HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 223

with their dimity curtains, adorned the parlors of the wealthy; and cupboards of nut-wood, imported from the “Fatherland,” were not unfrequently seen, while silver-plate was, in a few rare instances, displayed. Schools, also, had been established, and the youth of both sexes, now growing up to maturity, swayed no inconsiderable social influence, as was evidenced by the improved standard of taste which gradually became apparent in the domestic arrangements of private dwellings, both externally and internally. In the city, or rather the village of New Amsterdam, as it then was, public attention was directed towards certain needed municipal reforms—and the magistrates decreed the abolition of wooden chimneys, as well as “little houses,” hay-barracks, and hog-pens, all of which bad hitherto been paraded along the line of streets, and gradually the town became characterized by a much greater cleanliness and propriety of appearance. Other and larger houses were now erected, and after the establishment of a brick-yard at New Amsterdam, by DeGraff and Hogeboom, in the year 1660, brick houses became the fashion with all who could afford the additional expense.1

Still, the best edifices of that day would be deemed extremely cheap, as compared with those of a more recent period,Ñrarely exceeding $800, while those of an ordinary character were rated at from $200 to $500 of our present currency. Rents ranged from $25 to $100; and as barter was then, by reason of the want of a wellestablished system of currency, commonly provided for in all agreements, payments were frequently made partly in trade and partly in beaver-skins, which, in wholes or halves, then passed as a current medium of exchange, as regularly as bank-bills of the present day.

Thus far, we have described the buildings erected on Manhattan Island, and it is probable that those edifices which succeeded the

1 It was in those days though that the baking of brick of greater thickness than two inches, could not be effectual, and thus we find the brick of olden times to be relatively a third smaller than those of later days. They wasted none, and those which, from greater exposure to the heat, were burnt black, were built into the fronts of houses in ornamental figures, of diamonds, crosses, or squares, or perhaps the whole front chequered, as suited the taste of the owners. This custom is believed to have been peculiar (in the American settlements) to the Dutch of New Netherland, and their descendants, as travellers, at a period much later than the one now spoken of, remark upon the appearance of this city, in that particular, as being unlike that of any other place they had visited in the colonies. Valentine’s Corp. Manual, N. Y., 1861