves from en- croachments upon their ferry privileges by New Yorkers. With the advent of English supremacy, the situation was not improved, from the Brooklyn standpoint, by the sweeping ferry franchises and water- front privileges secured to New York by the Dongan Charter, granted April 27, 1686, under letters patent from James 11. of England. These rights, subsequently perfected and further secured in the Cornbury Charter, 1708, and again amplified and "forever secured to the Mayor, Aldermen, and Com- monalty of the City of New York, and to their successors in ofiice, ' ' in the Montgomery Charter, 1730, practically deprived Brooklyn of her water-front. These privileges, confirmed time and again by the state courts, gave New York City the inalienable right perpetually to control all ferries running from her 20 New York: The Second City of the World. shores. Under the Montgomery Charter, for the consideration of a few shill- ings and a beaver skin, New York City's boundary line was fixed at low water mark on the Brooklyn shore, so that while the inshore end of a hawser by which a vessel was moored to a Brooklyn wharf might rest on Brooklyn territory, the outshore end and the vessel itself would be within the limits of New York City. As a consequence of this monopoly, Brooklyn, up to the time of Consolidation, had no water front of her own except a small tract near Bay Eidge, and the only other way by which a vessel could be gotten into that City was by hauling her up on the ways or landing her in a dry dock. The money value of these water privileges to New York City is expressed in the receipts from ferry, railroad and steamship companies, which amount to nearly $2,500,000 a year. Brooklyn, having no water front and no right to tax shipping, had no coiTespondiug income. This is a single instance of a provoking cause of the desire for Consolidation — a cause whose origin can be traced back to a foreign source across 3,000 miles of water and over more than two centuries of time. After years of rivalry, varying in degree of acuteness at different periods, the acrimony became intensified when, shortly after 1825, the townspeople of Brooklyn set about securing a Charter for a City on the eastern shore. This attempt was defeated for several years in the Legislature, the opponents claiming that it was Brooklyn's manifest destiny, sooner or later, to become a part of New York City. In January, 1834, says Stiles in his "History of King's County," "The Brooklyn people, undaunted by their previous defeats and confident in their own resources and the justice of their claims, again renewed their application to the Legislature for a City charter. The City of New York, with the spirit of the dog in the manger, still threw the whole weight of her wealth and influence against the movement, objecting that the limits of the City of New York ought to embrace the whole of the Counties of Kings and Kichmond ; that all commercial cities are natural rivals and com- petitors, and that contentions, inconvenience and other calamities grow out of such rivalries ; that the period was not far distant when a population of not less than 2,000,000 would be contained within the three counties of New York, Kings and Kichmond ; that the limits of the City of New York already extended to low water mark on all the shores of Brooklyn east of Ked Hook ; that an act of Legislature passed in 1821 relative to the Village of Brooklyn was virtually an encroachment on the rights of New York, inasmuch as it pro- vided for the election of a harbor master, whose duty in Brooklyn would be within the City limits of New York ; and further, that the Sheriff and civil officers of Brooklyn were allowed to execute processes on board of vessels attached to the wharves of Brooklyn. ' ' A verbatim passage or two from the records of the Board of Aldermen of New York City at that time will indicate the state of sentiment which then existed on Manhattan Island. The Board resolved : Brooklyn Obtains a City Charter. 21 "That it is impolitic, as well in respect to the interests and welfare of the applicants themselves (for a city charter for Brooklyn) as of the inhabitants of the City of New York, that the former should be incorporated as a City, except in connection with the City of New York, upon equal and just prin- ciples. "That the same cannot be otherwise done, with any substantial advantages to the inhabitants of Brooklyn, without materially infringing upon the vested rights and necessary immunities of the City of New York. ' ' That from the peculiar situation of the City of New Y'ork, its commercial character and importance, and the inseparable connection existing between its prosperity and that of the whole State, it is for the interests of the people of this State, as a political body, to second your memorialists in their efforts to preserve and protect the rights and privileges of the City of New York in their full integrity and to defeat all attempts to establish a distinct and rival community, which, by exercising a divided or concurrent jurisdiction, over the matters which now constitute the harbor of New Y^ork, must inevitably interfere with regulations already established in respect to its navigation, em- barrass the commercial pursuits of this ancient and flourishing City, and lead to a state of hostility and bad feeling between parties whose contiguity and peculiar local situation indicate that they should be united as one body, to participate in and enjoy with mutual security and benefit the advantages with which Nature has surrounded them. ' ' The granting of the Brooklyn City Charter on April 8, 1834, put a long quietus upon the idea of New York's and Brooklyn's common destiny, and the citizens of the respective Cities again devoted their attention to the task of gaining as much advantage of each other as possible. In 1843 the Com- mon Council of New York prepared and presented to the Legislature a bill taxing the property of Brooklynites doing business in New Y'ork, against the passage of which the Common Council of Brooklyn successfully remonstrated. During the decade of 1840-50, the idea of municipal enlargement by annexa- tion found a local expression in the growing movement for the union of Williamsburg and Brooklyn. At the same time the broader application of the idea to New York and Brooklyn was still agitated. In 1850 a Senate Committee was appointed to report on the subject of the union of the two great Cities, and reported adversely in 1851. The favorable sentiment was expressed in the minority report which declared it to be apparent to all "that the true interests of these places would be greatly promoted by uniting them under a common government. By this union the many questions that would tend to disturb the peace and well-being of both would be terminated. ' ' In 1856 State Senator Cyrus P. Smith, of King's County, introduced a resolution for the union of New York and Brooklyn, but it was defeated and the subject again dropped. A unique feature of Senator Smith's idea was the proposition to fill up the East Kiver with gravel, and connect Manhattan and Long Islands by terra firma. He believed that the cost of the enterprise would be more than covered by the sale of the made land at high prices. In 1857 a partial consolidation of interests was effected by the passing of the "Metro- 22 New York: The Second City of the World. politan Police Act, ' ' placing the police of New York, Brooklyn and surround- ing towns under one jurisdiction, an Act which was followed by others merging the fire and health departments of the Cities ; but these ties which bound the sister Cities together were destined to be severed thirteen years later. It was now evident that Consolidation was not to be effected without a long fight and a strong fight, and a fight maintained with a persistency of purpose born of experience, knowledge, and courageous tenacity. No man combined these qualities more eminently than Andrew Haswell Green, to whom a re- spectful and affectionate people apply the term of "Father of the Greater New York." Thirty years ago his prophetic mind foresaw municipal Consolida- tion in its ultimately broad scope, as that of Samuel Adams perceived, years in advance of his contemporaries, the destiny of the American Colonies to become united into a single and homogeneous political system. Mr. Green was born October 6, 1820, upon the commanding eminence of the City of Worces- ter, Mass., named Green Hill, which has been the homestead of the family for four generations. Springing from a lineage which had displayed its self- sacrificing loyalty in the great national drama which preceded American Inde- pendence, born of parents of strong intellectuality and robust integrity, and reared upon a homestead commanding one of the broadest and most beautiful views in New England, Mr. Green inherently possessed and naturally acquired those distinguishing traits of character which appeared afterward in his incorruptible honor, his intense love of the scientific and the beautiful, and his appreciation and unselfish devotion to the well-being of his fellow-men. Although educated in the Worcester Academy with a view of entering the United States Military Academy at West Point, the purpose of a military career was abandoned, and about the year 1835 he entered the employment of a prominent business house in New York City. Mr. Green's talents, how- ever, were cast in the professional rather than the mercantile mold, and after several years of business life, he entered the law office of Samuel J. Tilden, whose political principles he shared, and with whom he sustained confiden- tial and trusted relations throughout life. Upon Mr. Tilden's death Mr. Green became one of the executors of his will, which, among other provisions, left seven millions of dollars for a public library. In this capacity he was first to propose the consolidation of libraries, which was effected in 1895, under the title of ' ' The New York Public Library : Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations." While practicing his profession, Mr. Green became greatly interested in educational affairs, and it was as a Trustee of the public schools of New York, elected by the people of the Fourteenth Ward, that he first entered public life. In 1854 he was elected a Commissioner of Public Schools, and soon after became President of the Board of Education. In this capacity, as in every other public trust, Mr. Green displayed a complete mastery of details and a jealous championship of the interests committed to his care. In 1857 he first became identified with Central Park when that section of the ANDREW HASWELL GREEN. The Father of Greater New York. 25 town was yet unformed, and his labors have left their impress upon almost every beautiful natural feature that has been preserved on the island north of Fifty-ninth street. First as Commissioner, then as Treasurer, then as Presi- dent of the Park Board, and finally as Controller of the Park — an office created especially to give greater scope to his abilities — he bestowed for years more solicitous care upon the creation, development and extension of the City's great and small thoroughfares and pleasure grounds than any other individual citizen. Bringing into play his many-sided faculties, he blended with the development of public parks a comprehensive scheme of public health, public amusement, and public education. The Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Meteorological Observatory, and the Zoolo- gical Garden, are but features of his plan, which also included a meteorolog- ical and astronomical observatory. An unmarried man, Mr. Green seems to have adopted the children of the City for his own, and in the interest of the comfort and happiness of these little ones, and of the manual classes, he has resolutely defended the public parks and breathing places against the en- croachments periodically attempted. His jealousy for the protection and preservation of these privileges has been so great that he has resisted the use of Central Park for military parades, for a speedway, and for the World's Fair in 1892; protested against the location of Grant's Mausoleum in Kiver- side Park, and objected to the location of the New York Public Library, in which he is deeply interested, upon the site of the old Bryant Park reservoir. It was also through his efforts, assisted by the Empire State Society of the Sons of the American Eevolution, that the historic City Hall of old New York was preserved from destruction. Mr. Green's exalted idea of honesty could never tolerate the attainment or retention of any position in the public serv- ice, high or low, except by genuine merit. His principle in this regard is illustrated by a placard which hangs on his office wall, a relic of the days when he was the directing power of Central Park, which reads as follows : "Men are employed by the Commissioners of the Park to work for their regular wages and for no other consideration whatever. The labor of each man employed, his compliance with the rules of the work, and civil behavior are all that will be required of him. No influence of any sort will be brought to bear upon the political opinions or actions of men employed. ' ' Andrew H. Green. ' ' Mr. Green required the reading of this notice once a fortnight by the fore- man to each gang of laborers, and had it posted on every tool-box used by the department. In 1865, when he was Controller of the Park, the Legislature imposed upon the Commissioners of Central Park the duty of laying out that portion of the 26 New York: The Second City of the World. island lying north of One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street ; and his official communications on the subject refer to a vast body of subjects such as the creation, extension, widening and straightening of streets, the reservation of Iiarks and parkways, the Harlem Eiver improvements, sewerage, reforming the city plan below One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, ferries, bridges, transverse tunnels across the Island, water and gas supply, pavements, abba- toirs, fair grounds, race courses, riding and driving, and rapid transit. Most of these recommendations have been adopted and are now accepted as matters of course, with little public appreciation of the time, thought, and energy devoted to their projection, while others, such as rapid transit, are still engrossing the careful attention of the municipal statesmen of to-day. As truly as Hamilton's character is wrought into his enduring works of state- craft, or as Edison's is being expressed in the beneficent inventions which confront the citizen at every turn, Mr. Green's is woven into the structure and visible aspect of modern New York. This is true not only of great construc- tive works, but also of such subordinate details as the graceful outline of the Washington Bridge, which was substituted for an ungainly original plan, or, negatively, the suppression of unsuitable designs for the Central Park gate- ways. At the time of the Tweed revelations in 1871, when the people cast about for some citizen of proved integrity to stand as a faithful watchdog over the city's treasury, they turned instinctively to Mr. Green, and morally coerced Controller Connolly to appoint him as his Deputy. Mr. Tweed's chagrin was privately expressed in his admission that the appointee was a man whom he could not in the least degree subordinate to his own designs. The "New York Tribune' ' expressed the popular sentiment of the time when it said : "Fortunately Mr. Green is an officer whose long experience in public affairs, strict sense of accountability, and thorough methods of doing business make it impossible that he should pursue any course less satisfactory to the honest and intelligent taxpayers of this City than that which is outlined by 'The Tribune.' The man who now holds the keys of the City Treasury is incor- ruptible, inaccessible to partisan or personal considerations, immovable by threats or bribes, and honest by the very constitution of his whole nature." Mr. Connolly was soon compelled to retire, and Mayor Hall, in obedience to universal public sentiment, appointed Mr. Green Controller in his place. In 1876 Mr. Green was nominated for Mayor on the Citizens' Independent ticket, but declined to run out of consideration for the interests of Mr. Tilden, who was then candidate for President of the United States ; and in 1897, although again publicly mentioned as first Mayor of the greater City, he again declined to avail himself of a natural opportunity to secure the nomination of the Democratic party for the honor to which his public services, in i)opular esti- mation, seemed to entitle him. Upon retiring from the office of Controller in 1877 he assumed the extensive responsibility of executing the estate of The Father of Greater New York. 27 William B. Ogden, but his fellow citizens still maintained a hold on his serv- ices. In 1880 Mayor Cooper appointed him Park Commissioner. In 1881 Governor Cornell appointed him one of the Commissioners to revise the tax laws of the State. In 1883 Governor Cleveland appointed him on the Niagara Park Commission, in which position he was retained Governors Hill and Flower. In 1890 the Legislature appointed him a Commissioner to locate and plan the great railroad bridge across the Hudson Kiver which is to unite Manhattan Island with the rest of the continent. In breaking ground at the site where the New York terminus was first located, Mr. Green said: "I am glad that you have provided me with a sensible tool — a strong, substantial shovel, fit symbol of honest practical labor — instead of a silver trowel or a gilded spade. With this robust implement, which well indicates the inten- tion of its promoters that the work is primarily for the benefit of all the people, and not alone for the aggrandizement of capital, in the presence of this assemblage as witnesses, I now commence the work of constructing the New York and New Jersey Bridge, fixing its location by a visible earthmark." Mr. Green deems this structure one of the most important and essential factors for the retention of the commercial supremacy of New York. The i^eople elected Mr. Green a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1894, and about the same time he was appointed by the Legislature one of the State Trustees of Scenic and Historic Places and Objects. He was also one of the original trustees of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. Omitting for the present any reference to his subsequent public honors, it may be mentioned that during this period he has been connected as Member, Director, Trustee, or Ofiicer, with many societies and institutions, including the American Anti- quarian Society, New York Historical Society, American Museum of Natural History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Zoological Society, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, New York Geographical Society, New York Society for Parks and Playgrounds for Children, New York Juve- nile Asylum, the Isabella Heimath, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, New York Academy of Science, State Bar Association, Nev/ York State Agricultural Society, and the Sons of the American Eevolu- tion. The foregoing sketch of Mr. Green's life, though brief, will enable the reader to understand how each successive stage in his career was fertilizing his mind for the germination and growth of the idea which has found its con- summation in the unification of the municipalities grouped around the port of New York. It should be understood that the science of municipal develop- ment, so far as it exists to-day, exists not in books, but in the minds of those who have devoted themselves to its study. One can read standard works on the subject of architecture, or astronomy, or constitutional government, but there is no standard literature on the science of the construction of cities. One reason for this is the fact that this department of human activity is so 28 New York: The Second City of the World. subject to the altered condition of progressive civilization, that the science has had no time to crystallize into a body of fixed principles. From the be- ginning of civilization to the present time, there has been a constant and accelerated change in the requirements and conditions of urban populations. Primitive tribes were nomadic, with no i^ermanent habitation, migrating with the seasons, following their supply of food like the children of Nature that they were. Then, as civilization dawned and rose, habitations became more fixed, but their location was still largely determined by natural characteristics. Men built walls to inclose places of safety from wild beasts and human ene- mies ; and to minimize the labor of constructing their defenses, they huddled their domiciles as closely together as possible, leaving streets only wide enough to move about in. Their passageways, following the lines of least physical resistance, were often laid out along the paths first made by domestic animals, and even at the present time the inhabitants of many a city tread ancient streets whose courses were determined by those most primitive of civil engineers, the dumb beasts. Carriageways were not then thought of, and sidewalks are a modern invention. Almost all oriental cities were first laid out regardless of vehicular traffic. As Mr. Green says in one of his remarkable reports, streets were first used by men and animals of burden indiscriminately, and such a condition still exists in some unprogressive Euro- pean cities, in which the pedestrian finds his way among the beasts and filth of the kennel. The dangers and inconveniences of this indiscriminate mix- ture of travel led to a distribution of travel and traffic when carriages were introduced. Beasts of burden and vehicles were assigned to one side of the way and pedestrians to another. And finally in crowded streets, pedestrians passing in opposite directions arranged themselves in distinct currents of travel, those going one way taking one side of the walk and those going the other way taking the other side of the same walk. The idea of paving the thoroughfares, while practiced to a certain extent in the streets of ancient Rome and Pompeii, which still show the ruts of chariot wheels, was not uni- versally regarded as a necessity until more modern times. "There was no pavement in Paris, " says Mr. Green, "until the royal stomach of Philip Augustus was turned, as he looked out of his windows in the Cite, by odors proceeding from a wagon plowing up the mud of the streets ; and the man- dates which issued thereupon must have been slowly executed, for years elapsed before the perambulation of the streets by pigs was forbidden, when a son of Louis le Gros had been thrown from his horse by one of these un- toward animals. Less than two centuries since, the streets of London, if paved at all, were so imperfectly paved that the occasional wheeled carriage that passed through them was very likely to get fixed in the mire. From a mutual exertion to avoid the mud thrown by carriage wheels toward the foot passage, quarrels often arose between pedestrians as to which should 'take the wall, ' or the side of the walk most remote from the carriageway. The i The Science of Municipal Construction. 