One writing truth that I learned (relearned?) writing Naming Gotham: The Villains, Rogues, and Heroes Behind New York Place Names is that book publishers are serious about word limits. Unlike a law review article where the word limit is more of a suggestion, my publisher gave me a hard upper limit for words in the book. I ran out of space long before I ran out of words. So, I have taken to blogging because there are more stories I want to tell. This is one of them. You can read about the book project here, and the first installment of this saga here.
When we last met, Robert Macomb had constructed his dam(n) bridge across the Harlem River . The New York legislature had granted him the right to build the dam so long as it did not impede navigation. Legislation authorizing the dam explicilty required Macomb to build and maintain a lock to ensure that the river remained navigable.
Macomb ignored this injunction, much to the fury of the growing population of Westchester that was now cut off from New York harbor. After Macomb’s dam was completed, boats seeking to traverse this portion of the river had to unload above the dam, haul the boat over the bridge, and then reload the boat. This was hard, dangerous work that made navigation well nigh impossible.
Enter Lewis Gouverneur Morris, scion of the wealthy Morris family that owned parts of Westchester and much of the Bronx, including the areas presently known as Port Morris and Mott Haven. The family was extremely politically powerful. Lewis’s grandfather was Chief Judge of the New York Supreme Court, and his great-uncle Gouverneur Morris not only signed the Declaration of Independence, but also wrote the preamble to the Constitution.
Westchester landowners drafted a Remonstrance to the State Legislature. This Remonstrance, signed by more than 100 people, averred that before the construction of Macomb’s dam the Harlem River was navigated by schooners, sloops and other vessels. Although the main thrust of this Remonstrance dealt with the High Bridge and the Croton aqueduct, it also documented and complained of the navigation problems caused by Macomb’s dam. They appointed Lewis G. Morris as their agent for addressing this problem. Lewis brought the Remonstrance to Albany, but also took on a less orthodox role in solving the navigational challenges.
Characterizing Macomb’s dam as a public nuisance, these leading citizens of Westchester decided to take matters into their own hands. Declaring that “any person injured or incommoded by said nuisance [could] abate the same,” they deputized Lewis G. Morris and vested him with authority to remove enough of it to allow navigation. They not only agreed to pay the costs of this direct action, promised to bail out anyone who was arrested, but also advised “We recommend the employment of a strong force of men and scows, that the work may be promptly effected, and to the end of obviating opposition.”
On August 31st 1838, Morris and his entourage boarded the Schooner Superior and sailed up to Macomb's dam. They demanded passage through the dam to deliver a load of bricks upstream. The Bridge keeper (remember there was an illegal toll bridge atop the dam) stated the obvious—that he could not let them through because the bridge had no lock and thus there was no way for a schooner to pass.
On September 8th, Morris and entourage again returned in a sailboat and demanded passage through Macomb’s dam. Again they were denied, there being no lock that could afford them passage.
Finally, on the evening of September 14th, Morris and his entourage returned once more, this time on Nonarpiel, a vessel hired to transport coal from New Jersey to Morris’s residence upriver from the dam. Morris again demanded passage through the dam. Upon being denied passage, Morris and his men began “quietly and in a peaceable manner commence taking down part of said dam and bridge, and did take up sufficient thereof to let said vessel pass through.”
Under Morris’s direction, 63 men spent much of the next week dismantling Macomb’s dam, ultimately removing roughly three spans of the dam and demolishing one of the abutments. Through her trustee, Mary Pell Cornell Macomb sued (Robert had already died) alleging a trespass. After a trial on the merits, the judge instructed that “if the jury should find [the dam] was a public nuisance then the defendant had a right to abate it by his own act” and “that in doing so, the defendant had a right to remove so much of the dam as was necessary to make a safe and convenient passage for all vessels.” The jury ruled for Morris on all counts. The appeals court not only affirmed but also awarded Morris roughly $400--the cost of dismantling the dam.
