KAY'S HOUSE, LONDON TERRACE 254

Literary New York

Chapter I

Writers of New Amsterdam

[Illustration: Seal of New Amsterdam]

There is a fashion nowadays of trimming the fronts of brick houses by
placing black bricks among the red in such a way as to form odd and
unique designs. It is an attractive way of doing, for it varies the
staid simplicity of the solid color. But for all it may seem original
and new, it is a style that had its beginning long, long ago, even in
the days when the stern Peter Stuyvesant governed with an iron hand
over the Dutch colony of fifteen hundred people, the town that was one
day to be New York, but which in his time was called New Amsterdam.

[Illustration: Early Dutch Houses]

It was a tiny town then; picturesque, too, for the houses were low,
irregular, with sloping roofs and gable ends to the street. They were
built of wood--that is, all except the church, the Stadt Huys, the
Governor's house, and some few dwellings of colonists who had brought
much wealth with them from Holland. These were for the most part of
stone. It was usual in them all--there were scarcely more than a
hundred,--whether of wood or stone, to have chimneys outside the
walls, thus making less the danger of fire, and if any part of the
house were of brick it was sure to be the chimney. All the brick had
then to be brought from Holland, so it was an expensive building
material and but sparingly used.

At this time when Stuyvesant held full sway there were two industrious
colonists who held the idea that their short-cut to immense wealth lay
in the way of making bricks at home and supplying them to their fellow
colonists. So it came about, after long and slow deliberation, that
the first brickyard was started. To be sure the venturesome
fortune-hunters soon found that they were not to succeed all at once,
for, owing to their lack of knowledge, they ruined so many of their
bricks that the profits of the business were like to be consumed in
the black-burned material that they threw aside as worthless.

But just at this time an odd thing happened. This was no less than
the appearance of a colonist who agreed to buy--at a low price to be
sure, but still to buy--all the black-burned and apparently useless
brick. The brickmakers wondered very much at this, and without doubt
thought the man a trifle unsound in his mind, but they agreed, and
very soon the buyer had built himse