31 existing custom of giving to ladies tlie inside of the walk arose from the desire to avoid exposing them to the contents of the gutter. ' ' The old adage that Necessity is the Mother of Invention is well illustrated in the progress of street building from these small beginnings. Convenience of construction is now subordinate to the end desired. When Nassau Street, in Manhattan Borough, was first laid out, the citizens petitioned for permis- sion to construct a highway along the "lane that runs by the pie-woman." The pie-woman with her enduring wares has not yet disappeared entirely from among the minor institutions of the metropolis, but she has ceased to be a mere-stone for the location of streets. To-day the citizens decide where they want a street, and there they make it, even if they have to cut it seventy five or one hundred feet deep in solid rock — as may be seen in the new streets that are being constructed in the upper part of the Island. In the infancy of invention, watercourses and mountains which we now span or penetrate to suit our convenience, were insurmountable obstacles ; and, as in the case of Lon- don before the advent of the Romans, it was not uncommon for hostile peoples to dwell on opposite sides of a river, restrained from each other's throats by a barrier which has since been converted into an avenue of friendly communi- cation. So tenacious is the human race of its traditions, even involuntarily, and so hard is it to uproot and cast out inherited customs and modes of think- ing, that it is oftentimes with the greatest difficulty that people can be made to realize that they have outgrown the conditions of early barbarism, and that, as in the case of New York City, natural geographical divisions do not necessarily involve segregation or hostility of interests. The changes in these conditions, keeping pace with the progress of invention, have been so rapid and multifarious, that if any attempt were made to formulate the canons of municipal construction, they would be outgrown in a lifetime. We see illustrations of this fact almost every year at home or abroad. The correc- tion of past errors or the adaptation to modern circumstances, is alreadj' costing New York City many millions. The widening of Broadway under the law of 1857, and the very recent widening and extension of College Place and Elm street, are illustrations in point. The irremediable error of that portion of the City's plan, from Houston street to One Hundred and Fifty- fifth street, which disposed the longitudinal avenues at greater distances apart than the lateral streets, thus reducing the number of the channels of traffic in the direction in which they were most needed, is continually costing the in- habitants of Manhattan Island great treasure. The Commission which was originally intrusted by the law of 1807 with the task of laying out that sec- tion, was composed of three distinguished gentlemen — Gouverneur Morris, Simeon DeWitt and John Rutherford — whose eminent services in many direc- tions have earned for their names a lasting reputation. But not one of them was a resident of the City. Mr. Rutherford lived in New Jersey, Mr. Morris in Westchester, and Mr. DeWitt in Albany. They employed John Eandel, 32 New York: The Second City of the Woi'ld. Jr., to lay outtlieplau, and Le adopted the system wliicli gridirons the islaud. As soon as the City began to approach the territory comprised therein, there was a demand for its modification, and in the next fifty years no less than thirty-eight laws were passed for that purpose, abolishing or materially alter- ing almost every feature of the original plan except the rectangular system. Two further instances may be cited in passing, showing how little, at different stages of the City's life, the City fathers realized the rapidity with which it would grow. When the City Hall of old New York was erected in 1803-12, it was built of white marble, with the exception of the north wall, which, for the sake of economy, was made of brown stone, as it was not then thought that the city would grow so as to extend around to the north side of the build- ing ! "When the Commission on laying out the City made their report in 1811, they planned among other things a grand parade (Thirty-second to Thirty- fourth Streets), and thought it no unreasonable conjecture that in half a cen- tury the City would be closely built up to its northern boundary and contain a population of 400,000 souls! In 1861, at the end of that period, the prophesied population had been more than doubled. The City continued to expand. In 1851 a second attempt was made to lay out part of the island, the objective portion being the territory above One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, and the Common Council directed the Street Commission to present a plan. Commissioner John T. Dodge appointed Edwin Smith, Gardner A. Sage and William Dodge, Jr., to take the matter in charge, but no appropriation having been made for the work, nothing was accomplished. In 1860 a third attempt was made by the Legislative appoint- ment of a board of seven Commissioners, who, serving without pay, expended $41,236 for some valuable surveys, and at the end of their four years' term surrendered the responsibilities of their trust At length, by Act of April 24, 1865, the powers of these Commissioners were transferred to the Commis- sioners of Central Park, and at this point in our narrative we discover an important turning-point in the City's history, and first see emerging from the mass of perplexities which had confronted the people, the idea of Consolida.- tion which has just been consummated. When the Central Park Commissioners assumed the task of laying out the northern end of the island, they encountered problems which have increased in difficulty ever since, and the solution of which required careful analysis and study. If the insular interests of the island were alone to be considered, there would have been no need of municipal partnership with her neighbors ; but the instant that her relations with the outside world became involved, the necessity for some concert of purpose became imperative. If an avenue laid out on Manhattan Island was not to terminate at the Harlem at a grade so far above the corresponding highway across the river as to make bridge connec- tion difficult or impracticable, co-ordination of action was necessary. When the question of bridges across the Harlem arose, the people of Westchester Mr. Green's Historic Communication of 1868. 33 County claimed that New York owned to liigli water mark on the Westchester shore, and that New York should assume the expense of the whole bridge except the portion which extended bej'ond the limit of flood tide. Still later, upon the construction of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, the problems of the proper division of expense and management, of tolls, etc., were sources of constant friction. A thousand questions like these, too numerous and complicated to mention, evoked a now historic communication addressed to the Board of Commis- sioners of Central Park by Comptroller Green, under date of December 30, 1868, which was printed as an appendix to the Twelfth Annual Eeport of the Commissioners. This document, which reveals the source of Mr. Green's idea in the considerations heretofore mentioned, is here given in full : "To the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park: "In the progress of laying out the north end of the Island the general sug- gestions, made in a previous communication to the Board concerning the rela- tions of the southerly part of Westchester County with the City, have come to be practically important, and call for distinct notice and specific consideration before proceeding to complete the plans upon which the Board is now engaged. The lower part of the County of Westchester lies adjacent to the City of New York, and is separated from it by a river of a width easily bridged or tunneled. It is so intimately connected with and dependent upon the City of New York, that unity of plan for improvements on both sides of the river is essential, not only for the future convenience of the inhabitants, but in order that the ex- pensive processes of changing the plan of the coming City after it is built up may be avoided. "The leading avenues and lines of travel in the City of New York lie gen- erally in a northeasterly direction, and reach the boundary between the two counties at very different distances from the center of business in New York ; thus, the Second Avenue terminates at the Harlem Eiver, at about seven miles from the City Hall, the Eighth Avenue at about nine miles, and the King's Bridge Koad, on the west side of the City at about twelve miles from the same point. There is therefore a triangular gore o{ the southwestern por- tion of Westchester County, five miles in length from north to south, and over two miles in width, from east to west, including all parts of the town of West- chester, that lies as near the business centre of New York as the opposite part of New York Island. "Most of the valleys in Westchester which afford easy lines for travel, run in a similar direction as the leading avenues of New Y'ork. "The bridges that have up to this time been constructed across the Harlem Eiver, are but cheap and poor affairs, with a capacity for travel that is so much less than that of the roads leading to them, as to occasion, particularly at those with swings or draws, interruptions and delays to travel that will soon become very serious. "The development of both Counties will be much advanced by providing means of a direct crossing of the river at the ends of most of the leading avenues of New York terminating at the river, and by laying such new avenues as are to be provided in New York, terminating at the Harlem Eiver, as far as practicable, so as to connect readily and directly by bridges or tunnels New York: The Second City of the World. with avenues leadiug immediately into the heart of Westchester County by the natural openings in the hills, or by convenient methods of surmounting them. "But little more than a decade has passed since the only roads from the City of New York into and through Westchester County were the old Col- onial Boston Post Koad and the Albany Turnpike ; the former having its l)eginning nearly opposite the present termination of the Third Avenue, and the latter at King's Bridge. "After the building of Macomb's Dam and the Farmer's Bridge, near Ford- ham, roads were opened to them, each terminating in the road crossing West- chester from the Boston Post Koad, and running through Fordham to the Albany Turnpike. Three leading lines of railroad already pass through this County, and two or three others are projected. "On its surface, which is generally well adapted for suburban residences, may now be found many beautiful private structures, as well as public insti- tutions of great extent. Its steep and precipitous bluflfs are chiefly, though not entirely, on the hills that lie along the Hudson and Harlem rivers. ' ' The immediate front on the Harlem Kiver is capable of being made avail- able for the purposes of commerce and for the convenience of a large popula- tion. It is not too early to endeavor to guide, by such foresight as can be commanded, the progress of improvements in Westchester in conjunction with those of this City, for the best ultimate interests of both ; and so that the benefits which ought naturally to accrue to that County, from its proximity to the city, may not be postponed. Several villages have, within the last twenty years, been projected in Westchester by the owners of farms, which already embarrass the question of future improvements, and unless the difficulties are soon met by the adoption of a general plan, these embarrassments will have so increased, and become so fixed upon the ground, that no generation will be found bold enough to grapple with and remedy them. "Less than four square miles of the City of New York, above Astor Place, had been laid out in farm plots, without reference to any general plan, prior to 1807, and were but little built upon prior to 1811, when the plan of the City was adopted ; and to this day, parts of this district have not recovered from the ill efi'ects of this heterogeneous work of individuals. When once sales of territory are made in small subdivisions, questions of title so compli- cate and weigh down efforts to remedy past errors that they are abandoned. "Although a street or avenue may be made more capacious by taking land from adjacent lots, yet by this process the lots bordering on it are often left of greatly reduced value and of much diminished convenience. "The southerly part of Westchester County is made up of the towns of Morrisania, West Farms, East and West Chester and Yonkers. The township of Morrisania already comprehends the villages of Morrisania, Mott Haven, Port Morris, Wilton, North New York, East and West Morrisania, Melrose, Woodstock, Elton, Claremont and Highbridgeville. The township of West Farms comprises the villages of Tremont, Belmont, West Farms, Central Morrisania, Mount Hope, Mount Eden, William's Bridge, Fairmount and Fordham. These settlements are generally laid out with but little regard to each other or to their surroundings. The case is similar with that part of the town of Yonkers which adjoins the Ci4y of New York, and those parts of the towns of East and West Chester within the same radial distance from New York City Hall as King's Bridge. "The rapid approach of the City has occasioned great changes in the sub- Mr. Green's Historic Communication of 1868. 35 divisions of land in these towns, and in the vahie of property. But a few years since they were but little altered in their surface, except by the work of the farmer, from what they were when all that portion of the country was granted to Yonder Donck, more than two centuries ago. "The increase of this City will, within a short period, without doubt, require most of the area included within the southern part of Westchester for the homes of her artisans and merchants, and the solution of the question of rapid conveyance of business men between their homes and business, is all that is required to cover the unsettled portion of New York and the pictur- esque hills and valleys of the southerly part of Westchester with the residences of these classes and of those who desire to live near a great city. "The Harlem Kiver and Spuyten Duyvil Creek are the boundary line be- tween the two counties ; the jurisdiction of the City of New York extends to low-water mark on the Westchester shore. It needs but a short look into the future to see this river busy with the craft that are to supply the thriving population on both its banks. "At present these waters are but little navigated for commercial purposes; in some parts they are obstructed by mud-fiats and by illy-constructed bridges. "These two are really but one river, or rather they are an estuary connecting the tidewaters of the East Eiver and the Sound with those of the north side of the City, and can only be properly considered in connection with the waters they unite. As a waterway for commerce this estuary has the advantage of the Thames in the far less inconvenience arising from the rise and fall of tides, in the Thames sometimes equal to twenty-one feet, occasioning great expense in the construction of storehouses, and in handling goods to be loaded and unloaded. "The tides on the Harlem rise about six feet. It has the advantage of the Seine by reason of its easy debouchment into both rivers. The falls of rain that sometimes suddenly swell the Seine, occasioning great inconvenience, have no important effect on the Harlem. "At a small cost in comparison with the accruing benefit, a channel can be made from the North Eiver to Long Island Sound, through the Harlem River, with greater depth of water that the North River aflfords at some points between this City and Albany, and of width sufficient for all the practical purposes of the commerce that will seek to use it. "The importance of measures for the improvement of the navigation of this river, was made the subject of a general communication to the Board in the year 1865. It has since been brought to more general notice, and is begin- ning to command the attention of landowners in New York and in Westchester County, as it should, and sooner or later will, that of the public authorities of both counties, and of the State, as it concerns deeply a large portion of the commerce of the interior. "Without again detailing the results to be anticipated from such an im- provement, it is sufficient to repeat that it will shorten the distance of the travel between the North River and the waters of the Sound, and of a large portion of the City of Brooklyn lying on the East River, and between the North River and the Eastern States by more than twenty miles around the Battery of the tedious, expensive, and unsafe navigation of the crowded waters that skirt the city ; and, in connection with the improvement proposed at Hell Gate, will increase the facilities of foreign traffic by the Sound. "As early as the year 1700, these waters of the Harlem and Spuyten Duyvil 36 New York: T/ie Second City of the World. were respected as a navigable stream. It is on record tliat tlie first bridge across tliem was a drawbridge at or near the site of the present King's Bridge, erected by Frederick Philiipse, i:)rior to that year. "Recent surveys made under the direction of the Commissioners of the Central Park, establish the fact that prior to artificial obstructions in the river near King's Bridge for the erection of a watermill, about the commence- ment of the present century, the channel near that point at the narrowest ijart of the river, must have been over one hundred and fifty feet in width, and at least sis feet deep at high water of ordinary tides. It has been reduced by artificial methods to its present width, at the same point, of not exceeding eighty feet. "Between King's Bridge and the East River, navigation was obstructed by Macomlj's Dam and Harlem Bridge in the jsresent century. It was after- wards threatened with a more formidable barrier in a bridge proposed to be built to carry over the Croton Aqueduct, the erection of which was resisted by citizens both of Westchester and New York, at whose instance the Legis- lature, in the year 1839, passed an act limiting the obstructions to those pre- sented by the High Bridge. "The gentlemen who so successfully resisted the attempt to obstruct navi- gation by the Croton Aqueduct Bridge, also took measures to prevent its further obstruction by a bridge at the Second Avenue, and to remove Macomb's Dam, and cause draws to be constructed in the bridges at the Third and Fourth Avenues. "In the proceedings before the courts relating to this matter, it was shown that prior to the year 1813, the Harlem River was regularly navigated as far up as Farmer's Bridge by vessels carrying various kinds of produce, lumber and other building materials. Spuyten Duyvil Creek is now navigated by North River sloops and other vessels, from its mouth to within a few yards of King's Bridge. "In the case of 'Renwick ?;s. Morris,' in the Court for the Correction of Errors, aftirming the judgment of the Supreme Court, it was held that Ma- comb's Dam, as constructed, was a public nuisance, liable to abatement, although it has existed as such for over twenty years on a navigable river. This waterway affords advantages of navigation for a distance of over five miles to each county, equal, if not superior, to those furnished by the North River and Long Island Sound to the rest of the County of Westchester. "It cannot be doubted that great benefits would result to both counties, if the navigation of these waters were properly improved. But this improvement cannot be well done, if it even can be done at all, by the separate powers of each county. The method of proceeding would probably be to build bulk- heads on both sides of the channel opposite each other at the same time, and deposit the material which must be dredged from the channel behind both lines of bulkhead in proper proportions. When the obstructions at King's Bridge are reached, the whole width of the river may be closed for a distance of about 1,500 feet, the water pumped out, the rock in its bed blasted, and the material removed for the whole required width and depth by one set of employees ; walls are then to be built on both sides, and fendered and secured before opening the river again. It is not possible to do this work by piecemeal — it must be done as a whole, and to be well done, it must be done under one authority. "It is au undertaking in which the public not merely on the banks of the Mr. Green's Historic Communication of 1868. 