I. TON I i£x ICtbrtfi SEYMOUR DURST When you leave, please leave this hook Because it has heen said "Ever'thing comes t' him who waits Except a loaned hook." Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library Digitized by the Internet . Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/bookofnewyorkOOshac_0 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK By ROBERT SHACKLETON Author of "The Book of Boston," "Unvisited Places of Old Europe," Etc. Illustrated with Photographs and with Drawings by R. L. BoYKR THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 1928 COPYRIGHT 19 17 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY Tke Book of New York CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A City Young and Old 1 II The Great Indifferent City .... 14 III Down at the Battery 34 IV The Church and the Street .... 44 V Around City Hall Park 57 VI ''Million-footed Manhattan" .... 70 VII Up the Bowery 81 VIII Some Contrasts of the City .... 97 IX Among the Tenements 107 X Tammany 124 XI The City of Foreigners 135 XII Two Notable Squares 147 XIII Gramercy and Stuyvesant and Old Chelsea 158 XIV Up Fifth to Forty-Sfcond 168 XV Above Forty-Second 187 XVI On MURR.VY Hill 205 XVII Midst Pleasures and Palaces .... 213 XVIII Superstitions of the City 228 XIX Streets and Ways 241 XX The Region of Riverside 258 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAQZ XXI To JuMEL AND Van Cortlandt .... 268 XXII Hamilton and Burr 280 XXIII Where Many Thousands Dwell . . . 290 XXIV Up the Hudson 302 XXV West Point ......... 317 XXVI Down the Bay . > . 328 XXVII In Greenwich Village . . . . . .343 XXVIII Washington Square . . > „ r.- . 357 ILLUSTRATIONS The Governor's Room in the City Hall . . Frontispiece Madison Square Garden . . . Title Page Decoration PAGE The Brooklyn Bridge (heading) 1 The Statue of Liberty (initial) 1 The Bowling Green (tailpiece) 13 The Hall of Fame (initial) 14 Staircase and Rotunda of the Old City Hall (facing) 16 Poe's Cottage (tailpiece) 33 The Old House on the Battery .... (initial) 34 The Battery (facing) 36 Lower Manhattan (tailpiece) 43 The Stock Exchange (initial) 44 Old Trinity, far overtopped by Office Buildings (facing) 46 Fraunces Tavern (tailpiece) 56 St. Paul's on Broadway (initial) 57 The Old City Hall and its Setting . . . (facing) 66 Statue of Nathan Hale (tailpiece) 69 The Equitable Building (initial) 70 Minetta Street (tailpiece) 80 Statue of Peter Cooper (initial) 81 The Sherman Statue ...... (facing) 84 Old St. Mark's (tailpiece) 96 The Ancient Church in Eastchester . . (initial) 97 The End of 106th Street (tailpiece) 106 The Cathedral of St. John the Divine . . (initial) 107 Among the Tenements; Rivington Street (facing) 108 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Manhattan Bridge (tailpiece) 123 Wall Street (initial) 124 The City Hall (tailpiece) 134 The Shopping Stretch of Fifth Avenue . (initial) 135 The Heart of Chinatown (tailpiece) 146 The Appellate Court (initial) 147 The Towers of Madison Square . . . (facing) 150 The Farragut Monument (tailpiece) 157 Statue of Petrus Stuyvesant .... (initial) 158 Studio Buildings in East 19th Street . . (facing) 160 Gramercy Park and the Players Club . . (facing) 164 The Oldest House in New York . . . (tailpiece) 167 The Old Eleventh Street Corner . . . (initial) 168 ' ' The Little Church Around the Corner ' ' . (facing) 174 The New York Public Library .... (tailpiece) 186 St. Patrick's Cathedral (initial) 187 Forty-Second Street near Fifth Avenue . (facing) 190 The Metropolitan Museum (tailpiece) 204 The Grand Central Terminal .... (initial) 205 The Obelisk in Central Park .... (facing) 210 On the Park Side of Fifth Avenue . . . (tailpiece) 212 Madison Square Garden (initial) 213 Classic Pillars of the Pennsylvania Station (facing) 216 The Hispanic Museum (tailpiece) 227 A Hester Street Corner (initial) 228 The Lights of Broadway (facing) 234 The Custom House (tailpiece) 240 The Corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue (initial) 241 The College of the City of New York . . (tailpiece) 257 Grant's Tomb (initial) 258 The Beginning of Riverside Drive . . . (facing) 260 Columbia University (facing) 264 The Soldiers* and Sailors' Monument . . (tailpiece) 267 The Van Cortlandt Mansion .... (initial) 268 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Jumel Mansion (tailpiece) 279 The Statue of Hamilton in Central Park . (initial) 280 New York from the Bay (tailpiece) 289 Entrance to Prospect Park (initial) 290 The Brooklyn Museum (tailpiece) 301 Staircase in the Philipse Manor Hall . . (initial) 302 The Hudson near Fort Washington . . (facing) 304 Irving 's Home, Sunnyside (tailpiece) 316 The Medieval Effect of West Point . . (initial) 317 West Point and the Highlands . . . (facing) 322 The West Point Chapel ...... (tailpiece) 327 The Old Moravian Church . . . . . (initial) 328 Billopp House (tailpiece) 342 Old Wrought-Iron Newel Posts . . . (initial) 343 A Bit of Greenwich Village : Milligan Place (facing) 346 Comer in Old Greenwich (tailpiece) 356 The Benches of Washington Square . . (initial) 357 Washington Arch : the Gateway of Fifth Avenue (facing) 360 Washington's Words in Stone .... (tailpiece) 369 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK CHAPTER I A CITY YOUNG AND OLD |INE old Frenchman that he was, when he came back over the ocean to ns a half century after his youthful advent, Lafayette appreciated to the full the finely delightful qualities which he rec- ognized in the character of our principal city. shall love New York,'' he said; Mon- sieur, I shall love New York so well that I may never be able to get away from it!" And this ' ' ' expresses the keynote of New York, its magnetic quality, the way in which it draws, attracts, allures. He who writes of New York should take the city seriously, yet not too seriously. The city is so great, so mighty, so tremendous, in population, in wealth, 1 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK in power, in achievements, that any tendency to over- estimate should be checked, that every claim to impor- tance should be carefully weighed, that the subtle danger of over-admiration should be avoided. That excellent New York poet of long ago, Fitz-Greene Halleck, felt and expressed all this when he wrote : **And on our City Hall a Justice stands: A neater form was never made of board ; Holding majestically in her hands A pair of steelyards and a wooden sword, And looking down with complaisant civility — Emblem of dignity and durability." But when, with every tendency to yield over-ad- miration or over-importance fully in hand, one looks at New York seriously, soberly, with intent to see only what is fairly to be seen, it is seen as a city of immense and wide interest. Far more than any other city, whether of the past or of the present, New York is one that is both young and old. Insistently young, vociferously young, ob- viously young, it at the same time displays all the qualities of maturity. It is a city of today, yet also a city of three centuries. This marks it, among cities, more than does any other of its myriad characteristics. There are the vivid, vital evidences of youth, the fire of youth, the strength and vigor and crudity and ruthlessness and inconstancy of youth ; it is a city as new and as crude as the newest of mining towns and of as gay an irre- sponsibility : yet it is also a city with the sadness, the earnestness, the gravity, the solidity, the balance, the 2 A CITY YOUNG AND OLD impressiveness, of age. Eightly seen, its chasmed streets are but wrinkles cut by the years. Looking at the tens of thousands of new buildings, the miles and miles of new-made thoroughfares, it is the very newest of all cities: yet it is also one that possesses the salt and the savor of time. One needs but remember that in old St. Mark's Church there lies buried a man who, of powerful influence on the life and development of this, his beloved to^\m, was ruler here while the long-ago Thirty Years' War was rag- ing, was born when Elizabeth was Queen of England and while Shakespeare was splendidly in mid-career. In everything. New York is the city that is differ- ent. When considering Boston, Philadelphia, Chi- cago, San Francisco, it is customary to speak of what their people think or are or do, but no one ever speaks thus of the people of New York, but only of the city itself. For the city is so much greater than its peo- ple! With New York, the city makes the people; elsewhere, the people make the city. Always it has been a restless city; and Adrian Block, who built the first handful of houses here, over three hundred years ago, and here built and launched the first vessel built in America, named that vessel of Manhattan the Unrest, as if with a touch of in- spired insight. And Verazzano, who was here long before Block; coming, indeed, in the reign and in the service of him of **the longest nose in history," as the New Yorker, Henry James, described that pic- turesque king, Francis the First ; also saw Manhattan with the eye of prophecy, for he set down in his re- 3 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK port that the island seemed to be a place of wealth! It seemed to him a place of gold, of jewels, of furs — and it is still a place of gold and of jewels and of furs. Never was there any other city that so rapidly and ruthlessly tears down and throws away. It would seem as if the motto of New York were Never save for tomorrow what can be destroyed today!" It builds swiftly, makes immense advances swiftly, but as swiftly destroys what it has built : dwelling houses and business buildings that have gone up like magic disappear like magic, in single gaps, in rows, in streets, in four-square blocks. Nothing, however new and costly, is permitted to stand for a moment in the path of public or private improvement. For new thoroughfares, for burrowing subways, for bridge approaches, massed houses vanish; and other buildings, in number innumerable, vanish that there may arise triumphant business structures or apart- ment houses such as elsewhere the world has never seen. The story, cheerfully typical, is told, of a vis- itor of note, that he was driven uptown, in the morn- ing, to be toasted and greeted and to meet some of the city^s best, and that in the afternoon he was taken back over the same route that he might see what changes had meanwhile taken place ! "When New York is referred to, whether by New Yorkers themselves or by others, Manhattan Island, or the Borough of Manhattan as it is now officially known, is usually meant, although there are also the Boroughs of Brooklyn, of Queens, of Richmond, of 4 A CITY YOUNa AND OLD the Bronx, within the limits of the Greater City. In all, it is estimated that now the population is more than that of London; that Greater New York leads the world! Manhattan is an Indian word, Americanized. As, at one end of the State, the softly lilting *'Neeaw- gawrah,'' with its accent on syllables first and third, was harshly changed to *^Nyaggaruh," so, at this end of the State, the **Manattan'' of the Indians, without an **h,*' and prettily pronounced, as it was, with its accent on syllable one, was harshly transformed in accent and given a **hat'M — with about the same effect indeed, as that of putting an American hat on an Indian in his native dress. There are still a few Indians in the region of the James River, in Virginia, where John Smith and Pocahontas and Powhatan played their drama of life and death, and I have heard them speak of their great chief of the past, with the easy ripple, accenting syllable one, of **Powattan," quite discarding the **hat,'' as Manhattan Indians would similarly do with their own name, were there any Manhattan Indians existent. Never in history has there been such a magnificent city. It draws the great and the little; the masters of finance, of railroads and manufacturing, the lead- ers in law and surgery and authorship and art, and millions of little folk as well; while the rest of the country looks on jealously, feels jealous, is jealous — but New York, when she thinks of them at all, knows that the very men who talk depreciatingly of her are getting ready to come to her by the next train. 