city advanced rapidly. Abraham De Peyster was the mayor in 1691, and he projected improvements with a lavish hand. The Garden Street Church, completed in 1693, was chief among the substantial indications of progress. It was built in the midst of a beautiful garden—a few years of age—"a great distance up town," fronting a narrow lane called Garden Alley, which afterward became Garden Street, and is now Exchange Place. The same year Wall Street was first paved to the width of ten feet in front of the houses facing the wall. It was at the suggestion of Mayor De Peyster that the city first assumed the support of public paupers. Each alderman was ordered to make a return of the poor in his ward. About the same time the corporation erected on the river shore (in front of the old City Hall) a pillory, cage, whipping post, and ducking stool. This last-named instrument of torture was for the punishment of excess or freedom of speech. It was not a Dutch but a purely English invention, and had been used for a long time in the British Empire. The year 1695 was eventful in the city's progress, and several handsome dwellings were erected in Wall Street. More money was in circulation than ever known before, and real estate advanced materially in price. Privateers and pirates walked the streets freely, and bought provisions for long voyages in exchange for gold and valuable commodities from the East. Trinity Church was projected, at the head of Wall Street, and several pretentious houses were erected in various parts of the city. De Peyster built an elegant mansion in Queen (Pearl) Street opposite Pine, fifty-nine feet front and three stories high. Some of the rooms were forty feet deep; and the walls and ceilings were elaborately decorated. The ground occupied the whole block, with a coachhouse and stable in the rear. De Peyster, about the same time, presented the city with the site for a new City Hall at the head of Broad Street in Wall. The first opening of the lane (since Nassau Street) known then as Kip Street, was in June, 1696. The mayor and corporation had been petitioned by Teunis De Kay for the privilege of making a cartway through "the street that runs by the pie woman's leading to the City Commons."
The privilege was accordingly granted, and the land alongside given to De Kay as compensation for his labor. The following year the streets were first lighted, by a lantern containing a candle, hung on a pole from every seventh house. The first night-watch was instituted soon afterward; four "good and honest men" being appointed to go round the city from nine in the evening until daylight next morning, with a bell, to proclaim the season of the weather, and the hour of the night."
The final erection of the City Hall, in 1700, was the great event which