37 river, but over a very wide extent, is greatly interested ; as things now stand, diiferent jurisdictions and forms of municipal government, through all the territory immediately affected and to be directly benehted, will very much embarrass its accomplishment. It is doubtful whether it can be satisfactorily carried out by any private company, and without the provision by intelligent legislation, of adequate means intrusted to some competent body duly author- ized thereto ; to invest any private company with the right to exclude vessels from passing through this waterway, except upon pa\ ment of tolls, would be open to great objection. "The problems to be solved for all time, are those of the accommodation by the most improved modern methods, of traffic across the river, and of traffic on the river, so that each shall not interfere with the other. "The improvement of the navigation of the river is one subject and the method of carrying persons across it another. Having alluded to the former, the other question, that of crossing the river, remains to be briefly considered. "Some idea of the extent of bridge and tunnel communication that will ultimately be required between New York and Westchester may be obtained from the experience of the cities of London and Paris. "There are now in London seven bridges across the Thames, devoted to ordinary traffic, and three exclusively for railways, within the distance of three miles, beginning at the east; they are as follows: London Bridge, Southwark Bridge for general traffic, and at a distance of 1,450 feet from the former, between these, is a railway bridge ; the next is Blackfriar's Bridge, at a distance of 2,450 feet from Southwark Bridge ; another railway bridge lies between the two last named ; then comes Waterloo Bridge, at 2, 900 feet from Blackfriar's Bridge; then Westminster Bridge, 3,150 feet from Waterloo Bridge, with another railway bridge between tliem ; next is Lambeth Bridge, distant from Westminster Bridge, 2,250 feet, and is followed by Vauxhall Bridge, 2,700 feet further up the river, and near the limit of dense popula- tion; beyond these are Chelsea and Battersea Bridges, each at intervals of a little over a mile. "These bridges vary in length from 708 feet to 1,380 feet, and are of vari- ous widths. "Less than a century ago the only bridges over the Thames within the above limits, were Old London, Blackfriar's and Westminster. Since then, Old London Bridge has been removed as inadequate for the modern travel, and New London Bridge built near the site of the old one : Blackfriar's and Westminster have been improved and rebuilt, and all the others newly con- structed. In building the New London Bridge and the others, very great expense was incurred for opening the new streets and approaches to them, and great delay incurred thereby. Most of these bridges are designed upon an extensive and magnificent scale as to the extent of the accommodation afforded, and are works of engineering skill and architectural beauty. It is stated that the cost of the New London Bridge and the approaches to it, over thirty years ago, was £2,000,000, or about $14,000,000 of United States currency. In addition to the bridges mentioned, the opposite banks of the Thames are connected by the Thames Tunnel, at the distance of about two miles below London Bridge. "Within the limits of the City of Paris, the river Seine is crossed by twenty-six bridges in the distance of seven and a half miles, including the 38 New York: TJie Second City of the World. number which cross both of the channels passing the Isle of St. Louis and Isle de Palais. "Seven of these bridges are suspension, three are of iron on stone piers, one is of wood, and the rest are of stone; their length varies from 170 feet to 460 feet, and their breadth from fifteen to eighty -three feet; two of them are for foot passengers only, and two exclusively for railways. "Twelve of the bridges are less than 1,000 feet distant from the nearest bridge to them. Between fourteen of them, the distance is less than 2,000 feet each, and the greatest distance between any two of them is but 4,700 feet. Many of them are most elaborate and elegant struc- tures, and were erected at great cost; in both London and Paris several of these bridges were built by private enterprise, and profit derived from tolls collected for passing ; but of late they have mostly been built as free bridges at the expense of the municipalities, and several of the bridges that formerly were toll bridges have been made free. "Whenever the population of New York and Westchester shall assume the density on the shores of the Harlem River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek which that of London has on the Thames, and Paris on the Seine, the means of communication must be fully equal to that afforded across the Thames and Seine, and it must be borne in mind that the general traffic over bridges crossing the Thames and Seine is not obstructed by draws and openings. "The length of the waterway from the North Eiver to Little Hell Gate, measured through the Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Harlem River, is about 39,000 feet — nearly eight miles. The average distance between bridges for general traffic in London is 2,100 feet, and in Paris, 1,500 feet. "The average distance of those in London would give nineteen, and of those of Paris nearly twenty-five for equal accommodation across the Harlem River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek, to the East River, and their length, except- ing those that may be built on the suspension plan, would probably vary from 250 to 600 feet. ' ' If the City of New York and Long Island shall hereafter be connected by bridges, the distance between Ward's Island and the Battery would require twenty -two of them, if they crossed as frequently as in London ; and thirty, if they were built as near each other as in Paris. "The construction of proper approaches to tunnels under the Harlem River would be much easier than in London, because the average rise and fall of tide is nearly fourteen feet less in New York than in London, and that differ- ence in grade alone would be very beneficial if equal size of tunnel and depth of channel were maintained in both cities. "The width of the Seine through the City of Paris is from 100 to 600 feet. "The width of the Thames through the City of London is from 870 to 1,200 feet. "The width of Harlem River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek, between New York and Westchester, is from 200 to 450 feet. ' ' The width of the East River between the pier-head lines of New York and Brooklyn, is from 1,200 to 2,500 feet. ' ' The width of the North River, between New York and New Jersey is from 2,700 to 4,000 feet between the pier-head lines. "In various reports, discussions, affidavits and remonstrances on the subject of the improvement of the Harlem River, and in relation to the removal of I VIEW OF THE GREAT Ji U 1 1,1 )l XGS UF JaAVKK MANHATTAN :OM THK BROOKhYX TKU.MINTS <)I'" THE EAST RIVER BRIDGE. n Mr. Green's Historic Communication of 1868. 43 obstructions to navigation, much stress has been laid on the fact that even draw or swing bridges add greatly to the expenses of transportation. "These, with other considerations of a public character, would suggest the desirability, whenever practicable, of constructing tunnels in lieu of bridges. "From the East Eiver to Macomb's Dam the shores of the Harlem Eiver are too flat to admit of the easy construction of aerial or suspension bridges, but are thought to be fairly adajjted to the construction of tunnels under the river bed, at such depth as would not impede navigation. "From High Bridge to Sherman's Creek, aerial or suspension bridges might be built at as great altitude as the High Bridge of the Croton Aque- duct, and again from Sherman's Creek to the North River, tunnels could be constructed under or bridges over the river and creek wherever crossing from shore to shore was shown by i^roper topographical examination of the two counties to be required. "In determining the height of bridges, it should be remembered that steam vessels are rapidly supplanting sailing vessels, and that therefore the con- struction of bridges to accommodate lofty masts is a constantly diminishing necessity, and that by the striking of the topmasts and topgallant masts, many sailing vessels might be accommodated with diminished height of bridge. "The subject of the sewerage of the northern part of New York Island and all the southwestern part of Westchester is one in which the citizens of both places are equally interested, and should be arranged under one homogeneous system. "The amount of sewage and offal which, without proper regulation, would be cast into the Harlem Eiver from either or both shores, would, by reason of the limited width of the river, be likely to be injurious to the healthfulness of both, and detrimental to navigation. "Immense outlays are now making to free the Thames from the noxious effects of the city sewage ; measures for the same purpose should be under- taken at the Harlem Eiver. "The supply of pure and wholesome water in Westchester is another sub- ject demanding early attention, in order that the wants of her increasing pop- ulation may be met at the proper time. "It is problematical whether the supply of water that can be drawn through the Croton Aqueduct, after the immense storage reservoirs now building in Putnam County are completed, will be more than the City of New York, with its present limits, will ultimately requre under rigid rules to prevent waste. ^ "It is certain that much of the land in the southern part of Westchester is too highly elevated to be able to draw water from the Croton Aqueduct if the supply were enough to warrant it, yet a judicious arrangement of the means and resources now unused in Westchester, in combination with the use of such portion of the surplus of the Croton Water as the season might afford, would be productive of immediate benefit to property on both sides of the river, and very much hasten its occupancy. "The Bronx and Saw Mill Elvers are the only resources that are likely to be availed of for the supply of water to the lower part of Westchester County, and the supplies that they will afford should be secured and devoted for such purposes at as early a period as possible, and before the banks of those streams are occupied with establishments that will pollute the waters and render the streams unfit for use, except at the great expense of buying off this class of occupancy. "From the period when the question of supplying New York City with New York: Tlie Second City of the World. pure water first occupied tlie public mind, uutil the year 1841, when the Croton water -was finally introduced, more than half a century elapsed, and various projects were entertained and discussed. "The Collect Pond, in this city, Artesiau Wells, the Bronx and Saw Mill Eivers, the Housatonic Eiver, and the Croton each had their advocates, as well as the Passaic, since appropriated for the supply of Jersey City and its surroundings, and even a project for damming the Hudson Eiver opposite Amos street (now West Tenth street), making slack water navigation above it, and using the water power afforded from it to pump a supply for the city, was proposed and entertained. "During the time thus employed in considering various plans, the material interests of the City of New York suffered severely for want of pure water for her citizens, and an adequate supply for the extinguishment of fires, and large sums were expended by the Manhattan Company in futile efi'orts to obtain a supply of pure water for domestic purposes, and by the Corporation of the City to procure a supjjly from similar sources sufficient for the use of the fire department, in both cases unsuccessfully ; the probable result of the latter failure was the disastrous fire of December, 1835, when more value of prop- erty was destroyed in one night than the original cost of the Croton Water Works. "The ancient boundaries of the City of New York extend to low-water mark on its opposite and surrounding shores, thus giving to the city territorial jurisdiction over the adjacent rivers. Serious disputes have arisen with the State of New Jersey, and much trouble occasioned with Brooklyn in regard to jurisdiction at her whar\'es, as well as regards the ferries to Long Island. "The question of ferries across the North Eiver is still in an unsatisfactory condition, each State claiming the right to make laws to regulate them. The City now owns in Westchester County the line of the Croton Aqueduct, and a large area of land in Putnam County, for existing and future reservoirs. "The building and maintenance of bridges between the Counties of New York and Westchester has already been occasion of vexation and trouble. Westchester has claimed that she ought to pay only a portion of the expense of erecting a bridge over the river, equal to the proportion of it that stands within her jurisdiction, which extends only to low -water mark on her own side of the river, thus charging that County with but a very trifling part of the whole expense. This, it is believed, has been the basis claimed by West- chester on every occasion of building a bridge between the two Counties. "The laying out of roads and bridges, and the aijportioning of expendi- tures for great works built in the interest of both Counties and of the whole public, should be taken out of the petty squabbles of small jurisdiction, and left to the determination of some body with comprehensive powers, capable of dealing with these subjects, not in the interest of New York alone, or of West- chester alone, but in that of both, and of the whole public convenience. "The inconveniences that arise from the existing diversity of legislative, judicial and executive functions, and of officers that have a patched and piece- meal jurisdiction over divers portions of the territory in question, are daily experienced; to remedy this in some degree it has been found deKira])le to extend the powers of the Police Board, and the Health Board, not only over New York and Westchester, but over Kings and Eichmond Counties, though still at the different ends of every existing bridge over the Harlem, the police are required to enforce different excise regulations. Mr. Green's Historic Communication of 1868. 45 "To-day, under acts of the Legislature, passed recently, there are at least seven separate and independent Commissions engaged in laying out, -working and grading streets, avenues and roads in the towns of West Farms and Mor- risania, and several of the lines of these roads necessarily intersect each other, and the separate town authorities also still exercise their control as to work- ing and grading the remaining streets, without reference to these several Commissions. "It will be observed that this communication is confined to works of a physical material character, in which both Counties have a common interest — such an interest, present and prospective, as will be best fostered by unity of development : these works are the water supply, the sewerage, the naviga- tion of the interjacent waters, the means of crossing these waters, and the land ways that should be laid on each side so as to furnish the best facilities for both. In this enumeration nothing is included that will not be more wisely and better planned and executed by a single authority, and nothing that proposes any present change in political jurisdiction, or that is calcu- lated to disturb the functions or privileges of any existing officer or officers. "The location, building, and maintenance of bridges or tunnels across or under the river, the proper times for doing it, the improvement of the naviga- tion of the river, and the maintenance of it, and the proportion of expense to be borne by the property benefited, can scarcely be adjudicated by iudejx^nJ- ent political corporations, and the time that would be lost in conferences or litigations, and in efforts of the representatives of each City or County to throw an undue portion of the expense on the other, would be the occasion of detriment to the ijrosperity of all interested. "If the convenient administration of the laws in these adjacent Counties has required the exercise of a united authority in certain departments, why in the case of clearer necessity for unity in the planning and building of these material works, should it be found difficult to secure the agencies that will insure such unity, with entire acceptability to the people of both Counties, and although the advantages to accrue from a consolidation of a portion of Westchester with New York and Brooklyn into one municipality, with one executive head, will force itself upon the mind, yet all that is suggested or required in the material works above enumerated may be gained without such consolidation. A competent body may be constituted, with all needed powers for the purpose, without territorial consolidation, and without raising those purely political considerations which may be delayed until the necessity of territorial annexation demand immediate attention. "Heretofore, where a measure has involved the interest of both Counties, it has been usual to compose a body of citizens, selected from both Counties, for its execution ; and perhaps this would be the preferable way, though it does not seem to have worked very well on the Third Avenue Bridge. The method to be adopted will probably be left to be determined, so far as West- chester is concerned, hy the wish of the people of that County, as expressed by its representatives in the Legislature. ''It is not i))frihh'iJ iiotr fo do mofe than direct attention to flie iiiipnrfni)/ sub- ject of bringinr/ tlie ( ''ilij ,>f New York and flie County of Ki'hus, h of JVestcJiester Coaidf/ niid a jxirf of Queens and Riclimond, indudiiKj flic various suburbs of fiie city witliin a certain radial distance from tJte center, under one common municipal government, to be arranged in departments under a single executive liead. 