5 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK More and more of the wealth of the world centers here. In spite of misconceptions which come from extravagant statements, whether made seriously or as witticisms, New York is a safe city, a city to which capital gladly comes and where the average individ- ual lives a protected and happy life. Naturally and inevitably, there is temptation where there is such vastness of wealth; naturally, there is crime; but on the whole, for those who wish safety, safety comes as a matter of course. It is a city which is more criticised, by its own peo- ple and by others, than any other city in the world was ever criticised. At the same time it is essen- tially so great a city that not only is every New Yorker proud of being a New Yorker, but every other American, away from his own home town, no matter what that town may be or how dearly he may honor it, is pridefully titillated if taken for a New Yorker, for the very name carries with it the implication of alert- ness, of power, of ability. Whatever is, is wrong,'' is what people love to say of New York, yet all, no matter how reluctantly, or with what misgivings, ad- mire its might. That it should develop skyward is held against the city as one of the most common reproaches ; yet this development was but meeting an exigence with sagacity. Narrowed closely between rivers and bay, and thus barred from the usual development of the usual city, sidewise and outward, this unusual city found its natural development to be up toward the sky; whereupon, toward the sky it went, with thou- 6 A CITY YOUNG AND OLD sands of people in the offices of single structures, and with banks of elevators of from five to thirty or so ; and with much of positive beauty, and not only costli- ness, in many of these wonderful office buildings. The streets between these dizzy heights are like roads through narrow defiles between mountains. I have seen, in the Alps, the white summits, far above me, aglow with the splendor of sunset, while the road it- self was darkened by the gloom of evening, and I have often thought of this when, looking up from some canyon street of New York, where the shadows have already gathered, I have seen, far above, white towers still glowing with the sunset glory of purple and gold. Fired by the greatness of New York, Fernando Wood, its mayor, in 1861 proposed in a message to the Common Council that it should secede from the Union and become independent. He looked upon the secession of the South as certain, and was anxious that New York emulate and outdo the glories of the long-ago free cities of Germany. New York, im- perially alone, was to be the wonder of the world! — alone, except for Staten Island and Brooklyn, which it was to annex and then to take the name of Tri- Insula! But with the firing on Fort Sumter the proposal of Mayor Wood was instantly thrust aside and forgotten. New York is a kaleidoscopic city, an active city, a city with the touch and tang of leadership, a city that has always welcomed. Some other cities receive even the most worthwhile newcomer with hesitation and 7 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK doubt. But make yourself a New Yorker, declare yourself a New Yorker, and New York accepts you, and is glad to have you, and is the more glad the more you are worth the having. New York welcomes and appraises, whereas in some of the other Eastern cities you will never really be accepted, no matter how wonderful, how able, how brilliant, you may be ! If you would advance in art, in letters, in business, New York treats you as one of her children; if you would be a social climber, it is not necessary to have a family tree to climb by, as it is in Boston and Phila- delphia. From the first, New York has been cosmopolitanly planned. From the first it has stood for broad toler- ance, and has welcomed all nationalities and all be- liefs. As early as 1643, so it has been stated, there were people of eighteen nationalities here. The Dutch set a broad example in a day of narrow- ness by declaring that all religious sects should be treated alike. The city, then a tiny place, gave shel- ter both to Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson when they fled from New England persecution. Jesuit Fathers, fleeing from the Indians, were wel- comed and given free transportation to Europe. Hebrews, with wonderful tolerance for that early day, were admitted to citizenship in 1657 — and that it was really so wonderful is not without a humorous suggestion in view of the vast number of Hebrews who at the present day take New York citizenship as a matter of course. Intended victims marked for death by the witchcraft delusion fled here for safety, 8 A CITY YOUNG AND OLD and found it ; for the New York clergy, while those of New England were flaming with the terrible zeal of religious persecution, gravely resolved that **a good name obtained by a good life should not be lost by spectral accusation. ' ' A city of amenities, this great city of New York! And it is typical of the influence of the place that when a letter from Washington to his wife is inter- cepted by the British and sent to General Howe, he courteously, from his headquarters in New York, sends it back to Washington, expressing himself as happy to return it without the least attempt having been made to discover its contents. And some time after this, we find Washington sending his compli- ments to General Howe in New York and doing him- self the pleasure to return a dog, picked up by some American troops and having the name of General Howe on the collar. And that Washington himself, who began his Presidential career in New York, owned dogs of such names as Juno, and Mopsey and Truelove, would alone point out that he himself was a man of amenities, a very human and a very likable man, indeed. The very air of New York exhilarates. This is no fancy, but a very literal fact. There is something extraordinarily brisk, active, inspiring about it. And it is not only New Yorkers who notice this, but vis- itors as well. have,'' wrote Thackeray, **an ir- repressible longing to be in motion. There is some electric influence in the air and the sun here which we don't experience on our side of the globe. People 9 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK can^t sit still; they must keep moving. I want to dash into the street now. ' * And the mention of Thackeray is remindful that New York is a city which always presents the possi- bilities of adventure of one kind or another; for that great novelist had, in New York, an actual adven- ture, such as his great rival Dickens fancied in imagi- nation as happening to Pickwick! For Thackeray wrote home that, after a dinner at Delmonico's, he went to his hotel and began undressing, only to be paralyzed by a woman's voice in the alcove — for he had gone into a second-floor room instead of his own on the third! tremble when I think of it,'' he writes. Always one comes back to the idea of change, as a characteristic of New York ; and the very seal of the city is curiously typical of this. On it there still stands an Indian with his bow — no wonder English- men come to New York to hunt Indians on Broadway ! (Before passing this off as entirely a joke it is well to remember that one so recent as Ellen Terry, the actress, has set down in her memoirs that when first she sailed for New York, from England, it was with the expectation of finding the men wearing red flan- nel shirts and bowie knives !) And still there stands, on the other side of the shield, an old-time sailor, in knee-breeches, with a lead-line in his hand and at his shoulder a double cross-staff such as was long ago used in taking observations, and such as, indeed, was used by Hudson himself as he entered the harbor of what was to become known as New York. 10 A CITY YOUNa AND OLD Between the Indian and the knee-breeched sailor is a windmill. A few windmills far out on Long Island have continued to represent, into this twentieth cen- tury, this picturesque feature of the past, but it is difficult to realize that windmills were ever a feature of city life, here on Manhattan! But it was neces- sary to have some kind of power for mills, and there was no stream on the island with current sufficient, and so it was that windmills naturally came. Tradi- tion still hazily tells of the first one as standing just west of Broadway, and of the amazement of the In- dians — something like, one may presume, the amaze- ment of sophisticated New Yorkers who, wandering so far afield as toward the eastern end of Long Is- land, gaze in amazement at these lingering relics of the past. There was a time when windmills stood on Maiden Lane, and on Cortlandt Street and Park Row, and at other places, and they show prominently in early prints of the city. The barrels on the seal are not rum barrels, but in- nocent flour barrels, for an important industry of early New York was the milling of flour. And the two beavers ! It is long since beavers were on Man- hattan Island, even in the shape of finished skins. In early days, however, the island was thronged with beavers and a little beaver stream gave name to Beaver Street; even as early as 1626 one ship car- ried from Manhattan Island to Amsterdam over seven thousand beaver skins, besides the skins of otter, mink and other animals ; and by 1671 the prov- 11 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK ince was furnishing over eighty thousand beaver skins annually. Immediately above the shield is an eagle ; and it is certainly long since an eagle fluttered down Broad- way ! In fact, one sees that nothing on the shield is typical of the present day ; that these things, so typi- cal of the past, have gone. Mrs. Trollope, mother of the famous Anthony, came over to America, almost a century ago, and wrote a book of the most narrow and unfair animad- versions, but in one respect she was enthusiastic about America; she immensely admired New York. **My imagination is incapable of conceiving any- thing of the kind more beautiful than the harbor of New York," she wrote. *^I think New York one of the finest cities I ever saw. Situated on an island, which I think it will one day cover, it rises, like Venice, from the sea, and like that fairest of cities in the days of her glory receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth. ' ' Lord Bacon, whose scientific mind loved to revel in details, enumerated among the things that ought to be seen by a traveler, the courts of princes, the courts of justice in session, churches, walls, fortifications and harbors, antiquities and ruins, libraries, colleges, gardens, warehouses, horsemanship and fencing, the training of soldiers, plays, treasuries of jewels and robes, and in conclusion, whatsoever is memorable'' : and it seems as if one who would write of New York should place himself, so far as possible, in the position 12 A CITY YOUNG AND OLD of Bacon's traveler, and try to see the city from the traveler's standpoint. And one likes to remember the words of Washing- ton Irving when, in 1832, he returned from Europe and was proudly welcomed by his city: **Is this not, ' ' he said, * * a city by which one may be proud to be received as a son!" 13 CHAPTER II THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY |ROM early years the greatness and fu- ture growth of New York were recog- nized; and over a century ago the streets of the city were mapped out, in detail, for al- most the entire extent of Man- hattan Island. Never was there a more amus- ing misconception than the often-repeated one that the north side of the City Hall was made of cheaper ma- terial than the front because no one was ever ex- pected to live north of it and that therefore it would never be seen, for before the City Hall was built the growth of the city northward was recognized. Commissioners, appointed to map out the streets for the population of the future, worked on the task from 1807 to 1811, and produced the most amazing prophecy in the annals of any city. For, after all, New York was then but small. It was lusty and vigorous and confident, but in wellnigh two centuries of existence had not extended thickly for much more than a mile from the Battery. And here came com- 14 THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY missioners who, with the eye of faith, saw the coming development and planned out streets for miles and miles to the northward, over land that was then but sparsely dotted with tiny villages and scattered farm- houses, with here and there a mansion. They ac- tually mapped out the plan of the city to 155th Street, inspired by the basic belief of the time; they were prophets inspired by the sense of popular confidence. But they were not poetical prophets; they dis- cerned the future, but they met the situation prosai- cally. They did not attempt charm in their plan; there was, with the streets, to be naught of circles and crescents such as those of Edinburgh or Bath, naught of great and ordered vistas or of avenues radiating from a central point, as one sees in Paris or as had even then been begun in Washington. They saw, in the great slim water-girdled city of the future, a problem to be met, not prettily but prosaically; there was frankly to be a triumph of utilitarianism. They themselves realized this. They discussed circles and stars and ovals and radiants, but then set down, stolidly, that **The commissioners could not but bear in mind that a city is to be composed prin- cipally of the habitations of men, and that straight- sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in." And all the artists and art commissions of New York have never been able to get over the result of their work. Pick up the map which they made, back before the War of 1812, and you will think that you are looking at a map of today, unless you notice the date, and 15 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK unless you notice no Central Park, and that Madison Square was to be much larger than it was finally made, for their plan contemplated the extent of Madi- son as from 23rd to 34th Streets and from Third Avenue to Seventh, to give ample space for a reser- voir of water and for the gathering and training of troops. They felt dubious about developing above 155th Street, where the lower stretch of the Harlem, with its marshy flats, was reached. In time, they thought, a still farther district might be built up, but that, as they said, might not be for centuries. But so far as 155th Street it seemed to them a very practical prop- osition; and this at a time when the city had not seriously extended beyond City Hall Park and when little Greenwich Village was a distant and separate place ! They worried somewhat about how their plan, con- cretely expressing the city^s vague dream, would be taken; some, they said, would expect them to chart streets even beyond 155th; to others, *'It may be a source of merriment that the commissioners have provided space for a greater population than is col- lected at any spot on this side of China''; but they bravely set forth their ideas, gridironing the coming city with streets all at right-angles. Practical men though they prided themselves on be- ing, they made a most unpractical blunder ; a mistake which has proved to be both awkward and costly. For they ought to have known that the proper way to develop New York for the street traffic of the 16 STAIRCASE AND ROTUNDA OF THE OLD CITY HALL THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY future was the exact contrary of their plan : that in- stead of having a few avenues running lengthwise and