New York City
April 1853
MARY AND JOHN STROLLED PAST MR BARNUM’S AMERICAN MUSEUM ON the corner of Broadway and Ann Street, with its exotic Siamese twins and strange and terrible wonders of the natural world. A place she longed to visit!
They stopped to admire the recently opened St Nicholas Hotel. It was magnificent and even more decadent than New York’s renowned Astor Hotel.
‘It cost a million dollars to build,’ said John admiringly. ‘There are six hundred rooms, but soon it will have one thousand.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ murmured Mary.
She watched a little enviously as the crowds of wealthy women and gentlemen in their fine style passed through its tall, polished brass doors, noting the finer details of the ladies’ dresses so that she could endeavour to copy them.
‘Some day we will dine there,’ promised John.
‘We will never afford it,’ Mary said with a laugh, as instead they walked on until they stopped at the corner of Broadway to buy oysters from the busy oyster cart.
‘This country is different from Ireland, for here one man is as good as the next,’ John said seriously, adding a shake of salt to his oysters. ‘And one man’s money is as good as another’s! Once you work long and hard there is an opportunity, even for the likes of us.’
‘And heaven knows we both work hard enough,’ she said, squeezing his arm.
‘Do you recall the narrow brick house down at the very far end of our street, with the broken windows?’ asked John.
‘Not very well. Is it the derelict one? ’Tis in a terrible state. A piece of shingle fell off it and nearly killed a poor messenger boy. It should be condemned.’
‘Aye. Pat heard that the owner is moving away and selling it next month. I was wondering if we should consider trying to buy it.’
‘You and Pat want to buy it?’
Mary sighed. She wasn’t sure she wanted her husband borrowing more money or undertaking so much work again.
‘No, it’s nothing to do with Pat,’ he protested. ‘I was thinking that it might suit us to live in.’
‘How can we possibly buy a home of our own?’ she argued hotly. ‘John Sullivan, you know well we don’t have that type of money!’
‘I admit it needs a whole heap of work, but Pat and I, and young Tim can do much of it, and Pat says the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank might consider lending us the money.’
John sighed heavily as they inspected the inside of the ramshackle house on Mulberry Street. Its decrepit condition was far worse than Mary could have imagined.
‘The floorboards are rotten and there is a big hole in the roof. The staircase has collapsed and half the windows are broken,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose that is why it is so cheap.’
Mary’s heart sank with disappointment. A strong musty smell pervaded the property and one wall was running with damp. The yard was infested with cockroaches. It was a wreck of a place. No wonder it was lying abandoned and empty. She doubted there was any hope of salvaging such a place.
‘However, there is more room than I expected,’ declared John. ‘I know that it will take months to make the building even habitable, but I believe it could make a decent home for us.’
‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted, ‘that I’d ever want to live here.’
‘Pat and Tim will give me a hand. With the right amount of work, I think that it will suit us and our needs. There is even a little room that you could use for your dressmaking.’
Mary could see how excited John was at the prospect of taking the old building and renovating it.
‘It’s an opportunity for us, Mary,’ he pleaded. ‘If the savings bank lends us the money, then it’s a chance for us that we may not get again – to have a few rooms that we can call our own.’
Three months later, despite her reservations, John had borrowed from the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank and the broken-down house was theirs.