In 1854, the City of New York repossessed Macomb’s dam, and four years later, the New York legislature finally directed New York City and Westchester County to remove the dam and build a new toll-free bridge. To facilitate navigation, this bridge was built as a swing bridge. The bridge was landmarked in 1992.
Check out Naming Gotham to learn more about the gossipy backstory behind New York City infrastructure.
Bonus: The multiple civil proceedings that emerged from this incident were among the earliest affirmations of the federally guaranteed freedom of navigation and an early definition of waters of the United States. These cases also framed a robust theory of public nuisance that might be of interest to environmental lawyers today.
Added Bonus for Property Professors: Robert and Mary Macomb were extremely litigious. One of their many cases, Baker v. Lorillard, provides a remarkable tour of estates in land, including how to interpret ambiguous grants after the legislative elimination of fee tails, the consequences of partitioning estates encumbered by life estates, and the various ways vested remainders might be divested by executory interests.
Vermont Law School has announced that Beth McCormack will be its new dean. McCormack joined the faculty in 2011 and has served as assistant director of the legal writing program, vice dean of students, deputy vice dean for academic affairs, interim president and dean. She holds a JD from Vermont Law.
We're pretty late to the party on this but Barnard College has announced that Laura Rosenbury will be its next president. Rosenbury is currently dean at Florida Law. She will assume the Barnard Presidency on July 1, 2023.
In writing Naming Gotham: The Villains, Rogues, and Heroes Behind New York Place Names I discovered that ran out of space long before I ran out of words. So, I have taken to blogging because there are more stories I want to tell. This is one of them. You can read about the book project here, and the next installment of this saga here.
If you drive up FDR Drive on your way to the George Washington Bridge, you will pass Macombs Dam Bridge (at one time there was an apostrophe--Macomb's Dam Bridge because it belonged to Robert Macomb--but the apostrophe was lost to history.) The current iteration of Macombs Dam Bridge is a swing bridge, built in 1896. At the time, it was the worlds heaviest movable object. It is also very beautiful (photo of Edward Hopper 1935 photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
The story behind the bridge, like so much our our named New York infrastructure, is a window into history. Few New Yorkers have even heard of the Macomb family, or the outsized role they played in New York and United States history. While Naming Gotham goes into detail about Alexander Macomb Sr.'s shady financial dealings, and Alexander Macomb Jr.'s military exploits, today I want to talk about the youngest male member of the Macomb clan and his own special brand of sleaze. Maybe a better name would have been Macombs Damn Bridge
Meet Robert Macomb: Grifter Extraordinaire
Born in 1783, Robert Macomb was the youngest son of Alexander Macomb Sr., a Revolutionary war-profiter who made a fortune supplying the British forces in Ohio with food and arms. After the war, Alexander moved his family to New York City where he turned his talents for grift to land speculation. For a brief period Alexander owned most of the Adirondacks, and all of the Thousand Lakes, until his scheme with William Duer to corner the US debt market backfired, causing the Panic of 1792 and landing him in debtors prison.
Despite his father's drama, Robert grew up in the lap of post-revolution luxury. In fact, the Macomb family house became the first official residence for President George Washington. The family enslaved at least 12 Black people, making them the third-largest slaveholders in New York City.
Robert studied law at Columbia. Family political connections got him appointed clerk of the New York criminal court in 1811.
This involved first ousting the sitting clerk, John W. Wyman a move the New York Morning Post called “an instance of injustice and oppression scarcely paralleled in the annals of our state affairs.” (Robert Macomb painting by Edward Green Malbone, CCO, donated to Wikimedia Commons by the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
He didn’t last long in the job.
In 1817, the New York Evening Post published multiple articles accusing Robert of malfeasance, alleging that Robert was “prostituting” his office as clerk of court “to the vilest, meanest, most mercenary and even dishonest purposes.” Specifically, the paper alleged that Robert sold pardons to convicted criminals, and pocketed fines and bail money paid into the court. Robert brought a libel action and lost spectacularly—the paper’s editor easily persuading a jury to rule in his favor on the ground that that truth was an absolute defense to libel. (People v. William Coleman). Robert was forced to resign his post. Attempts to get him to pay back the money floundered, with the committee formed to recoup funds characterizing Robert as "shuffling and evasive."
