Old American Museum, City Hall Park

Original title: New York City Hall Park. North End, 1825 - from an original drawing. Broadway is in the foreground and the City Hall building is to the right, outside the engraving. Source: New York Public Library.

Comments on this illustration were made by I.N. Phelps Stokes (Iconography of Manhattan Island, ... 1918) as follows: «This view shows the west elevation of the old Almshouse, which had been converted, in 1816, for the use of a number of societies, and was known as the New York Institution. [Continue below...]

The American Museum, here shown as occupying the west section of the building, was established in 1790, under the patronage of the Tammany Society, and was called the Tammany Museum. In 1795 it was turned over to Gardiner Baker, who had been its keeper since its foundation, and the name was changed to the American Museum. In 1800, after the death of Baker, the museum was sold to W. J. Waldron, and, in 1810, was acquired by John Scudder, after whose death, in 1821, it was managed by his son, Dr. John Scudder, and others, until 1842, when it was purchased by P. T. Barnum. ... It occupied the old Almshouse until July, 1830, when the various institutions occupying the New York Institution were obliged to seek other quarters, the Common Council having decided to appropriate the old Almshouse for public offices. For over twenty years the building was used for courts and offices, and was known as the New City Hall (...). It was destroyed by fire in 1854.

After its removal from the old Almshouse, a new marble building was erected for the American Museum on the corner of Ann Street and Broadway, opening for the season on December 24, 1830. (...).

The buildings at the extreme left of the view are on the north side of Chambers Street; the one at the extreme right, with the cupola, is doubtless intended to represent the Old Gaol. The two storey building set at an angle between the Gaol and the Almshouse is Public School No. 1, on Tryon Row. See plan in the Goodrich Guide (1828). The one storey building south of the school has sometimes been identified as the Dispensary and Soup House, maintained by the Almshouse Commissioners. This building, however, stood in the extreme northerly corner of the Park, and would be hidden in this view by the Almshouse. The fence around the park was erected in 1818-21, from designs by McComb, which are still preserved, with his drawings of City Hall Park, by the N. Y. Hist. Society.