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diff --git a/42501-0.txt b/42501-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d9c35c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/42501-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2595 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42501 *** + +NEW YORK SKETCHES + + +[Illustration: On the Harlem River--University Heights from Fort +George.] + + + + + NEW YORK SKETCHES + + BY + + JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS + + [Illustration] + + WITH ILLUSTRATIONS + + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + NEW YORK 1902 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + Published, November, 1902 + + Trow Directory + Printing & Bookbinding Company + New York + + + + + TO + + Meade Creighton Williams + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + THE WATER-FRONT 1 + + THE WALK UP-TOWN 27 + + THE CROSS STREETS 63 + + RURAL NEW YORK CITY 99 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + On the Harlem River--University Heights from Fort + George _Frontispiece_ + + PAGE + Grant's Tomb and Riverside Drive (from the New Jersey + Shore) 3 + + Down along the Battery sea-wall is the place to watch + the ships go by 5 + + Old New Amsterdam 7 + + Just as it has been for years. (Between South Ferry and + the Bridge.) + + New New York 9 + + Not a stone's throw farther up ... the towering white + city of the new century. (Between South Ferry and + the Bridge.) + + From the point of view of the Jersey commuter ... some + uncommon, weird effects 11 + + (Looking back at Manhattan from a North River + ferry-boat.) + + Swooping silently, confidently across from one city to + the other 13 + + (East River and Brooklyn Bridge.) + + Looking up the East River from the Foot of Fifty-ninth + Street 15 + + Even in sky-line he could find something new almost + every week or two 17 + + The end of the day--looking back at Manhattan from the + Brooklyn Bridge. + + For the little scenes ... quaint and lovable, one goes + down along the South Street water-front 19 + + Smacks and oyster-floats near Fulton Market. (At the + foot of Beekman Street, East River.) + + This is the tired city's playground 21 + + Washington Bridge and the Speedway--Harlem River + looking south. + + Here is where the town ends, and the country begins 23 + + (High Bridge as seen looking south from Washington + Bridge.) + + The Old and the New, from Lower New York across the + Bridge to Brooklyn 24 + + From the top of the high building at Broadway and Pine + Street. + + The old town does not change so fast about its edges 25 + + (Along the upper East River front looking north toward + Blackwell's Island.) + + ... opposite the oval of the ancient Bowling Green 29 + + ... immigrant hotels and homes 30 + + No. 1 Broadway 30 + + Lower Broadway during a parade 30 + + The beautiful spire of Trinity 31 + + ... clattering, crowded, typical Broadway 32 + + City Hall with its grateful lack of height 33 + + What's the matter? 34 + + In the wake of a fire-engine 35 + + No longer to be thrilled ... will mean to be old 37 + + Grace Church spire becomes nearer 39 + + Through Union Square 40 + + ... windows which draw women's heads around 41 + + Instead of buyers ... mostly shoppers 42 + + ... crossing Fifth Avenue at Twenty-third Street 43 + + Madison Square with the sparkle of a clear ... October + morning 44 + + In front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel 45 + + Diana on top glistening in the sun 46 + + Seeing the Avenue from a stage-top 47 + + ... people go to the right, up Fifth Avenue 48 + + A seller of pencils 49 + + It is also better walking up here 50 + + ... those who walk for the sake of walking 51 + + At the lower corner of the Waldorf-Astoria 52 + + ... with baby-carriages 53 + + This is the region of Clubs 54 + + (The Union League.) + + ... close-ranked boarding-school squads 55 + + ... the coachmen and footmen flock there 56 + + The Church of the Heavenly Rest 57 + + Approaching St. Thomas's 59 + + The University Club ... with college coats-of-arms 60 + + Olympia Jackies on shore leave 61 + + Down near the eastern end of the street 65 + + Across Trinity Church-yard, from the West 67 + + An Evening View of St. Paul's Church 69 + + The sights and smells of the water-front are here too 71 + + An Old Landmark on the Lower West Side 73 + + (Junction of Canal and Laight Streets.) + + Up Beekman Street 75 + + Each ... has to change in the greatest possible hurry + from block to block. + + Under the Approach to Brooklyn Bridge 77 + + Chinatown 79 + + It still remains whimsically individual and village-like 81 + + A Fourteenth Street Tree 83 + + Such as broad Twenty-third Street with its famous shops + 85 + + A Cross Street at Madison Square 87 + + Across Twenty-fourth Street--Madison Square when the + Dewey Arch was there 88 + + Herald Square 91 + + As it Looks on a Wet Night--The Circle, Fifty-ninth + Street and Eighth Avenue 93 + + Hideous high buildings 95 + + Looking east from Central Park at night. + + Flushing Volunteer Fire Department Responding to a Fire + Alarm 103 + + A Bit of Farm Land in the Heart of Greater New York 105 + + Acre after acre, farm after farm, and never a sign of + city in sight. + + One of the Farmhouses that have Come to Town 107 + + The old Duryea House, Flushing, once used as a + head-quarters for Hessian officers. + + East End of Duryea House, where the Cow is Stabled 108 + + The Old Water-power Mill from the Rear of the Old + Country Cross-roads Store 109 + + The Old Country Cross-roads Store, Established 1828 110 + + In the background is the old water-power mill. + + Interior of the Old Country Cross-roads Store 111 + + The Colony of Chinese Farmers, Near the Geographical + Centre of New York City 112 + + Working as industrially as the peasants of Europe, blue + skirts, red handkerchiefs about their heads 113 + + Remains of a Windmill in New York City, Between Astoria + and Steinway 114 + + The Dreary Edge of Long Island City 115 + + The Procession of Market-wagons at College Point Ferry + 116 + + Past dirty backyards and sad vacant lots 117 + + New York City Up in the Beginnings of the Bronx + Regions--Skating at Bronxdale 119 + + Another Kind of City Life--Along the Marshes of Jamaica + Bay 121 + + There is profitable oyster-dredging in several sections + of the city 123 + + Cemetery Ridge, Near Richmond, Staten Island 126 + + A Peaceful Scene in New York 127 + + In the distance is St. Andrew's Church, Borough of + Richmond, Staten Island. + + A Relic of the Early Nineteenth Century, Borough of + Richmond 128 + + An Old-fashioned, Stone-arched Bridge. (Richmond, Staten + Island) 129 + + An Old House in Flatbush 131 + + + + +THE WATER-FRONT + + + + +[Illustration: Grant's Tomb and Riverside Drive (from the New Jersey +Shore).] + + + + +THE WATER-FRONT + + +Down along the Battery sea-wall is the place to watch the ships go by. + +Coastwise schooners, lumber-laden, which can get far up the river under +their own sail; big, full-rigged clipper ships that have to be towed +from the lower bay, their topmasts down in order to scrape under the +Brooklyn Bridge; barques, brigs, brigantines--all sorts of sailing +craft, with cargoes from all seas, and flying the flags of all nations. + +White-painted river steamers that seem all the more flimsy and riverish +if they happen to churn out past the dark, compactly built ocean liners, +who come so deliberately and arrogantly up past the Statue of Liberty, +to dock after the long, hard job of crossing, the home-comers on the +decks already waving handkerchiefs. Plucky little tugs (that whistle +on the slightest provocation), pushing queer, bulky floats, which bear +with ease whole trains of freight-cars, dirty cars looking frightened +and out of place, which the choppy seas try to reach up and wash. And +still queerer old sloop scows, with soiled, awkward canvas and no shape +to speak of, bound for no one seems to know where and carrying you +seldom see what. And always, everywhere, all day and night, whistling +and pushing in and out between everybody, the ubiquitous, faithful, +narrow-minded old ferry-boats, with their wonderful helmsmen in the +pilot-house, turning the wheel and looking unexcitable.... + +That is the way it is down around Pier A, where the New York Dock +Commission meets and the Police Patrol boat lies, and by Castle Garden, +where the river craft pass so close you can almost reach out and touch +them with your hand. + +The "water-front" means something different when you think of Riverside +and its greenness, a few miles to the north, with Grant's tomb, white +and glaring in the sun, and Columbia Library back on Cathedral Heights. + +[Illustration: Down along the Battery sea-wall is the place to watch the +ships go by.] + +Here the "lordly" Hudson is not yet obliged to become busy North River, +and there is plenty of water between a white-sailed schooner yacht and +a dirty tug slowly towing in silence--for there is no excuse here for +whistling--a cargo of brick for a new country house up at Garrisons; +while on the shore itself instead of wharves and warehouses and +ferry-slips there are yacht and rowing club houses and an occasional +bathing pavilion; and above the water edge, in place of the broken ridge +of stone buildings with countless windows, there is the real bluff of +good green earth with the well-kept drive on top and the sun glinting on +harness-chains and automobiles. + + * * * * * + +Now, between these two contrasts you will find--you _may_ find, I mean, +for most of you prefer to exhaust Europe and the Orient before you begin +to look at New York--as many different sorts of interests and kinds of +picturesqueness as there are miles, as there are blocks almost. + +For instance, down there by the starting-point. If you go up toward +the bridge from South Ferry a block or so and pull down your hat-brim +far enough to hide the tower of the Produce Exchange, you have a bit +of old New Amsterdam, just as it has been for years, so old and so +Amsterdamish, with its long, sloping roofs, gable windows, and even +wooden-shoe-like canal-boats, that you may easily feel that you are in +Holland, if you like. As a matter of fact, it is more like Hamburg, I +am told, but either will do if you get an added enjoyment out of things +by noting their similarity to something else and appreciate mountains +and sunsets more by quoting some other person's sensations about other +sunsets and mountains. + +[Illustration: Old New Amsterdam. + +Just as it has been for years. + +(Between South Ferry and the Bridge.)] + +But if you believe that there is also an inherent, characteristic +beauty in the material manifestations of the spirit of our own new, +vigorous, fearless republic--and whether you do or not, if you care to +look at one of these sudden contrasts referred to--not a stone's throw +farther up the water-front there is a notable sight of newest New York. +This, too, is good to look at. Behind a foreground of tall masts with +their square rigging and mystery (symbols of the world's commerce, if +you wish), looms up a wondrous bit of the towering white city of the new +century, a cluster of modern high buildings which, notwithstanding the +perspective of a dozen blocks, are still high, enormously, alarmingly +high--symbols of modern capital, perhaps, and its far-reaching +possibilities, or they may remind you, in their massive grouping, of a +cluster of mountains, with their bright peaks glistening in the sun far +above the dark shadows of the valleys in which the streams of business +flow, down to the wharves and so out over the world. + +Now, separately they may be impossible, these high buildings of +ours--these vulgar, impertinent "sky-scrapers;" but, as a group, and +in perspective, they are fine, with a strong, manly beauty all their +own. It is the same as with the young nation; we have grown up so fast +and so far that some of our traits, when considered alone, may seem +displeasing, but they appear less so when we are viewed as a whole and +from the right point of view. + +[Illustration: New New York. + +Not a stone's throw farther up ... the towering white city of the new +century. + +(Between South Ferry and the Bridge.)] + +Or, on the other hand, for scenes not representatively commercial, nor +residential either in the sense that Riverside is, but more of the +sort that the word "picturesque" suggests to most people: There are all +those odd nooks and corners, here and there up one river and down the +other, popping out upon you with unexpected vistas full of life and +color. Somehow the old town does not change so fast about its edges as +back from the water. It seems to take a longer time to slough off the +old landmarks. + +[Illustration: From the point of view of the Jersey commuter ... some +uncommon, weird effects. + +(Looking back at Manhattan from a North River ferry-boat.)] + +The comfortable country houses along the shore, half-way up the island, +first become uncomfortable city houses; then tenements, warehouses, +sometimes hospitals, even police stations, before they are finally +hustled out of existence to make room for a foul-smelling gas-house +or another big brewery. Many of them are still standing, or tumbling +down; pathetic old things they are, with incongruous cupolas and dusty +fanlights and, on the river side, an occasional bit of old-fashioned +garden, with a bunker which was formerly a terrace, and the dirty +remains of a summer-house where children once had a good time--and still +do have, different-looking children, who love the nearby water just as +much and are drowned in it more numerously. It is not only by way of +the recreation piers that these children and their parents enjoy the +water. It is a deep-rooted instinct in human nature to walk out to the +end of a dock and sit down and gaze; and hundreds of them do so every +day in summer, up along here. Now and then through these vistas you get +a good view of beautiful Blackwell's Island with its prison and hospital +and poorhouse buildings. Those who see it oftenest do not consider it +beautiful. They always speak of it as "The Island." + +For those who do not care to prowl about for the scattered bits +of interest or who prefer what Baedeker would call "a magnificent +panorama," there are plenty of good points of vantage from which to see +whole sections at once, such as the Statue of Liberty or the tops of +high buildings, or, obviously, Brooklyn Bridge, which is so very obvious +that many Manhattanese would never make use of this opportunity were +it not for an occasional out-of-town visitor on their hands. No one +ought to be allowed to live in New York City--he ought to be made to +live in Brooklyn--who does not go out there and look back at his town +once a year. He could look at it every day and get new effects of light +and color. Even in sky-line he could find something new almost every +week or two. In a few years there will be a more or less even line--at +least a gentle undulation--instead of these raw, jagged breaks that +give a disquieting sense of incompletion, or else look as if a great +conflagration had eaten out the rest of the buildings. + +[Illustration: Swooping silently, confidently across from one city to +the other.... + +(East River and Brooklyn Bridge.)] + +The sky-line and its constant change can be watched to best advantage +from the point of view of the Jersey commuter on the ferry; he also has +some wonderful coloring to look at and some uncommon, weird effects, +such as that of a late autumn afternoon (when he has missed the 5.15 and +has to go out on the 6.26) and it is already quite dark, but the city +is still at work and the towering office-buildings are lighted--are +brilliant indeed with many perfectly even rows of light dots. The dark +plays tricks with the distance, and the water is black and snaky and +smells of the night. All sorts of strange flares of light and puffs of +shadow come from somewhere, and altogether the commuter, if he were not +so accustomed to the scene, ought not to mind being late for dinner. +However, the commuter is used to this, too. + +That scene is spectacular. There is another from the water that is +dramatic. Possibly the pilots on the Fall River steamers become +hardened, but to most of us there is an exciting delight in creeping up +under that great bridge of ours and daringly slipping through without +having it fall down this time; and then looking rather boastfully back +at it, swooping silently, confidently across from one city to the +other, as graceful and lean and characteristically American in its line +as our cup defenders, and