4. The Home of Captain Kidd (Vanished)

Not only was the legendary seventeenth-century privateer (okay, fine, “pirate”) William Kidd (aka Captain Kidd) a New Yorker, he was a wealthy one at that. His home at 119 Pearl Street, at the southern tip of Hanover Square, was situated close to the old wall for which Wall Street was named. It was waterfront property, back before all that landfill got in the way, the better to gaze out over the harbor’s many islands where maybe he buried a treasure or two. (See Chapter 1.)

The Kidds’ lavish home—with “104 ounces of silverware,”(4) a healthy wine cellar, and the biggest Turkish carpet in the city—allowed him to pay for a pew at the newly built Trinity Church in 1698. The captain even donated equipment to aid in the church’s construction. No Kidding. (119 Pearl Street) 

(4) From Edward Robb Ellis’s The Epic of New York City.