in the sept 16th issue of the new yorker -- one year after the trade
center attacks -- (and by the way the cover alone, once again, is
worth the price of the magazine) the novelist cathleen schine has a
fascinating article on the history of the world trade center site.

she decided to research the 16-acre site from the earliest days we
have record of it, from farm to churchland, red-light district,
revolutionary epicenter, mob site, and business district, and it
paints an amazing picture. a must read.

<http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?020916fa_fact1>

some quotes:

In 1614, the Tijger, a Dutch trading ship, burned at anchor and sank
in the North River. Three centuries later, in 1916, workers were
digging a tunnel for the I.R.T. subway line. At the intersection of
Greenwich and Dey, twenty feet below ground, their shovels hit wood:
the charred keel and three charred ribs of a ship. The style of the
ship was early Dutch, and radiocarbon dating of the wood indicated
that the vessel was built some time between 1450 and 1610. .... the
Tijger, a trading vessel a world away from home, burned and sank
beneath the water where almost four hundred years later two towering
buildings devoted to world trade burned and sank to the ground.


---
On September 21, 1776, just a few weeks after the disastrous Battle of
Brooklyn, when the British took back Manhattan and George Washington
and his troops barely escaped obliteration, a fire started at the
Fighting Cocks, a tavern near Whitehall Slip, and swept uptown. ....
the confusion and the shouting ... "joined to the roaring of the
flames, the crash of falling houses and the widespread ruin . . .
formed a scene of horror great beyond description." The fire destroyed
one-quarter of the city's buildings, including five hundred houses and
everything on the site of the future World Trade Center.


---
After more than a decade of frenzied growth, and in the midst of high
inflation (the cost of living went up sixty-six per cent in the first
two months of 1836 alone) and a burgeoning labor movement, a notice
appeared in the local papers: "Bread, Meat, Rent, Fuel! Their Prices
Must Come Down. The Voice of the people Shall Be heard, and Will
Prevail!" A meeting in City Hall Park was announced for "All Friends
of Humanity, determined to resist Monopolists and Extortioners." When
the huge rally adjourned, a mob, several hundred strong, stormed off
to the warehouse of Eli Hart & Co., at 175 Washington Street. The
protesters, according to the next day's Evening Post, "commenced
violent proceedings upon it and those who were in it," smashing doors
and windows, and throwing two hundred barrels of flour onto the
street, along with a thousand bushels of wheat. One month later, the
Wall Street panic of 1837 hit New York.


and there's more. again, a must read.
--

barry
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