Thursday, December 28, 2000
Broadway, America's earliest highway
LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis
As we travel down Broadway, complaining about the tightness of the roadway and the crowdedness of the sidewalk, let’s keep in mind that it was constructed for the traffic needs of 1673, a point in time about 60 years after the arrival of the first settlers of New Amsterdam. You are indeed following the footsteps of the Dutch burghers and their British conquerors, whose rule was briefly overturned in the same year by a Dutch naval squadron.
Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland (1660-85), who had to flee to the Netherlands in 1651, after the Glorious Revolution of the Puritans executed his father, Charles I, was restored to the throne after the death of Cromwell. He repaid his Dutch providers of exile by warring against them, conquering New Amsterdam in 1664. Well aware of the value of communications, in 1672 he ordered Governors Francis Lovelace of New York and John Winthrop of Connecticut "to enter a close correspondency,.’ and a year later the first brave rider (his identity has been lost) left New York for Boston, getting there in the incredibly short time of two weeks . His unmarked route led through New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester and Cambridge, not quite paralleling the roughly 220 miles along US 95, 91 and 95 that I travel regularly in 5 hours (he did not discover the US 84 Hartford to Sturbridge shortcut).
The early mail riders did not have just nature to worry about, there were also hostile Pequot Indians who could bushwhack them (a tradition that has revived since 1987, when the Mashantucket Pequots opened the Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut). King Phillip in 1675 ranged all over Massachusetts, destroying settlements, and the sporadic attacks following the war named after him continued for several years.
,
The routing of the King’s Road through Manhattan was identified with 14 milestones in 1769, with the first just outside the city, on the west side of the Bowery, steps south of Canal Street, the next on southwest corner of Fourth Avenue and Astor Place, then at the intersection of Madison Avenue and 26th Street, east side of 3rd Avenue midway between 45-46th Streets, west side of 2nd Avenueat 62nd Street, NW corner of 3rd Avenue and 81st, and Central Park west of 5th Avenue, between 97-98 Streets. With the 8th milestone at St. Nicholas Avenue between 115-116th Streets the Great Road moved to the West Side, continuing through the west side of St Nicholas Avenue, opposite the north line of 133rd Street, then through the SW corner of 153rd Street, on to west side of Broadway, near 170-171st Streets, continuing to corner 190th Street, then to about 204th Street, and ending at the Harlem Ship Canal. It is fascinating to follow it on a map.
The crossing of Harlem River was at Spuyten Duyvil Creek, then a narrow tidal stretch (now filled in, the site of the Marble Hill Houses) where John Verveleen established a pole-boat ferry in 1669 at what was known as the Wading Place. A smart businessman, manor lord Frederick Philipse built a toll bridge there, near the now intersection of 230th Street and Marble Hill Avenue, in 1693. He named it Kings Bridge, for William III. The neighboring farmers protested, and years later one of them, Benjamin Palmer, built a free bridge. Stopped by a court order inspired by the Philipses, Palmer moved his bridge to 225th Street and opened it in 1759. He had great hopes of building a new city to rival Manhattan, and tried to develop City Island, failing in the effort. Not even a Benjamin Palmer grade school commemorates his name.
The crossing was an important point - the Kings Road divided there, to branch into the Albany Post Road.. Markers were continued in the Bronx, on the New Boston Post Road. Eventually the laborious Kingsbridge detour was eliminated, with a bridge at 130th Street, and now Willis Avenue Bridge and the Bruckner Expressway ease the Boston trip.
No such comforts were there for the early post riders, although eventually the Boston Post Road became three roads, to service other population centers along the route. A Middle Road split at Hartford to service such population centers as Manchester, Mansfield, Mendon, Milford, Medway and Millis. A Lower Road split at New Haven to follow the shore, crossing the Narragansett Bay to pass near Fall River and Providence.
