This city was born downtown.

Mad Dutch burghers, avaricious British Colonials, African slaves speaking Yoruba and Ashanti, Jews seeking refuge from the Inquisition in Brazil, Huguenots finding safety from religious slaughters, secret Catholics, exiles, lamsters, political dreamers, men who abandoned wives and children, con men, hustlers, a few odd murderers: All found refuge south of Chambers St. even before there was a United States of America.

They invented this city. From the beginning, when a few thousand of them huddled on the tip of Manhattan behind the wall that gave Wall Street its name, they made a place that was plural, that was open to the world. Even the villains among them (there were many) understood that this place, this New York, was different. Their story makes up the earliest chapters of our own story, and that long narrative is what we call history.

The Museum of the City of New York is a history museum. I'm not neutral about its future, since I'm on the board of trustees, along with some wonderfully idealistic (and unpaid) New Yorkers who want to give something back to a city that has made so much of their lives possible.

All take their duties seriously. All are riled by the possibility that Mayor Bloomberg will reverse more than four years of work and stop the plans to move the museum from 103rd St. and Fifth Ave. to the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers St., in the heart of our wounded downtown Manhattan.

The plans for this move took many hours of debate, study and preparation during the Giuliani administration — this was no last-minute Yankee Stadium deal. Some $85 million of taxpayers' money already has been spent renewing the Tweed, from a new roof, to restoring the exterior staircase that was removed in 1942.

That sum, dictated in large part by landmarks rules, now seems preposterous. But it was not spent by the museum; it was spent by the city government during flush times (the museum did spend more than $2 million on consultants, with the city's approval). Obviously, Bloomberg has an enormous problem with his post-Sept. 11 austerity budget, but killing the move to Chambers St. would be foolish.

'Money Can Be Found'

The immediate problem is not money. Those on the museum board who understand finance far better than I do insist that budget cuts can be made up. "That money can be found," one executive said. "The real problem is the space. The mayor apparently wants the space for those who work for him, not for the museum." Another trustee described the mayor's still-vague plan as creating "a Taj Mahal for bureaucrats."

This would be very sad, indeed. In the 1970s, I used to visit Paul O'Dwyer in his office in the old Tweed, in search of laughter or wisdom. "Every morning I walk in that door," he said one day, "I want to weep." The place smelled of mildew, caused in part by the leaking roof (now replaced) and the dense compost of cabinets and cardboard files stuffed with damp old paper.

The grand rooms had been chopped into bureaucratic cubicles. Much proud stone was painted or chipped. Doors, floors and ceilings were scabbed by coats of paint and time. It was like an elegant old brownstone that had been converted into a roominghouse. Everywhere I turned, I saw the pale ghost of Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener.

All those accretions have been removed, at enormous expense, but the reason was simple: to establish an institution — the Museum of the City of New York — that would help "center" downtown, where our history began. The physical space of the museum would be doubled, allowing room for more thorough exhibits, along with public lectures and movies. It wouldn't be a repository of dust or mildew, but a place filled with excitement, while providing workspace for students, historians and other scholars. Because of the convergence of subway lines downtown, its location would make it more accessible to tourists and young students from all over the city.

That is, the museum would assert by its existence that history is a vivid part of living in New York. By understanding the New York past, including its follies, we can better place ourselves in the present, and even glimpse the future. That's what history museums do in Paris, Mexico City, Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow and London.

History, vividly presented, becomes part of our shared consciousness. It helps immigrants and their children understand how they fit into the narrative. It offers models for behavior or collective effort, while saving us from what Orwell called "the smelly little orthodoxies." New York is one of the few American cities with a long history. That rich, often appalling past has much to teach us all.

Tweed as Centerpiece

One strong argument for the museum's move to Chambers St. is about place. The street itself should be one of the grand entryways to the city, stretching as it does from the Brooklyn Bridge and the Municipal Building all the way to Stuyvesant High School on the Hudson River. And the Tweed must be its centerpiece.

Visitors would be able to leave the Tweed and find evidence of our city's vital narrative in every direction. They could walk down Broadway, enter the handsomely refurbished City Hall Park, gaze at the intricate beauties of the Woolworth Building, pause at St. Peter's on Barclay St. or St. Paul's on Vesey, keep going to Trinity and wander into Wall St. Or they could turn right past St. Paul's, and gaze at the great void where the World Trade Center once stood, and utter silent prayers. That void is also part of our history.

And there are other choices. They could ponder the enduring beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge, survivor of every mutilation. They could wander through the electronic bazaar of J&R Music World on Park Row. Or move north through Foley Square, knowing (from the museum's permanent exhibits) that this was once called the Five Points, the worst slum in American history, a place where the Irish and the Africans combined in the 19th century to create the New York "street" style (along with inventing tap dance). And then keep moving to the marvels of Chinatown.

Nobody will travel to Chambers St. to watch even the most idealistic bureaucrats carry coffee and cheese danish to their desks. The Tweed Courthouse should be the grandest museum of the city's narrative, and it should be located downtown. Now more than ever. Now, as an immediate commitment to those who work and live downtown. Now, as a permanent gift to New Yorkers not yet born.

The decision about the Tweed's future is urgent — and will itself be a part of our history. Every tick of a minute hand on a clock eats into the future. Just one tick — at the moment of decision — could send this grand opportunity into the lamentable past.