Greenwich Village

								

are to make way for new and grand apartment houses; and so these,
among the oldest buildings in Greenwich, drift into the mist of the
past.
And in that same part of the Square--in number 59 or 60, it is
said--lived one who cannot be omitted from any story of the Potter's
Field: Daniel Megie, the city's gravedigger. In 1819 he bought a plot
of ground from one John Ireland, and erected a small frame house,
where he lived and where he stored the tools of his rather grim trade.
For three years he dwelt there, smoothing the resting places in the
Field of Sleep; then, in 1823, a new Potter's Field was opened at the
point now known as Bryant Park, and the bodies from the lower cemetery
were carried there. Megie, apparently, lost his job, sold out to
Joseph Dean and disappeared into obscurity. It is interesting to note
that he bought his plot in the first place for $500; now it is
incorporated in the apartment house site which is estimated at about
$250,000!
There is a legend to the effect that Governor Lucius Robinson later
occupied this same house, but the writer does not vouch for the fact.
The Governor certainly lived somewhere in the vicinity, and his
favourite walk was on Amity Street,--why can't we call it that now,
instead of the cold and colourless Third Street?
I find that I have said nothing of Monument Lane,--sometimes called
Obelisk Lane,--yet it was quite a landmark in its day, as one may
gather from the fact that Ratzer thought it important enough to put in
his official map. It ran, I think, almost directly along North
Washington Square, and, at one point, formed part of the "Inland Road
to Greenwich" which was the scene of Revolutionary manoeuvres.
Monument Lane was so called because at the end of it (about Fifteenth
Street and Eighth Avenue) stood a statue of the much-adored English
general, James Wolfe, whose storming of the Heights of Abraham in the
Battle of Quebec, and attendant defeat of the Marquis de Montcalm,
have made him illustrious in history. After the Revolution, the statue
disappeared, and there is no record of its fate.
With the passing of the old Potter's Field, came many changes. Mayor
Stephen Allen (later lost on the Henry Clay), made signal civic
improvements; he levelled, drained and added three and a half acres to
the field. In short, it became a valuable tract of ground. Society,
driven steadily upward from Bowling Green, Bond Street, Bleecker and
the rest, had commenced to settle down in the country. What had
yesterday been rural districts were suburbs today.
In 1806 there were as many as fifteen families in this neighbourhood
rich and great enough to have carriages. Colonel Turnbull had an "out
of town" house at, approximately, Eighth and Macdougal streets,--a
charming cottage, with twenty acres of garden land which today are
worth millions. Growing tired of living in the country, he offered to
sell his place to his friend, Nehemiah Rogers; but the latter decided