FIFTH    AVENUE
 

27
 

From Valentine's Manual.                                                                         Collection of Perry Walton.

HOUSE OF REFUGE IN 1832.

The remodelled  United  States Arsenal building, which stood on a site now part of Madison

Square.

Near the lower end stood an old United States Arsenal; to the
northeast was a Potter's Field; while to the west was the land of
General Theodorus Bailey, the City Postmaster; and at the north,
the farm of Caspar Samler. The Arsenal was erected in 1808, at
the junction of the Eastern Post-Road and the Bloomingdale Road,
near where the Farragut Statue now stands, on land sold to the
Government in 1807 by the City. A powder magazine stood here
as early as 1785. In 1823 "the barracks," as the Arsenal was
called, were abandoned, and the following year the building and
land were sold, for $6,000, to the Society for the Reformation of
Juvenile Delinquents, the first society in America organized to
care for and reform youthful offenders. The remodelled edifice, the
first House of Refuge in New York City, was opened with six boys
and three girls. In 1839 it was destroyed by fire, and the institution
was transferred to the foot of East 23rd Street, where it remained
until its removal, about 1854, to Randall's Island.

At the southern end of the Parade Ground, on the Eastern Post-
Road, a Potter's Field was opened in 1794, in which the dead of the
almshouse and victims of the yellow fever epidemics were interred
until the new Potter's Field was established at Washington Square, in
1797. In 1837 the Parade Ground, called " a public place," was reduced
to the present dimensions of Madison Square (6.84 acres), and in 1844
the Eastern Post-Road, which traversed the Square, was closed.
The course of this old road may be still traced by the double row of
trees that runs northeast toward Madison Square Garden. Madison
Square, named after President Madison, was formally opened as a
 

United

States

Arsenal

and the

Juvenile

Asylum
 

Potter's
Field
and the
Opening of
Madison
Square