as overwhelmingly powerful and fearless as +Niagara Falls. However much like the Thames Embankment is the bit of +East Fifty-ninth Street in a yellow fog, and however skilful you may be +in making an occasional acre of the Bronx resemble the Seine, our big +bridges cannot very well remind anyone of anything abroad, because there +aren't any others. + +[Illustration: Looking up the East River from the Foot of Fifty-ninth +Street.] + +For the little scenes that are not inspiring or awful, but simply quaint +and lovable, one goes down along the South Street water-front. Fulton +Market with its memorable smells and the marketeers and 'longshoremen; +and behind it the slip where clean-cut American-model smacks put in, +and sway excitedly to the wash from the Brooklyn ferry-boats, which is +not noticed by the sturdy New Haven Line steamers nearby. On the edge +of the street and the water are the oyster floats, half house and half +boat, which look like solid shops, with front doors, from the street +side until, the seas hitting them, they, too, begin to sway awkwardly +and startle the unaccustomed passer-by. + +It is down around here that you find slouching idly in front of +ship-stores, loafing on cables and anchors, the jolly jack tar of +modern days. From all parts of the world he comes, any number of him, +if you can tell him when you see him, for he is seldom tarry and less +often jolly, unless drunk on the very poor grog he gets in the various +evil-looking dives thickly strewn along the water-fronts. Some of these +are modern plate-glass saloons, but here and there is a cosey old-time +tavern (with a step-down at the entrance instead of a step-up), low +ceiling, dark interior, and in the window a thickly painted ship's model +with flies on the rigging. + +Farther down, near Wall Street ferry, where the smells of the world +are gathered, you may see the stevedores unloading liqueurs and spices +from tropical ports, and coffees and teas; nearby are the places where +certain men make their livings tasting these teas all day long, while +the horse-cars jangle by. + +[Illustration: Even in sky-line he could find something new almost every +week or two. + +The end of the day--looking back at Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge.] + +Old Slip and other odd-named streets are along here, where once the +water came before the city outgrew its clothes; before Water Street, +now two or three blocks back, had lost all right to its name. Here the +big slanting bowsprits hunch away in over South Street as if trying to +be quits with the land for its encroachment, and the plain old brick +buildings huddled together across the way have no cornices for fear of +their being poked off. Queer old buildings they are, sail lofts with +their peculiar roofs, and sailors' lodging-houses, and the shops where +the seaman can buy everything he needs from suspenders to anchor cables, +so that after a ten-thousand mile cruise he can spend all his several +months' pay within two blocks of where he first puts foot on shore and +within one night from when he does so. Very often he has not energy to +go farther or money to buy anything, thanks to the slavery system which +conducts the sailors' lodging-houses across the way. There is nothing +very picturesque about our modern merchant marine and its ill-used and +over-worked sailors; it is only pathetic. + +Those are some of the reasons, I think, why East River is more +interesting to most of us than North River. Another reason, perhaps, is +that East River is not a river at all, but an arm of the ocean which +makes Long Island, and true to its nature in spite of man's error it +holds the charm of the sea. The North River side of the town in the old +days had less to do with the business of those who go down to the sea +in ships, was more rural and residential; and now its water-front is so +jammed with railway ferry-houses and ocean-steamship docks that there is +little room for anything else. + +[Illustration: For the little scenes ... quaint and lovable, one goes +down along the South Street water-front. + +Smacks and oyster-floats near Fulton Market. (At the foot of Beekman +Street, East River.)] + +However, these long, roofed docks of famous Cunarders and American and +White Star Liners, and of the French steamers (which have a round-roof +dock of a sort all their own) are interesting in their way, too, and the +names of the foreign ports at the open entrance cause a strange fret to +be up and going; especially on certain days of the week when thick smoke +begins to pour from the great funnels which stick out so enormously +above the top story of the now noisy piers. Cabs and carriages with +coachmen almost hidden by trunks and steamer-rugs crowd in through the +dock-gates, while, within, the hold baggage-derricks are rattling and +there is an excited chatter of good-by talk.... + +By the time you get up to Gansevoort Market, with its broad expanse of +cobble-stones, the steamship lines begin to thin out and the ferries +are now sprinkled more sparsely. Where the avenues grow out into +their teens, there are coal-yards and lumber-yards. On the warehouses +and factories are great twenty-foot letters advertising soap and +cereals, all of which are the best.... Farther up is the region of +slaughter-houses and their smells, gas-houses and their smells.... And +so on up to Riverside, and across the new bridge to the unknown wildness +of Manhattan's farthest north, and Fort Washington with its breastworks, +which, it is pleasing to see, are being visited and picnicked upon more +often than formerly. + +[Illustration: This is the tired city's playground. + +Washington Bridge and the Speedway--Harlem River looking south.] + +But over on the east edge of the town there is more to look at and more +of a variety. All the way from the Bridge and the big white battle-ships +squatting in the Navy Yard across the river; up past Kip's Bay with its +dapper steam-yachts waiting to take their owners home from business; +past Bellevue Hospital and its Morgue, past Thirty-fourth Street ferry +with its streams of funerals and fishing-parties; Blackwell's Island +with its green grass and the young doctors playing tennis, oblivious to +their surroundings; Hell Gate with its boiling tide, where so many are +drowned every year; East River Park with its bit of green turf (it is +too bad there are not more of these parks on our water-fronts); past +Ward's Island with its public institutions; Randall's Island with more +public institutions--and so, up into the Harlem, where soon, around the +bend, the occasional tall mast looks very incongruous when seen across a +stretch of real estate. + +And now you have a totally different feel in the air and a totally +different sort of "scenery." It is as different as the use it is put to. +Below McComb's Dam Bridge, clear to the Battery, it was nearly all work; +up here it is nearly all play. + +On the banks of the river, rowing clubs, yacht clubs, bathing +pavilions--they bump into each other, they are so thick; on the +water itself their members and their contents bump into each other +on holidays--launches, barges, racing-shells and all sorts of small +pleasure craft. + +[Illustration: Here is where the town ends, and the country begins. + +(High Bridge as seen looking south from Washington Bridge.)] + +Near the Manhattan end of McComb's Dam Bridge are the two fields famous +for football victories, baseball championships, track games, open-air +horse shows; across the bridge go the bicyclers and automobilists, +hordes of them, brazen-braided bicyclists who use chewing-gum and lean +far over, leather coated chauffeurs with their eyes unnecessarily +protected. + +[Illustration: The Old and the New, from Lower New York Across the +Bridge to Brooklyn. + +From the top of the high building at Broadway and Pine Street.] + +Up the river are college and school ovals and athletic fields; on the +ridges upon either side are walks and paths for lovers. For the lonely +pedestrian and antiquarians, two old revolutionary forts and some good +colonial architecture. Whirly-go-rounds and big wheels for children, +groves and beer-gardens for picnickers; while down on one bank of the +stream upon the broad Speedway go the thoroughbred trotters with their +red-faced masters behind in light-colored driving coats, eyes goggled, +arms extended. + +On the opposite banks are the two railroads taking people to Ardsley +Casino, St. Andrew's Golf Club, and the other country clubs and the +public links at Van Cortlandt Park, and taking picnickers and family +parties to Mosholu Park, and regiments and squadrons to drill and play +battle in the inspection ground nearby, and botanists and naturalists +and sportsmen for their fun farther up in the good green country. + +[Illustration: The old town does not change so fast about its edges. + +(Along the upper East River front looking north toward Blackwell's +Island.)] + +No wonder there is a different feeling in the air up along the best +known end of the city's water-front. The small, unimportant looking +winding river, long distance views, wooded hills, green terraces, and +even the great solid masonry of High Bridge, and the asphalt and stone +resting-places on Washington Bridge somehow help to make you feel the +spirit of freedom and outdoors and relaxation. This is the tired city's +playground. Here is where the town ends, and the country begins. + +[Illustration] + + + + +THE WALK UP-TOWN + + + + +[Illustration: ... opposite the oval of the ancient Bowling Green.] + + + + +THE WALK UP-TOWN + + +The walk up-town reaches from the bottom of the buzzing region where +money is made to the bright zone where it is spent and displayed; and +the walk is a delight all the way. It is full of variety, color, charm, +exhilaration--almost intoxication, on its best days. + +Indeed, there are connoisseurs in cities who say that of all walks +of this sort in the world New York's is the best. The walk in London +from the city to the West End by way of Fleet Street, the Strand, and +Piccadilly, is teeming with interest to the tourist--Temple Bar, St. +Clement's, Trafalgar Square and all--but, for a walk up-town, a walk +home to be taken daily, it is apt to be oppressive and saddening, even +without the fog; so say many of those who know it best. Paris, with +her boulevards, undoubtedly has unapproachable opportunities for the +_flaneur_, but like Rome and Vienna and most of the other European +capitals, she has no one main artery for a homeward stream of working +humanity at close of day; and that is what "the walk up-town" means. + +[Illustration: ... immigrant hotels and homes.] + +[Illustration: No. 1 Broadway.] + +[Illustration: Lower Broadway during a parade.] + +And yet so few, comparatively, of those whose physique and office hours +permit, take this appetizing, worry-dispelling walk of ours; this is +made obvious every afternoon, from three o'clock on, by the surface and +elevated cars, into which the bulk of scowling New York seems to prefer +to push itself, after a day spent mostly indoors; here to get bumped +and ill-tempered, snatching an occasional glimpse of the afternoon paper +held in the hand which does not clutch the strap overhead. It seems a +great pity. The walk is just the right length to take before dressing +for dinner. A line drawn eastward from the park plaza at Fifty-eighth +Street will almost strike an old mile-stone still standing in Third +Avenue, which says, "4 miles from City Hall, New York." The City Hall +was in Wall Street when those old-fashioned letters were cut, and Third +Avenue was the Post Road. + +[Illustration: The beautiful spire of Trinity] + + +I + +Many good New Yorkers (chiefly, however, of that small per cent. born in +New York, who generally know rather little about their town except that +they love it) have not been so remotely far down the island as Battery +Park for a decade, unless to engage passage at the steamship offices +which until recently were to be found in the sturdy houses of the good +old Row (though once called "Mushroom Row") opposite the oval of the +ancient Bowling Green, where now the oddly placed statue of Abram de +Peyster sits and stares all day. (Now that these old gable windows and +broad chimneys are gone I wonder how he will like the new Custom-house.) + +[Illustration: ... clattering, crowded, typical Broadway] + +Now, the grandmothers of these same New Yorkers, long ago, before +there were any steamships, when Castle Garden was a separate island +and Battery Park was a fashionable esplanade from which to watch the +shipping in the bay and the sunsets over the Jersey hills--their +grandmothers, dressed in tight pelisses and carrying reticules, were +wont to take a brisk walk, in their very low-cut shoes, along the +sea-wall before breakfast and breathe the early morning air. They did +not have so far to go in those days, and it was a fashionable thing to +do. To-day you can see almost every variety of humanity on the cement +paths from Pier A to Castle Garden, except that known as fashionable. +But the sunsets are just as good and the lights on the gentle hills of +Staten Island quite as soft and there are more varieties of water-craft +to gaze at in the bristling bay. I should think more people would come +to look at it all. + +[Illustration: ... City Hall with its grateful lack of height ...] + +I mean of those even who do not like to mingle with other species +than their own and yet want fresh air and exercise. On a Sunday in +winter if they were to come down here for their afternoon stroll they +would find (after a pleasant trip on nearly empty elevated cars) less +"objectionable" people and fewer of them than on the crowded up-town +walks. + +What there are of strollers down here--in winter--are representatives of +the various sets of eminently respectable janitors' families (of which +there are almost as many grades as there are heights of the roofs from +which they have descended), and modest young jackies, with flapping +trousers, and open-mouthed emigrants, though more of the latter are +to be seen on those flimsy, one-horsed express wagons coming from the +Barge Office, seated on piles of dirty baggage--with steerage tags still +fresh--whole families of them, bright-colored head-gear and squalling +children, bound for the foreign-named emigrant hotels and homes which +are as interesting as the immigrants. Some of these latter are right +opposite there on State Street, including one with "pillared balcony +rising from the second floor to the roof," which is said to be the +earlier home of Jacob Dolph in Bunner's novel--a better fate surely than +that of the other New York house for which the book was named. + +[Illustration: What's the matter?] + +Across the park and up and around West Street are more of these +immigrant places, some with foreign lettering and some plain Raines's +law hotels with mirrored bars. One of them, perhaps the smallest and +lowest-ceiled of all, is where Stevenson slept, or tried to, in his +amateur emigranting. + +These are among the few older houses in New York used for the same +purposes as from the beginning. They seem to have been left stranded +down around this earliest part of the town by an eddy in the commercial +current which sweeps nearly everything else to the northward from +its original moorings.... But this is not what is commonly meant by +"down-town," though it is the farthest down you can go, nor is it where +the walk up-town properly begins. + +The Walk Up-town begins where the real Broadway begins, somewhat above +the bend, past the foreign consulates, away from the old houses and the +early nineteenth century atmosphere. Crowded sidewalks, a continuous +roar, intent passers-by, jammed streets, clanging cable-cars with +down-towners dodging them automatically; the region of the modern high +business building. + +[Illustration: In the wake of a fire-engine.] + +Above are stories uncountable (unless you are willing to be bumped +into); beside you, hurried-looking people gazing straight ahead or +dashing in and out of these large doors which are kept swinging back +and forth all day; very heavy doors to push, especially in winter, +when there are sometimes three sets of them. Within is the vestibule +bulletin-board with hundreds of men's names and office-numbers on it; +near by stands a judicial-looking person in uniform who knows them all, +and starts the various elevators by exclaiming "Up!" in a resonant +voice. While outside the crowd still hums and hurries on; it never gets +tired; it seems to pay no attention to anything. It is a matter of +wonder how a living is