The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky Page A

containers. In the late nineteenth century, the colonial habit of packing oysters in flour barrels was still common.
    The population was growing and New York was building. The city was not only paving streets but lining them with trees. Affluent New Yorkers were now building two- and three-story brick structures with tiled roofs and gables, often with a balcony on the roof from which to view the harbor or the town or Brooklyn across the East River. Families passed pleasant summer evenings on their balconies. Several stone churches were built, the grandest of these projects being Trinity Church, an Anglican citadel to compete with the newly constructed Dutch Reformed church.
    All of this building required mortar, and mortar required lime paste, which could be made by burning oyster shells. Trinity Church was formed by a royal charter in May 1697, and by that August had already put in its order for “oyster shell lime.” Burning oyster shells for lime was such a common activity that private homes in the New York area built their cellars with one side open for burning shells when household repairs were needed.
    The smoke of burning lime was thick and acrid, and an increasing number of New Yorkers believed that it could not be healthy to be breathing it. On June 19, 1703, the New York provincial government passed an act that prohibited both the distilling of rum, a growing economic activity as the port became involved in the Caribbean slave and molasses trade, and the burning of oyster shells within the city limits or within half a mile of City Hall. The royal governor, Lord Edwind Hyde Cornbury, in urging passage argued that “These industries contributed to the fatal distemper” in New York the summer before. But Lord Cornbury was a dubious leader, infamous for not paying his debts—it was alleged that people hid from his wife because she borrowed dresses and jewelry and never returned them. An attempt to repeal the law in 1713 failed, and on March 24, 1714, a tougher city ordinance was passed “that no oyster shells or lime be burnt in the Commons of this city on the south side of the windmill commonly called Jasper’s Windmill.”
    But no ordinances were passed to deal with the mosquitoes that came out in summertime or the garbage in the swamp.

    New York oysters
remained plentiful and large. Kalm wrote, “About New York they find innumerable quantities of excellent oysters, and there are few places which have oysters of such size.” The size was significant because it meant that the number of oysters taken was still a small enough percentage of the total to leave oysters growing many years before picking. New York was still an Eden where resources could be used with extravagance. Gowanus Bay in Brooklyn was particularly known for large oysters. In 1679, Jasper Danckaerts, the Dutch traveler, and his companion Peter Sluyter stayed at the home of Simon Aerson De Hart near Gowanus Cove. Danckaerts wrote:
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    We found a good fire half way up the chimney of clear oak and hickory, of which they made not the least scruple in burning profusely. We let it penetrate thoroughly. There had already been thrown upon it to be roasted, a pailful of Guanes oysters, which are the best in the country. They are large and full, some of them not less than a foot in length.
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    In truth nobody really wanted to eat a foot-long oyster. In the nineteenth century, British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray complained that eating an American oyster was “like eating a baby,” which presumably was not an endorsement. At the De Hart residence on Gowanus Cove, the largest oysters were pickled and shipped to Barbados.
    Apparently oysters were plentiful enough and easy enough to harvest that they remained inexpensive. A notice in December 1772 advertised “in the different slips of the harbor, no less than 600,000 oysters for sale.” Kalm not only noted the profit made on buying