New York has a couple of major roads, a high school, even a housing project named after Lafayette, the French military leader who became a Major General in the Continental Army and promoted democracy at home in France.
He was a big hero in post-Revolutionary War years. So to help celebrate America’s 50th birthday, Lafayette was invited back to the U.S. in 1824.
His arrival in August of that year put the city in the grip of Lafayette fever.
A third of the population of New York at that time—50,000 people—greeted him on lower Broadway.
Touring Manhattan, he attended parties, plays, and a spectacular ball at Castle Clinton in his honor before taking off to visit the rest of the country.
A plaque in the West Village marks his visit. It’s on Hudson Street affixed to P.S. 3.
At the time, the school was run by the “Free School Society” and was considered a fine example of public education, worthy enough to show the Marquis.
Tags: " plaque for Lafayette on Hudson Street, "Free School Society, Castle Clinton, Lafayette, Lafayette Houses, Lafayette Street, Marquis de Lafayette, New York in the Revolutionary War, P.S. 3
Ephemeral New York 
January 11, 2010 at 6:54 pm |
wow i didn;t know all those facts…thanks i remember it when i got inot the Lafayette train stop.
May 1, 2011 at 2:37 pm |
That painting shows how he looked as a powdered-wig youth of 19, not the elderly Chateaubriand-like grandée who visited in 1824.
April 10, 2013 at 12:40 am |
[…] That’s P.S. 3 on the corner of Grove Street, with the flagpole on the mansard roof. And trolley tracks run up the center of the street, notes the caption to the photo, both published in 1976′s New York Then and Now. […]
August 1, 2016 at 7:03 am |
[…] fever was running high in the city; the Revolutionary War hero had just made a rock star-like return visit to the grateful metropolis in […]
January 4, 2019 at 1:23 am |
My great great great Grandmother Anne Brown Thomas was a student at the school when the Marquis visited. She wrote a poem in his honor that she read to him upon his arrival.