Ruins of the Exchange and Adjacent Buildings, After the Great Conflagration, Dec. 16, 1835

On December 16, 1835 the devastating "Great New York Fire" destroyed seventeen blocks of lower Manhattan containing 700 buildings—the $30,000,000 loss mentioned in this print’s title would today amount to at least half a billion. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 had spurred trade and encouraged the construction of densely packed wooden warehouses to serve the burgeoning port. When fire broke out on a freezing and windy winter night, there were not enough volunteer fire fighters to control the rapid spread and attempts to pump water from the East and Hudson Rivers were hampered by the cold. This print shows the ruined Merchant’s Exchange on Wall Street, a columned masonry building designed by Alexander Jackson Davis that had opened in 1827 and symbolized the city’s prosperity. The tragedy led to the establishment of a new gridded street plan and more reliable water system. Aqueducts constructed between 1837 and 1842 brought water into Manhattan from the Croton River and Reservoir in Westchester, forty-one miles to the north.