53 EAST 20TH STREET 223 10 WEST STREET 232 WHERE "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES" WAS WRITTEN 237 146 MACDOUGAL STREET 239 108 WAVERLY PLACE 240 RICHARD GRANT WHITE'S HOME 241 WHERE RICHARD HENRY STODDARD DIED 243 WHERE THE AUTHORS' CLUB WAS ORGANIZED 244 HORACE GREELEY'S HOME 245 THE BEEKMAN MANSION 249 LAWRENCE HUTTON'S HOUSE 252 DE KAY'S HOUSE, LONDON TERRACE 254 Literary New York Chapter I Writers of New Amsterdam [Illustration: Seal of New Amsterdam] There is a fashion nowadays of trimming the fronts of brick houses by placing black bricks among the red in such a way as to form odd and unique designs. It is an attractive way of doing, for it varies the staid simplicity of the solid color. But for all it may seem original and new, it is a style that had its beginning long, long ago, even in the days when the stern Peter Stuyvesant governed with an iron hand over the Dutch colony of fifteen hundred people, the town that was one day to be New York, but which in his time was called New Amsterdam. [Illustration: Early Dutch Houses] It was a tiny town then; picturesque, too, for the houses were low, irregular, with sloping roofs and gable ends to the street. They were built of wood--that is, all except the church, the Stadt Huys, the Governor's house, and some few dwellings of colonists who had brought much wealth with them from Holland. These were for the most part of stone. It was usual in them all--there were scarcely more than a hundred,--whether of wood or stone, to have chimneys outside the walls, thus making less the danger of fire, and if any part of the house were of brick it was sure to be the chimney. All the brick had then to be brought from Holland, so it was an expensive building material and but sparingly used. At this time when Stuyvesant held full sway there were two industrious colonists who held the idea that their short-cut to immense wealth lay in the way of making bricks at home and supplying them to their fellow colonists. So it came about, after long and slow deliberation, that the first brickyard was started. To be sure the venturesome fortune-hunters soon found that they were not to succeed all at once, for, owing to their lack of knowledge, they ruined so many of their bricks that the profits of the business were like to be consumed in the black-burned material that they threw aside as worthless.