Lot: Beyond-the-Wall5 (Taxlots)

Lot
Beyond-the-Wall5
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Taxlots
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Property Was Used in 1660 For:
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Full Stokes Entry (See images below)
These two houses still belonged, in 1660, to Jan Vinje and the other heirs of Adriana Cuvilje (or Adrienne Cuviller), widow of Jan Jansen Damen.

The more northerly dwelling seems to have been the Damen farmhouse. In a recital of the partition of Madame Cuvilje's estate, it is listed as "the great house, now occupied by Cornelis Aertsen." The southerly house is named in the same instrument as "the small house now occupied by Pieter Stoutenburgh." — Liber Deeds, B: 103; cf. Mortgages, 1664-1675, trans, by O'Callaghan, 55. Aertsen and Stoutenburgh were assessed here in 1665. — Rec. N. Am., V: 225. One of the picturesque Dutch haystacks of the period stood behind the great house. It is, doubtless, this very haystack that has been mistaken for a church tower by so many students of the Visscher series of views. Pieter Stoutenburgh bought the small house in November, 1664. — Liber Deeds, B: 54; cf. Mortgages, 1664-1675, trans, by O'Callaghan, 13.

The great house was acquired by Dr. Henry Taylor, in 1672. — Liher Deeds, B: 190; Book of Records of Deeds i^ Transfers (etc.), 1665-1672 (translated), 210. It was ordered demolished by Governor Colve, in October, 1673, because it stood too near the fortifications. At the hearing, the doctor's wife appeared, and said "her husband is willing to risk his house, and to abide the result." — N. Y. Col. Docs., II: 631. According to a deposition concerning the surrender of the city, in August, 1673, Captain Manning and Doctor Taylor "opened the gates & lead in the Dutch . . ." — N. Y. Col. Docs., Ill: 199.

The great house stood diagonally across Cedar Street, on Broadway. If it could be reconstructed today, its south corner would probably touch the new forty-story Equitable Building. Pieter Stoutenburgh's house lot forms part of the Equitable site. For more than two centuries it retained its identity, thirty-seven feet, six inches wide on the Highway. As number 112 Broadway, it was the site of the National Hotel.