Forced out of public service, Macomb turned his hand to industrial and land development. Most notably, he obtained legislative approval to build a dam across the Harlem River to power a grist mill his father had build and then lost in bankruptcy. Robert bought it at the Tontine House bankruptcy sale. Article II of the legislative act approving the dam expressly required "[t]hat said dam shall be made and built as to admit the passage of boats and vessels accustomed to navigating the same, by means of a good and sufficient lock, gate, or apron or other contrivance and the said Robert Macomb, his heirs and assigns, at his or their own expense, shall keep and provide a suitable person to attend the same, so that no unnecessary delay may happen to those who may have occasion to pass the same." Article III provided a fine of $5 per instance for every time someone incurred "unnecessary delay." And, he was denied permission to build a toll bridge atop the dam. Robert was never one to let a legal technicality (in this case an express limitation in his legislative deed) stop him from making a buck. So, he built Macombs Dam Bridge without a lock, low enough to block navigation, and then built a toll bridge anyway.
After all, when your father’s “mad speculation” caused the Panic of 1792, and you are continually overshadowed by your older brother’s military exploits that helped save the Republic, AND you’ve just been forced out of your cushy government job, why not build an illegal dam and then add an illegal toll bridge on top.
Ah New York . . . Lawyers deciding they are above the law. Real estate developers doing whatever they please, regardless of the public’s interest. Well-connected grifters leveraging old family ties into sinecures and then abusing their authority to line their pockets. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Next Installment—The Breaching of Macombs Dam Bridge—Enter Lewis Gouverneur Morris.
If you enjoy this kind of gossipy history, be sure to check out Naming Gotham!
Thank you Dan and Bridget for inviting me to step into the Faculty Lounge. I am going to be blogging about my new book Naming Gotham: The Villains, Rogues, and Heroes Behind New York Place Names. One writing truth that I learned (relearned?) writing is that book publishers are serious about word limits. Unlike a law review article where the word limit is more of a suggestion, my publisher gave me a hard upper limit for words in the book. I ran out of space long before I ran out of words. So, I have taken to blogging because there are more stories I want to tell.
First let me introduce the project. Then in subsequent blog posts, I will share some of the stories and details that I had to cut from the book because of space constraints.
About Naming Gotham
Each day, millions of people “take” the Major Deegan, the Hutchinson Expressway, the Outerbridge Crossing, and the Holland Tunnel. Few travelers remember that, before these names became an urban shorthand for congestion, they were actual people. This quirky New York City history uses the naming of New York City’s roads, bridges, and civic institutions as a unique window into urban social structure and the City’s ever-changing inhabitants. The lives of Revolutionary War heroes, robber barons and Tammany Hall politicos introduce readers to the outsized roles that power politics, corruption, and the slave economy played and continue to play in New York City.
The names in this book tell only a small sliver of the City’s story. To date, New York City has chosen to commemorate mostly white men. In a city as diverse as New York, that fact is telling. It reflects the historical balance of power in the City—both in terms of who had the power to name things and who got to define what counts as history. As I was researching and writing this book, that began to change. Most significantly, the Shirley Chisholm State Park, named after the first Black woman elected to Congress, opened in 2019. This shift in who the City memorializes reflects the changing narrative that New Yorkers tell themselves about their city. It remains to be seen how this changing story will translate into the policies the City adopts for its schools, its roads, and its neighborhoods.
Here is the short (very funny) book trailer that artist and writer Jeff LaGreca made for Naming Gotham.
The University of Montana School of Law has announced that Elaine Gagliardi will be its new dean. She has served as interim dean since June 2022 and has been a faculty member at the school since 1995. Gagliardi, who holds a JD from Montana Law, will also oversee the University of Montana's Department of Public Administration and Policy.
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