made by all the newsstands on the corners; all +the dealers in pencils and pipe-cleaners and shoe-strings and rubber +faces who are thick between the corners, to whom as little heed is +given as to the clatter of trucks or the wrangling of the now-blocked +cable-cars, or the cursing truck-drivers, or the echoing hammering of +the iron-workers on the huge girders of that new office building across +the way. + +But that is simply because the crowd is accustomed to all these common +phenomena of the city street. As a matter of fact, half of them are +not so terrifically busy and important as they consider themselves. +They seem to be in a great hurry, but they do not move very fast, as +all know who try to take the walk up-town at a brisk pace, and most of +them wear that intent, troubled expression of countenance simply from +imitation or a habit generated by the spirit of the place. But it gives +a quaking sensation to the poor young man from the country who has +been walking the streets for weeks looking for a job; and it makes the +visiting foreigner take out his note-book and write a stereotyped phrase +or two about Americans--next to his note about our "Quick Lunch" signs +which never fail to astonish him, and behind which may be seen lunchers +lingering for the space of two cigars. + +An ambulance, with its nervous, arrogant bell, comes scudding down +the street. A very important young interne is on the rear keeping his +balance with arrogant ease. His youthful, spectacled face is set in +stony indifference to all possible human suffering. The police clear the +way for him. And now see your rushing "busy throng" forget itself and +stop rushing. It blocks the sidewalk in five seconds, and still stays +there, growing larger, after those walking up-town have passed on. + +The beautiful spire of Trinity, with its soft, brown stone and the green +trees and quaintly lettered historic tombs beneath and the damp monument +to Revolutionary martyrs over in one corner--no longer looks down +benignly on all about it, because, for the most part, it has to look up. +On all sides men have reared their marts of commerce higher than the +house of God. + +[Illustration: No longer to be thrilled ... will mean to be old.] + +It seems perfectly proper that they should, for they must build in +some direction and see what valuable real estate they have given up to +those dead people who cannot even appreciate it. Here among the quiet +graves the thoughtful stranger is accustomed to moralize tritely on how +thoughtless of death and eternity is "the hurrying throng" just outside +the iron fence, who, by the way, have to pass that church every day, in +many cases three or four times, and so can't very well keep on being +impressed by the nearness of death, etc., about which, perhaps, it is +just as well not to worry during the hours God meant for work. Even +though one cannot get much of a view from the steeple, except down Wall +Street, which looks harmless and disappointingly narrow and quiet at +first sight, Trinity is still one of the show-places of New York, and +it makes a pleasing and restful landmark in the walk up Broadway. It +deserves to be starred in Baedeker. + +Now comes the most rushing section of all down-town: from Trinity to +St. Paul's, clattering, crowded, typical Down-Town. So much in a hurry +is it that at Cedar Street it skips in twenty or thirty feet a whole +section of numbers from 119 to 135. The east side of the street is not +so capricious; it skips merely from No. 120 to 128. + +The people that cover the sidewalks up and down this section, +occasionally overflowing into the streets, would probably be pronounced +a typical New York crowd, although half of them never spend an entire +day in New York City from one end of the month to the other, and half +of that half sleep and eat two of their meals in another State of the +Union. The proportion might seem even greater than that, perhaps it is, +if at the usual hour the up-town walker should be obliged to struggle up +Cortlandt Street or any of the ferry streets down which the torrents of +commuters pour. + + * * * * * + +Up near St. Paul's the sky-scrapers again become thick, so that the +occasional old-fashioned five or six story buildings of solid walls with +steep steps leading up to the door, seem like playthings beside which +the modern building shoots up--on up, as if just beginning where the +old ones left off. More like towers are many of these new edifices, or +magnified obelisks, as seen from the ferries, the windows and lettering +for hieroglyphics. Others are shaped like plain goods-boxes on end, or +suggest, the ornate ones, pieces of carefully cut cake standing alone +and ready to fall over at any moment and damage the icing. + +[Illustration: ... Grace Church Spire becomes nearer.] + +Good old St. Paul's, which is really old and, to some of us, more +lovable than ornate, Anglican Trinity, has also been made to look +insignificant in size by its overpowering commercial neighbors, +especially as seen from the Sixth Avenue Elevated cars against the +new, ridiculous high building on Park Row. But St. Paul's turns its +plain, broad, Colonial back upon busy Broadway and does not seem +to care so much as Trinity. The church-yard is not so old nor so +large as Trinity's, but somehow it always seems to me more rural and +church-yardish and feels as sunny and sequestered as though miles +instead of a few feet from Broadway and business. + +[Illustration: Through Union Square.] + +Now, off to the right oblique from St. Paul's, marches Park Row with +its very mixed crowd, which overflows the sidewalks, not only now at +going-home time, but at all hours of the day and most of the night; +and on up, under the bridge conduit, black just now with home-hurrying +Brooklynites and Long Islanders, we know we could soon come to the +Bowery and all that the Bowery means, and that, of course, is a walk +worth taking. But The Walk Up-town, as such, lies straight up Broadway, +between the substantial old Astor House, the last large hotel remaining +down-town, and the huge, obtrusive post-office building, as hideous +as a badly tied bundle, but which leads us on because we know--or, if +strangers, because we do not know--that when once we get beyond it +we shall see the calm, unstrenuous beauty of the City Hall with its +grateful lack of height, in its restful bit of park. Here, under the +first trees, is the unconventional statue of Nathan Hale, and there, +under those other trees--up near the court-house, I suppose--is where +certain memorable boy stories used to begin, with a poor, pathetic +newsboy who did noble deeds and in the last chapter always married the +daughter of his former employer, now his partner. + +By this time some of the regular walkers up-town have settled down to a +steady pace; others are just falling in at this point--just falling in +here where once (not so very many years ago) the city fathers thought +that few would pass but farmers on the way to market, and so put cheap +red sandstone in the back of the City Hall. + +[Illustration: ... windows which draw women's heads around.] + +Over there, on the west side of the street, still stands a complete row +of early buildings--one of the very few remaining along Broadway--with +gable windows and wide chimneys. Lawyers' offices and insurance signs +are very prominent for a time. Then comes a block or two chiefly of +sporting-goods stores with windows crowded full of hammerless guns, +smokeless cartridges, portable canoes, and other delights which from +morning to night draw sighs out of little boys who press their faces +against the glass awhile and then run on. Next is a thin stratum +composed chiefly of ticket-scalpers, then suddenly you find yourself in +the heart of the wholesale district, with millions of brazen signs, one +over another, with names "like a list of Rhine wines;" block after block +of it, a long, unbroken stretch. + +[Illustration: Instead of buyers ... mostly shoppers.] + + +II + +This comes nearer to being monotonous than any part of the walk. But +even here, to lure the walker on, far ahead, almost exactly in the +centre of the cañon of commercial Broadway, can be seen the pure white +spire of Grace Church, planted there at the bend of the thoroughfare, as +if purposely to stand out like a beacon and signal to those below that +Broadway changes at last and that up there are some Christians. + +But there are always plenty of people to look at, nor are they all +black-mustached, black-cigared merchants talking dollars; at six +o'clock women and girls pour down the stairs and elevators, and out +upon the street with a look of relief; stenographers, cloak inspectors, +forewomen, and little girls of all ages. Then you hear "Good-night, +Mame." "Good-night, Rachel." "What's your hurry? Got a date?" And off +they go, mostly to the eastward, looking exceedingly happy and not +invariably overworked. + +[Illustration: ... crossing Fifth Avenue at Twenty-third Street.] + +Others are emissaries from the sweat-shops, men with long beards and +large bundles and very sober eyes, patriarchal-looking sometimes when +the beard is white, who go upstairs with their loads and come down again +and trudge off down the side-street once more to go on where they left +off, by gas-light now. + +And all this was once the great Broadway where not many years ago the +promenaders strutted up and down in the afternoon, women in low neck and +India shawls; dandies, as they were then called, in tremendous trousers +with huge checks. Occasionally even now you see a few strollers here by +mistake, elderly people from a distance revisiting New York after many +years and bringing their families with them. "Now, children, you are on +Broadway!" the fatherly smile seems to say. "Look at everything." They +probably stop at the Astor House. + +[Illustration: ... Madison Square with the sparkle of a clear ... +October morning.] + +As the wholesale dry-goods district is left behind and the realm of the +jobbers in "notions" is reached, and the handlers of artificial flowers +and patent buttons and all sorts of specialties, Grace Church spire +becomes nearer and clearer, so that the base of it can be seen. Here, as +below, and farther below and above and everywhere along Broadway, are +the stoop and sidewalk sellers of candies, dogs, combs, chewing-gum, +pipes, looking-glasses, and horrible burning smells. They seem +especially to love the neighborhood of what all walkers up-town detest, +a new building in the course of erection--with sidewalks blocked, and +a set of steep steps to mount--only, your true walker up-town always +prefers to go around by way of the street, where he is almost run down +by a cab, perhaps, which he forgets entirely a moment later when he +suddenly hears a stirring bell, an approaching roar, and a shrieking +whistle growing louder: + +Across Broadway flashes a fire-engine, with the horses at a gallop, +the earth trembling, the hatless driver leaning forward with arms out +straight, and a trail of sparks and smoke behind. Another whizz, and the +long ladder-wagon shoots across with firemen slinging on their flapping +coats, while behind in its wake are borne many small crazed boys, who +could no more keep from running than the alarm-bell at the engine-house +could keep from ringing when the policeman turned on the circuit. +And young boys are not the only ones. No more to be thrilled by this +delight--it will mean to be old. + +[Illustration: In front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.] + + +III + +At last Grace Church, with its clean light stone, is reached; and the +green grass and shrubbery in front of the interesting-looking Gothic +rectory. It is a glad relief. And now--in fact, a little before this +point--about where stood that melancholy building bearing the plaintive +sign "Old London Street"--which was used now for church services and now +prize-fights and had never been much of a success at anything--about +here, the up-town walkers notice (unless lured off to the left by the +thick tree-tops of Washington Square to look at the goodliest row of +houses in all the island) that the character of Broadway has changed +even more than the direction of the street changes. A short distance +below the bend all the stores were wholesale, now they are becoming +solidly retail. Instead of buyers the people along the street are +mostly shoppers. Down there were very few women; up here are very few +men. This is especially noticeable when Union Square is reached, with +cable-cars clanging around Dead Man's Curve in front of Lafayette's +statue. Here, down Fourteenth Street, may be seen shops and shoppers of +the most virulent type; windows which draw women's heads around whether +they want to look or not, causing them to run you down and making them +deaf to your apologies for it. Big dry-goods stores and small millinery +shops; general stores and department stores, and the places where +the sidewalks are crowded with what is known to the trade as "Louis +Fourteenth Street furniture." All this accounts for there being more +restaurants now and different smells and another feeling in the air. + +[Illustration: ... Diana on top glistening in the sun.] + +From the upper corner of Union Square, with its glittering +jewellery-shops and music-stores and publishers' buildings, and its +somewhat pathetic-looking hotels, once fashionable but now fast becoming +out-of-date and landmarky (though they seem good enough to those who +sit and wait on park benches all day), the open spaciousness of Madison +Square comes into view, the next green oasis for the up-town traveller. +This will help him up the intervening blocks if he is not interested in +the stretch of stores, though these are a different sort of shop, and +they seem to say, with their large, impressive windows, their footmen, +their buttons at the door, "We are very superior and fashionable." + +[Illustration: Seeing the Avenue from a stage-top.] + +The shoppers, too, are not so rapacious along here, because they have +more time; and the clatter is not so great, because there are more +rubber-tired carriages in the street. Nor are all these people shoppers +by any means, for along this bit of Broadway mingle types of all +the different sorts of men and women who use Broadway at all: nuns, +actors, pickpockets, detectives, sandwich-men, little girls going to +Huyler's, artists on the way to the Players'--the best people and the +worst people, the most mixed crowd in town may be seen here of a bright +afternoon. + +When they get up to Madison Square the crowd divides and, as some would +have us think, all the "nice" people go to the right, up Fifth Avenue, +while all the rest go the left, up the Broadway Rialto and the typical +part of the Tenderloin. + +But when Madison Square is reached you have come to one of the Places +of New York. It is the picture so many confirmed New Yorkers see when +homesick, Madison Square with the sparkle of a clear, bracing October +morning, the creamy Garden Tower over the trees, standing out clear-cut +against the sky, Diana on top glistening in the sun; a soft, purple +light under the branches in the park, a long, decorative row of cabs +waiting for "fares," over toward the statue of Farragut, and lithe +New York women, wearing clothes as they alone know how to wear them, +crossing Fifth Avenue at Twenty-third Street while a tall Tammany +policeman holds the carriages back with a wave of his little finger. + +[Illustration: ... people go to the right, up Fifth Avenue.] + +It is all so typically New York. Over on the north side by the Worth +monument I have heard people exclaim, "Oh, Paris!" because, I suppose, +there is a broad open expanse of asphalt and the street-lights are in a +cluster, but it seems to me to be as New Yorkish as New York can be. It +has an atmosphere distinctively its own--so distinctly its own that many +people, as I tried to say on an earlier page, miss it entirely, simply +because they are looking for and failing to find the atmosphere of some +other place. + +[Illustration: A seller of pencils.] + + +IV + +Now this last lap of the walk--from green Madison Square and the new +Martin's up the sparkling avenue to the broad, bright Plaza at the Park +entrance, where the brightly polished hotels look down at the driving, +with their awnings flapping and flags out straight--makes the most +popular part of all the walk. + +This is the land of liveried servants and jangling harness, far away, +or pretending to be, from work and worry; this is where enjoyment is +sought and vanity let loose--and that, with the accompanying