most of the streets running crosswise, it should have been seen, from the shape of the island, that the future traffic would need more highways and nearer together, lengthwise, north and south, and not so many near together, leading east and west. The gridiron should have been turned sidewise. If there had been more north and south highways, the natural direction of the city's main traffic, the congestion problem would have been avoided, and New York would not have had to meet and face, as it is still meeting and facing, an immense expense in the open- ing of more north and south thoroughfares. When the city came to the matter of laying out Central Park, a half century later — for thus rapidly had the city grown, as if to justify the early confi- dence ! — men of an unutilitarian type were chosen for the work, and they succeeded beautifully. They were a small board, consisting of the Mayor, two other city officials, and three citizens; and what a three those citizens were ! — for they were William CuUen Bryant the poet, and George Bancroft the historian, and Washington Irving! And the plans that they made and set in motion, or which they in their noble spirit inspired landscape artists to dream of, were of a kind so superb as to give New York one of the finest parks of any city in the world, with wealth of water and rocks, and diversified heights and levels, and greenery. New York has quite forgotten that it ever pos- 17 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK sessed Bancroft; it has forgotten that it possessed Bryant, although he lived for some time at 24 West 16th Street, and for a longer period at nearby Roslyn, on Long Island. And that it has not forgotten Irving is an exception to its usual indifferent way. New York 's way of ignoring even her greatest folk, and her readiness to be thoroughly critical when she does notice them, has had a marked effect in lessening the value of her historical and literary associations in the public mind. Alexander Hamilton and Washing- ton Irving have been the two that have come nearest to receiving her whole-souled and continued admira- tion, but even these have not been given adulation approaching the adulation customary in such a city as Boston. In Boston, a man of ability has always ex- pected to be taken very seriously, and has always taken himself very seriously. Boston, from the first, not content with its really great men and really great events, that it nobly honors, has also exploited even the tiniest happenings in its history, and has pin- nacled even second-rate and third-rate men, especially politicians and authors. New York, going to the other extreme, has taken its even notable events and people very lightly. Always, its tendency is to think of the future rather than of the past. Before the Revolutionary clash began. New York had expressed defiance of England — ^but after the war was over forgot to talk about it ! In January of 1770, long before the conflict at Lexington, even two months before the so-called Boston Massacre, men of New York skirmished with the British on Golden Hill, in 18 THE GEEAT INDIFFERENT CITY the vicinity of John and William Streets, following disputes about taxes and imposts and the alternate setting up and throwing down of the Liberty Pole, and here on Golden Hill several lives were thus early lost: but when the war was over New York made nothing of this brave event in its history ! Yet it was a notable thing, that fight on Golden Hill. It was not a thing to forget. For they were the British regulars that the New Yorkers fought, and the blood shed was probably the first blood shed in the War of the Eevo- lution. Washington Irving was born in this Golden Hill region, in a house, long since destroyed, on William Street, between John and I'ulton. And it is owing, in considerable degree, to Irving that New York has refused to take itself seriously ; although on the other hand it may be said that Irving was in great degree only reflecting, in this, the spirit of his native town. For Irving wrote a history of New York : it was a humorous book, a Knickerbocker history, as he called it, thus coining that delightful word, which was promptly adopted as meaning old families of Dutch ancestry, and then also as meaning short trousers, after Cruikshank delightfully illustrated the volume with short-breeched Dutchmen. The history pleas- antly made light of dignitaries of the past, and its success did much to intensify the general tendency of the city toward a sort of chaffing attitude, although Irving wrote only of the early Dutch regime. His humorous viewpoint, his refusal to take digni- taries seriously, was adopted in the general viewpoint 19 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK toward any sort of dignity or distinction. Dutchmen seemed funny to Irving, and he expatiated on that feature, emphasizing the size and quantity of their breeches, and the length of their pipes, and their gen- eral deliberateness of conduct. He might, had he wished, have written seriously enough of even the Dutch; of their frightful slaughter, for the mere lust of killing, of a hundred or so friendly Indians who had sought shelter on Manhattan from war parties of Mohawks ; he might have written with much gravity of the war that followed, and of the hiring of a cer- tain New Englander, one Underhill, who had dis- played such cold cruelty toward New England In- dians that the Dutch eagerly paid him to come here to manage a massacre, near what is now Bedford, with the shooting or burning of some five hundred men, women and children, without the loss of a single life among those who did the killing. But Irving frankly laid stress on the light and humorous features of the Dutch and their times, and the humor was really there in plenty, and he made himself and New York famous with it, even abroad; Sir Walter Scott read his Knickerbocker book and from it prophesied Irving 's coming greatness, and greeted him as a friend and literary brother when he went to Abbotsf ord. With that book, early in his career, Irving sounded the natural New York keynote of frivolousness to- ward the past, and helped to intensify it. It was easy to encourage indifference in the great growing indifferent city which, though at times ready to flare 20 THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY into enthusiasm, quickly forgets. And perhaps New York could not be the greatest exponent of the future if she permitted herself to think of the past. Irving was quite capable, when he chose, of handling historical subjects with sober dignity, as in his life of Washington; and that he and Washington once met, and how they met, is among the prettiest of all the incidents of New York history. Irving was born in the year which marked the close of the Revolution, 1783, and therefore his first name of Washington came naturally; and in 1789, Wash- ington, then living in New York as President of the United States, was one day spoken to, in a shop, by a Scotch maid, who modestly called his attention to a little boy beside her, of whom she was in charge ; for, recognizing Washington, the maid wished him to know that the lad had been given the name of Wash- ington in his honor; whereupon the tall grave man put his hand on little Irving 's head and said a few simple words of good wishes ; and one knows that this chance meeting must deeply have influenced Wash- ington Irving throughout his entire life, and that, no matter how excellent a man he would in any case have been, it must have aided in keeping him to standards of sweetness and honesty and kindliness : and never was there a sweeter and kindlier career than that of Irving. He is directly connected with New York City. He lived for a time in that immensely distinguished line of buildings, with great long front of huge Corin- thian pillars, on Lafayette Street (once Lafayette 21 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Place), known as Colonnade Row, which had been named, at first, likewise in honor of Lafayette, La Grange Row. The Row has dwindled in recent years; it has become shorter and shorter by demoli- tion and soon it must all vanish. Long ago it lost all atmosphere of fine living, yet here wealthy New Yorkers dwelt, and in one of the houses President Tyler married Julia Gardiner of Gardiner's Island, the bit of land just off shore out toward the end of Long Island which, granted two and a half centuries ago as Gardiner's Manor, has remained the only un- broken manor in the country, for its extent has been neither altered nor diminished since the original grant; and, an even stranger fact, it is still in pos- session of a lineal descendant of the first Gardiner. There was no modest shrinking from publicity at the Tyler-Gardiner wedding! It was, indeed, an exam- ple to the contrary; for after the ceremony the bride and groom were driven down Broadway behind four white horses to a waiting warship. Still more closely associated with Irving than Colonnade Row is the house, still looking much as when he lived there, on Irving Place, at the corner of 17th Street. The surroundings, however, have greatly changed, for in Irving 's day there was a great open space stretching off toward the East River. It is a smallish building of gray brick, three stories and a basement in height. Fronting on Irv- ing Place are pleasant windows, with an iron balcony running the width of the house, and a slightly pro- jective bay, of white wood supported on slender iron 22 THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY rods ; the entrance to the house being by iron balus- tered steps of brown stone on the 17th Street side. In this house, and even more in his charming home of Sunnyside, up the Hudson, Irving delightfully met the finest folk of his day. Literary fancies change; but much of what Irving wrote is still as fascinating to modern taste as when he wrote it. His *'New York,'' however, makes, in large part, hard reading, and one wonders that it so delighted his period. It pleased giants as well as little folk. Not only was the general public de- lighted with it, and Scott delighted with it, but Dickens has recorded that, coming down from New Haven to New York by boat, he cut short a nap, so as not to miss seeing Hell Gate and the Hog's Back and other localities made famous by the Knickerbocker volume. Dickens also admired the other work of Irving, that which is still so fresh and so altogether charm- ing, and when, later, he came down the Hudson to- ward New York, he looked eagerly for all the locali- ties of that delightful region, made famous by the writer whom every one loved. It is interesting to know that there was for a time a pleasant association between Irving and John Howard Payne, and that the two collaborated in the writing of a play called Charles the Second," which has usually been ascribed to Payne alone, and which, after being acted in London, was presented in New York, in 1824, in the long ago vanished Park Theater, the fashionable theater of early New York, which 23 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK seated twelve hundred, and was the resort of the best people of the time whenever an excellent play was given. That the author of **Home, Sweet Home" was a New Yorker, born here in 1791, is another of the facts that New York has never greatly heeded. Joseph Rodman Drake, who died in 1820 at the age of twenty-five, was a New Yorker who, like Irving, recognized in the Hudson River a pictorial subject. He wrote the lilting rhymes of the Culprit Fay," which, although it made no fixed impression in litera- ture, was notable as an early American work. And he did write one memorable and remembered thing, his *^Ode to the American Flag," with its ring- ing lines : *^When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurl'd her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there Drake also discovered and wrote about the beauties of the Bronx, long afterwards to be rediscovered by F. Hopkinson Smith; and it is fitting that the early poet should be buried in that region that he loved, in a little graveyard now included within a park that has been called by his name. There was a Damon and Pythias friendship be- tween Drake and another New Yorker, Fitz-Greene Halleck, both of whom were born in the same year and both of whom struggled together for literary fame; and the death of Drake gave the sorrowing 24 THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY Halleck the opportunity that he would only too gladly have missed, for he wrote, in memory of his friend, some never-to-be forgotten lines, simple and touching in their measured beauty: * ' Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days ; None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise. ' ' Halleck also made other contributions to fame, among others the fiery lines beginning, **At midnight, in his guarded tent.'' Recently, picking up by mere chance a book of selections of poetry, published in New York in 1840, with its credit of this or that poem to Shelley or Shakespeare or Scott or whatever Brit- ish writer it might be, I noticed, in casually turning the pages, that Marco Bozzaris'' was there — but with the author's name quite omitted! He was American; he was a New Yorker; why should he be remembered or named ! Not only New York City, but the country in gen- eral, ought to give far more honor to our early au- thors than it is customary, except in the case of a very few, to give. Leaving an author's name off altogether, in a formal collection, is not usual, but it is very usual indeed to depreciate the entire early American literary school. Even such writers as did not do work that is to live forever, did at least aid in giving that atmosphere of literature and art without which no country can well produce artistic or literary masters. 