140 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
be found in large numbers, in the taverns, stores and beer halls
operated by their German countrymen. Eugen Liever's Shake
speare Hotel, at the corner of Duane and William Streets, was the
meeting place for many German societies. Several German news
papers were published in the vicinity and to their number Weitling now added his Die Republik der Arbeiter. Third Avenue still
was a country road marked with little hills, and to the east, in the
area of Fortieth Street, there were small frame houses built and
occupied by Germans in a section known as Squattertown. East
of the present location of the New York Public Library on a little
elevation stood a sizable and substantial farmhouse owned by a
German which was frequently used by the Germans as a picnic
place. Many streets of the growing metropolis were unpaved and
muddy, and droves of cattle occasionally were driven along its
main thoroughfares. Travel was largely by stage. Yorkville, a
popular meeting place for German workers who came to picnic
in its dense woods, could be reached by Dingeldein's Stage in an
hour and a half.
About 1850 the Germans of New York lived in a fairly compact
area which included City Hall Place, and Gold, William, Ann,
Beekman, Chatham, Forsythe, Pearl, Bayard, Broom, and Hester
Streets. Much of their social life centered along Bayard and Hester
Streets. Here refugees—some of whom were men of education
and distinction—eked out a meager existence in tailoring or other
trades, gave music lessons, or performed ordinary manual labor.
Joseph Fickler, who had been prominent in the revolution and
at one time a creditor of Weitling, operated a restaurant at Duane
and William Streets. Rosier von Oels, once a member of the Ger
man Parliament, conducted a German-American school at Oliver
and Henry Streets. A tavern on William Street, operated by
Friedrich Romberg, a refugee from Baden, was known as "Fes-
tung Rastatt," to commemorate the fortress which had figured so
prominently in the revolution. On Gold Street, there were a
number of tailor shops, some of them managed as co-operatives,
where German workers sat on their tables and benches and lis-