Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Above the Clouds and Old New York: An Historical Sketch of the Site and a Description of the Many Wonders of the Woolworth Building
No description of these first New York habitations for white men has come down to us, and by some it has been conjectured that they were mere wigwams. But since it is known that Block had with him tools fit for the building of a ship, it is probable that they were frame huts, perhaps covered with bark and reed-thatched, Indian fashion. In any event, they served well enough as outward and visible tokens of Dutch possession, until the arrival of the first permanent settlers in 1623. With their advent, the Woolworth site, far though it was outside the limits of the original New York - or New Amsterdam, as its founders named it - began to assume historic importance. The control of the town, as of the entire province of New Netherland, had been vested in a commercial corporation, the Dutch West India Company, and it was of course necessary to make provision for the maintenance of the company's officials and servants stationed on the island. Accordingly, search was made for a good farming section, and the choice very properly fell on the land between Fulton and Warren Streets, from Broadway to the North River. Fenced in and reserved strictly for the use of the West India Company, this fertile holding became popularly and officially known as the Company's Farm. A rough road was opened to it, rude precursor of the "Great White Way" of the twentieth century; several buildings were set up, these including a house, barns, and a substantial wind-mill; and soon the process of clearing was well under way, workmen whose names have long faded from remembrance burning the brush and ploughing the soil of the very spot where today one of the greatest architectural marvels of the ages towers skyward in mind-enthralling majesty and beauty. Meanwhile, all unconscious of this splendid edifice of a later day, the worthy citizens of New Amsterdam paid less heed to the development of the Company's Farm than to the duties and pleasures of life in the cosy little town that gradually grew up along the southeast river front. Here, in houses at first of wood and afterwards of brick, built in the old Dutch manner with the gable end towards the street, they passed their days in a placid, leisurely simplicity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