25 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK There are New Yorkers who will not even glance at a place associated with Irving or Poe or Howells or Mark Twain or other American authors, who go obediently about, following guide or guidebook, pick- ing out the home and the grave of this and that New England or Old England writer, even of such as can only fairly be credited with what may be called good literary intentions. Edgar Allan Poe was long a New Yorker, but he was an unhappy New Yorker indeed. He could not, either as author or editor, sufficiently impress him- self to secure practical returns. An unbelievably few dollars, was, as a general thing, the extent of his literary remuneration; a possible five or ten dollars always loomed large. For his Raven,'' written when he was a New Yorker, he seems to have been paid the pitiful sum of ten dollars. He lived in grinding poverty in various shadowily remembered New York localities, and toward the end far up in the Fordham district, and he was so often without money to pay the stage fare down into the city that he frequently walked the entire distance in lonely discouragement. Such walks as, at other times, he took for the sake of walking, were usually at night; and one evening, crossing alone on the foot- path over the lofty aqueduct over the Harlem River — a bridge which, seen from below and from a dis- tance, is positively beautiful, with its row of tall and symmetrical arches — he noticed a brilliant star di- rectly in front of him, whereupon there came to him the inspiration for the lines, with their haunting 26 THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY rhythm and swing, about the star-dials hinting of morn, their liquescent and nebulous luster, their be- diamonded crescent. After all, one remembers that Poe's first and most definite standard of poetry was that it be musical. The poor little Fordham cottage has been pre- served, although not quite at the original spot; the city, so indifferent to Poe himself, has at least kept his cottage. His wife, poor thing, died there, hungry and cold; she used to try to keep warm in bed by cuddling her yellow cat against her bosom, but at last even a cat was not enough to sustain life. And Poe himself soon wandered away from this great in- different city and at Baltimore somberly closed his sorrowful career. It is a curious thing, in regard to New York^s lit- erary history, that a majority of its early notable leaders were poets. In such an eminently practical city as this, one would certainly have expected prose. Irving, indeed, wrote prose, but he was exceptional; and even his prose, until he was well on in his career, was of gay insouciance. Poets have continued to arise, novelists have here distinguished themselves, short-story writers have here done splendid work — but historians and philosophers have not greatly flourished in Manhattan soil. It may be added, too, that New York long ago seized the literary scepter of the country and took to itself the most prominent publications and most of the publishing houses. In the great and even vast number of authors who 27 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK in course of time have come to call New York their home, it is hard to pick and choose. A man may, like Howells, write with skill and smoothness and publish book after book, only to find himself not pre- cisely deemed among the few to be marked for per- manent fame. It is curious, and one may if he wishes deem it unfair, but so it is, that a score of thick novels may be thrust aside when there suddenly appears, let us say, a thin-volumed Colonel Carter." And, too, Howells has always seemed to consider himself more of a Bostonian than a New Yorker; a New Yorker by stress of circumstance, but still a Bostonian by choice. Henry James, too — ^well, he did admirable early work, but so promptly made and kept a resolve to live as much as possible on the other side of the Atlantic, even long before he formally became a Brit- ish subject, that perhaps he, too, need not be looked upon as a New Yorker. One is tempted to think that the most interesting of his associations with his na- tive city is the fact that, as a small boy, he saw Thack- eray, when the great Englishman was a dinner guest at his first New York dinner, at the home of little Henry's father. And perhaps the best, or at least the cleverest, commentary on the works of Henry James, intricate and involved as he allowed his style to become, with interminable length of sentences, was that of the witty New Yorker who announced that a new serial by Henry James was about to begin, and that the opening sentence was to be continued through six numbers. 28 THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY At the time I write, Richard Harding Davis and F. Hopkinson Smith, both of them now dead, loom the most prominent as New York writers, or at least as the most prominent among those who have not only done distinguished work in broad fields but who also have best presented the character and the life of the city itself. But this, probably enough, will not be permanent. Not so long ago, Crawford was deemed the most notable of this class. Before that, and especially as exponents of New York, came Bunner and Sidney Luska — but Sidney Luska is quite forgotten now, and Bunner, with all his bubbling cleverness, is with difficulty kept in mind. Still further back there was Winthrop ; now and then you will still hear some old- fashioned New Yorker speak of him; but Winthrop died in the Civil War, and somehow his work seemed to die then too; not entirely without reason, either, if one may judge from his inept description of de- lightful Washington Square, as *^a dreary place, drearily surrounded by red brick houses with marble steps monstrous white, and blinds monstrous green.'' F. Hopkinson Smith should be remembered, among other reasons, for so breezily pointing out that, in a New York apartment-house room without a chimney, it is quite possible to put both a fireplace and a chim- ney, and to have friends gather there in conf abulative happiness in front of a blazing fire, the ideal of **four feet on a fender." And he loved to point out that even in the heart of New York there may be the gleam of old mahogany, there may be the shining 29 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK glow of lights from old brass andirons, there may be a glorious sideboard, there may be the lovely blue of old china, there may be the silver sheen of ancient stately candlesticks. To the very end of his long life he kept all the en- thusiasm of youth. How every one loves his Colonel Carter ! I remember his telling me that in essentials he was picturing in this character his own father; and it touched him to know that he had made his father so loved. He was describing a real house, in that story, on West 10th Street, at w^hat was 58%, behind 58, near Sixth Avenue, but only a trace of it now remains. And it is sorrow^ful to think that in this great indifferent city there may before long be only a trace of the fame of Hopkinson Smith him- self. That New York so rapidly forgets and so fre- quently ignores is quite typical of a deep-based trait : that is, that New York is a city entirely with- out self -consciousness ; it is so sufficient unto itself as not to be sensitive in the least about its dignity or its reputation, or to care what people think or say or write about it. As a world center, it must needs be that New York is greater than any of its people ; and it carries this feature to an extreme undreamed of in other world centers. The individual, no matter how tow^ering, no matter for a time how dominant, finds his importance to be little compared with that of the city itself. It is a city which treats individuals as the ocean treats drops of water. New York does not, like other cities, 30 THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY claim great men ; she expects great men to claim New York! And over and over again one notices how carelessly she forgets. Already New York has practically forgotten that President Grant, up at 3 East 66th Street, wrote the greater part of his Memoirs, under immense financial and physical stress, with the shadow of death creep- ing over him. The city has quite forgotten that President Arthur died at 123 Lexington Avenue. Still more amazing is it that New York long ago quite forgot the birthplace of Roosevelt, although the unusual personality of the man and his having been President for two terms would, one should suppose, have kept the house an object of constant interest. As I write, it has just been destroyed; it was at 28 East 20th Street; and for a long time before its de- struction it stood drearily unoccupied, though a res- taurant had for a time been there, and it bore in its window an invitation, so unintentionally humorous as almost to be pathetic, to * * Come in and eat where Roosevelt was born." New York has quite forgotten that he of the famous Monroe Doctrine, President Monroe, came to New York toward the close of his life and died here in 1831: fittingly, too, on the Fourth of July, as with two other Presidents, Jefferson and John Adams. His home here was an old house, still standing, at 63 Prince Street at the corner of Lafayette. It is a house of brick, once red but now weatherbeaten to dreary dinginess, a house with charming fanlights and high stoop and pleasant dormers and capacious 31 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK gables, with high ceilings, with well-designed door- frames and eight-paneled doors; but it is now a wreck, \sdth the great blue sign of a ragman upon its center and signs of **For Sale'' on either side. It seems incredible, that the fact could be forgot- ten by any city, that the author of the declaration which for a century influenced the world, the declara- tion as to entangling ourselves in the broils of Europe, or suffering the powers of the old world to interfere with the affairs of the new," once made the city his home. Forgotten, too, is the fact that his body remained in the Marble Cemetery, far over on East Second Street beyond Second Avenue, until 1858, when it was taken to Eichmond at the request of the State of Virginia. The old cemetery, high iron-fenced in front and high brick walled behind, is still sedate, composed, with an air of quiet breeding, and, situated though it now is in the midst of tenement surroundings, has succeeded by its silent influence in maintaining a gen- eral air of quiet and neatness and cleanliness in the adjacent buildings, even though the ones whose rear windows open upon its old-fashioned space are a-flutter with vari-colored washing. Not to be confounded, this graveyard, with another Marble Cemetery," so called, near by, entered through a tunnel-like entrance at 41% Second Ave- nue; in this other Marble Cemetery, little and now hidden away, there having been buried some 1500 in all, many of them from the most prominent families, as would be expected from a most curious and now 32 THE GREAT INDIFFERENT CITY almost undecipherable inscription, that it was in- tended as **a place of interment for gentlemen. Mohammed planned a heaven for men ; but left it for New York to plan a gentlemen's cemetery! 33 CHAPTER III DOWN AT THE BATTEEY HEN New York a few years ago wished to celebrate the completion and opening of its first subway, and wished to do it in a style commensurate with the city's greatness, the mayor suggested that ev- ery bell and whistle should sound in unison for one hour; a great and prolonged din being supposedly representative of New York City and most fitting for the celebration of a tre- mendous achievement! And New York is indeed a city of noise — but the noise is the rattle and thunder and turmoil of traffic ; it is not noise from choice but from necessity. And there are still several places in Manhattan where there is almost quiet, one of these being down at the lower point of the island, the Battery, where still there is a peaceful area of park, almost undis- turbed by din. George Washington, when as President he lived in this city, found his favorite walk to be, as he has re- 34 DOWN AT THE BATTERY corded in his diary, along the sea-wall of the Battery. And Aaron Burr, after the loss of Theodosia, the daughter whom he worshipped, used to pace back and forth, back and forth, along this sea-wall, looking hungrily toward the Narrows in the never to be ful- filled hope that a ship should appear bearing the one who had so mysteriously vanished at sea. The sea-wall is still one of the finest walks in the city. The land projects a little further into the Bay than it used to do, and the walk has therefore been advanced a little, but it is still almost identically the same as of old ; it is a walk of buoyancy for those who can feel buoyant, with its tang of the sea and its tingling breezes, and for the unhappy, like Burr, there are days of breezeless gloom, when the water seeps and sighs along the edge. To walk there is to walk in a place of memories. A beautiful approach to the Battery is from the Bay, on a day of sunlight, when there is a glowing blue of water and of sky, and the ceaseless movement of numberless boats. On either side there is the gen- tly sloping shore of Long Island or of New Jersey ; in front, on the left, is the great green Goddess of Lib- erty; on the right are the mighty curves of the bridges ; in the center, set in the midst of blue water, beneath the blue dome of the sky, there rises a clus- tering mass of buildings to incredible and irregular heights, in whites and grays and dark browns, with splashes of red and green. And in front of this clus- tered mass is the park of the Battery. There is dignity in the view, there is strength, there 35 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK is superb impressiveness, there is the unexpected gen- tleness of greenery. In the early hours of a winter's evening, when the myriad boats show lights of green and white and red, and Liberty stands in a soft