Nooks and Corners of Old New York — Part 37

Bank Street was named in 1799. The year previous a clerk in the Bank of New York on Wall Street was one of the earliest victims of yellow fever, and the officials decided to take precautions in case of the bank being quarantined at a future time. Eight lots were purchased on a then nameless lane in Greenwich Village. The bank was erected there, and gave the lane the name of Bank Street.

Washington Square was once a Potter's Field. A meadow was purchased by the city for this purpose in 1789, and the pauper graveyard was established about where the Washington Arch is now.

[Illustration: Looking South from Minetta Lane]

Manetta Creek, coming from the north, flowed to the west of the arch site, crossed to what is now the western portion of the Square, ran through the present Minetta Street and on to the river. In 1795, during a yellow fever epidemic, the field was used as a common graveyard. In 1797 the pauper graveyard which had been in the present Madison Square, was abandoned in favor of this one. There was a gallows on the ground and criminals were executed and interred on the spot as late as 1822.

In 1823 the Potter's Field was abandoned and removed to the present Bryant Park at Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue. In 1827, three and one half acres of ground were added to the plot and the present Washington Square was opened.

Past the pauper graveyard ran an inland road to Greenwich Village. This extended from the Post Road (now the Bowery) at the present Astor Place near Cooper Union, continued in a direct line to about the position of the Washington Arch, and from that point to the present Eighth Avenue just above Fifteenth Street. This road, established through the fields in 1768, was called Greenwich Lane. It was also known as Monument Lane and Obelisk Lane. A small section of it still exists in Astor Place from Bowery to Broadway. A larger section is Greenwich Avenue from Eighth to Fourteenth Streets. Monument Lane took its name from a monument at Fifteenth Street where the road ended, which had been erected to the memory of General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. The monument disappeared in a mysterious way during the British occupation. It is thought to have been destroyed by soldiers.