glitter and +glamour, is always more interesting to the great bulk of humanity. + +It is also better walking up here. The pavements are cleaner now and +there is more room upon them. A man could stand still in the middle of +the broad, smooth walk and look up in the air without collecting a crowd +instantaneously. You can talk to your companion and hear the reply since +the welcome relief of asphalt. + +Here can be seen hundreds of those who walk for the sake of +walking, not only at this hour but all day long. In the morning, +large, prosperous-looking New Yorkers with side-whiskers and +well-fed bodies--and, unintentionally, such amusing expressions, +sometimes--walking part way, at least, down to business, with partly +read newspapers under their arms; while in the opposite direction go +young girls, slender, erect, with hair in a braid and school-books under +their arms and well-prepared lessons. + +[Illustration: It is also better walking up here.] + +Then come those that walk at the convenience of dogs, attractive or +kickable, and a little later the close-ranked boarding-school squads and +the cohorts of nurse-maids with baby-carriages four abreast, charging +everyone off the sidewalk. Next come the mothers of the babies and their +aunts, setting out for shopping, unless they have gone to ride in the +Park, and for Guild Meetings and Reading Clubs and Political Economy +Classes and Heaven knows what other important morning engagements, +ending, perhaps, with a visit to the nerve-specialist. + +And so on throughout the morning and afternoon and evening hours, each +with its characteristic phase, until the last late theatre-party +has gone home, laughing and talking, from supper at Sherry's or the +Waldorf-Astoria; the last late bachelor has left the now quiet club; the +rapping of his cane along the silent avenue dies away down an echoing +side-street; and a lonely policeman nods in the shadow of the church +gate-post. Suddenly the earliest milk-wagon comes jangling up from the +ferry; then dawn comes up over the gas-houses along East River and it +all begins over again. + +[Illustration: ... those who walk for the sake of walking.] + +But the most popular and populous time of all is the regular +walking-home hour, not only for those who have spent the day down +toward the end of the island at work, but for those who have no more +serious business to look after than wandering from club to club drinking +cocktails, or from house to house drinking tea. + +All who take the walk regularly meet many of the same ones every day, +not only acquaintances, but others whom we somehow never see in any +other place, but learn to know quite well, and we wonder who they +are--and they wonder who we are, I suppose. Pairs of pink-faced old +gentlemen, walking arm-in-arm and talking vigorously. Contented young +couples who look at the old furniture in the antique-shop windows and +who are evidently married, and other younger couples who evidently soon +will be, and see nothing, not even their friends. Intent-browed young +business men with newspapers under their arms; governesses out with +their charges; bevies of fluffy girls with woodcock eyes, especially on +matinée day with programmes in their hands, talking gushingly. + +[Illustration: At the lower corner of the Waldorf-Astoria.] + +It is a sort of a club, this walking-up-the-avenue crowd; and each +member grows to expect certain other members at particular points in the +walk, and is rather disappointed when, for instance, the old gentleman +with the large nose is not with his daughter this evening. "What can be +the matter?" the rest of us ask each other, seeing her alone. + +There is one man, the disagreeable member of the club, a +bull-frog-looking man of middle age with a Germanic face and beard, a +long stride, and a tightly buttoned walking-coat (I'm sure he's proud +of his chest), who comes down when we are on the way up and gets very +indignant every time we happen to be late. His scowl says, as plainly as +this type, "What are you doing way down here by the Reform Club? You +know you ought to be passing the Cathedral by this time!" And the worst +of it is, we always do feel ashamed, and I'm afraid he sees it. + +[Illustration: ... with baby-carriages.] + + * * * * * + +This mile and a half from where Flora McFlimsey lived to the beginning +of the driving in the Park is not the staid, sombre, provincial old +Fifth Avenue which Flora McFlimsey knew. Up Fifth Avenue to the Park New +York is a world-city. + +Not merely have so many of the brownstone dwellings, with their high +stoops and unattractive impressiveness, been turned over to business or +pulled down altogether to make room for huge, hyphenated hotels, but the +old spirit of the place itself has been turned out; the atmosphere is +different. + +The imported smartness of the shops, breeches makers to His Royal +Highness So-and-So, and millinery establishments with the same Madame +Luciles and Mademoiselle Lusettes and high prices, that have previously +risen to fame in Paris and London, together with the numerous clubs +and picture-galleries, all furnish local color; but it is the people +themselves that you see along the streets, the various languages they +speak, their expression of countenance, the way they hold themselves, +the manner of their servants--in a word, it is the atmosphere of the +spot that makes you feel that it is not a mere metropolis, but along +this one strip at least our New York is a cosmopolis. + +[Illustration: This is the region of clubs. (The Union League.)] + +And the Walk-Up-town hour is the best time to observe it, when all the +world is driving or walking home from various duties and pleasures. + +There, on that four-in-hand down from Westchester County comes a group +of those New Yorkers who, unwillingly or otherwise, get their names so +often in the papers. The lackey stands up and blows the horn and they +manage very well to endure the staring of those on the sidewalks. + +Here, in the victoria behind them, is a woman who worships them. She +would give many of her husband's new dollars to be up there too, though +pretending not to see the drag. See how she leans back in the cushions +and tries to prop her eyebrows up, after the manner of the Duchess she +once saw in the Row. She succeeds fairly well, too, if only her husband +wouldn't spoil it by crossing his legs and exposing his socks. + +Here are other women with sweet, artless faces who do not seem to be +strenuous or spoiled (as yet) by the world they move in, and these are +the most beautiful women in all the world; some in broughams (as one +popular story-writer invariably puts his heroines), or else walking +independently with an interesting gait. + +[Illustration: ... close-ranked boarding-school squads.] + +Here, in that landau, comes the latest foreign-titled visitor, urbane +and thoughtfully attentive to all that his friends are saying and +pointing out to him. And here is a bit of color, some world-examining, +tired-eyed Maharajah, with silk clothes--or was it only one of the +foreign consuls who drive along here every day. + +There goes a fashionable city doctor, who has a high gig, and +correspondingly high prices, hurrying home for his office hours. Surely, +it would be more comfortable to get in and out of a low phaëton; this +vehicle is as high as that loud, conspicuous, advertising florist's +wagon--can it be for the same reason? + +Here in that grinding automobile come a man and two women on their way +to an East Side _table d'hôte_, to see Bohemia, as they think; see how +reckless and devilish they look by anticipation! Up there on that 'bus +are some people from the country, real people from the real country, +and their mouths are open and they don't care. They are having much +more pleasure out of their trip than the self-conscious family group +entering that big gilded hotel, whose windows are constructed for seeing +in as well as out (and that is another way of advertising). + +[Illustration: ... the coachmen and footmen flock there.] + +Here comes a prominent citizen outlining his speech on his way home +to dress for the great banquet to-night, for he is a well-known +after-dinner orator, and during certain months of the year never has a +chance to dine at home with his family. Suppose, after all, he fails of +being nominated! + +Here come a man and his wife walking down to a well-known +restaurant--early, so that he will have plenty of time to smoke at +the table and she to get comfortably settled at the theatre with the +programme folded before the curtain rises; such a sensible way. He is +not prominent at all, but they have a great deal of quiet happiness out +of living, these two. + +And there goes the very English comedian these two are to see in +Pinero's new piece after dinner, though they did not observe him, to his +disappointment. It is rather late for an actor to be walking down to +his club to dine, but he is the star and doesn't come on until the end +of the first act, and his costume is merely that same broad-shouldered +English-cut frock coat he now has on. We, however, must hurry on. + +[Illustration: The Church of the Heavenly Rest.] + + * * * * * + +Because it keeps the eyes so busy, seeing all the people that pass, one +block of buildings seems very much like another the first few times +the new-comer takes this walk, except, of course, for conspicuous +landmarks like that of the new library on the site of the late reservoir +or the Arcade on the site of the old Windsor Hotel, with its ghastly +memories; but after awhile all the blocks begin to seem very different; +not only the one where you saw a boy on a bicycle run down and killed, +or where certain well-known people live, but the blocks formerly +considered monotonous. There are volumes of stories along the way. +Down Twenty-ninth Street can be seen, so near the avenue and yet so +sequestered, the Church of the Transfiguration, as quaint and low and +toy-like as a stage-setting, ever blessed by stage-people for the act +which made the Little Church Around the Corner known to everyone, and by +which certain pharisees were taught the lesson they should have learned +from the parable in their New Testament. + +Farther up is a church of another sort, where Europeans of more or +less noble blood marry American daughters of acknowledged solvency, +while the crowd covers the sidewalks and neighboring house-steps. +Here, consequently, other people's children come to be married, though +neither, perhaps, attended this church before the rehearsal, and get +quite a good deal about it in the society column too, though, to tell +the truth, they had hoped that the solemn union of these two souls +would appropriately call forth more publicity. Shed a tear for them +in passing. There are many similar disappointments in life along this +thoroughfare. + +Farther back we passed what a famous old rich man intended for the +finest house in New York, and it has thus far served chiefly as a marble +moral. Its brilliance is dingy now, its impressiveness is gone, and +its grandeur is something like that of a Swiss _chalet_ at the base of +a mountain since the erection across the street of an overpowering, +glittering hotel. + +This is the region of clubs; they are more numerous than drug-stores, +as thick as florists' shops. But it seems only yesterday that a certain +club, in moving up beyond Fortieth Street, was said to be going +ruinously far up-town. Now nearly all the well-known clubs are creeping +farther and farther along, even the old Union Club, which for long +pretended to enjoy its cheerless exclusiveness down at the corner of +Twenty-first Street, stranded among piano-makers and publishers, and +then with a leap and a bound went up to Fiftieth Street to build its +bright new home. + +[Illustration: Approaching St. Thomas's.] + +Soon the new, beautiful University Club at Fifty-fourth Street, with the +various college coats of arms on its walls, which never fail to draw +attention from the out-of-town visitors on 'bus-tops, will not seem to +be very far up-town, and by and by even the great, white Metropolitan +will not be so much like a lonely iceberg opposite the Park entrance. I +wonder if anyone knows the names of them all; there always seem to be +others to learn about. Also one learns in time that two or three houses +which for a long time were thought to be clubs are really the homes +of former mayors, receiving from the city, according to the old Dutch +custom, the two lighted lamps for their doorways. This section of the +avenue where, in former years, were well-known rural road-houses along +the drive, is once more becoming, since the residence _régime_ is over, +the region of famous hostelries of another sort. + +[Illustration: The University Club ... with college coats of arms.] + +There is just one of the old variety left, and it, strangely enough, +is within a few feet of two of the most famous restaurants in +America--the somewhat quaint and quite dirty old Willow Tree Cottage; +named presumably for the tough old willow-tree which still persistently +stands out in front, not seeming to mind the glare and stare of the +tall electric lights any more than the complacent old tumble-down +frame tavern itself resents the proximity of Delmonico's and Sherry's, +with whom it seems to fancy itself to be in bitter but successful +rivalry--for do not all the coachmen and footmen flock there during the +long, wet waits of winter nights, while the dances are going on across +at Sherry's and Delmonico's? Business is better than it has been for +years. + +In time, even the inconspicuous houses that formerly seemed so much +alike become differentiated and, like the separate blocks, gain +individualities of their own, though you may never know who are the +owners. They mean something to you, just as do so many of the regular +up-town walkers whose names you do not know; fine old comfortable +places many of them are, even though the architects of their day +did try hard to make them uncomfortable with high, steep steps and +other absurdities. When a "For Sale" sign comes to one of these you +feel sorry, and finally when one day in your walk up-town you see it +irrevocably going the way of all brick, with a contractor's sign out in +front, blatantly boasting of his wickedness, you resent it as a personal +loss. + +[Illustration: Olympia Jackies on shore leave.] + +It seems all wrong to be pulling down those thick walls; exposing +the privacy of the inside of the house, its arrangement of rooms and +fireplaces, and the occupant's taste in color and wall decorations. Two +young women who take the walk up-town always look the other way when +they pass this sad display; they say it's unfair to take advantage of +the house. Soon there will be a deep pit there with puffing derricks, +the sidewalk closed, and show-bills boldly screaming. And by the time +we have returned from the next sojourn out of town there will be an +office-building of ever-so-many stories or another great hotel. Already +the sign there will tell about it. + +You quicken your pace as you draw near the Park; some of the up-town +walkers who live along here have already reached the end of their +journey and are running up the steps taking out door-keys. The little +boy in knickerbockers who seems responsible for lighting Fifth Avenue +has already begun his zigzag trip along the street; soon the long double +rows of lights will seem to meet in perspective. A few belated children +are being hurried home by their maids from dancing-school; their white +frocks sticking out beneath their coats gleam in the half light. Cabs +and carriages with diners in them go spinning by, the coachmen whip up +to pass ahead of you at the street-crossing; you catch a gleam of men's +shirt-bosoms within and the light fluffiness of women, with the perfume +of gloves. Fewer people are left on the sidewalks now--those that are +look at their watches. The sun is well set by the time you reach the +Plaza, but down Fifty-ninth Street you can see long bars of after-glow +across the Hudson. + +In the half-dark, under the Park trees, comes a group of Italian +laborers; their hob-nailed shoes clatter on the cement-walk, their blue +blouses and red neckerchiefs stand out against the almost black of the +trees; they, too, are walking home for the night. The Walk Up-town is +finished and the show is over for to-day. + + + + +THE CROSS STREETS + + + + +[Illustration: Down near the eastern end of the street.] + + + + +THE CROSS STREETS + + +A city should be laid out like a golf links; except for an occasional +compromise in the interest of art or expediency it