46 New York: The Second City of the World. "It would not be difficult to present reasons for such a territorial consolida- tion that will increase in cogency as population augments, and as facilities of intercommunication are developed to meet in some degree the demand of this poi)ulation. "More than 1,500,000 of people are comprehended (1868) within the area of this city and its immediate neighborhood, all drawing sustenance from the commerce of New York, and many of them contributing but little toward the support of its government. "An area that could be readily described, of convenient distances from the center, would comprehend within its limits the residence as well as the place of business of most of its population ; thus resolving the difficult question of taxation of non-residents that now exists. "Each department would be ratably represented in a common legislative assembly, and the expenses of government would be apportioned and borne by separate departments, and judicial, police and sanitary powers executed under equal and uniform regulations. The existing public property of each depart- ment would be left to be applied to its separate indebtedness and improve- ment. "It would be best, at the outset, to disturb but few existing officials; their offices should be left to expire with time and with the general conviction that they were not wanted; all purely political questions and jurisdictions might remain as at present — the idea being gradually to bring, without a shock or conflict, the whole territory under uniform government. "Can any one doubt that this question will force itself upon the public attention at no very distant period? Ingenuity is now taxed to devise methods of carrying people from the suburbs to the center, and the relations of the city with the suburbs are daily becoming more direct and immediate. "The great procession that continually moves toward our city from the Old World makes its first halt at Staten Island in Eichmond County, preparatory to its still western progress. "Measures are now on foot to unite Brooklyn with New York by two mag- nificent bridges, which are but the precursors of others, and which are to supplement the thronged ferries. A system of capacious ways is already pro- jected to connect the extensive parks that both municipalities are now engaged in adorning — each with its own characteristics and each with its own public attractions. "Westchester is demanding ways to transmit her population to the City; Eichmond County, by her ferries and railways is exerting herself in the same direction ; all progress points towards eventual consolidation and unity of administration ; the advantage of an incongruous and disjointed authority over communities that are striving by all material methods that the skill of man can devise to become one, will be more and more apparent, and the small jealousies and petty interests that seek to keep them separated will be less and less effectual. ' ' In none of the fitful suggestions and shortlived movements for Consolidation made before this time had the idea taken the scope and determination ex- pressed in Mr. Green's communication; and during the next half-dozen years there was a very evident accession of favorable public sentiment, increased, perhaps, by the abolition during the Tweed regime of the Acts which brought The Municipal Union Society of Brooklyn. 47 the Police, Health and Fire departments of New York and Brooklyn under common administrations, and which were regarded by many citizens as a wise and beneficial arrangement. In the year 1874 the sentiment in favor of Consolidation in Brooklyn crys- tallized in the formation of the Municipal Union Society of the City of Brooklyn and the County of Kings. This society, the pioneer of its kind in the City of Churches, was organized in the Directors' Koom of the Academy of Music on February 12, 1874. George T. Holt was temporary President, and Charles J. Lowrey temporary Secretary. The resolutions of organization declared that the purposes of the Society were "to promote in all proper ways a plan of union of the City of New York with Brooklyn and the five towns of Kings County under one municipal government — the whole to be called the City of New York. ' ' All persons friendly to the movement were eligible to membership upon signing the roll and paying a membership fee of ten dollars. A permanent organization was effected br the election of Simeon B. Chitten- den, President ; George T. Holt and Henry Sheldon, Vice-Presidents ; Charles J. Lowrey, Secretary, and Eobert Turner, Treasurer. Among the people identified with this movement were John Winslow, J. S. T. Stranahan, Demas Barnes, William B. Lewis, William Coit, S. B. Dutcher, Charles E. Miller, William H. Waring, Horace A. Miller, J. W. Van Sicklen, J. K. Ives, Eobert Stranahan, James Frothingham, D. D. Litchfield, Samuel McElroy, Henry Coffin, W. W. Goddrich, J. F. Pierce, Isaac Howell, Isaac Hall, General Henry W. Slocum, Marcellus Massey, William Marshall, Sigismund Kauf- mann, William H. Taylor, Daniel Chauncey, John B. Norris, William E. Sheldon and James S. Leeds. Other men of prominence who indorsed the movement were Wm. M. Evarts, Thomas C. Acton, John G. Cisco, Wm. E. Dodge, Joseph H. Choate and John A. Stewart, of New York. Mr. Winslow, as Chairman of the Executive Committee, and General Slocum, of the same Committee, were especially active in promoting the success of the Society. On March 24 the Society issued to the business men of New York a circular which had been drafted at Mr. Chittenden's house, making a strong argument in favor of municipal union. The petition embodied a draft of a bill provid- ing for a board of twenty Commissioners, ten from New York and ten from Kings County, who should draft a general plan of municipal government for the two Counties of New York and Kings. The plan which this Commission should adopt was to be printed and publicly distributed twenty days before the election in November, 1874, at which time the plan was to be submitted to popular vote. The circular announced that the first public meeting on the subject would be held on the third Tuesday in May, 1874, at noon. At the same time the Society placed petitions at the ferry houses and notified Brooklynites in every section of the City that they were there. As a result about 7,000 signatures in all were secured and taken to Albany by Mr. Wins- low on March 24th, when he appeared before the joint session of the Senate 48 New York: The Second City of the World. and Assembly committees at a hearing given on the petition of the Society. He asked for an Act to submit to the peoj)le the question whether New York, Brooklyn, and the five towns of Kings County should be united. He argued that the question was one of State interest, and the Legislature was asked so to consider it. As to the Cities, the union was proposed as a case of joint benefit. New York would be benefited by the prestige that would come from a large population. Brooklyn represented part of New York's natural growth, and by separate existence deprived New York of some of her rightful position. Union would defeat Philadelphia's boast that in a few years she would be the Metropolis of the Country. Neither New York nor Brooklyn could ajfiford to lose their commercial supremacy by remaining apart. Property values would l^e enhanced by Consolidation. New York required more storage, ter- minal and water front facility. Jealousies and boundary disputes would be done away with. New York needed the aid, sympathy, intelligence and moral support of Brooklyn in her efforts to secure pure municipal government. Whatever would benefit New York would reflexively benefit Brooklyn. They were united in municipal life and destiny. Many Brooklyn residents paid taxes in New York and had a right to a voice in the government of New York. They were thus taxed without representation. If they wanted to live in New York where they were taxed they could not, because there was not room for them. Kesidence in Brooklyn and business in New York tended toward a divided allegiance. Brooklyn was thus deprived of the benefit of the strength and wisdom which are usually found among large-minded, public-spirited men in great populations. Brooklyn was mainly a vast dormitory and a beau- tiful City of residences, though having large manufacturing and commercial interests, yet without metropolitan features and appliances. Union would bring more efficient and cheaper government, lower taxes and greater pros- perity. "And let us add in this connection," said Mr. Winslow, with a grimly humorous allusion to the recent Tweed exposures, "that if it is to be the continued fate of these two Cities to watch original sin as developed in corrupt rings, it will be easier to watch one ring than two." The examples of Paris, London, Boston and Philadelphia, in annexing adjacent territory, were cited, and it was argued in conclusion that what built up New York, equally increased the importance and grandeur of the State and Nation. Mr. Winslow's argument was not without opposition. Alderman Fisher, of Brooklyn objected that those who favored Consolidation had not presented the subject to the Common Council of the City of Brooklyn. He argued that he could not find anybody who favored the proposition, and that the absence of Brooklyn's influential public men from an important debate like this was proof that the public did not favor it. He claimed that the Brooklyn Bridge was the most important question just then, and that if Consolidation ques- tions were brought up before the people at that time, they would surely bo Failure of the Movement of 1874. 49 defeated. Harvey Farrington argued that tlie question should be referred to the people. The result of this attempt was practically the same as before. The As- sembly passed the Act but the Senate defeated it. Public sentiment, as ex- pressed in the newspapers at the time, showed the same predilection in favor of union on the part of New York, and the same opi)osition on the part of Brooklyn. That the sentiment in New York was far from unanimous, how- ever, appears from a movement in opposition to municipal union which sprang up at this time, and manifested itself in a meeting held at the office of William H. Eadnor, No. 5 Pine Street, on April 18, 1874, at which Llewellyn F. Barry was elected President, and James H. Godwin, Secretary. The organi- zation represented a number of property owners who adopted resolutions opposing Consolidation, and appointed a Committee to wait on Mayor Have- meyer. But while annexation was strongly opposed, and for the time being, defeated on the east, the movement progressed more favorably on the north. In 1873 Kingsbridge, West Farms and Morrisania were annexed to the City of New York, forming part of the Twenty-fourth Ward. The other major portions of the present Borough of Bronx were annexed to New York in 1895, all of them going into the Twenty-third and Twenty -fourth Wards. In 1889 Mr. Green brought to the attention of the Legislature a bill, having for its object the appointment of a commission to make inquiry as to whether Con- solidation was expedient or not. It proposed nothing final, but simply authorized an official examination into the subject. The bill passed the Assembly, and through the various steps of legislation in the Senate, but in the last hours of the session failed to reach a third reading. There is something in the successive failures of this project, and the deter- mined persistency of its advocates to make it succeed, that reminds one of the repeated disasters encountered in laying the Atlantic cable, and the indomi- table courage with which Cyrus W. Field maintained his convictions and secured his ultimate triumph. Mr. Field contended with great physical obstacles to unite two distant hemispheres, but what the Consolidation problem lacked in geographical or physical magnitude it possessed in moral perplexity. The Consolidationists had to overcome a strong popular prej- udice, which is often more potent than a physical obstacle, and they did eventually overcome it. The signs were growing favorable. The Act of 1889 was lost by a narrow margin, and in 1890 the proposition was renewed. Under date of March 4, 1890, Mr. Green addressed a memorial to the Legis- lature which was another example of the clear and forcible style which give his communications the character of state papers. He began diplomatically by declaring that the purpose of his memorial was not to hasten the future which was rapidly approaching, but to prepare to meet it with a proper sense of the duties and responsibilities which the magnitude of the subject demanded. 50 New York: The Second City of the World. Consolidation, he argued, was not a question of policy or plans, but of prog- ress of the law of evolution. Nature took the first step in this direction when she grouped Manhattan, Staten and Long Islands in indissoluble relations at the mouth of a great river. His communication of 1868 was quoted, and the progress since made in the lines he had indicated was cited in confirmation of his reading of the destiny of the metropolis. Beginning with the efi'acement of frontier lines of barbaric jurisdiction, geographical boundaries had become progressively less significant. The rivulet at Canal Street, which once marked the boundary between different tribes of a vanished people, was first to be disregarded. The Harlem had been spanned and adja- cent territory annexed to New York. The Gowanus inlet, separating the growing cities of Brooklyn and Williamsburgh had been obliterated as a line of political demarcation, and the two municipalities united. London, Paris and Chicago were following the same inevitable trend. The existing arrange- ment of several distinct jurisdictions within one area of common interest was a travesty upon government. That those conditions had prevailed for a cen- tury without precipitating anarchy was a marvel. Public disturbances of a tumultuous character of actual occurrence were cited to show the real dangers inherent in the existing system, and to illustrate the disposition to rebel against dismembered authority. The port's channels of navigation belonged in common to all the bordering municipalities. To regard as barriers or divisional lines the means by which communities met and mingled was a mis- construction of terms. In the frenzy of riparian acquisition by corporations, the waterway system was being despoiled. Absentee capitalism, resident in Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans, London, Paris and Frankfort, was "tak- ing from us the meat of butchered freedom and leaving us the skin and bones to be taxidermed into living semblance and imposed upon our many-headed municipalities as life, form and substance of true heaven-born liberty." The waters and atmosphere which penetrated and surrounded the metropolitan district, and supplied the conditions which determined the health of all the communities, required common authority for their regulation. As it was, each community was doing "full duty to itself in injecting its smoke, stenches and sewerage into another province or mayoralty, so that some of our people live in the interchange of reciprocal nuisances or medley of conglomerate nauseas." The diversity of existing police authorities promoted the immu- nity of the criminal classes by the confusion and delay of legal processes. The apprehension of Brooklynites that Consolidation meant a merger of the smaller city was met with the statement that their desire to be merged was manifested in every way but that which would accomplish it. They did more business in New York courts and markets than in their own. The strength of the opposition was believed to reside in the politicians and ofifice holders ; but they were comforted with the assurance that by Consolidation each section would still have its official contingent in a general assemblage, and that their Consolidation Inquiry Act of 1890 Passed. 51 field for reward and fame would be amplified. The mercantile prosperity of the port of New York did not depend upon the attractions of the harbor as a shelter for foreign shipping. Foreign commerce was but an auxiliary to the forces of domestic traffic. The great historic cities of the world were interior cities, collective and distributive centers of domestic trade. There were great cities without harbors and great harbors without cities. The deduction was that the commercial supremacy of this port did not depend so absolutely upon natural conditions that it could not be diverted, and that with the bridging of the Hudson at Poughkeepsie and elsewhere, the stream of domestic commerce was liable so to be turned aside that it would flow by and not through the gates of the Metropolis. The port must now compete for the elements of business of which it had hitherto possessed undisputed control. Upon the subject of municipal construction, it was argued that the expansion of the cities in the metropolitan district had reached such a stage that it should not be permitted to go further without unity of design which would avoid the costly errors of past experience ; and in the matter of government, the inter- vention of exterior authority was deprecated and a larger measure of home rule for one greater city advocated. Under the influence of the foregoing agencies, and others hereafter to be described, the Legislature passed, and Governor David B. Hill signed, on May 8, 1890, "An Act to create a commission to inquire into the expediency of consolidating the various municipalities in the State of New York occupying the several islands in the harbor of New York. ' ' The text of the Act is as follows : "The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows : "Section 1. The Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and not otherwise, shall appoint six persons, who, with the State Engineer and Surveyor, and one person to be designated by each of the following named authorities, namely, the Mayor of New York, the Mayor of Brooklyn, the Boards of Supervisors of Westchester, Queens, Kings and Kichmond counties respectively, shall be commissioners to inquire into the expediency of consoli- dating the various municipalities in the State of New York occupying the several islands in the harbor of New York, and to report from time to time their conclusions thereon to the Legislature, with such recommendations as they may deem proper and their reasons therefor. Any vacancies occurring in the number of the commissioners appointed by the Governor, whether by failure to accept such appointment or otherwise, shall be filled by the Gover- nor by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and not otherwise, and vacancies occurring among those otherwise appointed, whether by failure to accept or otherwise, shall be filled by the authority by whom the original appointment was made. "Section 2. Said commissioners may appoint a president, vice-president, and secretary, and may employ such persons as they deem necessary, and may gather such information and prepare such maps as may be needed to present their views intelligently, and may, with their report, present such 52 New York: The Second City of the World. bills for tlie action of the Legislature as ihey m&y deem expedient. They sliall receive no compensation for their services, and shall not be pecuniarily interested, directly or indirectly, in any work or contract concerning their duty under this act, and shall incur no obligations beyond the amount author- ized in the next section of this act. "Section 3. The Board of Apportionment of the City of New York may ap- projiriate such sum of money, not exceeding $5,000, as it may deem neces- sary to carry out the objects of this act, and the Comptroller of said City shall pay so much thereof as may be certified by said commissioners to be necessary, on vouchers in form satisfactory to said Comptroller. "Section 4. In furtherance of the objects of this act, the State Engineer and Surveyor shall, upon the request of said commissioners, render aid and facilities from his office, and the local officials of cities, counties and towns, any portion of the territory of which it may be proposed by the said commis- sioners to comprehend within one municipal combination, are authorized and directed to furnish said commissioners, when requested by them, any infor- mation or copies of records within their respective keeping whenever it can be done without imposing any additional cost or expense to said cities, coun- ties or towns. "Section 5. This Act shall take effect immediately." The Commissioners of Inquiry appointed under this act were: JohnBogart, of New York City, State Engineer ; John H. Brinckerhoff, of Queens County ; George E. Cathcart, of New York City ; Frederic W. Devoe, of New York City ; Andrew H. Green, of New York City ; George William Curtis, of Kich- mond County ; John L. Hamilton, of New York City ; Edward F. Linton, of Brooklyn ; Charles P. McClelland, of Westchester Countj' ; J. S. T. Stranahan, of Brooklyn ; Calvert Vaux, of New York City ; and William D. Veeder, of Brooklyn. The Commission organized by the election of Andrew H. Green, Presi- dent; J. S. T. Stranahan, Vice-President; and appointed William P. Bodgers Secretary. George Wm. Curtis being unable to serve, George J. Greenfield was appointed to represent Eichmond County. Mr. Bogart's membership being ex-officio, he was succeeded in turn by Martin Schenck and Campbell W. Adams, State Surveyors, Mr. Cathcart died in 1892, and J. Seaver Page was appointed in his stead. In 1891 Mr. Eodgers died, and Albert E. Henschel was appointed Secretary in his place. A glance at the biographies of the Commissioners will show the character of the men to whom this perplexing problem was committed for solution. John Bogart, consulting engineer of New Y'^ork City, was the first of the three State Engineers who served successively on the commission. He is descended from old Dutch and English-speaking ancestry who were among the active spirits in the history of New York before and after Peter Stuy- vesant marched out of Fort Amsterdam. His early education was supple- mented by a collegiate education at Eutgers, and a technical course by which he secured the degree of C.E. In politics Mr. Bogart is a Democrat, and was nominated by the Democratic party for State Engineer and Surveyor in Personnel of Consolidai'ton Inquiry Commisxlun. 