A PROSPECT OF OLD VARICK STREET, NEW YORK CITY. VARICK STREET A Narrative and Some Pen Sketches ARICK STREET, in the days long before St. John's Chapel was built, was little more than a path through a vast, dismal swamp, known as Lispenard's Meadows. Before 1800 it was inhabited entirely by cartmen, blacksmiths, and tallow chandlers, with here and there a farmer, who had leased a farm in this dismal region twenty or more years before the Chapel at the foot of this street was even thought of. But after 1807, when this "elegant and genteel building" was erected, the street was improved and its former occupants were all put out. It was hoped that the new church would attract a more desirable class of tenants to this almost suburban region. New houses were built, the land was carefully restricted, and everything was done that possibly could be made to make Varick Street the most desirable location for residences in the city. All houses in the future were to be built of brick or stone, they were to be not less than a certain height in front, and certain businesses, including "Cartmen, Blacksmiths and Tallow Chandlers," were forever excluded from the location in which they had formerly held sway. The street was paved, perhaps by some predecessor of the famous McAdam, and lanterns were undoubtedly hung up at regular intervals to be lighted on nights when the moon did not shine; or if the woeful tales of irate citizens, who wrote to the papers of that time are true-on nights when the official lamplighter was not too lazy to come out to attend to his official business. Queer things these houses were, for which the city's "best families" deserted their homes in the lower part of the city. Some were built of brick, a few of stone, and here and there was a frame one. A few were large, but most of them were so very small that they seem most cramped and uncomfortable to modern eyes, and one wonders what the "best families" of today would think of them. But "Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year The queerest thing of all about them. TYPICAL SECTION OF A HOUSE ON VARICK STREET. may have been brought about by the re- In many of the houses, as in this "typical" one, the ceilings of the rooms in the rear of the house were much lower than those in the front. In this house the ceiling of the front room on the first floor was nine feet high and the rear room only eight. On the second floor, there was also a difference of a foot between the rooms in the front and rear. This "typical" house was one of the most interesting in the Varick Street. section. It was on Watts Street about fifty feet from the corner of Varick, and it has just recently been torn down. The old lady who occupied it was perfectly willing to show the house to visitors, but she was not at all kindly disposed to having her domicile measured up and, it is, perhaps, to our disgrace that permission to take the measurements was only received after we had presented a half dollar-hard money-to Sally, this lady's maid of all work, and even then it had to be measured while "the Missus" was out shopping. Most of the houses that were built on been "touched by the hand of death in 1863," as H. C. Bunner said, and another ancient and obsolete musical instrument, and it gloried in the name of "music room." By the way, Sally told us, in spite of the evident fact that this house was not built until a dozen or more years after Washington's death, that the General once spent, not a night or a day, but a whole week; and she also mentioned that there was a house not far away, just where, she was not sure, where “an Indian Princess named Pochahontas, who was much celebrated for her beauty and elegant manners, spent her honeymoon after marrying one of Washington's generals." Perhaps her dates were a little mixed, but this did not lessen her enjoyment in walking in the footsteps of this "celebrated beauty." Upstairs in most houses were two large rooms, and a smaller one of the same size as the "best bedroom" on the floor First Floor SKETCH PLAN OF A HOUSE IN VARICK ST. Varick Street were unusually small, many as narrow as twelve or fifteen feet, and few wider than twenty or twenty-five feet. In plan each was the same as its neighbors on either side. You came into a narrow hall-no vestibule-and to the right or left, as the case happened to be, was the "best parlor." At the rear, usually the entire width of the house, was a good old-fashioned settin' room, with large windows, sometimes a wainscoting. or chair rail, and always a big fire-place. In some houses there was another little room at the rear, generally used as the "best bedroom," which cramped and uncomfortable place of abode was sacred to the occasional country cousin, who stopped or tarried in town for a spell, to see the sights and hear the sounds. In the "typical" house, this room was occupied by a battered violin, that had below. In some houses this room was later divided into two perfectly glorious closets, but otherwise there were no closets in the houses at all. There was no other way of heating them than by open fireplaces. The rooms were, and still are, in spite of Franklin stoves and Baltimore heaters, exceedingly cold and draughty. Warming pans must have been welcome and necessary luxuries on cold winters' nights when these houses were new. Neither was there any plumbing; and candles, and later Betty and Tilly lamps shed but feeble rays of light. But in spite of all this, these houses, from one end of Varick Street to the other were happy as well as beautiful and at one time most fashionable dwellings. And one may still find people living in some of them, whose parents and grand and even great grand Basement SKETCH PLAN OF A HOUSE IN VARICK ST. parents lived there before them. I have in mind one old lady now nearly ninetyfive years old, who has never lived in any other house but the one in which she now lives, on Varick near Dominick Street. For many years that has been one of the most popular of the streets of old New York. Very few, if any, of the houses here can be called Colonial in the really historical sense of the word. Much of the best work-the Rectory of St. John's Chapel, for instance, which was not built until after 1823, and which was not designed, as it is often said to have been, by John McComb-can date to no more remote times than those of the war of 1812. It has long been a street where people were rather suspicious of modern progress and the "march of the encroaching city" has until now done it little harm. |