On the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street was Riley's Fifth Ward Hotel, which was a celebrated place in its day. It was the prototype of the modern elaborately fitted saloon, but was then a place of instruction and a moral resort. In a large room, reached by wide stairs from the street, were objects of interest and art in glass cases--pictures of statesmen, uniforms of the soldiers of all nations, Indian war implements, famous belongings of celebrated men, as well as such simple curiosities as a two-headed calf. On Franklin Street, before Riley's door, was a marble statue minus a head, one arm and sundry other parts. It was all that remained of the statue of the Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, which had stood in Wall Street until dragged down by British soldiers. For twenty-five years the battered wreck had lain in the corporation yard, until found and honored with a place before his door by Riley. At the latter's death the Historical Society took the remains of the statue, and it is in its rooms yet.
The passage of Washington through the island is commemorated by a tablet on a warehouse at 255 West Street, near Laight, which is inscribed:
TO MARK THE LANDING PLACE OF GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON, JUNE 25, 1775, ON HIS WAY TO CAMBRIDGE TO COMMAND THE AMERICAN ARMY.
St. John's Church of Trinity Parish, in Varick Street close to Beach, was built in 1807. When the church was finished St. John's Park, occupying the entire block opposite--between Varick and Hudson, Laight and Beach Streets--was established for the exclusive use of residents whose houses faced it. Before it was established, the place had been a sandy beach that stretched to the river. The locality became the most fashionable of the city in 1825. By 1850 there had begun a gradual decline, for persons of wealth were moving up-town, and it degenerated to a tenement-house level after 1869, when the park disappeared beneath the foundations of the big freight depot which now occupies the site.
Around the corner from the church, a block away in Beach Street, is a tiny park, one of the last remnants of the Annetje Jans Farm. The bit of farm is carefully guarded now, much more so than was the entire beautiful tract. It forms a triangle and is fenced in by an iron railing, with one gate, that is fast barred and never opened. There is one struggling tree, wrapped close in winter with burlap, but it seems to feel its loneliness and does not thrive.