53 1887. On November 8 be was elected to tbat office by virtue of which he also became a Commissioner of the Land Office, and a member of the Canal Board, the Board of State Canvassers, Board of Quarantine Commissioners, Com- missioners of the New Capitol, and State Board of Equalization and Assess- ments. His duties in these various relations were so satisfactorily dis- charged that he was renominated and re-elected November 9, 1889. As before stated, by the Act of 1890, creating the Consolidation Inquiry Com- mission, he was made ex-officio a member of the Commission, and participated in its deliberations during the first two years of its existence. Mr. Bogart is a member of numerous professional and social organizations in New York and vicinity, including the Holland Society, the St. Nicholas, Century, Engi- neers, University and Delta Phi Clubs, Kutgers Alumni Association, Essex County Country Club, of Orange, N. J. , and the Fort Orange Club, of Albany. Martin Schenck, who was elected State Engineer and Surveyor in November 1891, and succeeded Mr. Bogart for two years from January 1, 1892, was born at Palatine Bridge, N. Y., January 24, 1848, and is of Holland Dutch extraction. Upon graduating from the engineering department of Union College in 1869, he was employed as a locating and constructing engineer on the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, and followed his profession for some time in Kansas and Indian Territory. Beturning east in 1872, he was for a time connected with the work of laj'ing the additional tracks on the New York Central & Hudson Eiver Eailroad. Between 1874 and 1880 he devoted much of his time to hydraulic engineering and to water power im- provement; in 1875 represented the county of Montgomery in the Legislature; in 1881 and 1882 was engaged in the construction of the West Shore Eailroad ; and from 1883 to 1894 was continuously engaged in the New York State Canal Department, except during the summer seasons of 1887 to 1891, when he was chief engineer of the work of improving the Hudson Eiver. During 1892 and 1893 he was State Engineer and Surveyor, which office he held until January, 1894. He was consulting engineer to the New York State Board of Health from January, 1894, until June, 1895, when he resigned to accept the office of City Engineer of Troy, N. Y., which position he now holds. Mr. Schenck has at various times been connected with the National Guard. His highest office was Chief of Engineers, with the rank of Brigadier-General, on the staff of Governor Flower. He is the author of numerous papers on civil engineering subjects, and has always taken an active interest in the matter of good roads and canal improvements. As a member of the Consolidation Inquiry Commission, he was an earnest advocate of the Consolidation scheme. In his report to the Legislature of 1893, he said: "I am most firmly con- vinced that Consolidation is most desirable and will prove beneficial to all the interests involved. It is a manifest injustice to longer deny such legisla- tive action as would give the inhabitants of the several cities and towns interested the right to express by ballot their approval or disapproval of the 54 New York: Hie Second City of the World. scheme proposed, and I would therefore respectfully renew the recommenda- tions made in my last report that such legislation may be had as will enable the citizens of the several municipalities interested to express severally, through the medium of the ballot, their views on this important subject in the freest and fullest manner. ' ' Commissioner Schenckwas succeeded on the Commission January 1, 1894, by the newly elected State Engineer, Campbell W. Adams, who served not only upon the Consolidation Inquiry Commission, but also upon the Charter Commission. His services are referred to more at length under the latter head. John H. Brinckerhoff, who represented Queens County on the Com- mission, was born at Jamaica, N. Y., November 24, 1829. His early ancestors were of Flemish extraction, who settled in Holland in 1307. Jores Dirksen Brinckerhoff, seven generations back, came to New Amsterdam in 1638, and was the progenitor of the entire Brinckerhoff family in America. He settled in Brooklyn in 1646, and was a Magistrate and the first Elder of the Dutch Church in Brooklyn. The subject of this sketch received a com- mon school education and entered the service of the Long Island Eailroad Company in 1845 to learn the trade of machinist and locomotive engineer. He followed this business for twelve years, served as foreman of the shops three years, and then commenced business as a grocer at Jamaica, in which latter occupation he has continued to the present time. He has been Trustee of Jamaica Village, Justice of the Peace, member of Board of Education in Jamaica Village, Supervisor of the Town of Jamaica for thirteen years, serv- ing as chairman of the Board of Supervisors for two terms. He is the Treasurer of the Jamaica Savings Bank, and a member and Secretary of the Board of Local Managers of the State Normal School at Jamaica ; besides holding responsible positions in other organizations. He is also a member of Jamaica Lodge, No. 546, F.A.M., and of the Veteran Firemen of Jamaica. On January 16, 1853, he married Laura Edwards, who died April 20, 1891, leaving three children. Mr. Brinckerhoff was an active member of the Con- solidation Inquiry Commission, and supplied the Commission with statistical information relating to the territory taken from Queens County for the "Greater New York," besides serving on committees, and promoting the passage of the bill in the Legislature creating the greater City. George Ehett Cathcart was born in South Carolina in 1843, and died in Newport, K. I., June 27, 1892. His father died when he was yet young, leaving him under the guardianship of Charles G. Memminger, subsequently Secretary of the Treasury in the Confederate Cabinet. At the beginning of the Civil War he served for a brief period on the staff of General Longstreet. Not being in sympathy with the Southern cause he soon resigned and went to Europe, where he engaged in literary and legal studies, being entered at the Middle Temple. He returned to this country in 1865, and engaged in news- Personnel of Consolidation Inquiry Commission. 55 paper work, first on the ' ' Charleston News and Courier, ' ' afterward with the "New York Times' ' and the "Springfield Republican. " In 1870 he engaged in the schoolbook business with Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., and a few years later he became a partner in the firm. When the American Book Company was organized in 1890 he assumed charge of the Agency Department, which position he held at the time of his death. He was a man of discriminating literary taste and liberal culture. While engaged in the schoolbook business he exercised a great influence on the publications of his firm, and contributed largely to the success of important literary works. In politics Mr. Cathcart was a Republican, and was at one time President of the Republican Organi- zation of the Old Twenty -first Assembly District. He was a member of the Union League, Republican, New York Athletic, Players, and the Aldine Clubs. He was married in 1866 to a daughter of the late Prof. James J. Mapes. Upon his death the Consolidation Inquiry Commission passed resolutions of regret. J. Seaver Page, Mr. Cathcart' s successor on the Commission, was born in New York City, and received a higher education in the College of the City of New York. Soon after his graduation from college he entered mercantile life, and by his progressive ideas and business-like methods forged ahead rapidly until he attained the position which he has held for many years, that of Vice-President of the F. W. Devoe & C. T. Raynolds Co., one of the largest paint, varnish and drug houses of the world. From his youth Mr. Page has had a taste for public activity. In college he displayed marked oratorical ability which he exercised conspicuously in his maturer years. In Presidential and lesser campaigns, his voice was one of the most welcomed and influential on the platforms of the Republican party, and as an after- dinner speaker he has an enviable reputation. This gift of Mr. Page's has freely been exercised in behalf of the benevolent organizations of New York, for whom he has been instrumental in raising large sums of money. For many years he was an enthusiastic devotee of out-door sports, giving much time to baseball affairs, pigeon shooting and other American sports. In club life he has been an active factor of the Country, Larchmont Yacht, Westmin- ster Kennel, Fulton, Reform, Republican and New York Athletic Clubs, the St. Nicholas Society, the Leiderkranz, and the Union League, of which latter he was Secretary for several years. He is deeply interested in the develop- ment of the public schools, and for many years was School Trustee in his district. When the subject of municipal union came prominently before the public, it found in him an ardent advocate, and as a member of the Com- mission in place of Mr. Cathcart his zeal in favor of Consolidation was unflagging. Frederick William Devoe, member of the Consolidation Inquiry Commis- sion, is a native of New York City, where he was born January 26, 1828. He is the son of John Devoe and Sophia Farrington, and a descendant of Fred- erick de Veaux, of France, a Huguenot refugee who came to New York in 56 New York: The Second City of the World. 1675. The pioneer ancestor was a large landed proprietor, owning extensive estates on Manhattan Island and in Morrisania and New Eochelle. Frederick William Devoe received private tuition until he entered his teens, and at an early age he became a clerk in the store of his brother Isaac, in Spottswood, N. J. About the year 1845 he returned to New York and entered the estab- lishment of Jackson & Bobbins, dealers and brokers in drugs, paints, var- nishes and oils, and thus formed his first connection with the line of business with which his name has since been conspicuously identified. For four years, beginning in 1848, he was a clerk in the store of Bulter & Kaynolds, dealers in the same line, and in 1852 he joined with Mr. Raynolds in forming the firm of Eaynolds & Devoe. In 1864 the concern was reorganized and became F. W. Devoe & Co. , and won a world-wide reputation with their specialty of refined petroleum called "Devoe's Brilliant Oil." In 1890 the firm of F. W. Devoe & Co. was incorporated, with Mr. Devoe as President and Treasurer, and in 1892 the F. W. Devoe & G. T. Kaynolds Co. was formed, with Mr. Devoe in the same position. Mr. Devoe has never been a political seeker, but has had several public honors and responsibilities conferred upon him. Mayor Cooper appointed him a Commissioner of Education in 1880, and Mayors Edson, Hewitt and Grant successively reappointed him to the posi- tion in which he did a great deal to promote the establishment of industrial teaching in the public schools in the cit3\ In 1890 Governor Hill appointed him a Trustee of the Homeopathic Hospital for Insane at Middleto•^^^l. He is now a Trustee of the New York Homeopathic Medical College and Hos- pital, President of the New York Juvenile Asylum, and Warden of the P. E. Church of Zion and St. Timothy. He is a member of the Holland, St. Nicholas, and Microscopical Societies, Scientific Alliance and American Museum of Natural History. He was married in 1853. George William Curtis, journalist and author, was born in Providence, R. I., February 24, 1824. Through his father, George Curtis, a business man, he was descended from Ephraim Curtis, the first settler of Worcester, Mass., and through his mother from public spirited ancestry which included his grandfather, James Burrill, United States Senator and Chief Justice of Rhode Island. In 1838 his father moved to New York and the son was put in a way to obtain a business training, but commercial life was not to his tastes, and in 1842, with a brother, he joined the famous Brook Farm com- munity at West Roxbury, Mass. After this experiment, he spent a year and a half at Concord, Mass., tilling the soil. In 1846 he went abroad and spent four years in study and travel in Europe, Egypt and Syria. Returning in 1850, he joined the editorial staff of the "New York Tribune." His literary productions during the next three years won him great reputation, and in 1853 he became one of the editors of "Putnam's Magazine." When the pub- lishers of the latter failed in 1857, Mr. Curtis began to contribute regularly to "Harper's Weekly, ' ' of which he eventually became editor-in-chief. A decade WILLIAM D. VEEDER. ALBERT E. HENSCHEL. 1 lit Personnel of Consolidation Inquiry Commission. 59 later, "Harper's Bazar" opened another channel for his prolific and delightful literary genuis. From 1853 to 1873 he was one of the most popular lyceum lecturers of the da3', and he was a political orator of great force, esijecially when attacking slavery. Although an active Republican, he never sought and repeatedly declined public office, even the post of Minister to England failing to tempt him during Hayes' administration. He did, however, accept from President Grant an appointment to the National Civil Service Commission, and did much to advance reforms in civil service of the Government. As a member of the State Board of Regents and as President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for many years, he contributed largely to the advancement of education, the arts and sciences in New York State and City. In 1856 he married Anna, daughter of George Francis Shaw. His inability to serve deprived the Commission of one whose wide experience and broad views would have been of great value in its deliberations. In the midst of the struggle for an end in which he was deeply interested, he died of cancer of the stomach at his home on Staten Island, August 31, 1892. George J. Greenfield, who was chosen to represent Richmond County in place of Mr. Curtis, was born in the City of New York (Borough of Man- hattan), on the 14th day of March, 1838. His father, John V. Greenfield, and grandfather John Greenfield, were old residents and prominent merchants of this city. Mr. Greenfield was graduated at the City College in 1855, and entered the ofiice of Lot C. Clark, Esq., a prominent lawyer of Staten Island and this City, and subsequently entered the State and National Law School at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., where he graduated in 1859, and was admitted to the Bar the same year. He at once entered into active practice of his profes- sion in Staten Island and New York, and soon became a leading member of the Bar, being retained on one side or the other of most of the important liti- gations on Staten Island, particularly in municipal matters. While a Demo- crat in national politics, he has always been an ardent advocate of the best men for local offices, irrespective of party, and in 1872, at the time of the overthrow of the Tweed administration, was elected by the citizens, Super- visor of the Town of Southfield, to which office he was re-elected for three years in succession, when he declined further re-election, although offered a renomination without opposition. During his administration of the office he effected important reforms, particularly in the assessment and collection of taxes, the benefit of which has continued until the recent Consolidation of Richmond County with New York City. In 1890 he was appointed as the representative of Richmond County on the Greater New York Commission, in place of George William Curtis, who could not serve, and it was largely due to his energy and ability that Richmond County polled the largest majority for Consolidation in proportion to its population of all the territory included within the Greater New York. He organized mass meetings of the citizens and invited full public discussion and debate upon the question with the result 60 New York: The Second City of the World. that out of a total vote of upward of 7,000, there were but about 1,500 votes in the negative. At the time of the appointment of the Commissioners to frame the Charter in 1896, he was the choice of a large majority of the citi- zens of Eichmond County, irrespective of party, as its representative on the Commission, but as it was determined by the appointing power that the appointee should be an active Republican, he was not appointed. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and Vice-President of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce and the Richmond County Country Club. Edward F. Linton, of Brooklyn, was born at Mattapoisett, Mass., in 1843. At the age of six years his family moved to Weymouth, Mass., where he passed his youth and received an excellent New England Common School education. When the war broke out he went to the front in the Eleventh Massachusetts Volunteers, and after serving his country in defense of the Union, he returned home and entered business. For many years the manu- facture of pyrotechnics engaged his attention, and subsequently he developed large banking and real estate interests. Taking up his residence in East New York he became one of the most active public spirits in the development of the region which eventually became the Twenty-sixth Ward of Brooklyn, and was chiefly instrumental in securing the annexation of that valuable section to the City. Although never a political seeker in any way, his contact with Mayor Chapin, of Brooklyn, had so impressed the latter with his zeal for the welfare of the City and his balanced judgment, that the Democratic Mayor ai^pointed him, a Republican, unsought, to the single place on the Consoli- dation Inquiry Commission at his disposal. In this body he was an earnest worker, and the author of many practical suggestions. He was the accredited representative of the Commission at Albany during the exciting legislative struggles of three years, appearing before the various committees having the bills in charge, and giving desired information to legislators. In 1896, when the Legislature passed a bill creating a Commission for the investigation of the long-standing and vexatious problem presented by the existence of steam locomotion in Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, Mr. Linton was appointed one of the five Commissioners, and became their Secretary. His experience and information were of the greatest value to the Commission, and the elaborate final report, prepared by him, was one of the most thorough and valuable of its kind ever presented to the City Government. The plan of the Commission for the connection of lower Manhattan with the heart of Brooklyn, by tunnel under East River and underground and elevated railroad through Atlantic Avenue, would, if executed, jilace the junction of Church and Cortland streets, New York, within twenty-four minutes' running time of Jamaica. Mr. Lin- ton organized the first bank established in the Twenty-sixth Ward. He is also President and Manager of the German American Improvement Company, which has conducted real estate development on a vast scale in Brooklyn and vicinity, and, it is hardly necessary to say, is interested in the Brooklyn Real Personnel of Consolidation Inquiry Commission. 