Chatham Square has been the open space it is now ever since the time when a few houses clustered about Fort Amsterdam. The road that stretched the length of the island in 1647 formed the only connecting link between the fort and six large bouweries or farms on the east side.
The bouwerie settlers in the early days were harassed by Indians, and spent as much time defending themselves and skurrying off to the protection of the Fort as they did in improving the land. The earliest settlement in the direction of these bouweries, which had even a suggestion of permanency, was on a hill which had once been an Indian outlook, close by the present Chatham Square. Emanuel de Groot, a giant negro, with ten superannuated slaves, were permitted to settle here upon agreeing to pay each a fat hog and 22-1/2 bushels of grain a year, their children to remain slaves.
North of this settlement stretched a primeval forest through which cattle wandered and were lost. Then the future Chatham Square was fenced in as a place of protection for the cattle.
The lane leading from this enclosure to the outlying bouweries, during the Revolution was used for the passage of both armies. At that period the highway changed from the Bouwerie Lane of the Dutch to the English Bowery Road. In 1807 it became "The Bowery."
The earliest "Kissing Bridge" was over a small creek, on the Post Road, close by the present Chatham Square. Travelers who left the city by this road parted with their friends on this bridge, it being the custom to accompany the traveler thus far from the city on his way.
What is now Park Row, from City Hall Park to Chatham Square, was for many years called Chatham Street, in honor of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. In 1886 the aldermen of the city changed the name to Park Row, and in so doing seemed to stamp approval of an event just one hundred years before which had stirred American manhood to acts of valor. This was the dragging down by British soldiers in 1776 of a statue of the Earl of Chatham which had stood in Wall Street.
The most celebrated pump in the city was the Tea Water Pump, on Chatham Street (now Park Row) near Queen (now Pearl) Street. The water was supplied from the Collect and was considered of the rarest quality for the making of tea. Up to 1789 it was the chief water-works of the city, and the water was carted about the city in casks and sold from carts.