rant was lost in
an attempt to introduce Italian opera into the United States. Palmo's
Opera House, in Chamber Street, between Centre Street and Broadway,
later became Burton's Theatre.

Until 1844, New York was guarded against crime by the old
"Leather-heads." This force patrolled the city by night, or that part of
it known as the lamp district. They were not watchmen by profession, but
were recruited from the ranks of porters, cartmen, stevedores, and
labourers. They were distinguished by a fireman's cap without front
(hence the name "Leather-head"), an old camlet coat, and a lantern. They
had a wholesome respect for their skins, and were inclined to keep out
of harm's way, seldom visiting the darker quarters of the city. When
they bawled the hour all rogues in the vicinity were made aware of their
whereabouts. Above Fourteenth Street the whole city was a neglected
region. It was beyond the lamp district and in the dark.

In no way, to the mind of the present scribe, can the contrast between
the life of the modern city and of the town of the days when Fifth
Avenue was in the making be better emphasized than by comparing the
conditions of travel. It was in the year 1820 that John Stevens of
Hoboken, who had become exasperated because people did not see the value
of railroads as he did, resolved to prove, at his own expense, that the
method of travel urged by him was not a madman's scheme. So on his own
estate on the Hoboken hill he built a little railway of narrow gauge and
a small locomotive. Long enough had he been sneered at and called
maniac. He put the locomotive on the track with cars behind it, and ran
it with himself as a passenger, to the amazement of those before whom
the demonstration was made. So far as is known that was the first
locomotive to be built or run on a track in America. But even with
Stevens's successful example, years passed before steam travel assumed a
practical form.

When the pioneer of Fifth Avenue wished to voyage far afield it was
toward the stage-coach as a means of transportation that his mind
turned, for the stage-coach was the only way by which a large portion of
the population could accomplish overland journeys. To go to Boston, for
example, the traveller from New York usually left by a steamboat that
took him to Providence in about twenty-three hours, and travelled the
remaining forty miles by coach. Five hours was needed for the overland
journey, and was considered amazing spe