61 Estate Exchange. Just after the Civil War Mr. Linton was married to an estimable woman of Weymouth, and has three daughters, the eldest two of whom are married. Mr. and Mrs. Linton are both deeply interested in the education of children, and have contributed generously thereto. For over four years Mrs. Linton maintained with great success a free school for little ones called the Linton Kindergarten. Charles P. McClelland, of Dobbs Ferry, was born in Scotland, December 19, 1854, and was educated in the common schools of New York City and the University of the City of New York. Upon the completion of the necessary preliminary study he was admitted to the Bar and has been engaged in the practice of the law ever since. In politics he has taken an active interest in the success of the Democratic party, and on account of his public spirit, was elected President of the village of Dobbs Ferry. In 1885 and 1886 he was a member of Assembly, and from December, 1886, to March, 1890, was Special Deputy Collector of Customs in New York City. In 1891 he again went to the Legislature, and was given the responsible position of Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and leader of the Democratic majority in the Assembly. In 1892 and 1893 he was elevated to the Senatorship from the old Twelfth District, consisting of Westchester and Eockland Counties, and in 1886 he was appointed a Manager of the Hudson River Hospital for Insane. He is still actively and successfully engaged in the practice of his profession, with offices at 32 Nassau Street, New York City, and maintains social relations with the City by membership in several prominent organiza- tions, including the Manhattan, Democratic, Burns and Ardsley Clubs, and the St. Andrew's Society. James Samuel Thomas Stranahan, the most conspicuous exponent of the Consolidation idea in Brooklyn, is one of the most venerable and venerated figures in the history of that City and Borough. His earliest ancestor in this country was James Stranahan, of Scotch-Irish parentage, a prosperous farmer, who was born in 1699, settled in Scituate, R. I., in 1725, and subsequently removed to Connecticut. His fifth son, Samuel, father of the subject of this notice, made his home in Peterboro, N. Y. Born in Peterboro, N. Y., April 25, 1808, the span of James S. T. Stranahan' s individual life reaches across three-quarters of the national existence of the United States of America. When he was born, there were only seventeen States in the Union, the origi- nal thirteen, and Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio. The larger por- tion of the area east of the Mississippi was yet a wilderness. The Louivsiana territory, extending in a great arc from the Gulf of Mexico to Puget Sound, had been acquired from France but fiA^e years before, and was practically terra incognita. And the annexation of Texas and the cession of the other exten- sive territory by Mexico did not occur until Mr. Stranahan was thirty-five or forty years of age. Like many an enterprising lad in the pioneer years of the century, who was gifted with more than commonplace mental equipment. 62 NeiD York: The Second City of the World. young Stranahan tilled his father's farm in summer-time and taught school in the winter. He studied to become a civil engineer, and when he arrived at age, went to the then Territory of Michigan with the expectation of estab- lishing himself in business. Circumstances did not favor his plans, and he returned to his native State, and entered the wool trade at Albany. In 1832 he went to Florence, Oneida County, N. T. , of which manufacturing village he was the founder, and soon began to take part in public affairs, adopting the principles of the old Whig party. In 1838 he was elected to the State Legis- lature on the Whig ticket in spite of the naturally Democratic complexion of his district. He left Florence in 1840, and for four years was engaged at Newark, N. J , in railroad construction, a science then in its infancy. He then removed to the recently-chartered city of Brooklyn, N. Y., where he has made his home ever since, and where he has large private business interests. He is Director or President of many financial institutions, in which his rare judgment and his high personal integrity have always been bulwarks of strength. He has been also Manager and President of the Union Ferry Com- pany ; and Manager and President and largest stockholder of the Atlantic Dock Company, whose mammoth docks, built under his personal supervision, are considered the finest in the country. Engrossing as his business cares have been, he has never permitted them to monopolize his attention to the exclu- sion of public concerns ; and the devotion with which he has addressed him- self to the welfare of his fellow-citizens is evidenced in the title of "The First Citizen of Brooklyn, ' ' which is familiarly applied to him, and in the unique distinction of being the only living citizen in Greater New York to whom a public monument has been erected. The latter is a bronze figure of heroic size, modeled by MacMonnies, erected in Prospect Park, June 1, 1891, in recognition of his exceptional services to the City of his adoption. The statue represents him in citizen's dress, standing in an easy posture. He holds his hat in his right hand down by his side, and his cane in his left hand, while over his partly raised left forearm he carries his overcoat. The necessary funds were raised by popular subscription in sums not allowed to exceed $100. There was an interval of ten years between his first and second political offices. In 1848 he was an Alderman of Brooklyn, and in 1850 an unsuccessful candidate for the office of Mayor. In 1854 he was a Whig Eep- resentative in Congress. He was a delegate to both of the National Conven- tions that nominated Lincoln for the Presidency, and a Presidential Elector in 1864. During the War he was chairman of the Brooklyn War Fund Com- mittee, whose sanitary fair raised $400, 000 for the relief of the Federal sol- diers. During the existence of the Metropolitan Police District, which, from 1857 to 1870 embraced New York, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, he was one of the Commissioners, and while serving in this capacity, appreciated the value to both New York and Brooklyn of a more complete consolidation of interests for which he has earnestly striven. Mr. Stranahan is the father of the Personnel of Consolidation Inquiry Commission. 65 Brooklyn Park System, including Prospect Park, the Eastern and Ocean Parkways, and the Concourse at Coney Island, upon which over §8,000,000 were expended under his superintendence. From 1860 to 1882 he Tvas Presi- dent of the Brooklyn Park Commission. Another great public work with which his name is conspicuously and inseparably connected is the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. He was one of the first subscribers to the stock, was one of the first Board of Directors organized in 1867, and was very influential in securing financial support for the enterprise when courage and confidence were necessary. He has served continuously as a Bridge Trustee after the work came under the control of the two cities, and in 1884 was President of the Board. By those familiar with bridge affairs, he is accredited with the responsibility for the change in plan for the superstructure, by which the four middle trusses in the main span were raised so as to permit the passage across the railway of a Pullman car of ordinary height. This change involved the addition and weight of about 200 tons, which excited much adverse criticism at the time, but which future experience is expected to justify. At the time of the opening of the Bridge in 1883, Mr. Sti-anahan's eminent services were recog- nized in a notable complimentary banquet, attended by the leading citizens of the United States. On this occasion he delivered a remarkable speech, referring to the wedding of New York and Brooklyn, not by hymeneal bonds, but by everlasting bonds of steel, and forecasted the ultimate political union of the municipalities. Upon the passage of the Act of 1890, creating the Con- solidation Inquiry Commission, Mr. Stranahan was made Yice-President, and has continuously and most zealoush^ worked for the fusion which has just been effected. The consolidation of these communities crowns the last of Mr. Stranahan' s great and disinterested endeavors in behalf of his fellow-citizens of Brooklyn, with whose progress for over half a century he has been thoroughly identified, and to direct and shape whose growth he has probably done more than any living person. Mr. Stranahan has twice been married. His first wife, Marianne Fitch, daughter of Ebenezer E. Fitch, of Oneida County, N. Y., died in 1866. In 1870 he married Miss Clara C. Harrison, a native of Massachusetts, and at the time of her marriage well known in Brooklyn as one of the principals of an important private seminary for young ladies. Having had the benefit of such princesses of educators as Mary Lyon and Emma Willard, her fine natural powers were fully developed, and her great executive ability has caused her to be called to fill important positions in philanthropic, civil and social relations. She is a trustee of Barnard Col- lege, Vice-President of the Alumnse Association of her Alma Mater — the Troy Female College, the pioneer in the higher education of women — President of the State Charities Aid Association for Kings County, Yice-President Gen- eral of the Daughters of the American Kevolution for New York State, presid- ing at the national convention in Washington in 1894, and was Yice-President of the New York State Board of "Women Managers for the Columbian Exposi- 66 New York: The Second City of the World. tion. She has also won honor as an authoress, her chief work, "A History of French Painting, ' ' having received complimentary notice both in Europe and America. One English quarterly gave the work thirty -six pages of review. Mrs. Stranahan had been indeed an helpmeet for her honored hus- band, and in full sympathy with his great public undertakings. Calvert Vaux, landscape architect, was born in London, England, December 20, 1824. He was educated at the Merchant Tailors' School, London, and was an articled pupil to Lewis N. Cottingham, a well-known architect of that city. In 1850 he came to America as assistant to A. J. Downing, the Smithsonian Institution's landscape architect, by appointment from the United State Government, and at the close of the year became Mr. Downing' s architectural partner, with headquarters at Newburgh-on-the-Hudson. Upon Mr. Downing' s death, Mr. Vaux carried on the business at Newburgh alone, and published his book on "Villas and Cottages." In 1857 he moved to New York City, being engaged as architect for the Bank of New York. Dur- ing the remainder of his life he was closely identified with the development of the picturesque aspects of the metropolis. In partnership with F. L. Olm- sted, under the firm name of Olmsted, Vaux & Co., Mr. Vaux, under the direction of Andrew H. Green and his colleagues, prepared the plans for Cen- tral Park, which are to-day the most conspicuous expression of his genius. The Mall, the sunken transverse roads, the crossing of foot paths and drives at different grades where made feasible, and other beautiful and convenient features of the Park which were parts of the original design, have been sub- stantially adhered to ever since. With brief intervals Mr. Vaux was con- nected with the Park for forty years. He also made plans for Riverside Park, and Morningside Park, New York City ; Prospect Park, Brooklyn ; parks at Chicago, 111., Buffalo, N. Y., Bridgeport, Conn., for the grounds about the Government Buildings at Ottawa, Canada, and for the New York State Reser- vation at Niagara, and also plans for many country places for prominent men, among the number being W. B. Ogden, in New York City, Samuel J. Tilden, in Yonkers, and G. G. Haven, in Lenox. Mr. Vaux was one of the archi- tects for the first buildings for the Museum of Art in Central Park, and the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan Square, in New York City. He also made the plans for eleven buildings for the Children's Aid Society in New York. His latest works were plans for downtown city parks in New York, made in conjunction with Samuel Parsons, Jr. He held many public positions, among the latest being those of landscape architect to the Depart- ment of Public Parks of New York City, and landscape architect to the Com- missioners of the State Reservation at Niagara. At the time of his death in November, 1895, he was a member of the Century Club, National Sculpture Society, and Municipal Art Society, and a Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1854 he married Mitry S. McEntee, and upon his death left two Personnel of Consolidation Inquiry Commission. 67 sons and two daughters, C. Bowyer Vaux, Downing Vaux, Mrs. H. H. Donaldson and Mrs. J. Lincoln Hendrickson. William Davis Veeder, who represented Kings County on the Consolida- tion Inquiry Commission, was born May 19, 1835, in Guilderland, Albany County, N. T., upon the homestead where his ancestors, of Old Nether- lands origin, had lived for four generations. After receiving a common school and academic education, and reading law in Albany, he was admitted to the Bar at Albany, in 1858, and entered the office of Hon. Henry Smith. Later in the same year he removed to Brooklyn, where he soon became actively identified with the interests of the Democratic party. In 1865 and 1866 he was a member of the State Legislature. In 1866 he was elected Sur- rogate of Kings County, a position which he held for ten years, and in which no decision of his was ever reversed. In 1876 he was elected to the Forty- fifth Congress by 7,286 majority over Col. Cavanagh, Independent Democrat indorsed by the Kepublicans. In 1867-68, and again in 1894, he was a member of the Constitutional Convention. He was a member of the Demo- cratic State Committee from 1874 to 1882. At the close of his term in Con- gress he retired from active political work, and resximed the practice of his profession, in which he is an authority on constitutional law, and a specialist on the statues referring to trusts, corporations and wills. Some of the most important and interesting will litigations in which he has been engaged were the Stewart will contest, the contest over the will of Mary E. O'Connor, the prolonged trial which arose over the will of Inventor McMahon, the endeavor to establish the legality of the legacies in the Onderdonk will, and many other cases involving novel and intricate questions of law. He was also coun- sel in the famous Morey letter case, and he secured an acquittal for City Treasurer Cortland F. Sprague, indicted for a criminal offense. His legal attainments were of great service to his colleagues on the Consolidation In- quiry Commission, and he was particularly consulted in relation to the draft- ing of the various bills prepared by the Commission for the Legislature. Among other things, he contended urgently for the election of Corporation Counsel by the people instead of appointment by the Mayor. Albert E. Henschel, Secretary of the Commission, was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1862, and came to New York before he was ten years old. He attended the public schools and the College of the City of New York. At an early age he developed a taste for political study, and delivered speeches in the campaign of 1876, when he was but fourteen years old. Samuel J. Til- den, the Presidential candidate, became interested in him, and personally arranged to have him deliver speeches in the Democratic cause. His relations with Mr. Tilden became friendly and intimate, and it was in this way that Mr. Henschel gained the acquaintance of Andrew H. Green, who was Mr. Tilden' s confidential adviser and faithful friend. Upon leaving college, Mr. Henschel entered Mr. Green's office, and while there studied law. He grad- 68 NeiD York: The Second City of the World. uated from the law department of the New York University, and entered upon the practice of his profession. He was soon, thereafter, appointed Assistant Counsel to the Corporation of the City of New York, under Henry R. Beek- man, now a Justice of the Supreme Court. As such Assistant, Mr. Henschel rose rapidly in the esteem of the Corporation Counsel, who intrusted him with the preparation of cases, briefs and opinions in matters of high impor- tance, and put him in charge of proceedings for street and park openings ; of which branch of the law he has since made a specialtj'. In 1887 Mr. Hen- schel took the first steps to bring about a practical movement for securing uniformity of State Legislation on the subjects of marriage and divorce, com- mercial law, wills, deeds, notarial acknowledgments, and other subjects, by means of State Commissions. It has been declared, in an address upon the subject of "Uniform Laws," delivered before the American Academy of Polit- ical and Social Science, that "The movement — if successful in any degree — would be the most important juristic work undertaken in the United States since the adoption of the Federal Constitution." In 1890, the State of New York, after three years of vigorous effort on Mr. Henschel's part, passed an act, drafted by him, providing for the appointment of "Commissioners for the Promotion of Uniformity of Legislation in the United States." This act has been followed by similar acts in more than thirty States and two Terri- tories. Mr. Henschel was made Secretary of the New York Commission, and Assistant Secretary of the National Conference of State Commissions ; which offices he has continuously held up to the present time. The first fruits of this imi^ortant endeavor have been the preparation of an act on the law of Negotiable Instruments, already adopted by the State of New York, and three other States, and important safeguards in the laws of marriage. The work, however, which has brought Mr. Henschel's name most conspicuously before the public, is that in connection with the creation of the Greater New York. Mr. Henschel appeared before the legislative committees in 1890, and, calling attention to the cogent reasons advanced by Mr. Green in a historical document of remarkable persuasive force on the benefits of Consolidation, assisted in obtaining the law which proved to be the groundwork upon which the achievement of the Greater City was founded. In March, 1891, he was elected Secretary of the Greater New York Commission, and threw himself into the work with great enthusiasm and energy. When in 1894:, the subject of Consolidation was submitted to a vote of the electors, he prepared argu- ments for Consolidation that were spread broadcast among the people, and delivered speeches and lectures at many meetings held throughout the terri- tory. In 1895 he published a pamphlet entitled "Historical Sketch of the Greater New York, " giving a history of the movement from its inception. The Legislature of 1897 passed resolutions thanking Mr. Green, Mr. Strana- han and others, including Mr. Henschel, for their efficient work in the creation of the Greater New York. Mr. Henschel has been counsel for important Coadjutor's of Consolidation Inquiry Commission. 