In 1783, when the English evacuated Manhattan, the _Advertiser_
published: "May the remembrance of this DAY be a lesson to princes!" and
in this spirit was the last vestige of imperial rule systematically
expunged from the city. Crown Street was a red rag to the bull of Young
America; it was called Liberty, and thus became innocuous! Queen Street
doffed its ermine and became homely and humble, under the name of Cedar.
King Street was now Pine. King George Street was abolished altogether,
according to the chronicles. One is curious to know what they did with
it; it must be difficult to lose a street entirely! A few streets and
squares named for individual Englishmen who had been friendly to America
were left unmolested--Abingdon Square, and also Chatham Street, which had
been given its appellation in honour of the ever popular William Pitt,
Earl of Chatham; Chatham Square, indeed, exists to this day.
Greenwich was at all times a resort for those who could afford it, an
exclusive and beautiful country region where anyone with a full purse
could go to court health and rest among the trees and fields and river
breezes. It was destined to become the most popular, flourishing and
prosperous little village that ever grew up over night. Those
marvellously healthy qualities as to location and air, that fine,
sandy soil, made it a haven, indeed, to people who were afraid of
sickness. And in those days the island was continually swept by
epidemics--violent, far-reaching, and registering alarming mortality.
Greenwich seemed to be the only place where one didn't get yellow
fever or anything else, and terrorised citizens began to rush out
there in droves, not only with their bags and their baggage, and their
wives and children, but with their business too!
John Lambert, an English visitor to America in 1807, writes:
"As soon as yellow fever makes its appearance, the
inhabitants shut up their shops and fly from their homes
into the country. Those who cannot go far on account of
business, remove to Greenwich, situate on the border of the
Hudson about two or three miles from town. The banks and
other public offices also remove their business to this
place and markets are regularly established for the supply
of the inhabitants."
Things went so fast for Greenwich during the biggest of the yellow
fever "booms" that one old chronicler (whose name I regret not being
able to find) declares he "saw the corn growing on the corner of
Hammond Street (West Eleventh) on a Saturday morning, and by the next
Monday Niblo and Sykes had built a house there for three hundred
boarders!"
Devoe says that:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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