Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/234

 have been expected that something would survive the flight of less than three centuries. A happy chance might easily have preserved the stone "temple" erected within the walls of the Fort in 1652, or the slightly older warehouse, or some one of the many curious little stone or brick houses in which the burly burghers of the seventeenth century smoked their long pipes by the chimney-side, while their wives plied the spinning-wheel, their daughters spread the board, and their children, in padded breeches, played about the sanded floor.

The Stadt Huys, originally built as an inn, to relieve Director Kieft of the burden of overmuch entertaining, dated back to the same year as the Dutch Reformed Church in the fortified enclosure. The organization of the old church is still maintained, and the functions of the city government have been performed in successive buildings to the present day; but the picturesque old government house—fifty feet square, three stories high in the walls and two in the attic, with windows in the gable of its crow-stepped roof,—that should have been cherished as a most interesting relic of the city's earliest period, lasted but a