became popular,
and a spot long famed for the degradation of its inhabitants, was thrown
open to the activities of trade, and its rookeries replaced by marble
palaces. What a transformation for Reade, Duane, Church, and Anthony
streets, once synonymous with misery and crime, thus to become the
splendid seats of trade!

The growth of the dry goods trade had by 1860 assumed proportions which
twenty years previously could not have entered into the wildest dreams.
Indeed, had a prophet stood in Hanover square at that epoch, and
portrayed the future, he would have been met with the charge of lunacy.
$30,000 rent for a store was not more absurd than the idea that trade
would ever wing its way to a neighborhood chiefly known through the
police reports, and only visited by respectable people in the work of
philanthropy. The enterprise of New York houses, in either following or
leading this movement, is admirably illustrated, and as the merchants of
New York are among her public men, we purpose a brief reference to a few
leading houses. As it is nothing new to state that only three per cent.
of our mercantile community are successful in making fortunes, the
results of these examples need not surprise the reader.

Among the chief concerns of nearly forty years' career, may be mentioned
C.W. & J.T. Moore & Co., who began in a small way in Pearl street,
followed the flood of trade to Broadway, and afterward took possession
of the splendid store built by James E. Whiting, on the site of the
Broadway theatre. Bowen & McNamee commenced somewhere about 1840, having
sprung from the bankrupt house of Arthur Tappan & Co. Their first
establishment was in Beaver street, whence they removed to a marble
palace which they built in Broadway in 1850, having, in ten years,
realized an enormous fortune in the silk trade. Encouraged by the
success following this second movement, the firm sold their store at an
enormous advance, and purchased the corner of Broadway and Pearl
streets, thus indicating that trade had advanced a mile up town. The
palatial store which they erected on this spot will long mark the
climacteric point in mercantile architecture. It was supposed at the
time of its erection to be the finest jobbing store in existence, and
although since then both Mr. Astor and James E. Whiting have each put up
a splendid marble establishment in Broadway, they have not surpassed the
one we refer to. Messrs. Bowen & McNamee were early identifie