In the middle of the nineteenth
century, New York City's residential and commercial districts were
pressing ever northward along Broadway. This acutely observed
mid-century watercolor captures some of the unusual juxtapositions
engendered by this movement. The massive new Empire Building
opened in the early 1850s to house both offices and stores (it
replaced the earlier Grace Church, which by 1843 had voted to
follow its parishioners who were building fine homes in the Union
Square neighborhood).1
The Empire Building stood in sharp contrast to the tranquil
cemetery of Trinity Church. Former New York mayor Philip Hone, an
avid diarist, recorded that Grace Church had sold in 1845 for
$65,000, "to be converted into stores below and the upper
part into a splendid museum of Chinese curiosities." The lack
of any known record substantiating these plans for the
deconsecrated Grace Church suggests that they never progressed.
Located at 71 and 73 Broadway, at
the corner of Rector Street (named for the succession of
eighteenth-century rectors of Trinity Church who lived on the site
before Grace Church was built there in 1807), the Empire Building
housed several dry-goods merchants at street level and various
business offices in its upper stories.2
In 1896 -1897 a newer, taller Empire Building replaced the
commercial structure depicted in this view, which then received
the appellation "Old Empire Building."
From the early eighteenth century
forward, Trinity Church cemetery, on the corner opposite the
Empire Building, had served as the final resting place of many
notable Americans, including Francis Lewis, signer of the
Declaration of Independence; inventor Robert Fulton;
financier-statesman Alexander Hamilton; and William Bradford,
founder of New York's first newspaper, The New-York Gazette.3
While the painting's composition
allots equal space to the Empire Building and the graveyard, the
sheer size of the new structure gives it prominence, suggesting
the significance attached to a modern edifice of commerce in a
city that was rapidly evolving into the center of American
business enterprise. The pedestrians and vehicles along Broadway
show the variety of traffic. Many elegantly attired men, women,
and children saunter along the sidewalks; a more modestly dressed
family (possibly visitors from the country) can be discerned at
the extreme right; and two boys are seen going about their
business, one (near the corner of the Trinity graveyard fence)
bearing a package he may be delivering, and the other (at bottom
center) apparently approaching people with something to sell. The
artist may have intended to compare the old cemetery's appearance
of repose with the dynamic street scene and the commercial energy
typifying the modern New York Cityscape.
John William Hill, son of the
engraver John Hill, was born in London and immigrated with his
family to the United States at the age of seven, initially
residing in Philadelphia and then moving to New York City in 1822,
where he served a seven-year apprenticeship to his father. In 1828
Hill began to exhibit work at the National Academy of Design. Five
years later he was elected an associate member, and he continued
to exhibit fairly regularly there until 1873. He was employed as a
topographical artist for the New York State Geological Survey from
1836 to 1841, after which he worked for Smith Brothers, a
publishing firm, where he was employed to sketch North America's
developing cities. From the mid-1850s on, Hill was greatly
influenced by the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and
devoted himself largely to painting from nature.4
This work, with its strong attention to tonal values and contrasts
of light and dark and its acutely observed architectural detail,
demonstrates the influence of his earlier experience in the employ
of printmakers. To a slightly lesser extent, the same qualities
inform Hill's landscape paintings.
Notes:
1 There
is no known record of the Old Empire Building's designer or
builder. It has little stylistic distinction, being typical of
massive commercial buildings of the period.
2 Among
the office tenants in the Empire Building was financier Russell
Sage (1816 -1906), who was elected to Congress in 1852 and who,
with Jay Gould, later made a fortune amounting to $70 million in
railroads and on Wall Street. When he died, his wife, Olivia Sage,
proceeded to give most of it to various charities, including a
foundation bearing his name.
3 Following
the 1830 ordinance prohibiting burials below Canal Street, Trinity
Church opened a new cemetery at 155th Street and Riverside Drive.
Among the wealthy and socially prominent church members interred
there are John Jacob Astor, Clement Clark Moore, and Alfred
Tennyson Dickens, son of Charles Dickens.
4 Richard
J. Koke, American Landscape and Genre Paintings in the New-York
Historical Society (New York: New-York Historical Society,
1982), vol. 2, pp. 134 -135.
