NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1796

February        

English actor Joseph Jefferson makes his New York City debut in The Provoked Husband.    **    New York City's council solicits bids for a municipal water system, receives two. Nothing is done.

Mar 26                 

Matthew Clarkson, Thomas Eddy, John Murray, Jr., Isaac Sloatenburgh, and John Watts, are authorized by the state of New York to build a state prison on newly-acquired property on Greenwich Street in New York City, to be known as Newgate.

November

The New York City owner of a Barclay Street building destroyed by fire this month starts a public subscription drive for financial aid in recouping his losses.

December        

A warehouse fire in lower Manhattan spreads northward from Wall Street, destroying close to 70 buildings between there and Maiden Lane, and costing $1,000,000. Water from the Tea Pump is used in fighting the blaze.    **    New York City's council once again solicits bids for a municipal water system, receives two (one from Westchester doctor Joseph Browne), both of which die in committee.

Dec 6                 

Leather dresser William Thomson, son-in-law of the Hardenbrook family, who took over the Collect property in lower Manhattan a few days ago, advertises in the New York Minerva promoting his tea water pump business on the property and countering some bad publicity.

City

Some black members of the John Street Church ask Bishop Francis Asbury to conduct separate services for them. He creates the African Chapel  (later the Zion A. M. E. Church) under the jurisdiction of the Methodist Episcopal Church.    **    The council rejects a state offer to purchase the site of the former Colles Water Works for a prison, turns the land into a dump for street waste.    **    Yellow fever kills several dozen people.    **    John Fitch tests his screw-propeller steamboat on New York City's Collect

 Pond. Passengers include Robert Fulton, Chancellor R. Livingston, passenger and inventor Nicholas Roosevelt, and young John Hutchings, who acts as steersman. John Stevens also experiments with steam on the pond.    **    The city attempts to get property owners around The Collect to agree to a canal to drain the pond. Nothing happens.    **    A steeple is added to St. Paul's Chapel.    **    The approximate date Benjamin Davis erects the Broadway House tavern on Broadway at Grand Street.     **    James Blackwell erects a clapboard farmhouse on Blackwell’s Island (formerly Varckens Eylandt, or Hog Island; later Welfare, then Roosevelt Island).    **    John Rogers buys four acres of the former Warren estate in lower Manhattan. The property will become the site of the first house to be built on Washington Square North (No. 20) in 1828 and 1829.

©  2013         David Minor         Eagles Byte