and whitish glow, and the interminable lines of cars move over the arching bridges like fireflies on fairy threads, and the tower- ing buildings are alight, in thousands of windows, giving an etf ect as of a wonderful hill city with lighted houses rising tier on tier, higher and higher, it is one of the striking sights of the world. Washington, when in the long ago he walked the Battery walk, would have been keenly interested could he have known that, a quarter of a century after his own death, his beloved friend and associate Lafayette was to be received here at the Battery by enthusiastic New Yorkers. It was in 1824 that the Frenchman came back to re- visit America. Most of the men of the Eevolution were then dead, and he did not know he had won a profound love in the hearts of all Americans. But he wanted to see once more the country for which he had given his best efforts and where the most inter- esting years of his interesting life had been spent. The changes in France had left him far from rich, and he was disturbed about what would be the ex- penses here. On the way over he talked candidly with a Boston merchant, a fellow passenger, about the cost of hotels and travel; and he accepted the Bostonian's invitation to dinner when he should reach that city. 36 DOWN AT THE BATTERY He expected, on the whole, to drift inconspicuously through the country. And when his ship reached New York and he found the Bay filled with ships a-flutter with flags and with their yards manned with lines of sailors, all in his honor; when he saw flags in every direction, on the water and on the shores, and when he heard the roar of cannon and the ringing of bells ; he wept with the pathetic surprise of it all. He landed at the Battery — and collectors prize the old blue plates that picture his ship, the Cadmus, and Castle Garden, as it came afterwards to be called, which was then a fort separated from the mainland by a narrow strip of water; a fort of that old cheese- box order of architecture which for so long a time appealed to army engineers. Here Lafayette was welcomed, and thence was driven to the City Hall, cheered by uncounted thousands on the streets and on the very roofs. And after that, throughout America, he found himself, wherever he went, the honored guest of nation or state or city or town — and there was no need to think of hotel expenses! And it is pleasant to know that when he reached Boston he took time from the rush of grand receptions to look up the Bostonian and dine with him as he had promised to do. Years after this, the city welcomed Admiral Dewey, here at the Battery, when he came sailing home from Manila, bearing his honors thick upon him ; though it is amusing to remember what panic he put into the hearts of the committee of reception by arriving one day sooner than was planned. However, like the 37 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK genial gentleman that he was, he postponed his land- ing until everything should be prepared. I saw him, close by, as he stepped ashore, and never was there a more simple, more attractive, more unpretentious, more capable-looking American. He was given a more than royal welcome, and a parade in his honor was resplendent in glitter of banners and arms, and was of immensity of length. At the very edge of the sea-wall, over at one side of Battery Park, still stands old Castle Garden, as it was for many years known. It was long the receiv- ing station for immigrants, before that it was used as a hall for amusements, celebrations and public recep- tions, originally it was a fort (not the first fort here at the Battery, but built just before 1812), and now it is the city 's Aquarium. Perhaps it was never of attractive shape ; certainly it has with the passage of years been altered out of any degree of attractiveness that it may have had in the past, although some of the old casemates are still preserved. It is a squatty, sprawling, many-sky- lighted building, with huge cupolas, a building neither round nor square nor octagon, but somehow suggest- ing each of these shapes. Jenny Lind 's first American concert was given here, and stories have come down about the marvelous in- terest and enthusiasm that she aroused. That first concert gave for her share twelve thousand dollars which entire sum she promptly turned over to charity. For that first concert Barnum offered a prize of two hundred dollars for the best song for her and there 38 DOWN AT THE BATTERY were seven hundred competitors, and Bayard Taylor won the prize. On the night of the first concert, peo- ple who had been unable to buy seats stood in throngs on the water-front or filled the host of boats that were rowed as near as possible to the outside of the building. It is one of the amusing memories of the Battery, that at the time when Barnum was exhibiting the once well known Cardiff Giant, at Castle Garden, he was apparently so fearful lest some one might get at it, that every night, after the performance was over, he had the supposedly petrified man, a heavy load, borne across this Battery space to the old Eastern Hotel (a house built before 1790 and only recently destroyed, at the corner of Whitehall and South Streets), where he kept a room for the ostensible safeguarding of his stone man. Near the Aquarium is a spirited bronze bust of Verazzano, and it shows him as the possessor of a nose as long as that of his royal master Francis. Here at the beginning of Broadway is a monument to an Italian explorer in the service of France, and sev- eral miles to the northward, at what was until lately deemed the other end of Broadway, is a monument to that still more famous Italian who made his explora- tions in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella. At the opposite side of the open space from the Aquarium, just where the park curves into State Street, is a house. Number 7, which has figured in one of Bunner^s stories, **A New York House," and which instantly attracts attention from its unusual and dis- 39 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK tinguished appearance. It was built shortly before the year 1800 by a New York merchant whose wife was connected with a governor of Connecticut and with President Dwight of Yale ; which facts were very important in early days when the Battery houses were social centres. Those people never supposed that the house would ever become a home for immigrant girls. It is fronted by two sets of pillars, one set being round and the other square; and there is a recessed balcony on the level of the second floor. When the occupant of 1804 moved away — a certain Colonel Van Vredenburgh, who had served in the Rev- olution — he loaded his furniture into a boat at his front door, and then, he and his family stepping in after the furniture, they started on their journey far up the Hudson, to a new home in the Mohawk Val- ley : where, it somehow seems interesting to know, this man of the Battery became known among the Indians as *^The Great Clear Sky." Immediately to the northward of Battery Park, where it opens into the Bowling Green, is the begin- ning of Broadway. At the right, as you face toward this beginning, is the great gray Custom House, roofed in dull red, and at the left is a higher building of red brick with a roof in black and green. Between these two buildings, beyond the Bowling Green, begins a mighty chasm, incredibly narrow, incredibly deep and high, a chasm in grays and browns and whites with slashes of greens and reds. It is a great long gash among buildings, it is a canyon profound in its depth, it is a long valley with vertical stone walls rising to 40 DOWN AT THE BATTERY great and irregular heights and peaks and ledges. It is a valley deeper and more precipitous than the gorge of the Trossachs, and it only waits a Walter Scott of business to picture there some tragic or dramatic scene. The pleasant oval of the Bowling Green — which was really once a bowling green and has for generations preserved this oval shape — surrounded by its iron fence, is remindful of one of the romantic episodes of New York history; an episode which has already become almost a myth. And to tell of this it is neces- sary to drop back a little into the past. Following the repeal of the Stamp Act, the New York Assembly voted, in its enthusiasm, to set up a statue of King George the Third and a statue of Wil- liam Pitt, whereupon the statue of William Pitt was set up in Wall Street and that of the King in the cen- ter of the Bowling Green. This kingly statue was equestrian and was set up on a date which shows how ingrained was the intense feeling for royalty even up to the verge of the Eevo- lution. For it was August 21, 1770 — and although in a short five years there were to be Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, the people were still so in- fatuated with royalty as to honor this birthday date of that Prince of Wales, who, dying before his father, and thus missing the throne, left only the memory that he was the son of King George the Second and the father of King George the Third, and that he was de- scribed in the lines, surreptitiously quoted and laughed about in England : 41 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK **Here lies Fred, Who was alive and is dead. Had it been his father, I had much rather. Had it been his brother, Still better than another. Had it been his sister. No one would have missed her. Had it been the whole generation. Still better for the nation. But since 'tis only Fred, Who was alive and is dead. No more need be said.'' The statue of Pitt was destroyed by angry British soldiers in the course of their occupancy of New York, but a fragment has been preserved and is in the rooms of the city's Historical Society; but before that on a July night in 1776 the Americans themselves had de- stroyed the statue of the King. It was in place when the sun went down, and when the morning came it had vanished. Few knew until long afterwards what became of it. It was taken to Litchfield in Connecticut, far up in the delightful hill country, and there, as it was of lead, it was made into bullets. And a record left by Oliver Wolcott, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards a general and a gov- ernor, tells who made the bullets and how many were made. A shed was built in the Wolcott orchard, and the statue, first chopped and melted in the kitchen, was made into bullets by women and girls of the best 42 DOWN AT THE BATTEEY blood and social position. Laura Wolcott made 8378 cartridges; Mary Ann Wolcott made still more, for lier total was 10,790 ; a neighbor, Mrs. Marvin, made 6058 ; Frederick Wolcott, a lad permitted to work with the women at the interesting task, made 936 ; a Mrs. Beach made 2002 ; others made amounts various ; and the total was 42,088 cartridges made. How and by whom the cartridges were used has not been recorded, except as to some minor items, such as the giving of 300 to the regiment of a Colonel Wig- glesworth — delightful name! — and the giving of sev- eral hundred to a Colonel Howe, and of fifty to the Litchfield militia on the occasion of an alarm. The ancient house still stands, full of years and dig- nity. The kitchen in which the lead was melted has been torn down, but the rest of the building stands just as it stood in the long ago ; the ancient orchard is still an orchard ; and the present owner, a Wolcott in direct descent, pointed out to me the spot where the bullets were made. 43 CHAPTER IV THE CHURCH AND THE STREET ITTINGLY, the richest church in I the world looks down the richest street in the world; or at least, the street held to be the most rep- resentative of wealth. But ^^Wall Street'' is more than that short and narrow thor- oughfare; for the name is under- stood to include, also, quite a sec- tion immediately adjacent. It ex- tends, indeed, down Broadway as far as to a quiet- looking building, of gray stone and with an ungraceful square tower, known throughout the world as Number 26"; this being the head- quarters of the Standard Oil Company. What ex- traordinary stories are represented by this ordinary looking building! What fiction, and what facts stranger than fiction, are called to mind by the thought of the centralized power that the building represents ! What a romance it all has been, in the rising up, from nothing, to an overshadowing of the world! Wliat business splendidly done, what griev- ous business battles, what control of legislators, of 44 THE CHURCH AND THE STREET mayors, of town councilmen and of individuals! How sphinx-like the building faces Broadway, hiding its secrets from the world ! The first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States lived for a time in a house which stood at Number 26''; and he was buried in the graveyard of Trinity Church, the precursor of the Trinity of to- day which, of sandstone so brown as almost to be black, stands looking down, from its position on Broadway, into the narrow defile of Wall Street. In its location, and with its great open stretch of old graveyard on either hand, the church is of wonder- ful impressiveness. The first Trinity, built in the reign of William of Orange, was burned in the great fire of 1776. It was rebuilt in 1790, and when this, too, was burned, the present structure was erected. It was completed in 1846 and its architect was Richard Upjohn, who did invaluable service to New York City by giving to it a number of fine and dignified churches, at a time when what is known as the Victorian influence was destroy- ing good taste upon both sides of the Atlantic : he was a worshiper of the Gothic, and made his mid-century churches look delightfully old! The notable bronze doors were designed by St. Gaudens, and were surely inspired by the doors of the Baptistery in Florence. The interior of the church is dignified, with much of impressiveness, and there is an effect of fine spa- ciousness, which well matches the