New-York tribune., 1901-04-13
OUR LOCAL ANTIQUITIES.
NETWORK LANDMARKS HUNTED UP
AND DESCRIBED.

the Origin of Street Names and Biblic graphy
by Albert llmann. Octave PIP. viii, 2S5. d.
Appleton & Co.
George. Tom and Emily are a band of docile
children who make an extended series of pill
grmages around New-York under the tutelage
of Professor Williams. to view the spots that
have historic associations and recall various i'm
portant events in the life of the city. Professor
Williams knows all about them. and let's nothing
escape him that serve him as a starting
point for entertaining discourse on the viciss-
tudes through which New-York has passed since
Henry Hudson's day. The book introducing
these figures is an agreeable presentation of the
facts and its thoroughness makes it valuable
addition TO municipal history. New-Yorlx is so
governed by a spirit OF tearing down and re-
building at short intervals as Mr.. Ulmann OBJ
serves. that veritable landmarks of its past are
rapidly disappearing. Various public spirited
efforts, however. have determined and marked
many of the more important historic sites and
II the flavor of antiquity is hard to find any
where in New-York City to-day there is at least
the memory of where it should linger. Mr. Ul-
mann has filled his book with an interesting
collection of pictures scenes and portraits, re-
produced from old plates, and maps. which give
it special value
OF course, the Dutch period is the first to be
studied; and a short tour below Wal-st is suffi-
cient TO exhibit its Typographical features, and
to show the tablets marking the site of Adrian
Blocks first settlement where Aldrch Court
now stands on Broadway; of Fort Ans erdam,
where the new Custom House will stand the
first Dutch tavern in Pearl-st. the oldest street
in the city, and Peter Stuyvesant's pear tree. at
Thirteenth-st. and Third-ave. All this is natu-
rally a text upon which to hang a running
mentary on the life and history of the town at
that era. SO, too, the English period is re
called by the city seal, with the windmill
and the -four barrels commemorating the flour
monopoly of 1878; the Bradford tablets showing
where the first printing press set up in
Pearl-st., and the first newspaper printed, where
the Cotton Exchange stands: the De Lancey
house where sedition was brewed in pre-Revo-
lutionary times: Golden Hill. at the corner of
William and John sts. where the first blood of
the Revolution was shed two months before the
Boston massacre; the site Of the oft destroyed
Liberty pole. at the Postoffce, of Willett's bold
disarmament of the British troops at Broad and
Beaver sts and of the reading of the Declara-
tion Of Independence to the American Army
The memorials of these places and incidents and
many others that are now established on Man
haitian Island are prompting enough for the
pleasant resume of Revolutionary history that
Mr.. Ulmann winds about them, and for the
more interesting side lights the manners and
customs of the day, which he is enabled to
throw upon his narrative
The workaday life of the metropolis is scarcely
aware OF the great number of interesting facts
in the later history of the city that can be
traced in various parts of the town by who
has the lore his command. Mr.. Ulmann
knows and chronicles them all, pointing out sites
and such remaining structures there are and
enumeratng every tablet that exists to
memorate the past, down to that in front of
the City Hall, where the rapid transit work is
purported to have begun. He tells 1t all
tertainingly and pictures 1t variously and
strikingly that he gives new life and sug-
gestiveness to municipal annals apt to seem
dull and dry. Such contribution toward the
awakening of a civic spirit should be gratefully
received 1t is peculiarly valuable in New-York,
where that spirit is SO frequently obscured. Not
the least valuable part of the book is list OF
the old streets Of the city, and an expapation
Of the origin and changes Of their names.
valuable photography is appended.