should be allowed to +follow the natural topography of the country. + +But this is not the way the matter was regarded by the commission +appointed in 1807 to lay out the rural regions beyond New York, which +by that time had grown up to the street now called Houston, and then +called North Street, probably because it seemed so far north--though, to +be sure, there were scattered hamlets and villages, with remembered and +forgotten names, here and there, all the way up to the historic town +of Haarlem. The commissioners saw fit to mark off straight street after +shameless straight street with the uncompromising regularity of a huge +foot-ball field, and gave them numbers like the white five-yard lines, +instead of names. They paid little heed to the original arrangements +of nature, which had done very well by the island, and still less to +man's previous provisions, spontaneously made along the lines of least +resistance--except, notably, in the case of Greenwich, which still +remains whimsically individual and village-like despite the attempt to +swallow it whole by the "new" city system. + +This plan, calling for endless grading and levelling, remains to this +day the official city chart as now lived down to in the perpendicular +gorges cut through the hills of solid rock seen on approaching Manhattan +Field; but the commissioners' marks have not invariably been followed, +or New York would have still fewer of its restful green spots to gladden +the eye, nor even Central Park, indeed, for that space also is checkered +in their chart with streets and avenues as thickly as in the crowded +regions above and below it. + +[Illustration: Across Trinity Church-yard, from the West.] + +However, anyone can criticise creative work, whether it be the plan +of a play or a city, but it is difficult to create. Not many of us +to-day who complacently patronize the honorable commissioners would +have made a better job of it if we had lived at that time--and had been +consulted. For at that time, we must bear in mind, even more important +foreign luxuries than golf were not highly regarded in America, and +America had quite recently thrown off a foreign power. That in itself +explains the matter. Our country was at the extreme of its reaction +from monarchical ideals, and democratic simplicity was running into +the ground. In our straining to be rid of all artificiality we were +ousting art and beauty too. It was so in most parts of our awkward young +nation; but especially did the materialistic tendency of this dreary +disagreeable period manifest itself here in commercial New York, where +Knickerbocker families were lopping the "Vans" off their names--to the +amusement of contemporaneous aristocracy in older, more conservative +sections of the country, and in some cases to the sincere regret of +their present-day descendants. + +[Illustration: An Evening View of St. Paul's Church.] + +Now, the present-day descendants have, in some instances, restored the +original spelling on their visiting cards; in other cases they have +consoled themselves with hyphens, and most of them, it is safe to say, +are bravely recovering from the tendency to over-simplicity. But the +present-day city corporation of Greater New York could not, if it so +desired, put a Richmond Hill back where it formerly stood, southwest of +Washington Square and skirted by Minetta River--any more than it can +bring to life Aaron Burr and the other historical personages who at +various times occupied the hospitable villa which stood on the top of it +and which is also gone to dust. They cannot restore the Collect Pond, +which was filled up at such great expense, and covered by the Tombs +prison and which, it is held by those who ought to know, would have +made an admirable centre of a fine park much needed in that section, as +the city has since learned. They cannot re-establish Love Lane, which +used to lead from the popular Bloomingdale road (Broadway), nearly +through the site of the building where this book is published, and so +westward to Chelsea village. + +They wanted to be very practical, those commissioners of 1807. They +prided themselves upon it. Naturally they did not fancy eccentricities +of landscape and could not tolerate sentimental names. "Love Lane? What +nonsense," said these extremely dignified and quite humorless officials; +"this is to be Twenty-first Street." They wanted to be very practical, +and so it seems the greater pity that with several years of dignified +deliberation they were so unpractical as to make that notorious mistake +of providing posterity with such a paucity of thoroughfares in the +directions in which most of the traffic was bound to flow--that is, up +and down, as practical men might have foreseen, and of running thick +ranks of straight streets, as numerously as possible, across the narrow +island from river to river, where but few were needed; thus causing +the north and south thoroughfares, which they have dubbed avenues, to +be swamped with heterogeneous traffic, complicating the problem for +later-day rapid transit, giving future generations another cause for +criticism, and furnishing a set of cross streets the like of which +cannot be found in any other city of the world. + + +[Illustration: The sights and smells of the water-front are here too.] + +I + +These are the streets which visitors to New York always remark; the +characteristic cross streets of the typical up-town region of long +regular rows of rectangular residences that look so much alike, with +steep similar steps leading up to sombre similar doors and a doctor's +sign in every other window. Bleak, barren, echoing streets where +during the long, monotonous mornings "rags-an-bot'l" are called for, +and bananas and strawberries are sold from wagons by aid of resonant +voices, and nothing else is heard except at long intervals the welcome +postman's whistle or the occasional slamming of a carriage door. +Meantime the sun gets around to the north side of the street, and the +airing of babies and fox-terriers goes on, while down at the corner +one elevated train after another approaches, roars, and rumbles away +in the distance all day long until at last the men begin coming home +from business. These are the ordinary unromantic streets on which live +so few New Yorkers in fiction (it is so easy to put them on the Avenue +or Gramercy Park or Washington Square), but on which most of them seem +to live in real life. A slice of all New York with all its layers of +society and all its mixed interests may be seen in a walk along one of +these typical streets which stretch across the island as straight and +stiff as iron grooves and waste not an inch in their progress from one +river, out into which they have gradually encroached, to the other river +into which also they extend. It is a short walk, the island is so narrow. + +[Illustration: An Old Landmark on the Lower West Side. + +(Junction of Canal and Laight Streets.)] + +Away over on the ragged eastern edge of the city it starts, out of +a ferry-house or else upon the abrupt water-front with river waves +slapping against the solid bulwark. Here are open, free sky, wide +horizon, the smell of the water, or else of the neighboring gas-house, +brisk breezes and sea-gulls flapping lazily. The street's progress +begins between an open lot where rival gangs of East Side boys meet to +fight, on one side, and, on the other, a great roomy lumber-yard, with +a very small brick building for an office. A dingy saloon, of course, +stands on the corner of the first so-called avenue. Away over here the +avenues have letters instead of numbers for names. Across the way--and +it is easily crossed, for on some of these remote thoroughfares the +traffic is so scarce that occasional blades of grass come up between the +cobble-stones--is a weather-boarded and weather-beaten old house of sad +mien, whose curtainless gable windows stare and stare out toward the +river, thinking of other days.... Some warehouses and a factory or two +are usually along here, with buzz-saws snarling; then another lettered +avenue or two and the first of the elevated railroads roars overhead. +This is now several blocks nearer the splendor of Fifth Avenue, but the +neighborhood does not look it, for here is the thick of the tenement +district, with dingy fire-escapes above, and below in the street, +bumping against everyone, thousands of city children, each of them with +at least one lung. The traffic is more crowded now, the street darker, +the air not so good. Above are numerous windows showing the subdivisions +where many families live--very comfortably and happily in numerous +cases; you could not induce them to move into the sunshine and open of +the country. Here, on the ground floor of the flat, is a grocery with +sickening fruit out in front; on one side of it a doctor's sign, on the +other an undertaker's. The window shows a three-foot coffin lined with +soiled white satin, much admired by the wise-eyed little girls. + +[Illustration: Up Beekman Street. Each ... has to change in the greatest +possible hurry from block to block.] + +As each of these succeeding avenues is crossed, with its rush and +roar of up-town and down-town traffic, the neighborhood is said to +be more "respectable," meaning more expensive; more of the women +on the sidewalks wear hats and paint, and there are fewer children +without shoes; private houses are becoming more frequent; babies less +frequent; there is more pretence and less spontaneity. The flats are +now apartments; they have ornate, hideous entrances, which add only +to the rent.... So on until here is Madison Avenue and a whole block +of private houses, varied only by an occasional stable, pleasant, +clean-looking little stables, preferable architecturally to the houses +in some cases. And here at last is Fifth Avenue; and it seems miles +away from the tenements, sparkling, gay, happy or pretending to be, +with streams of carefully dressed people flowing in both directions; +New York's wonderful women, New York's well-built, tight-collared young +men; shining carriages with good-looking horses and well-kept harness, +mixed with big, dirty trucks whose drivers seem unconscious of the +incongruity, but quite well aware of their own superior bumping ability. +Dodging in and out miraculously are a few bicycles.... And now when the +other side of the avenue is reached the rest is an anti-climax. Here +is the trades-people's entrance to the great impressive house on the +corner, so near that other entrance on the avenue, but so far that it +will never be reached by that white-aproned butcher-boy's family--in +this generation, at least. Beyond the conservatory is a bit of backyard, +a pathetic little New York yard, but very green and cheerful, bounded +at the rear by a high peremptory wall which seems to keep the ambitious +brownstone next door from elbowing its way up toward the avenue. + +[Illustration: Under the Approach to Brooklyn Bridge.] + +These next houses, however, are quite fine and impressive, too, and +they are not so alike as they seem at first; in fact, it is quite +remarkable how much individuality architects have learned of late years +to put into the eighteen or twenty feet they have to deal with. The +monotony is varied occasionally with an English basement house or a tall +wrought-iron gateway and a hood over the entrance. Here is a white +Colonial doorway with side-lights. The son of the house studied art, +perhaps, and persuaded his father to make this kind of improvement, +though the old gentleman was inclined to copy the rococo style of the +railroad president opposite.... Half-way down the block, unless a +wedding or a tea is taking place, the street is as quiet as Wall Street +on a Sunday. Behind us can be seen the streams of people flowing up and +down Fifth Avenue. + +By the time Sixth Avenue is crossed brick frequently come into use in +place of brownstone, and there are not only doctors' signs now, but +"Robes et Manteaux" are announced, or sometimes, as on that ugly iron +balcony, merely Madame somebody. By this time also there have already +appeared on some of the newel-posts by the door-bell, "Boarders," +or "Furnished Rooms"--modestly written on a mere slip of paper, as +though it had been deemed unnecessary to shout the words out for the +neighborhood to hear. In there, back of these lace-curtains, yellow, +though not with age, is the parlor--the boarding-house parlor--with +tidies which always come off and small gilt chairs which generally +break, and wax wreaths under glass, like cheeses under fly-screens in +country groceries. In the place of honor hangs the crayon portrait of +the dear deceased, in an ornate frame. But most of the boarders never go +there, except to pay their bills; down in the basement dining-room is +where they congregate, you can see them now through the grated window, +at the tables. Here, on the corner, is the little tailor-shop or +laundry, which is usually found in the low building back of that facing +the avenue, which latter is always a saloon unless it is a drug-store; +on the opposite corner is still another saloon--rivals very likely in +the Tammany district as well as in business, with a policy-shop or a +pool-room on the floor above, as all the neighbors know, though the +local good government club cannot stop it. Here is the "family entrance" +which no family ever enters. + +[Illustration: Chinatown.] + +Then come more apartments and more private residences, not invariably +_passé_, more boarding-houses, many, many boarding-houses, theatrical +boarding-houses, students' boarding-houses, foreign boarding-houses; +more small business places, and so on across various mongrel avenues +until here is the region of warehouses and piano factories and finally +even railway tracks with large astonishing trains of cars. Cross these +tracks and you are beyond the city, in the suburbs, as much as the +lateral edges of this city can have suburbs; yet this is only the +distance of a long golf-hole from residences and urbanity. Here are +stock-yards with squealing pigs, awful smells, deep, black mire, and +then a long dock reaching far out into the Hudson, with lazy river +barges flopping along-side it, and dock-rats fishing off the end--a hot, +hateful walk if ever your business or pleasure calls you out there of a +summer afternoon. There the typical up-town cross street ends its dreary +existence. + + +II + +Down-town it is so different. + +Down-town--"'way down-town," in the vernacular--in latitude far south +of homes and peace and contemplation, where everything is business +and dollars and hardness, and the streets might well be economically +straight, and rigorously business-like, they are incongruously crooked, +running hither and thither in a dreamy, unpractical manner, beginning +where they please and ending where it suits them best, in a narrow, +Old-World way, despite their astonishing, New-World architecture. +Numbers would do well enough for names down here, but instead of concise +and business-like street-signs, the lamp-posts show quaint, incongruous +names, sentimental names, poetic names sometimes, because these streets +were born and not made. + +[Illustration: It still remains whimsically individual and village-like.] + +They were born of the needs or whims of the early population, including +cows, long before the little western city became self-conscious about +its incipient greatness, and ordered a ready-made plan for its future +growth. It was too late for the painstaking commissioners down here. One +little settlement of houses had gradually reached out toward another, +each with its own line of streets or paths, until finally they all +grew together solidly into a city, not caring whether they dovetailed +or not, and one or the other or both of the old road names stuck fast. +The Beaver's Path, leading from the Parade (which afterward became +the Bowling Green) over to the swampy inlet which by drainage became +the sheep pasture and later was named Broad Street, is still called +Beaver Street to this day. The Maiden Lane, where New York girls used +to stroll (and in still more primitive times used to do the washing) +along-side the stream which gave the street its present winding shape +and low grading, is still called Maiden Lane, though probably the only +strollers in the modern jostling crowd along this street, now the +heart of the diamond district, are the special detectives who have a +personal acquaintance with every distinguished jewellery crook in the +country, and guard "the Lane," as they call it, so carefully that not +in fifteen years has a member of the profession