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Beyond were the homes of Judge Oakley, Samuel J. Tilden, James W. Gerard, George C. Clark and Harris Brooks, and David Dows lived in Irving Place, just below 20th Street.

On the north side of the Park at the N.E. corner of Lexington Avenue were the houses of Cyrus W. Field and his brother, Judge David Dudley Field.

The Alexander M. Lawrence family lived in the house on the N.W. corner, which many years afterward became the home of Stanford White.

The S.E. corner of Lexington Avenue and 22nd Street, on the same block as the Field houses, lived Peter Cooper the philanthropist, whose beneficent bounty built the great institution Cooper Union, where opportunities are given the youth of both sexes to perfect themselves in certain lines which are not taught in the public schools, nor in the City College.

Many a man and woman today owe their success in life tot he opportunities offered by the munificence of grand old Peter Cooper. One of his daughter became the wife of the late Abram S. Hewitt, at one time the respected Mayor of this great city.

The next corner above, Lexington avenue and 23rd Street, was the site of the College of the City of New York, originally the Free Academy, and from whose classic halls graduated many noted men of past generations, as well as of this generation.

Next door was the home of "Prex. Webster" of revered memory.

In later years, after the Civil War, the house became the home of General Alexander S. Webb, U.S. Army, Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Potomac during the war, who resigned from the U.S. service in order to accept the presidency of the venerable institution of learning which he served faithfully and well for many years. His death occurred February 12th, 1911.

At No. 66, next door to Calvary Church (at this time the odd numbers were not confined to the north side and the even numbers to the south side of the street), lived George B. DeForest, and Mayor Harper's home was in Gramercy Place between 20th and 21st Streets.

Two gas lamp posts, the old New York sign of a Mayoralty residence, were on the railing at the foot of the stoop and remained there for many years.

Rev. Dr. Francis L. Hawkes, the Rector of Calvary Church, was honored in the church throughout the land as a learned and eminent divine. He possessed a deep-toned, melodious voice which was most effective in the reading of the grand service of the Episcopal Church for the Burial of the Dead.

Calvary, now a downtown church, still continues its good work under the rector ship of the Rev. Theodore Sedgwick. Many comments have been made on its stubby "towers," but at one time there were two pointed latticed towers which succumbed in a heavy gale, back in the fifties.

At No. 28 East 20th Street stands the house where Theodore Roosevelt was born. It was then No. 38; his father's brother occupied the adjoining house.

Daniel Huntington, the artist, lived at No.49, and next door, on one side, was the home of the Cary sisters, Alice and Phoebe, and on the other side lived John A. Weeks, one of the most prominent lawyers of his day.

At the N.E. corner of Broadway and 19th Street stood the large brick house, in extensive grounds, erected by Tiebout Williams for his home on the "Williams Farm," which extended from 14th Street up, taking in parts of both sides of Broadway to 20th Street, and East to nearly Third Avenue, joining the Stuyvesant farm and including part of Gramercy Park, 19th Street and Irving Place. Certain portions of the farm, still owned by his descendants, are under long leases to tenants who have erected great buildings on the land.

The Williams house afterward became the residence of Peter Goelet and was chiefly noted because the old gentleman pastured his cow in the grounds and kept a number of pheasants and other brilliant plumaged birds.

In 19th Street on the north side lived Horace Greeley, and almost directly opposite was the home of Edwin Booth. On the north side farther east lived Dr. William Oliffe, whose wife was the youngest daughter of Tiebout Williams.

Up to about 1852 the only street car line was the Fourth Avenue, which was a part of the Harlem Railroad and was used to carry passengers from the railroad station at Centre and White Streets now covered by the Criminal Courts Building to Fourth Avenue and 32nd Street. The Park Avenue Hotel covers the plot on which stood the engine house and it was here that the locomotives "hooked on."

Madison Square Garden covers the block on which were the main stations of both the Harlem and New York & New Haven roads.

The New Haven had a downtown station on Broadway just below Canal Street, using the Harlem Tracks, and both passenger and freight cars of these roads were hauled by horses up to 32nd Street.

The Sixth Avenue street car line, completed about 1853, ran down Sixth Avenue from the depot at 43rd Street, now the Hippodrome, through Carmine, Varick, Canal, West Broadway to Broadway at Vesey Street (the Eighth Avenue line subsequently ended there).

There was a spur of the Sixth Avenue at Canal Street to Broadway on which was run a queer little car, shaped like an omnibus, drawn by one horse and there was no conductor. In the absence of a turntable at the terminus, the car was made to swing around on a pivot in the centre of the truck, and the horses soon became expert in making the swing and seemed to enjoy it.

Carmine Street and its immediate vicinity was largely occupied by colored people, who were not permitted on every car, but in order to accommodate them, every fifth car above the windows was marked in large letters on a white ground, "Colored persons allowed in this car."

Stages, they were never called "buses in New York, did most of the transportation up and down town. Several lines ran to South Ferry, one to Wall Street Ferry and two to the Fulton Ferry; none ran about 42d street.

There were no traffic policemen in those days and so the stage drivers and truck men drove their vehicles just how and where they saw fit; the result was naturally a succession of "jams."

The stages of two lines, Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, as they turned from Broadway into Fulton Street on their way to the ferry, rendered that point the most congested in the town, making it almost impossible for pedestrians to cross in the busy hours of the day.

To obviate the danger, an elevated bridge was built across Broadway, and it remained in use up to the time of the completion of the Broadway street car line in 1884 and the multiplication and extension of other lines finally drove the stages from the streets.

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