4 N.Y.S. 328 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1889
This action was brought to recover the sum of $1,770 and interest, for the alleged failure of the- defendant to perform his part of a contract for the sale and purchase of a lot of land on the south side of Eighty-First street in this city. The contract between the parties was dated the 12th of March, 1887. The controversy arises from the asserted incompetency of the defendant to convey the premises as described in the .contract. The lot in that instrument is said to be one on the southerly side of Eighty-First street, beginning 125 feet easterly from the southerly corner of Third avenue and Eighty-First street, and having 25 feet front and rear by 100 feet 3 inches in depth on each side, be the said several distances and dimensions more or less. And further, being the same premises conveyed to the party of the first part, (that is the defendant) by Peter Wooley anci wife by deed dated April 1,1868, and duly recorded. The deed to the defendant, thus mentioned in the agreement between the parties to this action, conveys a lot in the Nineteenth ward of this city, which was part of the Harlem commons, and known on a map of them made by Charles Clinton, surveyor of the city of New York, as No. 34, and bounded and described as commencing at a point on the southerly side of Eighty-First street, distant 125 feet easterly from the southerly corner of Third avenue and Eighty-First street, etc., “be the said distances more or less.” It appeared upon the trial, from an actual survey, that the lot commences 127 feet 1 inch from the southerly corner of Third avenue and Eighty-First street, and not 125 feet; but this disparity seems to have arisen from the fact that upon the Clinton map the block was marked as 600 feet in length, when in fact it was 610 feet on the lines of the streets. It further appears that the first map of the Harlem commons was made by Charles Clinton in December, 1824, and that from December, 1829, down to December,