history.  Some of the younger teachers came from the Union Theological Seminary in Washington Square.  Among the men later to become distinguished, who lectured at the school, were Felix Foresti, professor at the University, and at Columbia College, Clarence Cook, Lyman Abbott, John Fiske, John Bigelow, teaching botany and charming the young ladies because he was “so handsome,” and Elihu Root, then a youth fresh from college.  To quote from Miss Henderson:  “Miss Boorman has often told me of the amusement that the shy theological students and other young teachers afforded the girls in their classes, and how delighted these used to be to see instructors fall into a trap which was unconsciously prepared for them.  The room in which the lectures were given had two doors, side by side, and exactly alike, one leading into the hall and the other into a closet.  The young men having concluded their remarks, and feeling some relief at the successful termination of the ordeal, would tuck their books under their arms, bow gravely to the class, open the door, and walk briskly into the closet.  Even Miss Green’s discipline had its limits, and when the lecturer turned to find the proper exit he had to face a class of grinning schoolgirls not much younger than himself, to his endless mortification.  Elihu Root recently met at a dinner a lady who asked him if he remembered her as a member of his class at Miss Green’s school.  ’Do I remember you?’ the former secretary of State replied.  ’You are one of the girls who used to laugh at me when I had to walk into the closet.’”

It was in 1835, when the new avenue was in the first flush of its lusty infancy, that a hotel was opened at the northeast corner of Eighth Street.  They call it the Lafayette today:  tomorrow it may have still another name.  But to one with any feeling for old New York it will always be remembered by its appellation of yesterday, which it drew from the old proprietors of the land on which it stands, that family that is descended from Hendrick Brevoort who had served Haarlem as constable and overseer, and later emigrated to New York, where he was an alderman from 1702 to 1713.  The Brevoort farm adjoined the Randall farm and ran northeasterly to about Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street.  Among the descendants of the Dutch burgher was one Henry Brevoort, to whose obstinacy of disposition is owed a curious inconsistency of the city of today.  His farmhouse was on the west side of Fourth Avenue and on his land were certain favourite trees.  When the Commissioners were replanning the town in 1807 there was a projected Eleventh Street.  But the trees were in the way of the improvement, so old Brevoort stood in the doorway, blunderbuss in hand, and defied the invaders to such purpose that to this day Eleventh Street has never been cut through.  Instead, Grace Church, its garden and rectory cover the site of the old homestead.  Later the vestry of Grace Church was to play old Brevoort’s game.  “Boss” Tweed determined to cut through or make the church pay handsomely for immunity.  The vestry defied him.  Tweed never acted.