crossed the "dead-line" +successfully. There is Bridge Street, which no longer has any stream to +bridge; Dock Street, where there is no dock; Water Street, once upon +the river-front but now separated from the water by several blocks and +much enormously valuable real estate; and Wall Street, which now seems +to lack the wooden wall by which Governor Stuyvesant sought to keep New +Englanders out of town. His efforts were of no permanent value. + +[Illustration: A Fourteenth Street Tree.] + +Nowadays they seem such narrow, crowded little runways, these down-town +cross streets; so crowded that men and horses share the middle of them +together; so narrow that from the windy tops of the irregular white +cliffs which line them you must lean far over in order to see the busy +little men at the dry asphalt bottom, far below, rapidly crawling +hither and thither like excitable ants whose hill has been disturbed. +And in modern times they seem dark and gloomy, near the bottom, even +in the clear, smokeless air of Manhattan, so that lights are turned on +sometimes at mid-day, for at best the sun gets into these valleys for +only a few minutes, so high have the tall buildings grown. But they +were not narrow in those old days of the Dutch; seemed quite the right +width, no doubt, to gossip across, from one Dutch stoop to another, at +close of day, with the after-supper pipe when the chickens and children +had gone to sleep and there was nothing to interrupt the peaceful, +puffing conversation except the lazy clattering bell of an occasional +cow coming home late for milking. Nor were they gloomy in those days, +for the sun found its way unobstructed for hours at a time, when they +were lined with small low-storied houses which the family occupied +upstairs, with business below. Everyone went home for luncheon in those +days--a pleasant, simple system adhered to in this city, it is said, +until comparatively recent times by more than one family whose present +representatives require for their happiness two or three homes in +various other parts of the world in addition to their town house. This +latter does not contain a shop on the ground floor. It is situated far +up the island, at some point beyond the marsh where their forebears went +duck-shooting (now Washington Square), or in some cases even beyond +the site of the second kissing bridge, over which the Boston Post road +crossed the small stream where Seventy-seventh Street now runs. + +[Illustration: Such as broad Twenty-third Street with its famous shops.] + +Now, being such a narrow island, none of its cross streets can be very +long, as was pointed out, even at the city's greatest breadth. The +highest cross-street number I ever found was 742 East Twelfth. But +these down-town cross streets are much shorter, even those that succeed +in getting all the way across without stopping; they are so abruptly +short that each little street has to change in the greatest possible +hurry from block to block, like vaudeville performers, in order to show +all the features of a self-respecting cross street in the business +section. Hence the sudden contrasts. For instance, down at one end of +a certain well-known business street may be seen some low houses of +sturdy red brick, beginning to look antique now with their solid walls +and visible roofs. They line an open, sunny spot, with the smell of +spices and coffee in the air. A market was situated here over a hundred +years ago, and this broad, open space still has the atmosphere of a +marketplace. The sights and smells of the water-front are here, too, +ships and stevedores unloading them, sailors lounging before dingy +drinking-places, and across the cobble-stones is a ferry-house, with +"truck" wagons on the way back to Long Island waiting for the gates +to open, the unmistakable country mud, so different from city mire, +still sticking in cakes to the spokes, notwithstanding the night spent +in town. Nothing worth remarking, perhaps, in all this, but that the +name of the street is Wall Street, and all this seems so different +from the Wall Street of a stone's-throw inland, with crowded walks, +dapper business men, creased trousers, tall, steel buildings, express +elevators, messengers dashing in and out, tickers busy, and all the +hum and suppressed excitement of the Wall Street the world knows, as +different and as suddenly different as the change that is felt in +the very air upon stepping across through the noise and shabby rush +of lower Sixth Avenue into the enchanted peace of Greenwich village, +with sparrows chirping in the wistaria vines that cover old-fashioned +balconies on streets slanting at unexpected angles. + +[Illustration: A Cross Street at Madison Square.] + +[Illustration: Across Twenty-fourth Street--Madison Square when the +Dewey Arch was there.] + +The typical part of these down-town cross streets is, of course, that +latter part, the section more or less near Broadway, and crowded to +suffocation with great businesses in great buildings, commonly known as +hideous American sky-scrapers. This is the real down-town to most of the +men who are down there, and who are too busy thinking about what these +streets mean to each of them to-day to bother much with what the streets +were in the past, or even to notice how the modern tangle of spars and +rigging looks as seen down at the end of the street from the office +window. + +Of course, all these men in the tall buildings, whether possessed +of creative genius or of intelligence enough only to run one of the +elevators, are alike Philistines to those persons who find nothing +romantic or interesting in our modern, much-maligned sky-scrapers, +which have also been called "monuments of modern materialism," and even +worse names, no doubt, because they are unprecedented and unacademic, +probably, as much as because ugly and unrestrained. To many of us, +however, shameless as it may be to confess it, these down-town streets +are fascinating enough for what they are to-day, even if they had no +past to make them all the more charming; and these erect, jubilant young +buildings, whether beautiful or not, seem quite interesting--from their +bright tops, where, far above the turmoil and confusion, Mrs. Janitor +sits sewing in the sun while the children play hide-and-seek behind +water-butts and air-shafts (there is no danger of falling off, it is a +relief to know, because the roof is walled in like a garden), down to +the dark bottom where are the safe-deposit vaults, and the trusty old +watchmen, and the oblong boxes with great fortunes in them, along-side +of wills that may cause family fights a few years later, and add to +the affluence of certain lawyers in the offices overhead. Deep down, +thirty or forty feet under the crowded sidewalk, the stokers shovel +coal under big boilers all day, and electricians do interesting tricks +with switchboards, somewhat as in the hold of a modern battle-ship. +In the many tiers of floors overhead are the men with the minds that +make these high buildings necessary and make down-town what it is, with +their dreams and schemes, their courage and imagination, their trust and +distrust in the knowledge and ignorance of other human beings which are +the means by which they bring about great successes and great failures, +and have all the fun of playing a game, with the peace of conscience +and self-satisfaction which come from hard work and manly sweat. + +Here during daylight, or part of it, they are moving about, far up +on high or down near the teeming surface, in and out of the numerous +subdivisions termed offices, until finally they call the game off for +the day, go down in the express elevator, out upon the narrow little +streets, and turn north toward the upper part of the island. And each, +like a homing pigeon, finds his own division or subdivision in a long, +solid block of divisions called homes, in the part of town where run the +many rows of even, similar streets. + + +III + +These two views across two parts of New York, the two most typical +parts, deal chiefly with what a stranger might see and feel, who came +and looked and departed. Very little has been said to show what the +cross-streets mean to those who are in the town and of it, who know the +town and like it--either because their "father's father's father" did, +or else because their work or fate has cast them upon this island and +kept them there until it no longer seems a desert island. The latter +class, indeed, when once they have learned to love the town of their +adoption, frequently become its warmest enthusiasts, even though they +may have held at one time that city contentedness could not be had +without the symmetry, softness, and repose of older civilizations, +or even that true happiness was impossible when walled in by stone and +steel from the sight and smell of green fields and running brooks. + +[Illustration: Herald Square.] + +He who loves New York loves its streets for what they have been and are +to him, not for what they may seem to those who do not use them. They +who know the town best become as homesick when away from it for the +straightness of the well-kept streets up-town as for the crookedness +and quaintness of the noisy thoroughfares below. The straightness, they +point out complacently, is very convenient for getting about, just as +the numbering system makes it easy for strangers. On the walk up-town +they enjoy looking down upon the expected unexpectedness of the odd +little cross streets, which twist and turn or end suddenly in blank +walls, or are crossed by passageways in mid-air, like the Bridge of +Sighs, down Franklin Street, from the Criminal Court-house to the Tombs. +But farther along in their walk they are just as fond of looking down +the perspective of the straight side streets from the central spine of +Fifth Avenue past block after block of New York homes, away down beyond +the almost-converging rows of even lamp-posts to the Hudson and the +purple Palisades of Jersey, with the glorious gleam and glow of the +sunset; while the energetic "L" trains scurry past, one after another, +trailing beautiful swirls of steam and carrying other New Yorkers to +other homes. None of this could be enjoyed if the cross streets tied +knots in themselves like those in London and some American cities. Even +outsiders appreciate these characteristic New York vistas; and nearly +every poet who comes to town discovers its symbolic incongruity afresh +and sings it to those who have enjoyed it before he was born, just as +most young writers of prose feel called upon to turn their attention the +other way and unearth the great East Side of New York. + +[Illustration: As it Looks on a Wet Night--The Circle, Fifty-ninth +Street and Eighth Avenue.] + +There is no such thing as a typical cross street to New Yorkers. +Individually, each thoroughfare departs as widely from the type as the +men who walk along them differ from the figure known in certain parts of +this country as the typical New Yorker. In New York there is no typical +New Yorker. These so-called similar streets, which look so much alike +to a visitor driving up Fifth Avenue, end so very differently. Some of +them, for instance, after beginning their decline toward the river and +oblivion, are redeemed to respectability, not to say exclusiveness, +again, like some of the streets in the small Twentieths running out +into what was formerly the village of Chelsea; and those who know New +York--even when standing where the Twentieth Streets are tainted with +Sixth Avenue--are cognizant of this fact, just as they are of the peace +and green campus and academic architecture of the Episcopal Theological +Seminary away over there, and of the thirty-foot lawns of London +Terrace, far down along West Twenty-third Street. + +There are other residence streets which do not decline at all, but are +solidly impressive and expensive all the way over to the river, like +those from Central Park to Riverside Drive. And your old New Yorker +does not feel depressed by their conventional similarity, their lack +of individuality; he likes to think that these streets and houses no +longer seem so unbearably new as they were only a short time ago, but +in some cases are at last acquiring the atmosphere of home and getting +rid of the odor of a real-estate project. Then, of course, so many cross +streets would refuse to be classed as typical because they run through +squares or parks, or into reservoirs or other streets, or jump over +railroad tracks by means of viaducts, burrow under avenues by means of +tunnels, or end abruptly at the top of a hill on a high embankment of +interesting masonry, as at the eastern terminus of Forty-first Street--a +spot which never feels like New York at all to me. + +[Illustration: Hideous high buildings. + +Looking east from Central Park at night.] + +Some notice should be taken also of those all-important up-town cross +streets where business has eaten out residence in streaks, as moths +devour clothes, such as broad Twenty-third Street with its famous +shops, and narrow Twenty-eighth Street, with its numerous cheap _table +d'hôtes_, each of which is the best in town; and 125th Street, which is +a Harlem combination of both. These are the streets by which surface-car +passengers are transferred all over the city. These are the streets +upon which those who have grown up with New York, if they have paid +attention to its growth as well as their own, delight to meditate. +Even comparatively young old New Yorkers can say "I remember when" of +memorable evenings in the old Academy of Music in Fourteenth Street off +Union Square, and of the days when Delmonico's had got as far up-town as +Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. + +Furthermore, it could easily be shown that, for those who love old New +York, there is plenty of local historical association along these same +straight, unromantic-looking cross streets--for those who know how to +find it. For that matter one might go still further and hold that there +would not be so much antiquarian delight in New York if these streets +were not new and straight and non-committal looking. If, for instance, +the old Union Road, which was the roundabout, wet-weather route to +Greenwich village, had not been cut up and mangled by a merciless city +plan there wouldn't be the fun of tracing it by projecting corners +and odd angles of houses along West Twelfth Street between Fifth and +Sixth Avenues. It would be merely an open, ordinary street, concealing +nothing, and no more exciting to follow than Pearl Street down-town--and +not half so crooked or historical as Pearl Street. There would not be +that odd, pocket-like courtway called Mulligan "Place," with a dimly +lighted entrance leading off Sixth Avenue between Tenth and Eleventh +Streets. Nor would there be that still more interesting triangular +remnant of an old Jewish burying-ground over the way, behind the old +Grapevine Tavern. For either the whole cemetery would have been allowed +to remain on Union Road (or Street), which is not likely, or else they +would have removed all the graves and covered the entire site with +buildings, as was the case with a dozen other burying-grounds here and +there. If the commissioners had not had their way we could not have all +those inner rows of houses to explore, like the "Weaver's Row," once +near the Great Kiln Road, but now buried behind a Sixth Avenue store +between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets, and entered, if entered at +all, by way of a dark, ill-smelling alley. Nor would the negro quarter, +a little farther up-town, have its inner rows which seem so appropriate +for negro quarters, especially the whitewashed courts opening off +Thirtieth Street, where may be found, in these secluded spots, trees and +seats under them, with old, turbanned mammies smoking pipes and looking +much more like Richmond darkies than those one expects to see two blocks +from Daly's Theatre. Colonel Carter of Cartersville could not have +found such an interesting New York residence if the commissioners had +not had their way, nor could he have entered it by a tunnel-like passage +under the house opposite the Tenth Street studios. Even Greenwich would +not be quite so entertaining without those permanent marks of the +conflict between village and city which resulted in separating West +Eleventh Street so far from Tenth, and in twisting Fourth Street around +farther and farther until it finally ends in despair in Thirteenth +Street. If the commissioners had not had their way we should have had no +"Down Love Lane" written by Mr. Janvier. + + * * * * * + +Looked