The Kings Road is where the post office had its origins. "The scrivener" John Hayward was appointed to organize the taking and conveying of letters. It became a business monopoly in 1691 when Thomas Neale (who never came to America) was granted the royal patent for 21 years. The expensive and undependable service was reorganized after 1751 by Joint Deputy Postmasters William Hunter (for the south) and Benjamin Franklin (north). Franklin placed well-cut milestones along the roads, charged postage by the mile, and put a price on the mail delivery of newspapers, encouraging local publishing. Franklin was appointed Postmaster General by the Congress, and his image was on the first 1847 postage stamp (5 cents), along with Washington’s (10 cents).
Stagecoaches were a natural replacement of the saddlebag-carrying postriders, with the first mail contract awarded to a stage line in 1785, and just 53 years later the Congress declared every railroad an official post road. By 1850 the coaches were doomed, at least in the northeast. There was a network of stages and taverns that made the three-week trip from Philadelphia to Boston survivable, and a number of today’s pleasant country inns in New England date back to the stagecoach days.
Privately chartered turnpikes, the predecessors of the toll highways, furthered the expansion of travel and commerce in early United States, until the competition of railroads (for passengers and freight) and canals (for freight) cut the price of moving goods and people down considerably. The toll-charging pikes went out of business, the hated gate-keepers had to find new jobs, and the roadways became public highways. Some of them continue to charge tolls, such as the Massachusetts Turnpike, the easiest-to travel heavy-traffic road that I know.
Which brings us back to the hard-to-travel Broadway. For the history buffs, the routing of the King’s Highway present a challenge. The mile-markers are a thing of the past, and the taverns on the road have disappeared within Manhattan, where St. Paul’s Chapel (1764-66) and the Bowling Green fence (1771) are the oldest downtown survivors. Route 9, the Albany Postroad, can be traced with some ancient mile markers still in place (I remember one, in Croton).
For history readers, The Old Post Road by Stewart H. Holbrook (1962) is still the source, and Richard J. Koke of the Kingsbridge Historical Society has traced the milestones (The New-York Historical Society Quarterly, July 1950).
As we travel down Broadway, complaining about the tightness of the roadway and the crowdedness of the sidewalk, let’s keep in mind that it was constructed for the traffic needs of 1673, a point in time about 60 years after the arrival of the first settlers of New Amsterdam. You are indeed following the footsteps of the Dutch burghers and their British conquerors, whose rule was briefly overturned in the same year by a Dutch naval squadron.
Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland (1660-85), who had to flee to the Netherlands in 1651, after the Glorious Revolution of the Puritans executed his father, Charles I, was restored to the throne after the death of Cromwell. He repaid his Dutch providers of exile by warring against them, conquering New Amsterdam in 1664. Well aware of the value of communications, in 1672 he ordered Governors Francis Lovelace of New York and John Winthrop of Connecticut "to enter a close correspondency,.’ and a year later the first brave rider (his identity has been lost) left New York for Boston, getting there in the incredibly short time of two weeks . His unmarked route led through New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester and Cambridge, not quite paralleling the roughly 220 miles along US 95, 91 and 95 that I travel regularly in 5 hours (he did not discover the US 84 Hartford to Sturbridge shortcut).
The early mail riders did not have just nature to worry about, there were also hostile Pequot Indians who could bushwhack them (a tradition that has revived since 1987, when the Mashantucket Pequots opened the Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut). King Phillip in 1675 ranged all over Massachusetts, destroying settlements, and the sporadic attacks following the war named after him continued for several years.
,
The routing of the King’s Road through Manhattan was identified with 14 milestones in 1769, with the first just outside the city, on the west side of the Bowery, steps south of Canal Street, the next on southwest corner of Fourth Avenue and Astor Place, then at the intersection of Madison Avenue and 26th Street, east side of 3rd Avenue midway between 45-46th Streets, west side of 2nd Avenueat 62nd Street, NW corner of 3rd Avenue and 81st, and Central Park west of 5th Avenue, between 97-98 Streets. With the 8th milestone at St. Nicholas Avenue between 115-116th Streets the Great Road moved to the West Side, continuing through the west side of St Nicholas Avenue, opposite the north line of 133rd Street, then through the SW corner of 153rd Street, on to west side of Broadway, near 170-171st Streets, continuing to corner 190th Street, then to about 204th Street, and ending at the Harlem Ship Canal. It is fascinating to follow it on a map.
