Variations On A Theme

It turns out that I didn’t exhaust the topic of The Tombs yesterday. Possibly because of its social meaning in the mid-1800s, possibly because of its bizarre appearance, drawings and photos of it seem to have turned up a lot in various publications. Here’s a photo in 1898, near the end of its existence:

That’s the court side of the building, with the fancy portico. Nearly all of the illustration emphasize that side rather the plainer and bleaker prison side. Here’s a similar drawing, probably form the mid-century:

There’s a similar, but not the same, drawing in the 1870 book New York Illustrated. Maybe a different edition? Or another guidebook with the same title?

Here’s a view from the side, showing more of the prison wing on the left:

You’d think that the horse-drawn streetcars would help date this one, but they really don’t. Streetcars started replacing horse-drawn omnibuses in the 1830s and weren’t entirely displaced by cable cars and electric trolleys until the 1890s. Even assuming that the downtown lines were electrified first, that still leaves us a greater than 50-year period where that picture would be accurate. Here’s a similar view from the other side:

Here’s a photo of the front in 1902, taken shortly before demloliton:

Finally, two versions of the same drawing from 1857:

The first is a reprint and the caption gives a hint of the action in the background. Steam-engine service for trains on the Harlem Railroad – the railroad on the east side of Manhattan, as opposed to the Hudson River Railroad on the west side – never extended all the to the south end of the line. The railroad, as its name suggests, was built in the 1830s to connect “the city” – i.e., the downtown core – with the rural suburb of Harlem some seven miles away. The trains ran as individual horse-drawn street cars from the southern terminus (originally Prince Street) to 23^rd street, where they were assembled into trains with steam engines for the trip north. The line was extended far to the north of Harlem in the 1840s and early 50s, but it was also extended south to Centre Street and Park Row, at the northeaster corner of City Hall Park. The Tombs was two blocks north of the City Hall Station.