It was the favourite meetingplace for British officers during the war, and was the scene of the great ball given on May 7, 1789, in h(jnour of Washington's Inauguration. John Peter de Lancey sold the property to a

New Buildings and Old 35

syndicate composed of Philii) Li\'ingst()n, Gulian Verplanck, Ivloses Rogers, and others, in trust for subscribers to the "Tontine hotel and assembly room." The price paid was six thousand pounds, New York currency. This compan}' pulled down the de Lancey house and built in its stead the City Hotel, that long

occupied a large place in New York's local history. It was for years the only large hotel in the city and was the scene of many brilliant social events. In 1849 it made place for a row of stores, which in turn disa])- peared when the present Boreel Building took their place. Old Jan Jansen Damen had, in 1646, a farmhouse in the waggon road between Pine and Cedar Streets. It was a little back from Broadway, and is described as an exceedingly comfortable stone house. This was then outside of the cit>-. It was at this house that Governor Kieft spent much of his time, and Stuyvesant became a frequent guest. Now the Equitable Building covers the place where Damen sat on his stocp and enjoyed his garden and listened to the hum of bees in the apple blossoms, -- covers house, garden, orchard, and all, to the extent of nearly an acre of grotmd. The old Middle Dutch Church in time disappeared from Nassau Street, as even churches do in New York, and on the i8th of October, 1882, the Mutual Life Insurance Company purchased the site for six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There is not one of the great buildings that tower