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WASHINGTON SQUARE.

THIS beautiful square, now so much the resort of citizens and strangers, as a promenade, was only fifteen years ago a "Potter's Field," in which were seen numerous graves, generally the receptacles of the poor, and formerly of the criminals from the prison. It was long enclosed in a post and rail fence, and always produced much grass. It was not originally high and level as now, but a descending ground, from the western side to a deep gully which traversed it in a line from Doctor Wilson's large church to the mouth of the present tunnel on Sixth street below Walnut street. Another course of water came from the north west, falling into the same place. The houses on the street, along the south side of the square, were but a few years ago as miserable and deformed a set of negro huts and sheds as could be well imagined.

In the centre of the square was an enclosed ground, having a brick wall of about 40 feet square, in which had been interred members of Joshua Carpenter's and the Story families, caused by the circumstance of a female of the former family having been interred there for suicide-a circumstance which excluded her from burial in the common church grounds of the city.

Those who remembered the place long before my recollections, knew it when the whole place was surrounded by a privet-hedge, where boys used to go and cut bow-sticks, for shooting of arrows. Timothy Matlack remembered it as early as the year 1745 to $50, and used then to go to a pond where is now the site of the Presbyterian church, to shoot wild ducks. A. J. Morris, at the same period, remembered when a watercourse, starting from Arch street near Tenth street, traversed High street under a small bridge at Tenth street, and thence ran southeastward through the Washington Square, thence by the line of the present tunnel under the prison, by Beek's Hollow, into Dock creek, by Girard's Bank. The present aged Hayfield Conyngham, Esq. when he was young, caught fish of six inches length in the above-mentioned watercourse, within the present square. Another aged person told me of his often walking up the brook, barefooted, in the water, and catching crayfish.

It was the custom for the slave blacks at the time of fairs and other great holydays, to go there to the number of one thousand, of both sexes, and hold their dances, dancing after the manner of

their several nations in Africa, and speaking and singing in their native dialects, thus cheerily amusing themselves over the sleeping dust below! An aged lady, Mrs. H. S. has told me she has often seen the Guinea negroes, in the days of her youth, going to the graves of their friends early in the morning, and there leaving them victuals and rum!

In the time of the war of Independence the place was made awful by the numerous interments of the dying soldiers destroyed by the camp fever. Pits of 20 by 30 feet square were dug along the line of Walnut street by Seventh street, which were closed by coffins piled one upon another until filled up; and along the southern line, long trenches the whole width of the square were dug at once, and filled up as the voracious grave required its victims. Its final scene, as a Golgotha and ghostly receptacle, occurred in the fever of 1793; after which, the extension of improvements. westward, induced the City Council to close it against the use of future interments at and after the year 1795.

Some of my cotemporaries will remember the simple-hearted innocent Leah, a half-crazed spectre-looking elderly maiden lady, tall and thin, of the Society of Friends. Among her oddities, she sometimes used to pass the night, wrapped in a blanket, between the graves at this place, for the avowed purpose of frightening away "the doctors!"

The place was originally patented in 1704-5, under the name of the Potter's Field," as "a burial ground for strangers," &c. The minutes of Council, in September, 1705, show that the Mayor, Recorder, and persons of various religious denominations, were appointed to wait on the Commissioners of Property for a public piece of ground for "a burial place for strangers dying in the city.” With a run of ninety years it was no wonder it looked to the eye well filled!

That it was deemed a good pasture field, is evidenced by the fact of its being rented by the Council for such a purpose. A minute of Council of 14th April, 1766, is to this effect: "The lease of Potter's Field to Jacob Shoemaker having expired, it is agreed to lease it to Jasper Carpenter for seven years (to the year 1773) at ten pounds per annum."

It was begun as a public walk in the year 1815, under the plan of G. Bridport, and executed under the direction of George Vaux, Esq. It has from sixty to seventy varieties of trees, mostly of native growth. In a few years more they will have extended their shade in admirable beauty, and those who may exercise beneath their branches will no longer remember those "whelm'd in pits and forgotten!"

BEEK'S HOLLOW,

WAS the familiar name of ground descending into a brook or run, which traversed Walnut street a little above Fourth street, in the line of the present tunnel. Before the tunnel was constructed it was an open watercourse coming from the present Washington Square, crossing under Fourth street by an arch, and out to Dock creek by the way of the present Girard's Bank.

Many men are still living who remember it as an open, deep and sluggish stream, from Walnut street near the present Scotch Presbyterian church, in a line towards the corner of Library street and Fourth street-then a vacant commons there. In proof of the low ground once there it may be said, that when they were digging the cellar for the house No. 73, South Fourth street, western side, below Library street, at the depth of nine feet they came to an old post and rail fence!

