The work, although generally prosaic, was not without its romantic and interesting incidents. In a stone house on Greenwich Street, which was once the colonial mansion of Diedrich Von Wallendorf, a walled chamber was opened. The rugs and hangings it had contained were fallen to shreds, but the Queen Anne cabinets, tables, and bedstead were in as good condition as when the room was closed with solid stone masonry, two centuries ago, without any reason now apparent for the strange proceeding. Under the cellar floor of another house an earthen “crock” was found filled with sovereigns, coined in the last century, and through the destruction of an old wall cabinet, there came to light a package of letters from Lord North to Sir Henry Clinton, letters which indicated that the British Ministry of that day had been in negotiation with other patriot leaders than Benedict Arnold for a surrender of the revolutionary cause. The consent of the city authorities to a resurvey and remodeling of the streets and avenues of the destroyed section of New York, was obtained without difficulty since Mr. Morning was now the sole owner of the land affected thereby, and the rearrangements proposed by him were made at his own cost, and insured greater uniformity and greater convenience to the public than those which were superseded. The land was platted into blocks four hundred feet in length and eighty feet in width, running north and south, thus giving to the occupants of the new buildings either the morning or the afternoon sun. These blocks are divided by streets of a uniform width of one hundred feet, having a park thirty feet wide in the center of each street, with lawn, shrubs, ornamental trees, and a fountain in the center of each block. Gas, water, and sewer pipes, and electric light and pneumatic tubes, have been laid in the new streets, and by means of a powerful pumping engine, erected on the Battery, the sewers are flushed every day with sea water. The new streets are paved with asphalt, with sidewalks of cement. The city received from Morning land at the foot of Canal Street purchased by him, in exchange for Castle Garden and vicinage, and the Battery—filled with fountains, statues, and increased acreage of lawn and garden—is restored to its ancient functions, and more than its ancient glory. The buildings erected upon each of the one hundred blocks thus created, are of uniform size and style. Each building—occupying an entire block—is four hundred feet long, eighty feet wide, and seventeen stories high. The roofs are covered with glass, making the structures eighteen stories aboveground. One-half of the area of the eighteenth story in each block is laid out in plots filled with ten feet of rich soil in beds of perforated cement, the other half in broad walks of plate glass—guarded by copper netting—so as to admit light to the seventeenth story and to the large air shafts.