Bond Street
By Sturges S. Dunham

Bond Street, extending from Broadway to the Bowery
at a point where those two thoroughfares are less than
a thousand feet apart, is an unknown region to many
present day denizens of New York, but eighty years ago,
when Broadway ended at Union 'Tlace" and the Astor
House was new, when water was peddled in barrels at
a cent a gallon and gas cost $7 per thousand feet. Bond
Street was one of the best known streets in the city
and none stood higher in favor as a place of residence.
In its short stretch there dwxlt at one time or another
between 1820 and 1850,.the mayor of the city; the town's
most popular physician; the pastor of one of the largest
and wealthiest churches; a senator of the United States;
one of the city's two representatives in Congress; an ex-
secretary of the treasury; a major general in the army
who became one of our most distinguished soldiers and
a candidate for the presidency; and two members of a
firm of bankers who in the financial world of their time
exercised an influence unequalled on this side of the
Atlantic.

In the words of "Uncle David Valentine," Bond street
"was projected about 1807." Why it was so named has
not been ascertained, but it seems not unlikely that a
famous street of the same name in London had some¬
thing to do with the choice. In Elliott's 1812 directory
the sole resident of Bond street is Samuel Hallett, prob¬
ably the Samuel Hallett who had a carpenter shop in
the Bowery near Bleecker Street. Beyond this we know-
nothing of Mr. Hallett, but perhaps he worked at his
trade on the more pretentious house that later rose on
the site of his own dwelling. At any rate he is entitled
to such fame as may flow from the fact that he was one
of the pioneers of Bond Street.

The social history of Bond street begins about 1820,
when Jonas Minturn built the marble-front house that

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