It seems that the old Dutch settlers were fond of hunting and fishing, for they came here to shoot and angle, as we would go into--let us say--the Adirondacks or the Maine woods! "A high range of sand hills traversed a part of the island, from Varick and Charlton to Eighth and Green streets," says Mary L.Booth, in her history.

"To the north of these lay a valley through which ran a brook, which formed the outlet of the springy marshes of Washington Square...." And here, on the self-same ground of those "springy marshes," is Washington Square today.
The lonely Zantberg,--the wind-blown range of sand hills; the cries of the wild birds breaking the stillness; the quietly rippling stream winding downward from the higher ground in the north, and now and then, in the spring of the year, overflowing its bed in a wilderness of brambles and rushes;--do these things make you realise more plainly the sylvan remoteness of that part of New York which we now know as Downtown?
A glance at Bernard Ratzer's map--made in the beginning of the last half of the eighteenth century for the English governor, Sir.

Henry Moore--shows the only important holdings in the neighbourhood at that time: the Warren place, the Herrin (Haring or Harring) farm, the Eliot estate, etc.

The site of the Square, in fact, was originally composed of two separate tracts and had two sources of title, divided by Minetta Brook, which crossed the land about sixty feet west of where Fifth Avenue starts today.

Westward lay that rather small portion of the land which belonged to the huge holdings of Sir.