spaciousness of the burying-ground outside. The brilliant white of the elaborate altar and the glow of myriad colored panes 45 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK in a great window behind it make a contrast that will become finer and finer as age gently softens the hues of the glass. It used to be that the spire of Trinity was the loftiest landmark of New York, and it seemed miracu- lous when skyscrapers began to mount above it. Henry James, less than forty years ago, writing his International Episode, put his Englishman up to the amazing height of seven stories in an office build- ing and from that immense height the roar of the street sounded infinitely far below," and the man was startled by seeing himself on a level with a steeple top ! Now, Trinity spire is far below the cor- nices and towers of the giant buildings that cluster thick about that part of Broadway. Back in the time of Queen Anne, Trinity was given a royal grant of a great tract on lower Manhattan Island, and although the church has given away por- tions to this or that institution, she still holds the greater part of the tract, and is the greatest tenement house proprietor in New York, with an annual income of over half a million dollars, from which she assists in the upkeep of several churchly offshoots, officially her chapels, and such good works as seem fitting, and of course attends to her own ministry. When Doctor Berrian was rector of Trinity a preacher from a poor country parish went to him and asked for his influ- ence in finding a church with a larger salary, where- upon the good rector exclaimed, with naive earnest- ness, that he could not understand why clergymen so often wished a change: **Why," he concluded, ^*I 46 OLD TRINITY, FAR OVERTOPPED BY OFFICE BUILDINGS THE CHURCH AND THE STREET have been with Trinity Church for forty years, and have never thought of leaving ! ^ ^ When the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Ed- ward the Seventh, visited New York, he was taken to a service at Trinity, and close to him sat General Winfield Scott, that picturesque figure of our War of 1812 with England, and in the crowded aisle beside the pew stood George Bancroft, historian of the Revo- lution ! — ^which delicate attentions must have amused the eminently clear-sighted young man, as doubtless later he was even more amused when, visiting Wash- ington, nothing would do but that he must go down to Mt. Vernon and stand before the tomb of the man whose leadership had taken a nation from England's rule. In New York, besides attending Trinity, the Prince of Wales was made to feel that he was indeed a guest that the city delighted to honor, for he was taken to Central Park, and Cooper Union, and Barnum's Museum, and the Free Academy, and a Deaf and Dumb Institution! In fact, he was treated as New Yorkers always used to treat country cousins, but in his case there was fortunately, also, a splendid ball in his honor at the old Academy of Music, at Irving Place and 14th Street ; a building now given over to moving pictures, after a long career as opera house and theater, and at the time of the great ball only six years old. Probably the most beautiful service of Trinity is that of Ascension Day, when it is customary to have a special choir of some fifty voices, and an orchestra 47 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK of some two-score pieces, so as to give superb music superbly. On this day the cburch is literally packed, and with many unable to enter, and the splendid serv- ice is the more effective from the knowledge that, while it is in progress, the rush and turmoil of busi- ness, of Broadway and Wall Street, are at the very doors. The noblest memor\^ of old Trinity ought to be that, at a time when the World War was raging, but before America had plunged in, a noon-day meeting was regularly held here, to pray ^^for the restoration of the world's peace, and for divine guidance for all men." The printed form, given to each who en- tered, expressed the hope ^Hhat a way may be found for the speedy restoration of just and honorable peace amongst all nations.'' No other graveyard in New York possesses varied interest to equal that of Trinity, where the stones and monuments are thick-clustered, and where the very place seems filled with thick-clustering memories. Not only does the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, lie here, but also that Gallatin of the three ^^A's," Abraham Albert Alphonse, the Swiss who, coming to America in 1780, and at once taking part in our war, held afterwards a succession of high offices, including that of Secretary of the Treasury. Both he and Hamilton are in the southern half of the graveyard, and on this side, too, but so far back as to be at the extreme verge, is the grave of that picturesque Eevolutionary general, highly trusted by Washington, who is always referred to as 48 THE CHURCH AND THE STREET Lord Stirling, although his efforts in the British courts to secure the Stirling earldom, with its title and estates, were unsuccessful: the self-made peer,'' Major Andre gibingly termed him. Near the tomb of Stirling is that of General Kearney, of the Civil War — for our old churches, like the cathedrals of England, began, even before our entry into the world struggle, to put up memorials to veterans and victims of war after war. Here in Trinity churchyard is buried that Sir Dan- vers Osborne who, upon landing from England, assumed office, and after ruling as governor of New York for half a week, incontinently hanged himself. Here is the supposed grave of Charlotte Temple, over whose sad story, whether it was true or false, our forefathers and mothers loved to weep. Almost at the entrance of the church is the tomb of Captain James Lawrence, he of the Chesapeake and Don't give up the ship!" And the victorious English honored Lawrence when, with display and solemn cannonading, they sailed with his body, wrapped in the American flag, into Halifax. And it is one of the most curious similarities of literature that, as Oliver "Wendell Holmes saved Old Ironsides from destruction with his vigorous and timely verses, in the same way Tennyson, with vigorous and timely verse, saved from destruction the Shannon, the con- queror of the Chesapeake, In the upper corner of the churchyard, just off the Broadway sidewalk, is a towering and admirable monument to the men of the Revolution who died in 49 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK the English prisons of New York. There is no word of hate ; there is no reminder of the needless suffering which was inflicted upon those men. It is as if, under the shadow of this old church, all enmity should be forgotten. And yet, being human, one likes to remember that, so it seems (although, unfortunately, it is not an abso- lute certainty), the terrible provost Cunningham, who was responsible for most of the cruelty, and who loved to boast that he had killed more Americans than both Burgoyne and Cornwallis combined, was after- wards hanged, in London, for forgery. He had a nephew who as a lad assisted him and was especially active in extorting money for food and for any miti- gation of cruelty, and this nephew lived on, in New York, for half a century after the Eevolution, in busi- ness as a real estate agent. For a great many years, burials have not been per- mitted in this old Trinity burying ground, except in the rare case of some member of an old family that possesses a Trinity family tomb. I saw, not many years ago, such a funeral and burial here, it being the funeral of a descendant of one of the earliest Dutch families, and it made a very impressive scene, here in the heart of the busiest portion of the busiest city of the world, in the very shadow of the Elevated trains that went thundering by. It is one of the prettiest sights in this great city, to see, at noontime, on pleasant sunny days, pretty young stenographers sprinkled about this ancient graveyard, sewing in the sun — not precisely Shake- 50 THE CHURCH AND THE STREET peare^s charming spinsters and knitters in the sun^'; but Shakespeare himself would doubtless have changed the word to sewing if he could have seen this old graveyard of Trinity on a pleasant day. Wall Street represents the financial supremacy of America, the financial supremacy of the world. It is no exaggeration to say that Wall Street has become the money capital of the nations. Here it is that the mighty financial affairs of Europe and Asia, of Africa and Australia, of our own America, are directly or indirectly controlled. The vast commercial interests of our land, the trade and the manufactures, all yield homage to this clump of office buildings centering about the narrow thoroughfare into whose gorge-like chasm Old Trinity so staidly looks. Wall Street, crowded as it is with men of money, lined as it is by office buildings occupied by financial firm3 whose names are known throughout the world, is more famous for an old building at the corner of Nassau Street than for the offices of even the most famous men of millions. The building is of gray stone, dulled to a deeper gray by time, and across the entire front are high steps, which lead up to a terrace and to a row of pillars of much dignity, and thus to the entrance. This fine old building stands where stood the former City Hall, which was used as a meet- ing place by the Continental Congress and thus gained the name of Federal Hall, and in front of which Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States. The great slab of brown stone on which he stood 51 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK when taking the oath is preserved in a bronze frame inside the present building; and in front is a gravely noble statue of Washington, by J. Q. A. Ward. That there is also a tablet representing Washington kneel- ing under a two-branched tree, with gloved hands raised in prayer, merely shows how both history and religion may be belittled. To suggest some of the differences between those days in 1789 and today, it may be mentioned, remind- fully, that there was no telephone then, no electricity, no moving pictures, no motor-cars, no telegraph; there was not a bathroom or a furnace or a gas jet or a match or a steel pen in all New York. And if I add that on inauguration day Washington wore a coat of black velvet, a white waistcoat, knee breeches, silver buckled shoes, yellow gloves, and a long dress-sword, it is only as a reminder that he was a careful dresser and considered that a man of posi- tion should pay great attention to his personal looks. The President ^s March" began its course of pop- ularity by being played at one of the receptions to Washington on his way here from Mount Vernon for the inauguration: after that, it was played in New York, on every possible Presidential appearance, and was always enthusiastically received by the public; and no wonder, for it was played with the tune to which were afterward given the words of **Hail, Columbia ! ' ' Knowing how Wall Street is abused, by many, as a place of metaphorical financial pirates, it is curious to know that it was the shelter of a very real pirate, 52 THE CHURCH AND THE STREET the famous Captain Kidd himself ! For Kidd did not spend all his life on the sea or in burying treasure! He lived at one time on Pearl Street, here in New York, and, marrying a widow who lived on Wall Street, he became, through the marriage, the owner of the house at what was number 56 ; so that he was a veritable Wall Street man. It is curious about Kidd that, pirate though he was, and indicted for piracy, the crime for which he was hanged was the too hasty killing of one of his own piratical sailors by a blow with a bucket. It is odd that a more terrible and much more vicious pirate, of old-time days, was named Morgan; but in this case with no connection whatever with Wall Street. No one would ever have thought of Morgan the pirate in connection with any Wall Street name, had not the most prominent of Wall Street men of some years ago been moved by a sense of saturnine humor to give his yacht the piratical name of the Corsair and to have it painted black. In the early days of New York, real pirates, or free- booters who were looked upon as probable pirates, were not an uncommon sight in the streets, swashing about in their great hats, their flaming waist-sashes, and with great pistols openly showing. Some of the early New York fortunes were based on buying loot from the pirates and selling it at a great profit. Pirates were hanged, at New York, as recently as toward the middle of the nineteenth century. Broad Street, which is really an unusually broad street, is a very important part of the Wall Street 53 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK district: during banking hours its pavement, just around the corner from Wall Street, is excitedly alive with the brokers of the picturesque **curb market,'* and here on Broad Street, facing this curb market, is the Stock Exchange itself. The Stock Exchange is a beautiful building, in some respects a superb building. It has an admirable row of little balconies, low set, along its front, above the entrance ways, and above the balconies is a row of low windows, and above them is a mighty frontage of glass, broad and high, against which stand six great grooved columns ; above these columns is a pediment, bearing a group of sculptured figures, emblematic of commerce and finance. Inside the building, the great floor offers an excit- ing sight, for it is thronged with brokers buying and selling, and the air is filled with frantic cries. It was a New York humorist who remarked, with truth, that **a seat on the Stock Exchange," costing seventy- five thousand dollars or so, meant the privilege of standing in a continuous cane-rush from ten to three ! One of the memories of Broad Street is that the great Hamilton, addressing here an excited crowd on the subject