[Greenwich Village by Anna Alice Chapin]@TWC D-Link bookGreenwich Village CHAPTER IV 39/41
And--Richmond Hill did not escape! It too became a tavern, a pleasure resort, a "mead garden," a roadhouse--whatever you choose to call it.
It, with its contemporaries, was the goal of many a gay party and I am told that its "turtle dinners" were incomparable! In winter there were sleighing parties, a gentleman and lady in each sleigh; and--but here is a better picture-maker than I to give it to you--one Thomas Janvier, in short: "How brave a sight it must have been when--the halt for refreshments being ended--the long line of carriages got under way again and went dashing along the causeway over Lispenard's green meadows, while the silvered harness of the horses and the brilliant varnish of the Italian chaises gleamed and sparkled in the rays of nearly level sunshine from the sun that was setting there a hundred years and more ago!" The secretary and engineer to the commissioners who cut up, levelled and made over New York was John Randel, Jr., and he has left us most minute and prolific writings, covering everything he saw in the course of his work; indeed one wonders how he ever had time to work at all at his profession! Among his records is this account of dear Richmond Hill before it had been lowered to the level of the valley lands.
It was, in fact, the last of the hills to go. After describing carefully the exact route he took daily to the Commissioners' office in Greenwich, as far as Varick Street where the excavations for St.John's Church were then being made (1808), and stating that he crossed the ditch at Canal Street on a plank, he goes on thus: "From this crossing place I followed a well-beaten path leading from the city to the then village of Greenwich, passing over open and partly fenced lots and fields, not at that time under cultivation, and remote from any dwelling-house now remembered by me except Colonel Aaron Burr's former country-seat, on elevated ground, called Richmond Hill, which was about one hundred or one hundred and fifty yards west of this path, and was then occupied as a place of refreshment for gentlemen taking a drive from the city." In 1820, if I am not mistaken, the levelling (and lowering) process was complete.
Richmond Hill's sad old windows looked no longer down upon a beautiful country world, but out on swiftly growing city blocks.
In 1831, a few art-loving souls tried to found a high-class theatre in the old house,--the Richmond Hill Theatre.
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