at from the point of view of use and knowledge, every street, +like every person, gains a distinct personality, some being merely more +strongly distinguished than others. And just as every human being, +whatever his name or his looks may be, continues to win more or less +sympathy the more you know of him and his history and his ambitions, so +with these streets, and their checkered careers, their sudden changes +from decade to decade--or in still less time, in our American cities, +their transformation from farm land to suburban road, and then to +fashionable city street, and then to small business and then to great +business. Such, after all, is the stuff of which abiding city charm is +made, not of plans and architecture. + + + + +RURAL NEW YORK CITY + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + +RURAL NEW YORK CITY + + +There is pretty good snipe shooting within the city limits of New York, +and I have heard that an occasional trout still rises to the fly in one +or two spots along a certain stream--which need not be made better known +than it is already, though it can hardly be worth whipping much longer +at any rate. + +A great many ducks, however, are still shot every season in the city, +by those who know where to go for them; and as for inferior sport, +like rabbits--if you include them as game--on certain days of the year +probably more gunners and dogs are out after rabbits within the limits +of Greater New York than in any region of equal extent in the world, +though to be sure the bags brought in hardly compare with those of +certain parts of Australia or some of our Western States. Down toward +Far Rockaway, a little this side of the salt marshes of Jamaica Bay, in +the hedges and cabbage-patches of the "truck" farms, there is plenty of +good cover for rabbits, as well as in the brush-piles and pastures of +the rolling Borough of Richmond on Staten Island, and the forests and +stone fences of the hilly Bronx, up around Pelham Bay Park for instance. +But the gunners must keep out of the parks, of course, though many +ubiquitous little boys with snares do not. + +In such parts of the city, except when No Trespassing signs prevent, +on any day of the open season scores of men and youths may be seen +whose work and homes are generally in the densest parts of the city, +respectable citizens from the extreme east and west sides of Manhattan, +artisans and clerks, salesmen and small shopkeepers, who, quite +unexpectedly in some cases, share the ancient fret and longing of the +primitive man in common with those other New Yorkers who can go farther +out on Long Island or farther up into New York State to satisfy it. To +be sure, the former do not get as many shots as the latter, but they get +the outdoors and the exercise and the return to nature, which is the +main thing. And the advantage of going shooting in Greater New York is +that you can tramp until too dark to see, and yet get back in time to +dine at home, thus satisfying an appetite acquired in the open with a +dinner cooked in the city. + +[Illustration: Flushing Volunteer Fire Department Responding to a Fire +Alarm.] + +Once a certain young family went off to a far corner of Greater New York +to attack the perennial summer problem. By walking through a hideously +suburban village with a beautifully rural name they found, just over the +brow of a hill, quite as a friend had told them they would, tucked +away all alone in a green glade beside an ancient forest, a charming +little diamond-paned, lattice-windowed cottage, covered thick with vines +outside, and yet supplied with modern plumbing within. It seemed too +good to be true. There was no distinctly front yard or back yard, not +even a public road in sight, and no neighbors to bother them except the +landlord, who lived in the one house near by and was very agreeable. All +through the close season they enjoyed the whistling of quail at their +breakfast; in their afternoon walks, squirrels and rabbits and uncommon +song-birds were too common to be remarked; and once, within forty yards +of the house, great consternation was caused by a black snake, though it +was not black snakes but mosquitoes that made them look elsewhere next +year, and taught them a life-lesson in regard to English lattice-windows +and American mosquito-screens. + +But until the mosquitoes became so persistent it seemed--this +country-place within a city, or _rus in urbe_, as they probably enjoyed +calling it--an almost perfect solution of the problem for a small family +whose head had to be within commuting distance of down-town. For though +so remote, it was not inaccessible; two railroads and a trolley line +were just over the dip of the hill that hid them, so that there was time +for the young man of the house to linger with his family at breakfast, +which was served out-of-doors, with no more objectionable witnesses +than the thrushes in the hedges. And then, too, there was time to get +exercise in the afternoon before dinner. "It seemed an ideal spot," to +quote their account of it, "except that on our walks, just as we thought +that we had found some sequestered dell where nobody had come since the +Indians left, we would be pretty sure to hear a slight rustle behind us, +and there--not an Indian but a Tammany policeman would break through the +thicket, with startling white gloves and gleaming brass buttons, looking +exactly like the policemen in the Park. Of course he would continue on +his beat and disappear in a moment, but by that time we had forgotten to +listen to the birds and things, and the distant hum of the trolley would +break in and remind us of all things we have wanted to forget." + +[Illustration: A Bit of Farm Land in the Heart of Greater New York. + +"Acre after acre, farm after farm, and never a sign of city in sight."] + + +I + +In a way, that is rather typical of most of the rurality found within +the boundaries of these modern aggregations or trusts of large and +small towns, and intervening country, held together (more or less) +by one name, under one municipal government, and called a "city" by +legislature. There is plenty that is not at all city-like within the +city walls--called limits--there is plenty of nature, but in most cases +those wanting to commune with it are reminded that it is no longer +within the domain of nature. The city has stretched out its hand, and +the mark of the beast can usually be seen. + +You can find not only rural seclusion and bucolic simplicity, but the +rudeness and crudeness of the wilderness and primeval forest; indeed, +even forest fires have been known in Greater New York. But the trouble +is that so often the bucolic simplicity has cleverly advertised lots +staked out across it; the rural seclusion shows a couple of factory +chimneys on the near horizon. The forest fire was put out by the fire +department. + +There are numerous peaceful duck-ponds in the Borough of Queens, for +instance, as muddy and peaceful as ever you saw, but so many of them are +lighted by gas every evening. Besides the fisheries, there is profitable +oyster-dredging in several sections of this city; and in at least one +place it can be seen by electric light. There are many potato-patches +patrolled by the police. + +[Illustration: One of the Farmhouses that Have Come to Town. + +The old Duryea House, Flushing, once used as a head-quarters for Hessian +officers.] + +Not far from the geographical centre of the city there are fields where, +as all who have ever commuted to and from the north shore of Long Island +must remember, German women may be seen every day in the tilling season, +working away as industriously as the peasants of Europe, blue skirts, +red handkerchiefs about their heads, and all: while not far away, at +frequent intervals, passes a whining, thumping trolley-car, marked +Brooklyn Bridge. + +[Illustration: East End of Duryea House, where the Cow is Stabled.] + +In another quarter, on a dreary, desolate waste, neither farm land, +nor city, nor village, there stands an old weather-beaten hut, long, +low, patched up and tumbled down, with an old soap-box for a front +doorstep--all beautifully toned by time, the kind amateurs like to +sketch, when found far away from home in their travels. The thing that +recalls the city in this case, rather startlingly, is a rudely lettered +sign, with the S's turned the wrong way, offering lots for sale in +Greater New York. + +It is not necessary to go far away from the beaten paths of travel in +Greater New York to witness any of these scenes of the comedy, sometimes +tragedy, brought about by the contending forces of city and country. +Most of what has been cited can be observed from car-windows. For +that matter, somewhat similar incongruity can be found in all of our +modern, legally enlarged cities, London, with the hedges and gardens +of Hampstead Heath, and certain parts of the Surrey Side, or Chicago, +with its broad stretches of prairie and farms--the subject of so many +American newspaper jokes a few years ago. + +[Illustration: The Old Water-power Mill from the Rear of the Old Country +Cross-roads Store.] + +[Illustration: The Old Country Cross-roads Store, Established 1828. + +In the background is the old water-power mill.] + +[Illustration: Interior of the Old Country Cross-roads Store.] + +But New York--and this is another respect in which it is different from +other cities--our great Greater New York, which is better known as +having the most densely populated tenement districts in the world, can +show places that are more truly rural than any other city of modern +times, places where the town does not succeed in obtruding itself at +all. From Hampstead Heath, green and delightful as it is, every now +and then the gilded cross of St. Paul's may be seen gleaming far below +through the trees. And in Chicago, bucolic as certain sections of it +may be, one can spy the towers of the city for miles away, across the +prairie; even when down in certain wild, murderous-looking ravines there +is ever on high the appalling cloud of soft-coal smoke. But out in the +broad, rolling farm lands of Long Island you can walk on for hours and +not find any sign of the city you are in, except the enormous tax-rate, +which, by the way, has the effect of discouraging the farmers (many of +whom did not want to become city people at all) from spending money for +paint and improvements, and this only results in making the country +look more primitive, and less like what is absurdly called a city. + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration: The Colony of Chinese Farmers, Near the Geographical +Centre of New York City.] + +But the best of these rural parts of town cannot be spied from +car-windows, or the beaten paths of travel. + + +II + +Make a journey out through the open country to the southeast of +Flushing, past the Oakland Golf Club, and over toward the Creedmoor +Rifle Range, after a while turn north and follow a twisting road that +leads down into the ravine at the head of Little Neck Bay, where a few +of the many Little Neck clams come from. All of these places are well +within the eastern boundary of the city, and this little journey will +furnish a very good example of a certain kind of rural New York, but +only one kind, for it is only one small corner of a very big place. + +[Illustration: Working as industrially as the peasants of Europe, blue +skirts, red handkerchiefs about their heads....] + +As soon as you have ridden, or walked--it is better to walk if there is +plenty of time--beyond the fine elms of the ancient Flushing streets, +you will be in as peaceful looking farming country as can be found +anywhere. But the interesting thing about it is that here are seen not +merely a few incongruous green patches that happen to be left between +rapidly devouring suburban towns--like the fields near Woodside where +the German women work--out here one rides through acre after acre of +it, farm after farm, mile after mile, up hill, down hill, corn-fields, +wheat-fields, stone fences, rail fences, no fences, and never a town in +sight, much less anything to suggest the city, except the procession of +market-wagons at certain hours, to or from College Point Ferry, and they +aren't so conspicuously urban after all. + +[Illustration: Remains of a windmill in New York City, Between Astoria +and Steinway.] + +Even the huge advertising sign-boards which usually shout to passers-by +along the approaches to cities are rather scarce in this country, +for it is about midway between two branches of the only railroad on +Long Island, and there is no need for a trolley. There is nothing +but country roads, with more or less comfortable farm-houses and +large, squatty barns; not only old farm-houses, but what is much more +striking, farm-houses that are new. Now, it does seem odd to build a new +farm-house in a city. + +[Illustration: The Dreary Edge of Long Island City.] + +Out in the fields the men are ploughing. A rooster crows in the +barn-yard. A woman comes out to take in the clothes. Children climb +the fence to gaze when people pass by. And one can ride for a matter +of miles and see no other kind of life, except the birds in the hedge +and an occasional country dog, not suburban dogs, but distinctly farm +dogs, the kind that have deep, ominous barks, as heard at night from +a distance. By and by, down the dusty, sunny, lane-like road plods a +fat old family Dobbin, pulling an old-fashioned phaëton in which are +seated a couple of prim old maiden ladies, dressed in black, who try to +make him move faster in the presence of strangers, and so push and jerk +animatedly on the reins, which he enjoys catching with his tail, and +holds serenely until beyond the bend in the road. + +[Illustration: The Procession of Market-wagons at College Point Ferry.] + +Of course, this is part of the city. The road map proves it. But there +are very few places along this route where you can find it out in any +other way. The road leads up over a sort of plateau; a wide expanse of +country can be viewed in all directions, but there are only more fields +to see, more farm-houses and squatty barns, perhaps a village church +steeple in the distance, a village that has its oldest inhabitant and +a church with a church-yard. Away off to the north, across a gleaming +strip of water, which the map shows to be Long Island Sound, lie the +blue hills of the Bronx. They, too, are well within Greater New York. +So is all that country to the southwest, far beyond the range of the +eye, Jamaica, and Jamaica Bay and Coney Island. And over there, more to +the west, is dreary East New York and endless Brooklyn, and dirty Long +Island City, and, still farther, crowded Manhattan Island itself. Then +one realizes something of the extent of this strange manner of city. It +is very ridiculous. + +[Illustration: Past dirty backyards and sad vacant lots.] + +When at last the head of Little Neck Bay is reached, here is another +variety of primitive country scene. The upland road skirting the hill, +beyond which the rifles of Creedmoor are crashing, takes a sudden turn +down a steep grade, a guileless-looking grade, but very dangerous for +bicyclists, especially in the fall when the ruts and rocks are covered +thick with leaves for days at a time. Then, after passing a nearer view +(through a vista of big trees) of the blue Sound, with the darker blue +of the hills beyond, the road drops down into a peaceful old valley, +tucked away as serene and unmolested as it was early in the nineteenth +century, when the country cross-roads store down there was first built, +along-side of the water-power mill, which is somewhat older. In front +is an old dam and mill-pond, called "The Alley," recently improved, +but still containing black bass; in the rear Little Neck Bay opens out +to the Sound beyond, one of the sniping and ducking places of Greater +New York. The old store, presumably the polling-place of that election +district of the city, is where prominent personages of the neighborhood +congregate and tell fishing and shooting stories, and gossip, and talk +politics, seated on boxes and barrels around the white-bodied stove, for +the sake of which they chew tobacco. + +It is one of those stores that contain everything--from anchor-chains to +chewing-gum. There are bicycle sundries in the show-case and boneless +bacon suspended from the old rafters, but the best thing in the place +is a stream of running water. This is led down by a pipe from the side +of the hill, acts as a refrigerator for a sort of bar in one corner of +the store--for this establishment sells a greater variety of commodities +than