Devoe says that: 

“The visits of yellow fever in 1798, 1799, 1803 and 1805 tended much to increase the formation of a village near the Spring Street Market and one also near the State Prison; but the fever of 1882 built up many streets with numerous wooden buildings for the uses of the merchants, banks (from which Bank Street took its name), offices, etc.”

“‘The town fairly exploded,’” quotes Macatamney,—­from what writer he does not state,—­“’and went flying beyond its bonds as though the pestilence had been a burning mine.’”

It was in 1822 that Hardie wrote: 

“Saturday, the 24th of August our city presented the appearance of a town beseiged.  From daybreak till night one line of carts, containing boxes, merchandise and effects, was seen moving towards Greenwich Village and the upper parts of the city.  Carriages and hacks, wagons and horsemen, were scouring the streets and filling the roads; persons with anxiety strongly marked on their countenances, and with hurried gait, were hustling through the streets.  Temporary stores and offices were erecting, and even on the ensuing day (Sunday) carts were in motion, and the saw and hammer busily at work.  Within a few days thereafter the custom house, the post office, the banks, the insurance offices and the printers of newspapers located themselves in the village or in the upper part of Broadway, where they were free from the impending danger; and these places almost instantaneously became the seat of the immense business usually carried on in the great metropolis.”

Bank Street got its name in this way, the city banks transferring their business thither literally overnight, ready to do business in the morning.

Miss Euphemia M. Olcott in her delightful recollections of the past in New York, gives us some charming snapshots of a still later Greenwich as she got them from her mother who was born in 1819.

“She often visited in Greenwich Village, both at her grandfather’s and at the house of Mr. Abraham Van Nest, which had been built and originally occupied by Sir.  Peter Warren.  But she never thought of going so far for less than a week! [She lived at Fulton and Nassau streets.] There was a city conveyance for part of the way, and then the old Greenwich stage enabled them to complete the long journey.  This ran several times a day, and when my mother committed her hymn: 

    "’Hasten, sinner, to be wise,
          Ere this evening’s stage be run’

     she told us that for some years it never occurred to her
     that it could mean anything in the world but the Greenwich
     stage.”

In further quoting her mother, she tells of Sir.  Peter’s house itself—­then Mr. Van Nest’s—­as a square frame residence, with gardens both of flowers and vegetables, stables and numbers of cows, chickens, pigeons and peacocks.  In the huge hall that ran through the house were mahogany tables loaded with silver baskets of fresh-made cake, and attended by negroes.