Excerpt from Old New York, Yesterday and Today The year of the Peace with Great Britain (178 3) found our city in a deplorable condition. Two great fires had practically wiped out its principal buildings; their melancholy ruins still stood, gaunt and depressing. The population had dwindled to a beggarly ten thousand. Grass grew on her streets and her wharves, to which no ships had come in years, had fallen to decay. The ma chinery for local government had ceased to function and everywhere discouragement and dej cc tion reigned supreme. But with the appearance of Washington and his famous generals at the head of their victorious troops, marching down Broadway, a great change came over the spirit of New York. She was instantly imbued with new life. Her streets were once more thronged and she became for the moment the capital of the New Empire. Had New York so remained, it is safe to say that no Capital City 1n the world could have rivalled the beauty and impressiveness with which she would have constructed the Federal Seat of Government. A glance at the picture of lower Broadway shown elsewhere in these pages, distant but a few steps from the sparkling sheltered waters of the broad Atlantic, gives some idea of the possibilities that are apparent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.