most department stores--and passes out into Long Island Sound in +the rear. + +The fact that they are in Greater New York does not seem to bother them +much down in this happy valley, at least it hasn't changed their mode of +life apparently. The last time we were there a well-tanned Long Islander +was buying some duck loads; he said he was merely going out after a few +snipe, but he ordered No. 5's. + +[Illustration: New York City Up in the Beginnings of the Bronx +Regions--Skating at Bronxdale.] + +"Have you a policeman out here?" we asked him. + +"Oh, yes, but he doesn't come around very often." + +"How often?" + +"Oh, I generally catch a glimpse of him once a month or so," said the +gunner. "But then, you see, these here city policemen have to be pretty +careful, they're likely to get lost." + +"Down near Bay Ridge," a man on the cracker-barrel put in as he +stroked the store-cat, "one night a policeman got off his beat and +floundered into the swamp, and if it hadn't been that some folks of the +neighborhood rescued him, he'd have perished--of mosquitoes." + +"We don't have any mosquitoes here on the north shore," put in the +other, addressing us without blinking. He is probably the humorist of +the neighborhood. + + * * * * * + +This is only one of the many pilgrimages that may be made in Greater New +York, and shows only one sort of rurality. It is the great variety of +unurban scenes that is the most impressive thing about this city. Here +is another sort, seen along certain parts of Jamaica Bay: + +Long, level sweeps of flat land, covered with tall, wild grass that +the sea-breezes like to race across. The plain is intersected here and +there with streams of tide-water. At rare intervals there are lonely +little clumps of scrub-oaks, huddled close together for comfort. Away +off in the distance the yellow sand-dunes loom up as big as mountains, +and beyond is the deep, thrilling blue of the open sea, with sharp-cut +horizon. + +The sun comes up, the wonderful color tricks of the early morning are +exhibited, and the morning flight of birds begins. The tide comes +hurrying in, soon hiding the mud flats where the snipe were feeding. +The breeze freshens up, and whitecaps, like specks, can be seen on the +distant blue band of the ocean.... The sun gets hot. The tide turns. +The estuaries begin to show their mud-banks again. The sun sinks lower; +and distant inlets reflect it brilliantly. The birds come back, the +breeze dies down, and the sun sets splendidly across the long, flat +plain; another day has passed over this part of a so-called city and no +man has been within a mile of the spot. The nearest sign of habitation +is the lonely life-saving station away over there on the dunes, and, +perhaps, a fisherman's shanty. Far out on the sky-line is the smoke of a +home-coming steamer, whose approach has already been announced from Fire +Island, forty miles down the coast. + +[Illustration: Another Kind of City Life--Along the Marshes of Jamaica +Bay.] + +Then, here is another sort: A rambling, stony road, occasionally passing +comfortable old houses--historic houses in some cases--with trees and +lawns in front, leading down to stone walls that abut the road. The +double-porticoed house where Aaron Burr died is not far from here. An +old-fashioned, stone-arched bridge, a church steeple around the bend, a +cluster of trees, and under them, a blacksmith shop. Trudging up the +hill is a little boy, who stares and sniffles, carrying a slate and +geography in one hand, and leading a little sister by the other, who +also sniffles and stares. This, too, is Greater New York, Borough of +Richmond, better known as Staten Island. This borough has nearly all +kinds of wild and tame rurality and suburbanity. Its farms need not be +described. + + +III + +Pointing out mere farms in the city becomes rather monotonous; they are +too common. But there is one kind of farm in New York that is not at +all common, that has never existed in any other city, so far as I know, +in ancient or modern times. It is situated, oddly enough, in about the +centre of the 317 square miles of New York--so well as the centre of a +boot-shaped area can be located. + +[Illustration: There is profitable oyster-dredging in several sections +of the city.] + +Cross Thirty-fourth Street Ferry to Long Island City, which really +does not smell so bad as certain of our poets would have us believe; +take the car marked "Steinway," and ride for fifteen or twenty minutes +out through dreary city edge, past small, unpainted manufactories, +squalid tenements, dirty backyards, and sad vacant lots that serve as +the last resting-place for decayed trucks and overworked wagons. Soon +after passing a tumble-down windmill, which looks like an historic old +relic, on a hill-top, but which was built in 1867 and tumbled down +only recently, the Steinway Silk Mills will be reached (they can be +distinguished by the long, low wings of the building covered with +windows like a hothouse). Leave the car here and strike off to the left, +down the lane which will soon be an alley, and then a hundred yards or +so from the highway will be seen the first of the odd, paper-covered +houses of a colony of Chinese farmers who earn their living by tilling +the soil of Greater New York. + +At short distances are the other huts crouching at the foot of big +trees, with queer gourds hanging out in front to dry, and large unusual +crocks lying about, and huge baskets, and mattings--all clearly +from China; they are as different from what could be bought on the +neighboring avenue as the farm and farmers themselves are different +from most Long Island farms and farmers. Out in the fields, which are +tilled in the Oriental way, utilizing every inch of ground clean up to +the fence, and laid out with even divisions at regular intervals, like +rice-fields, the farmers themselves may be seen, working with Chinese +implements, their pigtails tucked up under their straw hats, while the +western world wags on in its own way all around them. This is less than +five miles from the glass-covered parade-ground of the Waldorf-Astoria. + +They have only three houses among them, that is, there are only three +of these groups of rooms, made of old boards and boxes and covered with +tar paper; but no one in the neighborhood seems to know just how many +Chinamen live there. The same sleeping space would hold a score or more +over in Pell Street. + +Being Chinamen, they grow only Chinese produce, a peculiar kind of bean +and some sort of salad, and those large, artistic shaped melons, seen +only in China or Chinatown, which they call something that sounds like +"moncha," and which, one of them told me, bring two cents a pound from +the Chinese merchants and restaurateurs of Manhattan. For my part, I +was very glad to learn of these farms, for I had always been perplexed +to account for the fresh salads and green vegetables, of unmistakably +Chinese origin, that can be found in season in New York's Chinatown. +Under an old shed near by they have their market-wagon, in which, +looking inscrutable, they drive their stuff to market through Long +Island City, and by way of James Slip Ferry over to Chinatown; then back +to the farm again, looking inscrutable. And on Sundays, for all we know, +they leave the wagon behind and go to gamble their earnings away in Mott +Street, or perhaps away over in some of the well-known places of Jersey +City. Then back across the two ferries to farming on dreary Monday +mornings. + + +IV + +Even up in Manhattan there are still places astonishingly unlike what +is expected of the crowded little island on which stands New York +proper. There is Fort Washington with tall trees growing out of the +Revolutionary breastworks, land, under their branches, a fine view up +the Hudson to the mountains--a quiet, sequestered bit of public park +which the public hasn't yet learned to treat as a park, though within +sight of the crowds crossing the viaduct from the Grant Monument on +Riverside. There are wild flowers up there every spring, and until quite +recently so few people visited this spot for days at a time that there +were sometimes woodcock and perhaps other game in the thickly wooded +ravine by the railroad. Soon, however, the grass on the breastworks will +be worn off entirely, and the aged deaf man who tends the river light on +Jeffreys Hook will become sophisticated, if he is still alive. + +[Illustration: Cemetery Ridge, Near Richmond, Staten Island.] + +It will take longer, however, for the regions to the north, beyond +Washington Heights, down through Inwood and past Tubby Hook, to look +like part of a city. And across the Spuyten Duyvil Creek from Manhattan +Island, up through the winding roads of Riverdale to Mount St. Vincent, +and so across the line to Yonkers, it is still wooded, comparatively +secluded and country-like, even though so many of the fine country +places thereabouts are being deserted. Over to the eastward, across +Broadway, a peaceful road which does not look like a part of the same +thoroughfare as the one with actors and sky-scrapers upon it, there are +the still wilder stretches of Mosholu and Van Cortlandt Park, where, +a year or two ago, large, well-painted signs on the trees used to say +"Beware of the Buffaloes." + +[Illustration: A Peaceful Scene in New York. + +In the distance is St. Andrew's Church, Borough of Richmond, Staten +Island.] + +The open country sport of golf has had a good deal to do with making +this rural park more generally appreciated. Golf has done for Van +Cortlandt what the bicycle had done for the Bronx and Pelham Bay Parks. +There are still natural, wild enough looking bits, off from the beaten +paths, in all these parks, scenes that look delightfully dark and sylvan +in the yearly thousands of amateur photographs--the camera does not +show the German family approaching from the rear, or the egg-shells and +broken beer-bottles behind the bushes--but beware of the police if you +break a twig, or pick a blossom. + + +V + +Those who enjoy the study of all the forms of nature except the highest +can find plenty to sigh over in the way the city thrusts itself upon +the country. But to those who think that the haunts and habits of the +Man are not less worthy of observation than those of the Beaver and +the Skunk, it is all rather interesting, and some of it not so deeply +deplorable. + +[Illustration: A Relic of the Early Nineteenth Century, Borough of +Richmond.] + +There are certain old country taverns, here and there, up toward +Westchester, and down beyond Brooklyn and over on Staten Island--not +only those which everybody knows, like the Hermitage in the Bronx and +Garrisons over by the fort at Willets Point, but remote ones which have +not yet been exploited in plays or books, and which still have a fine +old flavor, with faded prints of Dexter and Maud S. and much earlier +favorites in the bar-room. In some cases, to be sure, though still +situated at a country cross-roads, with green fields all about, they are +now used for Tammany head-quarters with pictures of the new candidate +for sheriff in the old-fashioned windows--but most of them would have +gone out of existence entirely after the death of the stage-coach, if it +had not been for the approach of the city, and the side-whiskered New +Yorkers of a previous generation who drove fast horses. If the ghosts +of these men ever drive back to lament the good old days together, they +must be somewhat surprised, possibly disappointed, to find these rural +road-houses doing a better business than even in their day. The bicycle +revived the road-house, and though the bicycle has since been abandoned +by those who prefer fashion to exercise, the places that the wheel +disclosed are not forgotten. They are visited now in automobiles. + +[Illustration: An Old-fashioned Stone-arched Bridge. (Richmond, Staten +Island.)] + +There are all those historic country-houses within the city limits, well +known, and in some cases restored, chiefly by reason of being within +the city, like the Van Cortlandt house, now a part of the park, and the +Jumel mansion standing over Manhattan Field, a house which gets into +most historical novels of New York. Similarly Claremont Park has adopted +the impressive Zabriskie mansion; and the old Lorillard house in the +Bronx might have been torn down by this time but that it has been made +into a park house and restaurant. Nearly all these are tableted by the +"patriotic" societies, and made to feel their importance. The Bowne +place in Flushing, a very old type of Long Island farm-house, was turned +into a museum by the Bowne family itself--an excellent idea. The Quaker +Meeting-house in Flushing, though not so old by twenty-five years as +it is painted in the sign which says "Built in 1695," will probably be +preserved as a museum too. + +[Illustration: An Old House in Flatbush.] + +Another relic in that locality well worth keeping is the Duryea place, +a striking old stone farm-house with a wide window on the second floor, +now shut in with a wooden cover supported by a long brace-pole reaching +to the ground. Out of this window, it is said, a cannon used to point. +This was while the house was head-quarters for Hessian officers, during +the long monotonous months when "the main army of the British army lay +at Flushing from Whitestone to Jamaica;" and upon Flushing Heights +there stood one of the tar-barrel beacons that reached from New York to +Norwich Hill, near Oyster Bay. The British officers used to kill time +by playing at Fives against the blank wall of the Quaker Meeting-house, +or by riding over to Hempstead Plains to the fox-hunts--where the +Meadowbrook Hunt Club rides to the hounds to-day. The common soldiers +meanwhile stayed in Flushing and amused themselves, according to the +same historian, by rolling cannon-balls about a course of nine holes. +That was probably the nearest approach to the great game at that time +in America, and it may have been played on the site of the present +Flushing Golf Club. + +These same soldiers also amused themselves in less innocent ways, so +that the Quakers and other non-combatants in and about this notorious +Tory centre used to hide their live stock indoors over night, to keep +it from being made into meals by the British. That may account for the +habit of the family occupying the Duryea place referred to; they keep +their cow in a room at one end of the house. At any rate it is not +necessary for New Yorkers to go to Ireland to see sights of that sort. + +Those are a few of the historic country places that have come to town. +There is a surprisingly large number of them, and even when they are not +adopted and tableted by the D. A. R. or D. R., or S. R. or S. A. R., +they are at least known to local fame, and are pointed out and made much +of. + +But the many abandoned country houses which are not especially historic +or significant--except to certain old persons to whom they once meant +home--goodly old places, no longer even near the country, but caught +by the tide well within the city, that is the kind to be sorry for. +Nobody pays much attention to them. A forlorn For Sale sign hangs out +in front, weather-beaten and discouraged. The tall Colonial columns +still try to stand up straight and to appear unconscious of the faded +paint and broken windows, hoping that no one notices the tangle of +weeds in the old-fashioned garden, where old-fashioned children used to +play hide-and-seek among the box-paths, now overgrown or buried under +tin cans.... Across the way, perhaps, there has already squatted an +unabashed row of cheap, vulgar houses, impudent, staring little city +homes, vividly painted, and all exactly alike, with highly ornamented +wooden stoops below and zinc cornices above, like false-hair fronts. +They look at times as though they were putting their heads together to +gossip and smile about their odd, old neighbor that has such out-of-date +fan-lights, that has no electric bell, no folding-beds, and not a bit of +zinc cornicing. + +Meanwhile the old house turns its gaze the other way, thinking of days +gone by, patiently waiting the end--which will come soon enough. + +[Illustration] + + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Simple typographical errors were corrected. + +Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant +preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. + +Page 8, first line: "manifestations of the spirit" could be "or". + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's New York Sketches, by Jesse Lynch Williams + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42501 *** |