I can myself remember, when, a little westward of the brook, on the north side of Walnut street, there stood back from the street a very pleasant two-story old cottage, the residence of the widow Rowen, having a grapevine clustering about the lattices of the piazza, and a neat garden in front. I believe Doctor Cox built his dwelling house on the same premises, nearly thirty years ago. The south side of Walnut street was then generally vacant lots; and where the present range of fine houses extends westward from the south west corner of Fourth and Walnut street, was a long yard occupied many years by a coachmaker, whose frame shop stood upon the corner. The rear of Doctor Rush's former residence shows a gradual descent of sloping garden into Beek's Hollow; and an old house or two in Prune street, north side, show themselves buried as much as three steps beneath the present surface-thus marking there the range of "the Hollow" once so familiar in the mouths of all persons passing up Walnut street.

NORRIS' HOUSE & GARDEN.

NORRIS' house, a respectable-looking family mansion, occupied till lately the site on which is now placed the Bank of the United States. When first built, it was deemed out of town. Such as it was before the war of Independence, when adorned with a large and highly cultivated garden, has been well told in a picturesque manner by its former inmate, Mrs. L-.* Its rural beauties, so near the city, were once very remarkable; and for that reason made it the frequent resort of respectable strangers and genteel citizens. In that house, when Isaac Norris was Speaker, and was confined at home, infirm, the Assembly of Pennsylvania, for the sake of his presence, sometimes held their deliberations. In the time of the war, the patriots took off its leaden reservoir and spouts to make bullets for the army. It was occupied by several British officers when the British army possessed the city. In those gardens Admiral Howe and several British officers were daily visiters. A few years ago an aged female Friend from Baltimore, who lived there by selling cakes, &c. was present at a Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia, and then told her friends that her grandfather had once been given the ground whereon the Bank stands, with as much as half the squarc, for his services as chain-bearer in the original survey of the city. Now, when old and needy, she sees the Bank erected thereon, at a cost for the site of 100,000 dollars!

The range of large brick houses on the south side of Chesnut street, extending from the Bank of the United States up to Fifth street, were built there about 25 years ago, upon what had been previously Norris' garden. The whole front was formerly a gar den fence, shaded by a long line of remarkably big catalpa trees, and, down Fifth street, by trees of the yellow willow class, being the first ever planted in Philadelphia-and the whole the product of a wicker-basket found sprouting in Dock creek, taken out and planted in Mr. Norris' garden at the request of Dr. Franklin.

On the Fifth street side of the garden, extending down to Library street, there stood a rural-looking cottage, near the site of the present library. It was the gardener's residence, standing back from the street 'midst deep embow'ring shade, every way pictu resque to the eye, and having near it an open well of water of peculiar excellence, famed far and wide as "deep and cold," and for

In a family manuscript for her son.

which families often sent at several squares distance.

It was im

possible to see the tout ensemble as it then was, without associating the poetic description of "the drawwell and mossy bucket at the door!" The well still remains, as a pump, on the north side of Library street, about 60 or 70 feet eastward of Fifth street, but its former virtues are nearly gone.

The eastern side of the garden was separated from Fourth street by the Cross-Keys Inn and some two or three appurtenant houses once the estate of Peter Campbell, in whose hands they were confiscated, and then purchased by the late Andrew Caldwell, Esq. By mistake of the original surveys they had been built out four feet upon the Chesnut street pavement, so that when the street became public, they closed the front doors and entered the house on the western side by a gateway and a long piazza. The whole produced an agreeable oddity, which always made the block of buildings remarkable.

ROBERT MORRIS' MANSION.

THIS great edifice, the grandest ever attempted in Philadelphia for the family purposes of private life, was erected at the request and for the use of the great financier, Robert Morris, Esq. The whole proved to be a ruinous and abortive scheme, not so much from his want of judgment to measure his end by his means, as by the deceptive estimates of his architect, Major L'enfent-a name celebrated in our annals for the frequent disproportion between his hopes and his accomplishments.

Mr. Morris purchased the whole square, extending from Chesnut to Walnut street, and from Seventh to Eighth street, for 10,000.-a great sum for what had been, till then, the Capital, at which the Norris' family had used it as their pasture ground! Its original elevation was 12 to 15 feet above the present level of the adjacent streets. With such an extent of high ground in ornamental cultivation, and a palace in effect fronting upon Chesnut street, so far as human grandeur was available, it must have had a signal effect.

Immense funds were expended ere it reached the surface of the ground, it being generally two and sometimes three stories under ground, and the arches, vaults and labyrinths were numerous. It was finally got up to its intended elevation of two stories, presenting four sides of entire marble surface, and much of the ornaments worked in expensive relief. Such as it then was may be seen in

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