The passing of the British rule was the signal for variously radical democratic changes, not only in customs and forms, but in nomenclature.  After they had melted up a leaden statue of King George and made it into American bullets, they went about abolishing every blessed thing in the city which could remind them of England and English ways.  The names of the streets were, of course, nearly all intrinsically English.  A few of the old Dutch names persisted—­Bleecker, Vandam, and so on—­but nearly every part of the town was named for the extolling of Britain and British royalty.  Away then, said New York, with the sign manuals of crowns and autocracy!

In 1783, when the English evacuated Manhattan, the Advertiser published:  “May the remembrance of this DAY be a lesson to princes!” and in this spirit was the last vestige of imperial rule systematically expunged from the city.  Crown Street was a red rag to the bull of Young America; it was called Liberty, and thus became innocuous!  Queen Street doffed its ermine and became homely and humble, under the name of Cedar.  King Street was now Pine.  King George Street was abolished altogether, according to the chronicles.  One is curious to know what they did with it; it must be difficult to lose a street entirely!  A few streets and squares named for individual Englishmen who had been friendly to America were left unmolested—­Abingdon Square, and also Chatham Street, which had been given its appellation in honour of the ever popular William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; Chatham Square, indeed, exists to this day.

Greenwich was at all times a resort for those who could afford it, an exclusive and beautiful country region where anyone with a full purse could go to court health and rest among the trees and fields and river breezes.  It was destined to become the most popular, flourishing and prosperous little village that ever grew up over night.  Those marvellously healthy qualities as to location and air, that fine, sandy soil, made it a haven, indeed, to people who were afraid of sickness.  And in those days the island was continually swept by epidemics—­violent, far-reaching, and registering alarming mortality.  Greenwich seemed to be the only place where one didn’t get yellow fever or anything else, and terrorised citizens began to rush out there in droves, not only with their bags and their baggage, and their wives and children, but with their business too!

John Lambert, an English visitor to America in 1807, writes: 

“As soon as yellow fever makes its appearance, the inhabitants shut up their shops and fly from their homes into the country.  Those who cannot go far on account of business, remove to Greenwich, situate on the border of the Hudson about two or three miles from town.  The banks and other public offices also remove their business to this place and markets are regularly established for the supply of the inhabitants.”

Things went so fast for Greenwich during the biggest of the yellow fever “booms” that one old chronicler (whose name I regret not being able to find) declares he “saw the corn growing on the corner of Hammond Street (West Eleventh) on a Saturday morning, and by the next Monday Niblo and Sykes had built a house there for three hundred boarders!”