69 interests, especially in connection with public and municipal affairs. He has been for some time Associate Counsel for the New York and New Jersey Bridge Company. He has been a frequent contributor to the press, and is the author of the resolutions adopted by the New York Board of Aldermen in 1896, requesting Congress to provide adequate coast defenses for the protec- tion of the United States. Frederick Seymour Gibbs, who as Chairman of the Committee on Affairs of Cities, had the honor of introducing in the State Assembly the first successful Consolidation Bill — ^the act of 1890, by which the foregoing Commission was created — was born in Seneca Falls, N. Y., March 22, 1845. His father, Lucius S. Gibbs, a carpenter and builder, was of English antecedents, and was descended lineally from ancestors who lived in Connecticut for over a century, while he was collaterally related to the famous Gibbs family of South Carolina. His mothe>', Jane "Wilson, was of Canadian parentage and Scotch descent. When but seventeen years of age, Frederick S. Gibbs enlisted in the 148th New York Volunteers, and in spite of the fact that he was severely wounded three times, served till the close of the war, and was brevetted First Lieutenant for gallant and meritorious services. After the war he returned to Seneca Falls, and re-entered the employment of Cowing & Co., pump manufacturers, whom he had left in 1862. In 1875 he became Manager of the New York business of the Goulds Manufacturing Co., pump manufac- turers, and so remained until the formation of the Metropolitan "Water Co., of which he has been Managing Director ever since. In polities he is one of the best known Kepublican leaders in the Ciiy and State, and for the past sixteen years has been a delegate to all the State and County Conventions of his party, and to the National Conventions of 1888, 1892 and 1896, He now represents New York State on the Kepublican National Committee, and is a member of various other directing bodies of the party. In 1884 he was can- didate for Mayor of New York, being defeated in a three-cornered contest with Grace and Grant. In 1884-85 he was State Senator from the Eighth New York District, and in 1889 and 1890 Assemblyman from the Thirteenth New York District. As Chairman of the Committees on Affairs of Cities in both houses, he introduced and secured the passage of many imjportaut laws affect- ing New York City, the most notable being that creating th^ Consolidation Inquiry Commission. Notwithstanding the heavy demands upon his time made by his business and his political position, he maintains active member- ship in the Masonic Fraternity, Eoyal Arcanum, Ancient Order of United Workmen, American Legion of Honor, the Knickerbocker and New York Athletic Clubs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and American Geographical Society. On June 20, 1867, he married Miss Carrie A. Mynderse, of Seneca Falls, who died in 1894, and subsequently married Daisy M., daughter of Judge Clarence W. Meade, of New York. He has a married daughter, and an infant son. 70 Neio York: The Second City of the World. One of the most efficient coadjutors of tlie Commission not actually' a mem- ber of that body, was Andrew D. Parker, lawyer and Counsel of the Commis- sion. Mr. Parker is a native of New York City, where he was born Der-ember 4, 1859, his ancestry being mainly English — Friends and Episcopalian. His general education was received in private schools, including the Anthon Gram- mar School, and his legal studies were pursued in the law office of William C. "Whitney and Columbia Law School. In 1882 he was admitted to the Bar at Poughkeepsie, N. Y. , and entered actively into the pursuit of his profes- sion. In 1885 he was Private Secretary to United States Collector Hedden, and was appointed an Assistant District Attorney under Judge Eandolph B. Martine, continuing in the latter office until the end of District Attorney Fel- lows' first term. On May 6, 1895, Mayor Strong appointed Mr. Parker, who is an Anti-Tammany Democrat, Police Commissioner to succeed James J. Mar- tin, Tammany Democrat, at the same time that he appointed Theodore Eoose- velt, and Frederick D. Grant, Eepublicans, and during their terms of office, ending December 31, 1897, many important reforms were effected in the police administration of the City. As Counsel for the Consolidation Inquiry Com- mission, he appeared from year to year in Albany, Brooklyn and New York before the various legislative committees having the subject matter in charge, and before the Mayor of New York City, answering all objections and criti- cisms; and he drew the bill which became Chapter 488 of the laws of 1896, providing for Consolidation. In spite of a virulent and sustained opposition, and the critical scrutiny of many prominent hostile lawyers directed against every clause of the bill, it passed literally as at first drafted, except that in- stead of intrusting the drafting of the Charter to the original Consolidation Inquiry Commission, the powers-that-were at the time changed the section so as to create a special new Commission, who were to make provision for the election of municipal officers for the new City at the general election of 1897. Brevity and clearness were the points aimed at by the drafter in the prepara- tion of the bill, and its brevity is an infallible indication, to one acquainted with such work, of the amount of labor bestowed upon it. On June 3, 1890, the Commission assembled and organized by electing Mr. Green, President; Mr. Stranahan, Vice-President, and Mr.Kodgers Secre- tary. Those present at this meeting were Mr. Green, Mr. Stranahan, Mr. Vaux, Mr. Cathcart and Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Green made the opening speech, and the Commission then settled down to its work. A series of public hear- ings was given, but they were meagrely attended. These public hearings served not only to elicit valuable information, but to develop public sentiment. On September 30 the Commission held another meeting at which maps were inspected, and all the Commissioners expressed themselves in favor of union. The meeting of December 11 was made notable by an elaborate speech by Mr. Green on the rights of municipalities, and by the passage of a resolution Progress of the Movement in 1891 and 1892. 73 offered by Mr. Stranahan directing that a bill be drawn authorizing Consoli- dation, to be presented at the next Legislature. During the year 1891 the Commission made considerable progress in the direction of planning out some of the details of Consolidation. On March 22 the Commission requested Mr. Green to prepare the draft of a bill to be submitted to the Legislature. On April 2 the Commission discussed the subject further. On April 6 Mr. Green reported to the Commission his draft of the bill providing for Consolidation and for the framing of the Charter. This bill was sent up to Albany where Senator Cantor fathered it in the Senate and Mr. Brodsky, of New York, in the House. The bill was introduced simultaneously in the two chambers on April 7. It authorized the Commission to submit to the Legislature a Charter for the incor- poration and government of the City which should comprehend the City of New York as it then existed, Kings County, Kichmond County, the Town of Westchester, and that portion of the Towns of Eastchester and Pelham lying south of a straight line drawn from the intersection of the northern boundary of the City with the center line of the Bronx Eiver to the middle of the channel between Hunter's Point and Glen Island; also Long Island City, Newtown, Flushing, Jamaica and part of the Town of Hempstead. The form of government which was proposed concentrated the legislative powers in one chief executive officer and two separate legislative chambers. The property of each municipality was to become the proi)erty of the united City, which latter should assume and pay their debts by the issue of bonds. Each de- partment provided for the aid of the Chief Executive was to be under one head as far as possible. This bill appears to have been too conclusive in its operation to meet with the approval of the majority of the Legislature, as it provided for the concentration of the various municipalities under a single administration and the framing of the Charter without the submission of the question to the people. For one reason or another the bill made no progress in the halls of legislation, and was practically pigeon-holed at the end of the session. The failure of this bill, however, did not discourage the Commis- sion, but active preparations were made for the resumption of aggressive work in the Fall, and before the end of the year various other meetings had been held, at which the progress of the movement was considered. The year 1892 found the Commission ready to resume its work in the Leg- islature. On January 18 Mr. Green presented to the Commission the draft of a bill providing a plan of Consolidation. Section I. provided that the Consolidation Inquiry Commission should report to the Legislature a plan for the incorporation, government and administration of the City to compre- hend the territory described in the bill proposed the previous year. Section II. provided for the submission of the question of Consolidation to the people of the several municipalities interested. Section III. authorized the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York City to appropriate $25,000 to 7^ New York: The Second City of the World. carry on the work of tlie Commission. On the following day Mr. Cantor introduced the bill in the Senate, and George P. Webster, of the Twenty- third New York District, Chairman of the Committee on Cities, introduced it in the House. Mr. Webster, the introducer of the bill in the Assembly, looking to Con- solidation of the Cities, and a lawyer by profession, was born in Watertown, Conn., June 24, 1828. He was educated in New Haven schools and studied law in Newport, Ky., but caught the gold fever in '49 and started to the gold diggings. He reached California in the Spring of 1850, and for three years prospected a territory of 500 miles north and south. In 1852 he was in the celebrated Death Valley, and crossed the Sierra Nevadas three times in Win- ter. After three years of this hardy life, he returned to Newport, Ky., resumed the study of law, and was admitted to the Bar in Kentucky in 1854. Two years later he was elected County Attorney and Solictor in Newport, and in 1860 was elected to the State Legislature. When the Civil War broke out he resigned, and was commissioned by President Lincoln as Captain and Assistant Quartermaster, which gave him the rank of Captain of Cavalry. He served five years in the Army, part of the time (during the so-called "Siege of Cincinnati") being Quartermaster in Newport. He handled during the War $40,000,000, every cent of which was fully accounted for. In 1867 he came to New York and commenced the practice of law. He was elected to the Assembly four times, in 1890, 1891, 1892 and 1893, and was the author of the bill to build Central Bridge across the Harlem, long known as the "Webster Bridge." He had charge of from forty to fifty important bills for New York City, including those relating to the Third Avenue and Kingsbridge bridges, the removal of the Forty -second Street Eeservoir, the Croton Water Shed, the Elm Street widening, the new pumping station and others. He was chairman of the Committee on Affairs of Cities for two years, and introduced the bill consolidating the cities in 1892, of which project he was a firm advocate. He is a member of the Harlem Social Club, Harlem Democratic Club, Saga- more Club, Lafayette Post, G.A.K., and Loyal Legion, and one of the twenty- five charter members of Constantino Commandery, Knights Templars. He is also a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and other charitable oragnizations. The bill introduced by Senator Cantor and Assemblyman Webster aroused a great deal of interest and discussion in the Legislature, and a vigorous war- fare was made on it by the opponents of Consolidation. The representatives of Kings County offered an amendment providing for the exemption of Brooklyn from the provisions of the bill. All of the Kings County members did not oppose the measure, however, and to George L. Weed, an advocate of the bill, belongs the distinction of being the first Assemblyman from Kings County to champion the Consolidation of the Cities. Mr. Weed is a native of Brooklyn, where he was born, February 7, 1857. Referendum Bill Defeated in 1892. 75 His parents -nere William H. "Weed, of Stamford, Conn., and Maria Louise Fisher, of New York City, the former being the head of the establishment of Simmonds & Co., the oldest firm of ax and tool manufacturers in the country. All his grandparents were of American birth, and his great-uncle, John Dixon, founded the thriving city of Dixon, 111. The subject of this sketch was graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, and is Past President of the Polytechnic Reunion. He studied law with General H. C. King. In January, 1892, he formed a partnership with W. W. "Wilson to represent the Lawyers' Surety Company, of New York, in Kings County. In 1897 they became managers of the law department of the United States Guarantee Com- pany for the Metropolitan District. Mr. "W^eed was Member of Assembly from 1890 to 1892, and, as before mentioned, was the first Assemblyman from his county to advocate Consolidation, speaking in favor of Col. "Webster's bill in 1892. He is one of the five members of the Sub-Executive commitee of the Republican State League, and is delegate to the National League, and a mem- ber of the "Ward and County Executive Committees. He is a member of the Union League of Brooklyn, Aurora Grata, Crescent Athletic, Invincible and Levi P. Morton Clubs, and of the following organizations, in most of which he has held high ofiices : Knights of the Golden Cross, National Benevolent Legion, National Provident Union, Order of the Golden Chain, Order of Elks, American Legion of Honor, Knights of St. John and Malta, Ancient Essenic Order, Patriotic League of America, 1. 0.0. P., F. & A.M., R.A.M, K.T., R. & S. M., Lodge of Perfection, Princes of Jerusalem, Rose Croix, A. A. O.N. M.S., and others. In December, 1894, he married Marie R. Garcia, of Brooklyn, and resides at 418 Greene Avenue, Borough of Brooklyn, N. Y. On March 3, 1892, the Consolidation Bill, or, as we shall call it more properly, the Referendum Bill, came up in the Legislature again. Mr. Webster, assisted by Assemblyman James W. Husted, of Westchester, suc- ceeded in getting the House to consider the measure. General Husted's speech in behalf of Consolidation and in defence of the bill was a notable one. The Kings County members vehemently antagonized the bill. On March 15 the bill came up again as the special order for the day. Mr. Quigley, of Brooklyn, endeavored to kill the bill by striking out the enacting clause. His motion was withdrawn, however, after the Brooklyn men had made a canvass of the Assembly, and found that the bill was sure to be de- feated anyhow. Upon the question being put, the bill was tabled by a vote of 54 to 45. Assemblyman George L. Weed was the only one of the Brooklyn delegation who voted in favor of the bill. The defeat of the bill aroused no little indignation in New York City and Brooklyn. In June a number of influential citizens of Brooklyn issued an address to the electors of that City, expressing their regret and surprise that a bill which provided for the submission of the question of Consolidation to the people should have 76 New York: The Second Citj/ of the World. been antagonized almost unanimously by the Brooklyn representatives in the Assembly, and tlirongb their efforts defeated, and that the peoi)le whose serv- ants these legislators were should have been deprived by them of the oppor- tunity to say to the Legislature whether or not they favored Consolidation. They also expressed their conviction that the proposed Consolidation of New York would be of advantage to both Cities in facilitating enterprises for inter- communication, for sanitary and police purposes, and for the diminution of the burdens of taxation. In conclusion they called upon their citizens to organize in every election district to the end that such representatives should be chosen to the next Assembly as would be willing to allow the citizens of Brooklyn the right and ojiportunity to express their wishes on questions of vital interest. This address was signed by Alexander E. Orr, J. G. Jenkins, George L. Fox, Moses May, George W. Chauncey, S. B. Dutcher, C. T. Christiansen, Jere Johnson, Jr., H. W. Slocum, Joseph C. Hendrix and M. H. Hazzard. On October 6 the Commission met and received the foregoing communica- tion. E. C. Graves made a speech in favor of union, and on motion of Mr. Stranahan, Mr. Green was authorized once more to prepare a bill for the submission of the question of Consolidation to the voters. On December 8 the Commission held a public meeting at the Brooklyn Eeal Estate Exchange, at which William J. Gaynor, Asa W. Tenney and others advocated union. On December 16 the Executive Committee of the Consoli- dation League of Brooklyn met at the Eeal Estate Exchange and took steps for the promotion of their campaign. Li this mouth of December the agitation for Consolidation assumed a new phase. With the exception of the work of the Consolidation Inquiry Com- mission, the effort to develop public sentiment in favor of the movement had not been organized, and the individual efforts which were being made were neutralized by the combined efforts of the opponents of Consolidation in the Legislatiire. In December, 1892, several Brooklynites met at the Montauk Club and formed the Consolidation League, the details of the organization of which valuable auxiliary will be given more fully on another page. The year 1893 opened with the Consolidation Inquiry Commission un- daunted, and with large accessions of public sentiment. On January 12 the Commission met, and Mr. Green submitted his draft of the Keferendum Bill. Its terms were substantially the same as those in the bills previously intro- duced by the Commission. The bill provided, however, for a form of ballot on which the question was to be submitted to the people, and for some other minor details. On January 25 the bill was introduced in the Legislature by Senator Aspin- all and Assemblyman Webster, but was doomed to the same fate which its pred- ecessors had suffered. It was not defeated, however, without an earnest struggle in its behalf. On March 7 the Consolidation League of Brooklyn Referendum Bill Passed in 1894. 77 arranged for attending the hearing on the bill at Albany, and on March 8, a special train took 200 leading citizens to Albany to advocate union. On March 9 there was a hearing before the joint legislative Committees on Cities at Albany. William J. Gaynor and James Matthews advocated union, and Senator P. H. McCarren opposed it. On April 5 the Senate Committee unanimously reported the Referendum Bill adversely. On April 11 the Com- mission met again. Mr. Green read a review of the work done, and speeches were made declaring that the efforts to secure Consolidation should not be relaxed. On October 24 candidates for the State Legislature declared their position on the question of Consolidation, in response to the circular of the Consolidation League. On December 12 the Commission agreed to Mr. Green's bill with a section authorizing the Commission to draw a Charter in case of a favorable vote by the people. The section providing an appropria- tion of $25, 000 for the expenses of the Commission was cut out. On Decem- ber 23 the Consolidation League approved of a bill proposing the union of only New York and Brooklyn. On February 8, 1894, the Referendum Bill passed the Assembly by a vote of 106 to 7, on February 27 it passed the Senate by a vote of 18 to 7, Sen- ator Reynolds' clause in regard to equal taxation having been rejected, and the bill became a law by the signature of Governor Roswell Pettibone Flower. Apropos of the signature of this bill by Governor Flower, it is interesting to note that, beginning with 1890, the Legislature presented to each of four successive governors one of the four important bills which serve as landmarks in the history of Consolidation. In 1890 Governor Hill signed the Consoli- dation Inquiry Bill ; in 1894 Governor Flower signed the Referendum Bill ; in 1896 Governor Morton signed the Consolidation Act, and in 1897 Gover- nor Black signed the Charter Act. Governor Flower's signature to the Referendum Bill was attached with a ready conviction of its wisdom, born of a long career of active statesmanship and study of municipal affairs. He is a native of Theresa, Jefferson County, N. Y., where he was born, August 7, 1835, the sixth child of Nathan Monroe Flower and Mary Ann Boyle, and the descendant of pioneer ancestors, who settled in Connnecticut in 1696. His first pennies were earned as a boy, picking wool in his father's wool-carding and cloth-dressing mill, and doing such work as presented itself in a rural community. He attended school during the winter-time and evening school, and finally grad- uating from the high school, devoted himself to village pedagogy for a few years. In 1853, after a brief experience as a store clerk, he became Deputy Postmaster at "Watertown, N. Y., and from his salary accumulated enough to secure an interest in Postmaster William H. Sigourney's watch business. In 1859 he married Sarah M., daughter of Norris M. Woodruff; and ten years later, when Henry Keep, his wife's brother-in-law, died, he moved to New York and took charge of the estate, a property then worth $1,000,000, but 78 New York: The Second City of the World. now, under Mr. Flower's sagacious management, worth probably four times that amount. Meanwhile, Mr. Flower's financial relations had drawn him into the brokerage and banking business. In 1874 the firm of Benedict, Flower & Co. was dissolved, and subsequently the firm of R. P. Flower & Co. established, his partners being his two brothers, Anson E. and John D., and. a nephew, Frederick S. Flower. In 1890, after a prosperous and honorable business career of a third of a century, he relinquished his active interest in the business and became a special partner. Mr. Flower's political career began with his first vote for Buchanan, since which he has been a steadfast Democrat. His active participation in political affairs, however, did not begin until about 1868, when he made many speeches in the Seymour and Blair campaign. As the intimate friend of Samuel J. Tilden, he suggested the organization which subsequently became famous as the "Tilden Machine. " In 1870 he was Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, and directed the campaign which proved successful in spite of the party bolt. In 1881, upon the express declaration that he would not purchase a single vote, he was elected to Congress, and took a commanding position on questions of finance and taxation. He also participated actively in the legislation relating to rivers and harbors, and Chinese immigration. In 1882 there was a general demand for his nomination as Governor, but for the sake of party unity he made way for Grover Cleveland, declining in the same year a renomination to Congress. In 1888, however, for similar reasons of party harmony, he accepted the Congressional nomination, and was elected; and during his second term, as during his first, his career was distinguished by the same painstaking investigation and remarkable familiarity with every subject which he approached. On the great question of the tariff, he advocated the Mills Bill and opposed the McKinley tariff. His shrewd management of affairs as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1890 more strongly than ever called attention to him as a gubernatorial possibility, and in 1892 he was nominated and elected to the Governorship by a plurality of 47,937 over J. Sloat Fassett, the Eepublican candidate. On January 1, 1893, the little barefooted farmboy of Jefferson County reached a new stage of his constantly advancing career, and, honored with the highest honor in the gift of the State, assumed the Chief Magistracy of the Commonwealth. Mr. Flower's private life has been distinguished by many graces of personal char- acter. The new church at Theresa, the St. Thomas Parish House, New York City, the Parish House of Trinity Church in Watertown, N. Y. , and the Flower Hospital, New York City, erected (with one exception) wholly by his munificence, are but a few examples of his generosity. It will be seen from allusions in the foregoing review of the progress of the Consolidation movement, that the Consolidation Inquiry Commission had a valuable auxiliary in the Consolidation League of Brooklyn, to whose influ- ence the ultimate success of the movement was largely due. This organiza- The Consolidation League of Brooklyn. 