Street.

The Custom House at William Street and Wall was completed in 1842. At this same corner once stood a statue of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. In 1776, during the Revolution, the statue was pulled down by British soldiers, the head cut off and the remainder dragged in the mud. The people petitioned the Assembly in 1766 to erect the statue to Pitt, as a recognition of his zealous defence of the American colonies and his efforts in securing the repeal of the Stamp Act. At the same time provision was made for the erection of the equestrian statue of George III in Bowling Green. The statue of Pitt was of marble, and was erected in 1770.

The Tontine Building at the northwest corner of Wall and Water Streets marks the site of the Tontine Coffee House, a celebrated house for the interchange of goods and of ideas, and a political centre. It was a prominent institution in the city, resorted to by the wealthy and influential. The building was erected in 1794, and conducted by the Tontine Society of two hundred and three members, each holding a $200 share. Under their plan all property was to revert to seven survivors of the original subscribers. The division was made in 1876.

Close to where the coffee house was built later, a market was set up in the middle of Wall Street in 1709, and being the public market for the sale of corn and meal was called the "Meal Market." Cut meat was not sold there until 1740. In 1731 this market became the only public place for the sale and hiring of slaves.

Trinity Church has stood at the head of Wall Street since 1697. Before 1779 the street was filled with tall trees, but during the intensely cold winter of that year most of them were cut down and used for kindling.

The ferry wharf has been at the foot of the street since 1694, when the water came up as far as Pearl Street. It was here that Washington landed, coming from Elizabethport after his journey from Virginia, April 23, 1789, to be inaugurated.

The United States Hotel, Fulton, between Water and Pearl Streets, was built in 1823 as Holt's Hotel. It was the headquarters for captains of whaling ships and merchants. A semaphore, or marine telegraph, was on the cupola, the windmill-like arms of which served to indicate the arrival of vessels.

On the building at the northeast corner of Nassau and Cedar Streets is a tablet reading:

HERE STOOD

THE MIDDLE DUTCH CHURCH

DEDICATED A. D. 1729

MADE A BRITISH MILITARY PRISON 1776

RESTORED 1790

OCCUPIED AS THE UNITED STATES POST-OFFICE

1845-1875

TAKEN DOWN 1882

This church was a notable place of worship; the last in the city to represent strict simplicity of religious service as contrasted with modern ease and elegance. The post-office occupied the building until its removal to the structure it now occupies. The second home of the Middle Dutch Church was in Lafayette Place.

Nassau Street was opened in 1696, when Teunis de Kay was given the right to make a cartway from the wall to the commons (now City Hall Park). At first the street was known as Pie Woman's Lane.

Where Maiden Lane is there was once a narrow stream or spring water, which flowed from about the present Nassau Street. Women went there to wash their clothing, so that it came to be called the Virgin's Path, and from that the Maiden's Lane. A blacksmith having set up a shop at the edge of the stream near the river, the locality took the name of Smit's V'lei, or the Smith's Valley, afterwards shortened to the V'lei, and then readily corrupted to "Fly." It was natural, then, when a market was built on the Maiden's Lane, from Pearl to South Streets, to call it the Fly Market. This was pulled down in 1823.

On Gold Street, northwest corner of Platt Street, is a wedge-shaped house of curious appearance. It is best seen from the Platt Street side. When this street was opened in 1834 by Jacob S. Platt, who owned much of the neighboring land and wanted a street of his own, the house was large and square and had been a tavern for a great many years. The new street cut the house to its present strange shape, and it came to be called the "Jack-knife."

Golden Hill, celebrated since the time of the Dutch, is still to be seen in the high ground around Cliff and Gold Streets. Pearl street near John shows a sweeping curve where it circled around the hill's base, and the same sort of curve is seen in Maiden Lane on the south and Fulton Street on the north. The first blood of the Revolution was shed on this hill in January, 1770, after the British soldiers had cut down a liberty pole set up by the Liberty Boys. The fight occurred on open ground back of an inn which still stands at 122 William Street, and is commemorated in a tablet on the wall of a building at the corner of John and William Streets. It reads:

"GOLDEN HILL"

HERE, JAN. 18, 1770

THE FIGHT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE

"SONS OF LIBERTY" AND THE

BRITISH REGULARS, 16TH FOOT

FIRST BLOODSHED IN THE

WAR OF THE REVOLUTION

The inn is much the same as in early days, except that many buildings crowd about it now, and modern paint has made it hideous to antiquarian eyes.

On the east side of William Street, a few doors south of Fulton, John Delmonico opened a dingy little bake shop in 1823, acted as chef and waiter, and built up the name and business which to-day is synonymous with good eating. In 1832 he removed to 23 William Street. Burned out there in 1835, he soon opened on a larger scale with his brother at William and Beaver Streets, on which site is still an establishment under the Delmonico name. In time he set up various places—at Chambers Street and Broadway; Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue; Twenty-sixth Street and Broadway, and finally at Forty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue.

John Street Church, between Nassau and William Streets, was the first Methodist Church in America. In 1767 it was organized in a loft at 120 William Street, then locally known as Horse and Cart Street. In 1768 the church was built in John Street. It was rebuilt in 1817 and again in 1841. John Street perpetuates the name of John Harpendingh, who owned most of the land thereabout.

At what is now 17, 19 and 21 John Street, in 1767 was built the old John Street Theatre, a wooden structure, painted red, standing sixty feet back from the street and reached by a covered way. An arcade through the house