The crossing of Harlem River was at Spuyten Duyvil Creek, then a narrow tidal stretch (now filled in, the site of the Marble Hill Houses) where John Verveleen established a pole-boat ferry in 1669 at what was known as the Wading Place. A smart businessman, manor lord Frederick Philipse built a toll bridge there, near the now intersection of 230th Street and Marble Hill Avenue, in 1693. He named it Kings Bridge, for William III. The neighboring farmers protested, and years later one of them, Benjamin Palmer, built a free bridge. Stopped by a court order inspired by the Philipses, Palmer moved his bridge to 225th Street and opened it in 1759. He had great hopes of building a new city to rival Manhattan, and tried to develop City Island, failing in the effort. Not even a Benjamin Palmer grade school commemorates his name.
The crossing was an important point - the Kings Road divided there, to branch into the Albany Post Road.. Markers were continued in the Bronx, on the New Boston Post Road. Eventually the laborious Kingsbridge detour was eliminated, with a bridge at 130th Street, and now Willis Avenue Bridge and the Bruckner Expressway ease the Boston trip.
No such comforts were there for the early post riders, although eventually the Boston Post Road became three roads, to service other population centers along the route. A Middle Road split at Hartford to service such population centers as Manchester, Mansfield, Mendon, Milford, Medway and Millis. A Lower Road split at New Haven to follow the shore, crossing the Narragansett Bay to pass near Fall River and Providence.
The Kings Road is where the post office had its origins. "The scrivener" John Hayward was appointed to organize the taking and conveying of letters. It became a business monopoly in 1691 when Thomas Neale (who never came to America) was granted the royal patent for 21 years. The expensive and undependable service was reorganized after 1751 by Joint Deputy Postmasters William Hunter (for the south) and Benjamin Franklin (north). Franklin placed well-cut milestones along the roads, charged postage by the mile, and put a price on the mail delivery of newspapers, encouraging local publishing. Franklin was appointed Postmaster General by the Congress, and his image was on the first 1847 postage stamp (5 cents), along with Washington’s (10 cents).
Stagecoaches were a natural replacement of the saddlebag-carrying postriders, with the first mail contract awarded to a stage line in 1785, and just 53 years later the Congress declared every railroad an official post road. By 1850 the coaches were doomed, at least in the northeast. There was a network of stages and taverns that made the three-week trip from Philadelphia to Boston survivable, and a number of today’s pleasant country inns in New England date back to the stagecoach days.
Privately chartered turnpikes, the predecessors of the toll highways, furthered the expansion of travel and commerce in early United States, until the competition of railroads (for passengers and freight) and canals (for freight) cut the price of moving goods and people down considerably. The toll-charging pikes went out of business, the hated gate-keepers had to find new jobs, and the roadways became public highways. Some of them continue to charge tolls, such as the Massachusetts Turnpike, the easiest-to travel heavy-traffic road that I know.
Which brings us back to the hard-to-travel Broadway. For the history buffs, the routing of the King’s Highway present a challenge. The mile-markers are a thing of the past, and the taverns on the road have disappeared within Manhattan, where St. Paul’s Chapel (1764-66) and the Bowling Green fence (1771) are the oldest downtown survivors. Route 9, the Albany Postroad, can be traced with some ancient mile markers still in place (I remember one, in Croton).
For history readers, The Old Post Road by Stewart H. Holbrook (1962) is still the source, and Richard J. Koke of the Kingsbridge Historical Society has traced the milestones (The New-York Historical Society Quarterly, July 1950).
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:52 AM 
