Sentence:  It <WSD>was</WSD> thickly settled by fifteen thousand citizens and laid out into pig infested streets , mostly around the Battery , going bravely north to Wall Street , but giving up and becoming fields and farms in the region of Harlem Heights . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)