enth avenue, Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth
streets. These were some of the grants that he received. But they do not
include the land in the heart of the city that he was constantly buying
from private owners or getting by the evident fraudulent connivance of
the city officials.

Having obtained the water grants and other land by fraud, what did the
grantees next proceed to do? They had them filled in, not at their own
expense, but largely at the expense of the municipality. Sunken lots
were filled in, sewers placed, and streets opened, regulated and graded
at but the merest minimum of expense to these landlords. By fraudulent
collusion with the city authorities they foisted much of the expense
upon the taxpayers. How much money the city lost by this process in the
early decades of the nineteenth century was never known. But in 1855
Controller Flagg submitted to the Common Council an itemized statement
for the five years from 1850 in which he referred to "the startling fact
that the city's payments, in a range of five years [for filling in
sunken lots, regulating and grading streets, etc.], exceed receipts by
the sum of more than two millions of dollars."[109]

MANY PARTICIPANTS IN THE CURRENT FRAUDS.

In the case of most of these so-called water fronts, there was usually a
trivial rental attached. Nearly always, however, this was commuted upon
payment of a small designated sum, and a full and clear title was then
given by the city. In this rush to get water-grants--grants many of
which are now solid land filled with business and residential
buildings--many of the ancestors of those families which pride
themselves upon their exclusive air participated. The Lorillards, the
Goelets, William F. Havemeyer, Cornelius Vanderbilt, W. H. Webb, W. H.
Kissam, Robert Lenox, Schermerhorn, James Roosevelt, William E. Dodge,
Jr.--all of these and many others--not omitting Astor's American Fur
Company--at various times down to, and including the period of, the
monumentally corrupt Tweed "ring," got grants from corrupt city
administrations. Some of these water rights, that is to say, such
fragmentary parts of them as pertained to wharves and bulkheads, New
York City, in recent years, has had to buy back at exorbitant prices.
From the organization of the Dock Department down to 1906 inclusive, New
York City had expended $70,000,000 for the purchase of bulkhead and
wharf property and for construction.

During all the