1693 the first printing press in New York, "At the sign of the Bible."
A quaintly carved female figure is set above the street in the building at
No. 88 over a Tablet commemorating the great fire of 1835 which
destroyed most of the buildings of Coenties Slip. The blaze, which raged
for nineteen hours, destroyed 650 buildings with a loss of twenty
million dollars. Ten years later a fire in the same neighborhood destroyed
345 buildings and caused property damage amounting to six million
dollars.'

At the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets is Fraunces Tavern, one of
Manhattan's most cherished landmarks and a notable restoration of early
Georgian Colonial work. The relatively square proportions, regular window
spacing, brickwork, white portico, hipped roof with its light balustrade,
and the interior paneling, are all characteristic of the style, but Dutch
influence is echoed in the shape of the dormers, which differ from the
gabled English type. It was erected in 1719 as a residence by Etienne de
Lancey, a wealthy Huguenot. The merchant firm of his grandson Oliver
(De Lancey, Robinson, and Company) turned it into a store and ware-
house in 1757. The building was bought in 1762 by Samuel Fraunces,
a West Indian of French and Negro blood, who opened it as the Queen's
Head Tavern. Washington bade farewell to his officers in 1783, in the
tavern's Long Room, faithfully restored in 1907 by the Sons of the Revo-
lution (not to be confused with the Sons of the American Revolution).
A museum, exhibiting Revolutionary relics, is on the third floor, and on
the fourth is a small historical library with paintings by John Ward Duns-
more. (Open daily except Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; admission free.) Head-
quarters of the Sons of the Revolution occupy much of the building; a
restaurant patronized by Wall Street bankers and shipping and business
men is on the ground floor.

West Street and North (Hudson) River Water Front

Area; Battery Place to 72d St. along North River. Maps on pages 75, 127, and 149.

Although the western rim of Manhattan is but a small segment of New
York's far-flung port, along it is concentrated the largest aggregate of
marine enterprises in the world. Glaciers of freight and cargo move across
this strip of North (Hudson) River water front. It is the domain of the
super-liner, but it is shared also by the freighter, the river boat, the ferry,