PETER WALSH PROJECTS - Case Study (Block 89)

Major Sources:

[1] New York City Office of the Registrar of Deeds, 66 John Street, 13th Floor, Manhattan

[2] Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909, Volume 6, I.N. Stokes, Martino Fine Books, The Law Book exchange, Ltd., 1998 (1915-1928).

[3] Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

[4] New York City Department of Records and Information Services Municipal Archives, 31 Chambers Street, Room 103, Manhattan

10,000 – 7,000 B.C.E. – The first people to arrive at the island of Manhattan appear to have been hunters who followed big game into the area as the Ice Age ended, glaciers receded, and the ocean rose. They also appear to have simply passed through the area moving south as the warming continued. [3]

5,500 B.C.E. – 1626 C.E. – A second group followed later, settling into a series of seasonal encampments at various locations throughout the region including a site just north of what is now City Hall Park (Block 122, Lot 1). Eventually known as the Lenape peoples, they consisted of about a dozen small groups who hunted small game, fished, gathered naturally occurring produce and planted small agricultural plots. Although estimates vary widely, there may have been 15,000 people in the area when Europeans fist began to arrive. [3]

The Lenapes made use of a trail whose approximate route proceeded from Bowling Green and the Battery up Broadway, turning at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street and continuing up what is currently Park Row. [3]

In 1621, the States-General, the legislative body of the United Provinces of the Netherlands chartered Geoctroyerde West-Indische Compagnie, commonly known in English as the Dutch West India Company. Capitalized at 7.5 million Guilders, the Company was a corporate entity with sole Dutch rights to develop trade in West Africa and the Americas. It had its own structure of governance and its own military forces. Aside from trade, the Company was able to pay its shareholders massive dividends through the organized seizure of Spanish shipping vessels, a common practice during the seventeenth century when nations were at war. [3]

Unlike the purchase of Staten Island, which is detailed in an August 10, 1626 deed, there is no extant document of the purchase of Manhattan. Mythology (and a second-hand hearsay account contained in a contemporaneous letter) has Dutch West India Company Director Peter Minuit purchasing, on behalf of the Company, parts of Manhattan in May-June 1626 from on-site natives later determined to be simply traveling in the area. The price was apparently similar to the Staten Island purchase - a technology transfer of “Some Duffies [duffle cloth], kittles [kettles], Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jew’s Harps and Diverse Other Wares” worth about 60 Dutch Guilders (the proverbial $24). [3]

Minuit likely believed he had purchased a clear, permanent deed to the land. It is unlikely that the Lenape leaders who participated in a later “re-purchase” agreement (after pointing out that the first deal was cut by non-Manhattan visitors) had any such conception of absolute property rights of the kind that Europeans had devised after a thousand years of argument, adaptations and precedents. [3]

Lots 14 and 14 1/2in Block 89, which later became the site of Barnum’s American Museum (1842-1865) started as two separate unlotted land grants from the Dutch West India Company to Cornelis Van Tienhoven. [2]

1644, June 14 – [GROUND BRIEF], parcel that included Lot 14, later called “The Shoemaker’s Land.” [2]

1664, March - [GRANT] King Charles II of England made his younger brother, James Stuart, the Duke of York (later King James II), proprietor of most of the lands then known as New Netherland. [3]

The duke sent troops to seize control of New Amsterdam, taking possession of the city from the Dutch West India Company on September 8, 1664. [3]

1664, September 8 - [ARTICLES OF CAPITULATION] By the terms of the surrender, Dutch settlers were allowed to keep their “Estate, life, and liberty."

1694, March 1 – [DEED] unlotted parcel containing future Lot 14, Liber Deeds, XXI: 31 (New York) [1] The exchanges between Van Tienhoven, The Duke of York and these grantors are currently undocumented. (See Lot 14 1/2 for better documentation - Lot 14 may also have been regranted by York or these grantors are inheritors.)

1696, September 14 – See T.R. 47, Farm Histories Vol P. Tract Report 478 A – (Shoemaker’s Tract). [1]

1715, May, 2 – [PARTITION DEED] Lots 8-16 but not 14 1/2. Liber Deeds, XXVIII: 128 (New York) [1]

1808, August 26 – [COURT DECISION] Chancery Decision confirming title transfer based on an unfulfilled financial obligation of Christopher Steymets to John Steymets, agreed upon December 8, 1768, followed by the sale of the property, Lot 14, Liber Deeds, 81: 98 [1]

1646, March 27 – [GRANT] parcel that included Lot 14 1/2, later called “The Vineyard.” [2]

1664, March - [GRANT] King Charles II of England made his younger brother, James Stuart, the Duke of York (later King James II), proprietor of most of the lands then known as New Netherland. [3]

The duke sent troops to seize control of New Amsterdam, taking possession of the city from the Dutch West India Company on September 8, 1664. [3]

1664, September 8 - [ARTICLES OF CAPITULATION] By the terms of the surrender, Dutch settlers were allowed to keep their “Estate, life, and liberty.”

However, this parcel reverted to the English Crown after Van Tienhoven’s death and was re-granted. [2]

1685/6, April 10 – [PATENT GRANT] parcel that included Lot 14 1/2, later called “The Vineyard,” Liber Patents V: 293-97 (Albany) [2]

1685, March 9 – [DEED] parcel that included Lot 14 1/2, Liber Deeds, IX: 387 (Albany) [2]

Dongan was the English Governor of New York and the same individual who had originally granted the land to John Knight.

1762, July 13 – [DEED] parcel that included Lot 14 1/2, Liber Deeds XVI: 207 (Albany) [2]

1779 – [CONFISCATION] Lot 14 1/2, Thomas White was an English loyalist whose estate was confiscated by the New York State Legislature according to Chapter 25 of the “Laws of 1779.” Lot 14 1/2 was returned to White’s widow Anna in 1784 (for a price). Since the lot appears to have been sold to Andrew Hopper in 1775, there is a second deed for a second sale to Hopper, dated 1784. [2]

See Struggles and Triumphs or Forty Years of Recollections of P.T.Barnum, Barnum, P.T., New York: Penguin Classics, 1987 (1869) pp. 94-102 for Barnum’s description of the purchase of the Scudder’s Museum collection and his first lease from Francis Olmstead, dated, according to Barnum, December 26, 1841. After Olmstead’s death, the property appears to have been transferred to Henry Sargent through his wife Caroline, the daughter of Olmstead.

Barnum’s Museum burnt down in July of 1865 and the Lots are sold to New York Herald owner James Gordon Bennett who builds a new building for the Herald.

1943, May 8 - [DEED] Lots 14, 14 1/2, Liber Deeds, 4204: 246. Confirms Deed recorded July 23, 1936 [1]

Lots 14 and 14 1/2 are assembled with other lots and become Lot 12. Western Electric builds the G.E. Building of Communication in 1961.