Whitehall Street was one of the earliest thoroughfares of the city, and was originally the open space left on the land side of the Fort.
Beaver Street was first called the Beaver's Path. It was a ditch, on either side of which was a path. When houses were built along these paths they were improved by a rough pavement. At the end of the Beaver's Path, close to where Broad Street is now, was a swamp, which, before the pavements were made, had been reclaimed and was known as the Sheep Pasture.
Marketfield Street, whose length is less than a block, opens into Broad Street at No. 72, a few feet from Beaver Street. This is one of the lost thoroughfares of the city. Almost as old as the city itself, it once extended past the Fort and continued to the river in what is now Battery Place. It was then called Petticoat Lane. The first French Huguenot church was built on it in 1688. Now the Produce Exchange cuts the street off short and covers the site of the church.
Through Broad Street, when the town was New Amsterdam, a narrow, ill-smelling inlet extended to about the present Beaver Street, then narrowed to a ditch close to Wall Street. The water-front was then at Pearl Street. Several bridges crossed the inlet, the largest at the point where Stone Street is. Another gave Bridge Street its name. In 1660 the ways on either side were paved, and soon became a market-place for citizens who traded with farmers for their products, and with the Indians who navigated the inlet in their canoes. The locality has ever since been a centre of exchange. When the inlet was finally filled in it left the present "Broad" Street.
Where Beaver Street crosses this thoroughfare, on the northwest corner, is a tablet:
TO COMMEMORATE THE GALLANT AND PATRIOTIC ACT OF MARINUS WILLETT IN HERE SEIZING JUNE 6, 1775, FROM THE BRITISH FORCES THE MUSKETS WITH WHICH HE ARMED HIS TROOPS. THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY THE SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE REVOLUTION, NEW YORK, NOV. 12, 1892
On one side of the tablet is a bas-relief of the scene showing the patriots stopping the ammunition wagons.
Fraunces' Tavern, standing at the southeast corner of Broad and Pearl Streets, is much the same outwardly as it was when built in 1700, except that it has two added stories. Etienne De Lancey, a Huguenot nobleman, built it as his homestead and occupied it for a quarter of a century. It became a tavern under the direction of Samuel Fraunces in 1762. It was Washington's headquarters in 1776, and in 1783 he delivered there his farewell address to his generals.