of the Jay Treaty with England, was roughly dragged down and hustled through the street. Broad Street came naturally by its great width, for in early days a canal led down its middle, and quaint Dutch houses lined each side of the placid water, which generations ago vanished. The houses were mostly of wood, except for their gable ends, which faced the 54 THE CHURCH AND THE STREET canal and were of small yellow bricks with black headers: the doors were large, the windows were small, every doorstep was immaculately clean, every- body clattered about in wooden shoes — it is like a dream to think of that picturesque Broad Street of so long ago. There still stands, at the corner of Broad and Pearl Street, an old house of noble memories : not so old as those picturesque houses of the early Dutch, but one of the oldest existing buildings in New York; it is Fraunces Tavern, and was built in 1719. The building has suffered from fire and from radi- cal alterations, but it has been elaborately restored by the Sons of the Revolution to an appearance con- siderably like that of its early years, and is a digni- fied, dormered building of brick. A restaurant is still maintained on the lower floor. On the second floor is the famous *^Long Room," of the same shape and dimensions that it was when it won its fame, and not without much of its original appearance, in spite of the somewhat too free restoration. Fittingly, the building has been made the depository of a great num- ber of Revolutionary relics; for its association with the Revolution was profoundly dramatic. For it was here, in this dignified **Long Room,'* that Washington took farewell of his most prominent and trusted officers at the close of the Revolution. It was on December 4, 1783, and among the forty-four officers were Knox and Wayne, Greene and Steuben, Moultrie, Lincoln and Hamilton. It was a solemn and affecting scene. They ate together in almost 55 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK breathless silence. Then Washington filled his glass with wine, and said : *^ With a heart full of love and gratitude I must now take my leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.'* All drank their wine; and then, one by one, they made their farewells ; a scene profoundly solemn and sorrowful. 56 CHAPTER V ABOUND CITY HALL PAEK ET in the very center of the front wall of old St. PauPs, on Broadway, and in the shadow of its pillared portico, is a tablet setting forth that in this church is the tomb of the gallant General Eichard Mont- gomery. But this Broadway front, when the church was built, was the rear, and the real face of the church still looks out in the direction of the North Eiver, between which and the church there was originally nothing but trees and a low bank and the beach. And, in strictness, St. PauPs is not a church, but bears only the name of Chapel, being an off- shoot and dependent of Trinity. With the exception of the spire, St. PauPs was com- pleted in 1766, and its stones are almost black with age and dust and smoke. It is a building of a dig- nity in which a certain primness is mingled with a very real sense of charm. The spire, rising in pleas- ing pilastered gradations, was put up in 1794. Looking at the Montgomery tablet, there comes the 57 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK picture of a gallant young British officer, who, having recently resigned his commission, after winning honors under the command of Wolfe, had become a citizen of the Colony of New York and had fallen in love with the pretty daughter of one of the powerful Livingstons. have ventured to request, sir,'* he writes, with old-fashioned formality to the young woman's father. Judge Robert E. Livingston, *Hhat you will consent to a union which to me has the most promising appearance of happiness, from the lady's uncommon merit and amiable worth." He does not, you see, promise happiness to the young woman, or speak of his own advantages, but the very naivete of the letter shows him as a likable young man, and both father and daughter were alike in so believing. And so they were married; and in two years the Revolu- tion broke out, and at once Montgomery was ordered, with General Benedict Arnold, to attempt the capture of Quebec. And, as the story of it all comes back, one forgets this quiet portico and the ceaseless rush of Broadway, and thinks of the heroic attack, the narrow path along the cliff, the fierce wind and the drifting snow and the slippery ice, and of the whirl of grape- shot which marked Montgomery's death. The English conquerors carried his body with honor into Quebec, for chivalry had not then passed from war, and there it lay until 1818, when the State of New York asked that it might be yielded to the land of his adoption. With sorrowful pomp the body was brought back, and the last stage of the journey was by boat down 58 AROUND CITY HALL PARK the Hudson. At Rhinebeck, which for their brief married life had been their home, Montgomery's widow was still living, and as the funeral barge ap- proached she begged to be left alone, to see it from the window of the room which had been most dear to them, forty-three years before; and cannon thun- dered from the boat, and the guard stood at salute beside the catafalque; and when the boat moved slowly on into the distance, and friends went gently in to the hero's lonely widow, they found her fallen unconscious, overpowered by the rush of memories. St. PauPs, in its burials, seems to have been de- sirous to point out, even in early days, the cosmopoli- tan character of the city, for here lie such men as the Hessian Baron Nordeck, and that Sieur de Roche Fontaine who was aide to Rochambeau. Within, the church is pleasantly impressive; and, indeed, the interior was definitely modeled after fa- mous old St. Martin 's-in-the-Fields, of London. And there is still preserved, and held in reverence, but not with such reverence but that the visitor to the building may sit in it if he so desires, the pew which General Washington occupied when he lived in New York; Trinity, the parent church, being then but a ruin, hav- ing been burned during British occupancy of the city. St. PauPs occupies the block between Fulton and Vesey Streets, and at Vesey, while Broadway con- tinues straight on. Park Row leads off diagonally to the right; to the point thus formed, City Hall Park used to extend, and there was an admirable gateway here, and an admirable view of the present City Hall 59 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK itself : but this fetching view was lost when a post- office structure of unusual unattractiveness was built here, in 1875. Opposite the upper end of the post-office stands the loftiest of all skyscrapers, the Woolworth building, which splendidly rises in its fifty-one stories, to the seemingly impossible height of 750 feet. It is a noble building, in its dignity and in its fine simplicity, and points out, if the fact needs any pointing out, that a skyscraper may be not only a thing of necessity, in a city developing as New York develops, but a thing of beauty as well. With a fine air of distinction, the City Hall looks out over its little park. It is a building of cream color, mellowed and darkened by time, a building of perfection of outline, of peculiar attractiveness. It is so different from what one expects to see in New York that it is no wonder that the newly arrived Irishman remarked, on first catching sight of it, that it was certainly not made in this country ! It is but two stories high, unless one counts the half story of a basement and the slight square attic up- lifted in the center, and it is surmounted by a smallish and admirable clock-tower; but although it stands in the midst of towering new buildings, among which are not only the Woolworth but the immense and lofty new Municipal Building, this little old City Hall, so graceful, so self-possessed, with so fine an air of re- pose, of distinction, does not seem small. Indeed, it seems to dominate! It is a little Napoleon among giant marshals. 60 ABOUND CITY HALL PAEK The center of the building is recessed, with two pro- jecting wings. Throughout, it is the knowledge and use of proper proportions that give the building its fineness of look. There is more than the usual num- ber of windows along the front, thus adding to the aspect of airy lightness. In front of the broad stone steps that lead up to the low-pillared entrance, the sidewalk bends broadly outward in a generous bow, and, slightly terraced, adds to the general effective- ness. Inside, the admirable stone stairway, a double stair, sweeping upward within the rotunda, is a marvelous achievement of grace and beauty. The encircling pil- lars at the head of the stairs are of much dignity. The Governor's Eoom — so called from the intention that this should always be a headquarters ready for the Governor of the State, whenever he should visit the metropolis — is really a suite of three connecting rooms which keep up the old-time atmosphere of fine stateliness. Maintained as a memento of the past, the Governor's Room is beautiful in its paneling and cornices and ceilings, its fireplaces, the portraits of distinguished men that line its walls, and its fine old furniture. The room has a soft beauty of coloring, from the white of the woodwork, the varied colors of the paintings, the mahogany furniture, the oak floor ; and of all of the coloring, the buff and blue of Trum- bull's Washington is most delightful. This portrait of Washington was painted in 1790, at the special request of the city authorities, who for- mally asked Washington to permit Mr. Trumbull to 61 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK take his portrait to be placed in the City Hall as a monument to the respect which the inhabitants of this city have toward him''; the City Hall of that time being the building on Wall Street. This began a very pleasant custom on the part of the city to obtain for its City Hall the portraits of leading men, and especially men of this State, and the custom was kept up for some seventy-five years. (Ancient Florence began a similar custom, and in- stead of wearying with seventy-five years kept it up for centuries!) Washington is represented as standing beside his gray horse, with one hand on the pommel of the saddle. It is a quiet but spirited portrait, and Washington looks every inch a leader, in his coat of blue, his breeches and waistcoat of buff, his high black boots. The background represents the view and the walk which he personally loved, for it is New York Bay and the hills of Staten Island, as seen from the walk along the Battery. Among the other portraits is that of Seward as governor, twenty years before the Civil War, a slen- der, youngish, dapper, tight-buttoned man, painted by Inman ; and also an Inman is that of the distinguished New Yorker, Van Buren, with red hair and red side- whiskers and his hand on a tablecloth of dull crimson ; not at all the Van Buren of the imagination ! For this is a retiring sort of man, lacking altogether in the ex- pected aggressiveness of the chosen protege of the fiery Jackson. Here is Alexander Hamilton, painted by Trumbull ; 62 AROUND CITY HALL PARK a good-looking man, a little thin-lipped, with pow- dered hair and white stock. It takes away from the value of this portrait that it was not painted from life, but one year after Hamilton's death; but it no doubt correctly represents his long nose, his thin lips, his fingers a little too slender. Here is DeWitt Clin- ton who, the son of a distinguished father, won dis- tinction even greater than that of his father. He is a stoutish man with an alert and distinctly modern face. The portrait was painted by that Catlin who was one of the earliest travelers among the Indians of the West and a painter of Indian scenes. Among the others is a Hudson that need not seri- ously be considered, and also a Stuyvesant about which very little is known; but there is a really ex- cellent bust of Henry Clay, made by Pruden, in 1849. And there is a portrait of Oliver Hazard Perry — com- monly referred to as Commodore, ' ' but to whom a grateful government never gave a higher title than Captain, and even that not until after the Battle of Lake Erie. This painting was made at the request of the city, in 1816, very shortly after his victory ; it is by Jarvis, and it shows the gallant young Perry in an open boat, bareheaded, in blue coat and white waistcoat and trousers, with sailors beside him in striped woolen sweaters and beaver hats of the shape of the silk hats of today ; this scene representing him in the act of changing from his sinking flagship to another ship, to continue the fight. It is one of the pleasant things about New York that it has always loved to do honor to naval heroes. 63 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK Eecently it was Dewey; long ago Hull and Decatur were honored here, and were formally received at the City Hall ; and Oliver Hazard Perry was also one of the naval men to whom New York gave a special pub- lic welcome, in addition to securing his portrait. The old-time furniture here is fascinating. There is a beautiful great desk, a Sheraton of unusual length and design, flat-topped, with drawers at either end as well as at each side, the desk which Washing- ton, as President, personally used here in New York City. There are also desks that were personally used by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton; and there are chairs and tables and settees, made for the first furnishing of the former Federal Hall. J olm McComb, a Scotchman, was the reputed archi- tect of the City Hall, but there is some reason for thinking that the perfection of the design was largely owing to an assistant; a Frenchman. It should be remembered, however, that the best architectural work of the then recent years had been by Scotchmen, the family of Adam, that they had published their designs, and that this building shows marked Adam characteristics. McComb himself furnished the stone and did the stone work, and under him, for the woodwork, was a man named Weeks, who had a brother who was charged with having murdered a girl to whom he was engaged. Hamilton and Burr, who at that time had not become enemies, were united in the defense of Weeks, and the Judge, Lansing, practically ordered the jury to acquit. 