History of Hanover Square




Hanover Square in the British Colonial Period
by F.J. Sypher

Hanover Square was a creation of British New York.

During the Dutch period, New Amsterdam had its center at the southern end of Manhattan, near the main docks. The East River washed the shore at present-day Pearl Street (formerly Great Dock Street). Typical of the early structures in what is now Hanover Square was the house built in the mid-17th century by Burger Jorissen, on the west side of the square, at the corner of present-day William Street. Around the house were trees, gardens, and outbuildings, including, on the William Street side, a stillhouse, and a smithy. In front the windows looked out over a broad quay, dotted with trees, with the East River beyond. It must have seemed like a house on one of the canals of old Amsterdam.

In 1664 the city came under British rule, and was named New York in honor of its proprietor, the Duke of York, later King James II. A few years later, in 1668, Burger Jorissen’s house was purchased as a residence by Thomas Lewis, a shipping merchant and alderman of the city. As New York grew toward the north and east, the city council surveyed the area (1691). By means of landfill, streets were extended, and even the waterfront moved one block east, to appropriately-named Water Street, opened 18 January 1694. The east side of the square then became available for building.

In 1695, just after the death of Queen Mary II, the name “Great Dock Street” was changed to Queen Street. In the same year Abraham De Peyster, a merchant and prominent city official, built a large house in Queen Street. In bewigged finery he is vividly memorialized in the statue (1896, by George E. Bissell) that stands (or rather sits) now in Hanover Square. A resident on the west side of the square at about the same time was William Kidd, who assisted with the construction of the first Trinity Church; he is more widely remembered as “Captain Kidd.”

The broad quay was now a city “square” (actually a triangle), with houses on three sides, and also in the lower part of the area in the middle (where the De Peyster statue is today). In 1714, in honor of the accession of George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland, and Elector of Hanover, the square was named Hanover Square.

The city docks and their related commercial activity were by this time spreading northward as New York grew. As of 1712 the population of New York County was 5,840; by 1746 it had about doubled. In 1761, Gov. Cadwallader Colden estimated that there were about 2,000 houses in the city.

As buildings downtown were converted to commercial use, people moved their residences further north. The house that had formerly been Thomas Lewis’ residence was later taken over by the printer William Bradford as a combined residence and printing-shop. There in 1725 he began publication of New York’s first newspaper, the New-York Gazette. In 1757, Hugh Gaine, bookseller and publisher, moved his headquarters to Hanover Square, which had become known as New York’s “printing house square,” an equivalent of the London square named after the King’s Printing House (1667).

From Hanover Square, Queen Street led north toward an attractive residential neighborhood. At No. 156 Queen Street in 1752, William Walton, a prosperous merchant, built his spacious Georgian-style house, regarded at the time as the handsomest residence in the city. The location (site of the present-day 326-328 Pearl Street), was conveniently near his business office at Hanover Square.

At about this time also, near the northern end of Queen Street, and not far from Walton’s house, the Parish of Trinity Church built its first chapel of ease, St. George’s Chapel, to accommodate a growing Anglican congregation, including families who lived at a distance from the mother church on Broadway at Wall Street. Robert Crommelin, an architect and member of the Trinity vestry, designed the new chapel in Georgian style. It stood at Beekman Street and Cliff Street. St. George’s Chapel was opened on the 1st day of July 1752. (In 1811 it became an independent parish, St. George’s Church; now at Stuyvesant Square.)

Hanover Square was by then a center not only for publishing, but also for retail trade of all kinds. A contemporary newspaper advertisement mentions hats, clocks, looking-glasses, and East India goods. The location was near the docks (for supply of merchandise), and the north lay a fashionable residential neighborhood (for supply of customers). Another famous publisher in the area was James Rivington, at Queen Street. During the Revolution he published a loyalist newspaper, Rivington’s Royal Gazette.

A distinguished resident of Hanover Square during the revolutionary period was Prince William Henry, later King William IV, known as “the sailor king.” He had begun his naval career aboard H.M.S. Prince George, under Admiral Robert Digby, who was sent to America in August of 1781. For a brief time in 1782 they lived at the Beekman house in Hanover Square.

After the establishment of the United States, the New York City government changed a number of downtown street names, so as to reflect the new spirit of the nation. Queen Street became Pearl Street. Duke Street went back to being Stone Street. Crown Street became Liberty Street; King Street became Pine Street. The name “Hanover Square” was struck off the map, and the area officially became merely a part of Pearl Street. However, because of its long familiarity and prestige, “Hanover Square” continued in popular use, and it was officially restored in 1830.

In 1787 the Bank of New York moved to 11 Hanover Square (it later moved to Wall Street). In 1828 Hanover Square was much improved when the buildings on the lower end of the triangular block in the center were removed. But then the great fire of 1835 destroyed the entire area.

In subsequent years, as the square was built up again, it took on an aspect that can still be appreciated in surviving buildings, especially present-day India House, built in Italianate style in 1851-1854. It originally housed the Hanover Bank, founded in 1851 and named for its location on the square; in the same building were W.R. Grace & Co., and the New York Cotton Exchange. The positive associations of Hanover Square were also reflected in the name of the Hanover Fire-Insurance Company of New York.

Late in the 19th century, the area literally fell under a shadow, when the Third Avenue Elevated Railroad went up (in the 1870s and 1880s). Hanover Square was one of the busiest stops on the line. Along Pearl Street, the columns and railroad tracks discouraged further development in the immediate area until after the el came down, in the mid-1950s. Consequently many older buildings on Pearl Street were spared when tall office buildings began to rise, starting in the 1890s. Today one can still, here and there, see something of what the neighborhood of Hanover Square looked like in the mid-19th century.

But certainly the most flourishing period for Hanover Square was during the British colonial era, when it was one of New York’s prominent centers of commerce and culture.