"Admiral" Peter Warren (who was only Captain Warren at that time) built a house somewhere about 1744 in Greenwich. That house afterwards became, and was for many years, the residence of Abraham Van Ness, Esq. Around it clustered other fine houses: there came the Bayards and the de Lanceys and James

62 The Hudson River

Jauncev, and there the fashionables of their time were accustomed to turn for a drive into the country. Thomas A. Janvier, who made a dehghtful study of old Greenwich Village, says of its inhabitants:

Very proper and elegant people were all of these, and -- their seats being at a convenient distance from the city -- their elegant friends living in New York found pleasure in making Greenwich an objective point when taking the air of fine afternoons. And even when visiting was out of the question, a turn through Greenwich to the Monument was a favorite expedition among the gentle-folk of a century or so ago. Until about the year 1767, access to this region was only by the Greenwich Road, close upon the line of the present Greenwich Street and directly upon the water-side. Greenwich Lane was called also Monument Lane and Obelisk Lane : for the reason that at its northern extremity, a little north of the present Eighth Avenue and Fifteenth Street, was a monument in honor of General Wolfe. After the erection of this memorial to the hero of Quebec the drive of good society was out the Post Road to the Greenwich turning; thence across to the Obelisk; thence by the Great Kill Road (the present Gansevoort Street) over to the Hudson; and so homeward by the river-side while the sun was sinking in golden glory behind the Jersey hills. Or the drive could be extended a little by going out the Post Road as far as Love Lane, and thence south by the Southampton, Warren, or Fitzroy Road to the Great Kill Road, and so by the water-side back to town.