79 tion was the outgrowth of a speech made at the Montauk Club, in Brooklyn, in December, 1892, by William J. Gaynor, now a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, but then a practicing lawyer, who had suc- cessfully prosecuted a taxpayer's suit to stop the Long Island Water Supply Company fraud. Mr. Gaynor' s speech gave an impetus to the subject such as it had not had before. In less than a fortnight a meeting was held at the Montauk Club in which Mr. Gaynor, James Matthews, James McMahon and Louis Liebman participated. They decided that it was necessary to arouse the favorable sentiment of Brooklyn, and they formed the Consolidation League for that purprose. The call for a public meeting at the Real Estate Exchange elicited a hearty response, and the place was filled. Before the end of February, 1893, the League was fully organized, and a meeting was held at 44 Court Street, Brooklyn, at which officers were elected. These officers, with the Central Committee subsequently chosen, were as follows : James Matthews, President; James McMahon, Treasurer; Sander Shanks, Secretary ; Central Committee, A. Abraham, David Adee, John M. Alsgood, W. E. Bidwell, H. Batterman, Eugene D. Berri, David Barnett, E. F. Beecher, Henry P. Burger, A. P. Blanchard, Louis Behman, C. F. Brooks, W. A. Burns, Eugene G. Blackford, S. A. Byers, Andrew D. Baird, E. H. Bishop, Geo. W. Chauncey, Wm. H. Cummings, J. Curley, F. D. Creamer, E. B. Cantrell, M.D., William Dick, Claus Doscher, Desmond Dunne, Theo. C. Disbrow, Marshall S. Driggs, J. Henry Dick, W. H. Douglass, J. B. Davenport, Silas W. Driggs, O. M. Denton, Fred. H. Evans, Wm Flanigan, Henry Franke, George H. Fisher, Wm. Gubbins, W. J. Gaynor, Edward C. Graves, Edward M. Grout, John Gibb, John C. Grennell, Eufus T. Griggs, W. T. Goundie, W. W. Hanley, A. S. Higgins, Wm. H. Hazzard, Cromwell Hadden, James B. Healey, Thos. C. Hoge, Matthew Hinman, Irwin H. Heasty, G. B. Horton, John G. Jenkins, Darwin E. James, W. P. Jones, Oliver Johnston, Wm. Johnston, W. N. Kenyou, Herman F. Koepke, Chas. Kirchoff, J. N. Kalley, Edwin Knowles, James S. King, M.D., John Lough- ran, Louis Liebmann, John Leflferts, Jr., Walter Longman, Daniel S. Lough- ran, David Liebmann, Max Lang, J. Lehrenkrauss, Julius Manheim, Isaac Mason, Fred. L. Mathews, W. H. Moger, Leonard Moody, David F. Man- ning, Thos. McCann, A. W. Momeyer, Edward Merritt, John Moran, P. H. McMahon, James McLaren, J. T. Marean, P. H. McNulty, W. S. Northridge, Joseph O'Brien, Henry Offerman, George W. Oakley, Josiali Partridge, Alexander Pearson, Dr. Harry Plympton, Eussell Parker, D. B. Powell, Elwin S. Piper, W. H. Eeynolds, James E. Eoss, John F. Eyan, Col. N. T. Sprague, Chas. A. Silver, Thos. C. Smith, D. M. Somers, Prof. W. W. Share, Howard M. Smith, H. B. Scharmann, Eufus L. Scott, H. S. Stewart, Hugh Stewart, Chas. G. Street, John Shaw, W. T. Smith, Wm. Tumbridge, Stephen Underbill, Stephen Valentine, George W. White, Percy G. Williams, Samuel Wechsler, A. F. Wise. 80 New York: The Second City of the World. William J. Gaynor, who was the originator of the Consolidation League, was born in Whitestown, N. Y., in 1851. His father, Kendrick K. Gaynor, a farmer, was a member of an association of abolitionists, and an ardent supporter of James G. Birney for President. The son did farm work, attending the district school, and then at the "Whitestown Academy, and then left home to teach in Boston and continue his studies. He went to Brooklyn in 1873, became a rei^orter on local newspapers, and in 1875 began to practice law. He took a prominent place at the Bar, which culminated in his successful attack upon Mayor Chapin and other public officials in 1889, when they at- tempted to saddle the now celebrated Long Island Water Supply Company upon the City at a cost of $1,250,000. This waste of public funds he stopped, and the retirement of Mayor Chapin and his associates from public life fol- lowed. His active fight against public abuses continued until 1893, when he was nominated for Judge of the Supreme Court by the Eepublican party, although he was a Democrat. John Y. McKane attempted during that cam- paign to vote over 4, 000 spurious ballots against Mr. Gaynor, and for that ofi'ence was convicted and sent to prison. Mr. Gaynor was elected by over 35,000 plurality, and pulled all the Eepublican ticket in after him. The next year, 1894, he was offered the Democratic nomination for Governor, but the party leaders would not accept his proposed platform, and he declined. The same convention then nominated him for Judge of the Court of Appeals and that he declined. Again in 1895, Judge Gaynor was offered the Democratic nomination for Mayor by all the leaders of the party, but again he declined to run. In 1897 he was frequently urged to accept the nomination for Mayor of the Greater New York, and a party was organized in Brooklyn to further that object, but he stopped the movement. Judge Gaynor has led a very retired and studious life other than during the four years he was fighting the politi- cal leaders almost single-handed. He has a charming home life, and a houseful of children with whom he spends nearly all his spare time. He has con- tributed numerous articles to the "Albany Law Journal," among them "The Arrest and Trial of Jesus from a Legal Standpoint," "The Constitutional Limitations of the Taxing Power," and "The Construction of Wills as to the Charging of Debts and Legacies on Kealty." The only office he has ever held other than that of Supreme Court Judge, was that of Judge Advocate on the Staff of Gen. McLeer of the Second Brigade, to which he was appointed in 1890. A biographical sketch of Edward M. Grout, who was an active factor in the League, and the efficient coadjutor of Judge Gaynor, is given in the group of Borough Presidents in Chapter IV. James Matthews, one of the founders, and the first and only President of the League, was born in Brooklyn, March 25, 1839. He is the son of Azel D. Matthews, one of the old dry goods merchants of that city, who started in business in 1837, and is still the head of the firm of A. D. Matthews & Sons. r Tlie Consolidation League of Brooklyn. 83 James was educated in the public schools of his native town, and at the age of fifteen entered his father's store. Under his father's direction, he received a rigid training in sound mercantile methods, and in the course of time de- veloped such a marked capacity for business that he was admitted to the firm, of which he is still an active member, and to the success of which he has largely contributed. From the earliest inception of the Consolidation move- ment he has earnestly supported Messrs. Stranahan, Dutcher and other lead- ing advocates in Brooklyn, and upon the formation of the Consolidation League in 1892, was chosen its President, which position he held until the work of the League was finished. With this exception he has never held public office, but has always been interested in public affairs. From 1860 to 1867 he was a member of the old volunteer fire department, and was one of the most enthusiastic and efficient "fire laddies" of the time. Among his social connections, he is a member and Trustee of the Montauk Club, and a member of the Brooklyn Club. James McMahon, President of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, and Treasurer of the League, was born in Franklin County, N. Y., October 15, 1831. His early education was acqiiired at the public schools of Rochester, N. Y. Engaging early in active business, first in the book trade and after- ward in transportation, his business ability speedily brought prosperity. The well-known firm of Easton & McMahon became the Easton & McMahon Transportation Co., from the presidency of which Mr. McMahon retired some ten years ago. During the war this firm did a large inland transportation business, being connected with the B. & 0. and Pennsylvania railroads. For the past twenty years, Mr. McMahon has been identified with the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, as a member of its Finance Committee, Chairman, Trustee and President, Although his business interests have been large and varied, Mr. McMahon is also an influential factor in the charitable and social organizations of his community. When but twenty-one years of age, he was elected a member of the Board of Education of Rochester, N. Y. He has also served on the Board of Education of his adopted City of Brooklyn. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce; Director, Peoples' Trust Co., of Brooklyn ; Trustee, London and Lancashire Fire Insurance Co. ; Vice-Presi- dent, Savings Bank Association of the State of New York ; Vice-President and Chairman Finance Committee, Irish Emigrant Society ; Director, Insti- tute Arts and Sciences, and Vice-President, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Mention of these latter organizations, however, does not adequately indicate Mr. McMahon's influence in charitable affairs, for his kindly nature and deep interest in the welfare of others have resulted in constant activity in the organized charities of Brooklyn for a long series of years. Mr. McMahon is a member of the Catholic Club of New York, the Hardware Club of New York, the Crescent Athletic Club of Brooklyn, and the Columbian Club of Brooklyn. 84 Neic York: TJte Second City of the World. Sanders Slianks, Secretary of the League, is a young lawyer. He was born in Louisville, Ky., in 1863, and is a son of William F. G. Shanks, the veteran war correspondent and former city editor of the "New York Tribune." Mr. Shanks is a graduate of the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, and began life as a reporter on the "New York Times. ' ' He occupied his leisure hours in studying law with ex-District Attorney James W. Kidgway, and later with ex-Judge Samuel D. Morris. He was admitted to practice in 1892. He gave up newspaper work in 1893, and has practiced his profession in Brooklyn since then. He has been counsel in several important litigations, among them being the case of Moynahan vs. Birkett. As attorney for the plaintiff in that suit, he prevented the payment of over $49,000 of the taxpayers' money for fraudulent work at the St. Johnland County Farm for the Insane. Mr. Shanks was one of the first active workers for Consolidation, and gave up three years to that labor. He attended to all the details of the work, and spent nearly all of two winters in Albany in efforts to induce the Legislature to pass the bill allowing the people to vote on the questions, efforts that were finally successful. Since Consolidation he has been counsel in numerous legal i^rocediugs involving the construction of the Greater New York Charter. Many members of the League who were not officers were equally zealous in the prosecution of its work, and as many of their names will appear in the accounts of subsequent procedings, it will be instructive to make the acquaint- ance of some of the leaders now. Abraham Abraham, an earnest and influential member of the League, was born in the old City of New York in 1843, and received his education on Man- hattan Island, but in 1865 moved to Brooklyn and established himself in busi- ness. Commencing with a few employees, he has now become one of the great merchants of the United States. The department store of Abraham & Straus, of which he is the head, employs enough people to make three full regiments, if they were all men, or a whole army brigade under the new military stand- ard of the country, and the concern is one of the largest establishments of its kind in the world. Although closely devoted to business, he has found time to take an interest in piiblic affairs, and has earnestly supported everything tending to benefit the City of Brooklyn. He was quick to recognize the advantages of Consolidation, and the movement had in him one of its most powerful and most enthusiastic advocates. He appeared before the Lexow Committee and ex-Mayor Wurster in behalf of the leading Brooklyn mer- chants, and his timely and efficient intercession did much to hasten the con- summation of the union between the two cities. He has also devoted much attention to charitable work, and at present he is Vice-President of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, and one of the Directors of the Brooklyn Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, also President of Temple Israel, and a Director of the Brooklyn Society of Arts and Sciences. He is also a JOHN LEFFERTS, JR. PETER HENRY M'NULTY. The Consolidation League of Brooklyn. 87 member of the Union League, Brooklyn and Oxford Clubs of Brooklyn ; and the Chamber of Commerce of New York. Eugene G. Blackford, banker and pisciculturist, whose name lent much in- fluence to the movement, is the son of Gilbert L. and Mary A. Blackford, and was born at Morristown, N. J., August 8, 1839. His earliest progenitors in this country were of Scottish origin, and settled in New Jersey in the later IBOO's. Mr. Blackford went to school in Brooklyn until he was fourteen, and then was employed successively by a ship broker, a steamboat company, a railroad company and a dry goods merchant. To the latter, A. T. Stewart, he attributes his first substantial business training. His nest occupation was that of bookkeeper for a firm of fish dealers in Fulton Market, and here he dis- covered possibilities of success which led him to adopt the business as his own. Ever since 1867 he has actively been engaged in the culture, taking and merchandising of fish, and does an enormous business under the name of Eugene G. Blackford. He is also President of the wholesale fish and com- mission house of "Blackfords, " an incorporated company. The extent of his transactions led him in 1886 to enter concurrently into the banking business, and he now holds the position of President of the Bedford Bank. Since 1872 Mr. Blackford has been a close student of the history and propagation of fish, and had charge of the piscatorial exhibit at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. In 1880 he sent 130 tons of exhibits to the Interna- tional Fish Exhibition in Berlin, from which, as from the Centennial, he received a silver medal. He has been an invaluable coadjutor of the United States Fish Commission, and has devoted a great deal of his time, and large sums of money, to the advancement of his favorite science. He is well known to naturalists and pisciculturists at home and abroad, and is frequently the medium of international communications on the subject of the inhabitants of the deep. In 1860 Mr. Blackford married Frances L. Green of New York. He is a zealous member of the Baptist denomination, in which his grandfather and great grandfather were clergymen. Mr. Blackford is President of the American Writing Machine Co., the Biological School at Cold Spring, Long Island; the Atlantic Avenue Board of Improvement, and "Blackfords;" a director of the Schermerhorn Bank and Hide &, Leather Bank ; Chairman of the Executive Committee of People's Trust Co., City Savings Bank, and the Union Typewriter Co., a Trustee of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences ; and a member of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. He is also a member of the following clubs : The Manhattan and Ful- ton Clubs of New York, and the Union League, Moutauk, Hamilton, Brooklyn, Rembrandt, Biding & Driving and Dyker Meadow Clubs of Brooklyn. George W. Chauncey, of Brooklyn, one of the most energetic members of the League, was born in Brooklyn in 1847. At the age of eighteen he was graduated from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and after a three years' finishing course in Columbia University, entered the real estate business in 88 New York: The Second City of the World. his native City. His liberal education and his extensive business relations enabled him to form a clear and positive conviction as to the advisability of Consolidation, and when the Consolidation League was formed he was among the foremost to enter zealously upon the work which it had undertaken. He and three of his associates — James Matthews, A. Abraham and James D. Lynch — were familiarly called the "big four" on account of their herculean labors in behalf of union. Mr. Chauncey's high position in real estate mat- ters, and the recognized standing of the others, gave their opinions impor- tance, and the influence which they exerted upon others was of the greatest value in accomplishing the end in view. As member of the Executive Com- mittee of the League, part of whose duty was the education of members of the Legislature up to a realization of the desirability of Consolidation, Mr. Chauncey's efforts were most persistent and effective. Among the social organizations of which he is a member are the Brooklyn Club and Hamilton Club, of Brooklyn, and the Military Club (Seventh Kegiment "Veteran), of New York. He is President of the D. & M. Chauncey Eeal Estate Co., Ltd., and holds other responsible business relations. Silas Wright Driggs was another ardent Consolidationist, in which faith he was thoroughly indoctrinated by his father, Hon. Edmund Driggs — a gentleman widely known politically and socially in his day and generation, having filled the offices of Alderman of the City of Williamsburg, Tax-Col- lector of Brooklyn, President of the ancient village of Williamsburgh, and many other offices of honor and trust. An intimate personal and political friend of the distinguished Governor of New York, Silas Wright, Mr. Driggs, upon the birth of his son, the subject of this sketch, March 10, 1847, be- stowed upon him the name of his illustrious friend, Silas Wright. The family at this time were residing in New York. One year later they moved to Williamsburg, and have been identified with that section of the City for the past fifty years. S. W. Driggs has been in the warehousing business since his early manhood, and succeeded his brother, Marshall S. Driggs, who for more than thirty years conducted an extensive business in South Street, New York, and from which he retired in 1889. Mr. Driggs, who has been a consistent Democrat, like his father, has persistently refused to hold any po- litical office. He is a member of the Crescent Athletic, National City and Brooklyn Democratic Clubs, and in religious belief is of the Baptist faith. John Lefferts, Jr., son of the late John Leflferts, who was well known in financial circles, and a highly respected and much esteemed citizen of Brooklyn, descends from an old Holland family who settled in Flatbush in 1660, during the days when Peter Stuyvesant presided over the destinies of New Amsterdam. Mr. Lefferts was educated in old Erasmus Hall Academy in Flatbush, and then in Eutgers College, New Brunswick, N. J. With this foundation he took a law course in Columbia Law School, graduating in the class of 1876, and was admitted to the Bar the same year. He has always The Consolidation League of Brooklyn. 89 practiced in Brooklyn, chiefly in the real estate department of the profession, in which he has made a marked success. He has never held political office, but he was an active member of the Consolidation League, and one of the Committee of Seven on Organization, etc. He was and is a firm believer in the benefits to accrue to all the Boroughs from the municipal union, and when hard work had to be done to promote Consolidation, he was one of the most earnest laborers in cultivating public opinion. Mr. Lefi'erts is a member of the Holland Society of New York, the St. Nicholas Society of Nassau Island and the Montauk Club, of Brooklyn. Peter H. McNulty, Democratic Senator from the Sixth Senatorial District (of Brooklyn), an advocate of Consolidation, and a voter for the measure when it came up in the Senate, was born in Brooklyn, May 4, 1858. He has contended with many disadvantages of circumstances, but has risen in the world by his industry and innate ability. He had received only a few years of schooling when, at the age of thirteen, he began to support himself. Up to 1895 he was chiefly connected with the dry goods business, first as errand boy, then as traveling salesman, and finally manager of the mammoth estab- lishment of Wechsler