center of the block, with a small building facing the street, and a rough fenced inclosure. It was demolished some time prior to the Revolution, and handsome residences appeared on its site. Samuel Verplanck purchased three lots in 1773 for £260, and built a house upon the one next to the city hall. It was about the middle of the century when Fashion first turned her face toward Wall Street as a choice place of residence. One elegant dwelling after another was reared and occupied, and long before the tocsin of war sounded through its charmed precincts it had become notably the fashionable quarter of the city. The three-story double brick dwelling of the Marstons—afterward occupied by the Holland minister. Van Berckle—the McEvers mansion on the north-eastern corner of Wall and William streets, the residence of Gen. John Lamb, Collector of the Port, adjoining, the handsome home of the Van Homes, and the imposing dwellings of the Buchanans, Whites, Dennings, Smiths, Startins, Cuylers, and other prominent families, invested the thoroughfare with peculiar attractions. Gentlemen promenaded its sidewalks in black satin small-clothes, and white embroidered satin vests, ruffled shirts, and velvet or cloth coats of any color in the rainbow. Shoes were fastened with glittering buckles, and heads crowned with powdered wigs and cocked hats. Ladies appeared in brocaded silks of brilliant colors, the court-hoop was in vogue, and the bonnet of the period was jaunty and picturesque in the extreme.
The most prosaic and practical American will find it difficult to repress some slight throb of enthusiasm, in recalling the historic incidents which had their background in Wall Street, while New York was under kingly rule. Here sat that provocative little miniature Parliament of New York, which for upward of three fourths of a century presumed to criticise the acts of its great English prototype, and to curtail the power of the royal governors, not infrequently withholding money necessary for the support of the government. Its spirit, intelligence, and independence were conspicuously exhibited in every administration. In the case of Lord Cornbury it took measures to so guard the public funds that he esteemed himself openly insulted. The meagre support granted to Governor Hunter was on terms which he could not accept without humiliation. Even at that early day, some of the members denied the right of the queen to appoint salaries for her colonial officers; and the general sentiment was in favor of restraining the governor's prerogative. Lieutenant-Governor Clarke's first address to the captious body produced an expression of sentiment that would have done honor to the best days of Greece and Rome. One passage ran thus: "We therefore beg leave to tell your
