Greenwich seemed to be the only place where one didn't get yellow
fever or anything else, and terrorised citizens began to rush out
there in droves, not only with their bags and their baggage, and their
wives and children, but with their business too!
John Lambert, an English visitor to America in 1807, writes:
"As soon as yellow fever makes its appearance, the
inhabitants shut up their shops and fly from their homes
into the country. Those who cannot go far on account of
business, remove to Greenwich, situate on the border of the
Hudson about two or three miles from town. The banks and
other public offices also remove their business to this
place and markets are regularly established for the supply
of the inhabitants."
Things went so fast for Greenwich during the biggest of the yellow
fever "booms" that one old chronicler (whose name I regret not being
able to find) declares he "saw the corn growing on the corner of
Hammond Street (West Eleventh) on a Saturday morning, and by the next
Monday Niblo and Sykes had built a house there for three hundred
boarders!"
Devoe says that:
"The visits of yellow fever in 1798, 1799, 1803 and 1805
tended much to increase the formation of a village near the
Spring Street Market and one also near the State Prison; but
the fever of 1882 built up many streets with numerous wooden
buildings for the uses of the merchants, banks (from which
Bank Street took its name), offices, etc.
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