64 ABOUND CITY HALL PAEK The girPs aunt, shaking with passionate grief, cried openly in the court room that there would be no jus- tice in Heaven if those who had set free the slayer of her niece should die unpunished. And old New York- ers used to point out, with awe, that Hamilton was shot ; that Burr, a disgraced wanderer, crept disgraced to death; that Lansing, rising to be chief justice, stepped out of his office in New York, one day in 1829, and quite vanished out of existence, in absolute and mysterious disappearance. In front of the City Hall stands one of the most dis- tinguished works of art in New York, a bronze statue, by MacMonnies, of Nathan Hale, the schoolmaster cap- tain who volunteered to act as a spy to obtain informa- tion of which Washington was vitally in need. The statue, with a brave pathos in its pose, bears upon the base Hale's noble last words that his only regret was that he had but one life to give for his country. By an incomprehensible blunder, the statement is also inscribed on the base that Hale was *^a captain in the regular army of the United States," although the United States did not even exist until years after his death. He was hurriedly hanged, after the fare- well messages which he had written to his mother and to the girl he was to have married were burned before his eyes. The face, of gentle manliness, is but an ideal, as there was no portrait to follow: nor was Hale executed where his statue stands, but at some spot, vaguely identified as being on the Beekman property, beside the East Eiver. Within scarcely more than a stone's throw, how- 65 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK ever, from this statue there was long ago a hanging in New York City which, like that of Hale, was en- tirely without dishonor to the man upon whom sen- tence was inflicted. Following the overturning of the English govern- ment by William and Mary, a committee of safety met, in New York, to appoint a governor to take the place of the governor who had been appointed under the Stuart regime, whereupon a merchant named Jacob Leisler was chosen, and he acted as governor from 1689 to 1691, holding the office with dignity, and ready at any time to turn over his powers to a duly accredited successor. It was Leisler who, as acting governor, summoned the first Congress of the Colonies to meet ! He called the meeting together at the old State House in Coen- ties Slip, in 1690, and representatives were there from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, which was then under a separate government, and Maryland. New Jersey sent its * ^ sympathies ' ' in- stead of representatives; and the Quakers of Penn- sylvania sent word that it was *^ag't their princ's to fight." This Congress voted to raise an army of eight hundred and fifty men to invade Canada and wipe out the French, but it is not recorded that the French were wiped out at that time. Leisler *s career was tragically ended. A man with the suggestive name of Sloughter came over, appointed as governor, and although Leisler made no opposition whatever when the proper credentials were shown him, he was put under arrest, treated 66 AEOUND CITY HALL PARK with the greatest harshness, and sentenced to death, in spite of his pitiful amazement that he was to be slain by William for holding the Colony against Stuart sympathizers! He and his son-in-law were hanged, under accompanying circumstances of great cruelty, in a drenching rain, in the Leisler garden, close to the edge of what is now City Hall Park. The stigma of disloyalty was afterwards formally removed, and Frankfort and Jacob Streets bear in mind the unfortunate man, for Jacob was his first name and Frankfort was the city of his birth. There is a street up near Mulberry Bend with the sweet old- fashioned name of Hester, but that district is now so far from being either sweet or old-fashioned that one does not think of even the name as a delightful one: but it was named for Hester, the daughter of Governor Leisler. The City Hall was completed in 1812 ; and, in the open space where it now stands, the Declaration of Independence was read to the gathered American troops, on July 9, 1776, in the presence of General "Washington. Washington's first New York home, after he be- came President, was but a few minutes' walk from this spot, on Cherry Hill, at the corner of Cherry Street and the incredibly curving Pearl Street, on what is now known as Franklin Square. Cherry Hill, in early days, was a charming region, with cherry trees and greenery leading down to the sparkling river. But the Cherry Hill of to-day is one of the disreputable-looking tenement districts of 67 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK the city, with houses of different heights standing at irregular angles with the sidewalks, and threatening dark passageways leading to dingier and darker tene- ments in the rear. From the huge bridge, the orig- inal Brooklyn Bridge, far overhead, comes the dis- tant rumble of traffic. At the upper end of the slope stands a huge abutment, darkly massive, and on that very spot stood the Presidential mansion. The progress of New York since early days is splendidly marked by its bridges. To say that they are the greatest bridges in the world is but a small statement, for nowhere else in the world are there bridges even to be compared with them. The original Brooklyn Bridge, over a mile in length, is still fondly known by that distinctive name, and its beautifully sweeping curve still gives it the supremacy in looks. Close above is the Manhattan Bridge ; then comes the Williamsburg Bridge, with its length of over a thousand feet more than the first of these bridges, and of 7,200 feet in all. Next up the East Eiver is the huge Queensboro, fourteen hundred feet longer than the Williamsburg, and with a mighty length of 8601 feet in all. And last of all is the tremendous Hell Gate Bridge, leading from East 141st Street to Astoria. Different from the other bridges is this Hell Gate Bridge. For the others are for trolley cars and foot passengers, for wagons and automobiles, but the Hell Gate is a railroad bridge, making, with its huge bulk, the connecting link which for the first time permits, in connection with the tunnels, through trains to run 6S AROUND CITY HALL PAEK without ferriage from the South, through New York City, on to New England. Stupendous, marvelous — ^no words can be too strong for these achievements : and by far the great- est praise and the greatest credit belong to the mem- ory of the engineer, Roebling, who first saw how to span this great width of water, and who made the plans for Brooklyn Bridge and got the work in suc- cessful motion — and then died before the bridge could be completed. Work was begun in 1870: the bridge was opened for traffic in 1883: and I like to believe the story, which bears the marks of poetical truth, that Roebling, dying, and unable to leave his room, had himself, day by day, placed at the window, whence he could see, in the distance, the lofty towers, and the great bridge curving toward completion. CHAPTER VI MILLION-FOOTED MANHATTAN " "ALT WHITMAN never wearied of coining phras- es to express his admira- tion of New York, such as: Superb-faced Man- hattan''; **City of the World! City of tall fa- Qades of marble and iron ! ' ' * * Mettlesome, mad, extravagant city ! ' ' ^^Wlien million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavement ' ' ; and, naturally, * * My city ! ' ' The thrill, the life, the movement, the strength, of the city — how they stand for the most representative Americanism! And foreign visitors are much im- pressed by these aspects of Americanism : as, for ex- ample, Thackeray, who writes: Broadway has a rush of life such as I have never seen: the rush and restlessness please me. ' ' Eudyard Kipling, however, was frankly jarred by this kind of Americanism, at least on his first visit. Busy streets, and huge busi- ness structures, frankly wearied him, and, as he has never been in the habit of mincing his words, he pub- 70 ^'MILLION-FOOTED MANHATTAN'' lished his irritable belief that Americans were bar- barians ' ' and * * heathens. ' ' However, the barbarians and heathens forgave him, and all America watched and waited with eager sympathy when he lay in New York, at the threshold of death, in the late '90 *s. Kip- ling came to know New York very well: and I have wondered whether, with his love for the picaresque and unusual, he ever knew, in regard to a hotel that was one of his favorites, that the brother of the pro- prietor was said to be a professional thief and swin- dler whose frequent address was the penitentiary, and that the hotel itself, highly respectable and prosper- ous, had been built, so it was said, with the ill-earned money from the brother who, for cogent reasons, was unable, himself, to spend much time there ! A human tide comes flowing into the business por- tion of New York every morning; it fills the canyon gorge of Broadway, it goes rushing in currents into the side streets and offshoots, it is sucked into the great stores and the office buildings. Then, in the aft- ernoon, the tide turns. The human stream comes pouring out of the buildings, rushing from street after street, swirling into the subways, moving in swift cur- rents toward ferries and elevated trains, rushing to- ward the great bridges. And no feature of this gen- eral scene is more impressive than the black-coated, black-skirted streams moving in unbroken currents, across the squares and across the avenues, eastward into the tenement districts. In general character, the lower part of the city on the West Side is different from that on the East ; the 71 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK streets are broader, the houses are lower, there are far more individual homes remaining, with concomi- tantly fewer tenements, there is many a charming old doorway, many an oval window, there are wrought- iron newels with pineapples or classic urns ; and here the population is still largely American or Irish- American. Far down on the lower West Side, on Varick Street, at St. John's Park, is St. John's Chapel, which was considered so far uptown when it was built that it was wondered who could possibly be expected to attend it, but which is now so far downtown that church-goers never get to it. Trinity Church, owning a great deal of land in this vicinity, and wishing in consequence to draw wealthy homes here, built for this reason, St. John 's, completed in 1807. At the time it was built, it faced out over a space free of houses towards the Hudson, and was known as St. John's-in-the-Field. Within the park which was laid out within a few years after the building of the church grew fine big trees, and this park space was enclosed, as Gramercy Park still is, within an iron fence with a locked gate, whose keys were given to owners of the new houses facing the park, as they were built. They were fine houses that gradually arose there, but most of them were torn down and replaced by business structures many and many a year ago. But, before the coming of business, the entire centre of the park, which was to have remained a delightful open space forever, was acquired by the New York Central Eailway, which covered every portion of the 72 ^^MILLION-FOOTED MANHATTAN'' park area, over half a century ago, with a huge un- sightly freight station, thus not only ruining the neighborhood for homes, but blotting the park itself entirely out of existence: for always there are men who can carry out ruthless plans. I remember meet- ing an old gentleman, an old-time resident of the park, who told what a poignant tragedy to him and to others was the felling of the trees. Old St. John's, now black with age, is of stately porticoed design, with great pillars, and its fine tower diminishingly rises in pilastered squares and columned circles. Its interior is stately and dignified, with fine colunms, and tall square pilastered corners at the front of the chancel, and a curving stairway to the pulpit. I say that all this *4s," but even as I write the stately old building may be destroyed. In front of it a new subway has undermined the very portico, and on either side are wreckage and desolation. Even before the recent additional changes of the vicinity began to be made. Trinity was on the point of giving up this chapel, and by the time this is published the building may, not improbably, be demolished. It won so many friends by its dignified beauty, that it has been permitted to remain long after its practical use- fulness disappeared. The last time that I was there, one day as the after- noon shadows were gently stretching across the shad- owy interior, it was not a time for service, but the organist was softly practising, and I was the only one in the church. Sweet and pleasant was the effect, de- 73 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK lightful was the fine dignity of it all and the softly echoing music — and then, at the very door, came a succession of crashing detonations from the blasting work. It is a pleasant thing to remember in connection with this old church that here there is still given out, on Saturday mornings, a free weekly dole of sixty- seven loaves of wheaten bread in compliance with the will of a certain John Leake, who died in 1792, leav- ing money whose income should always be thus de- voted to feeding the poor. Delightfully remindful, this, that New York is really an old city ; for nothing is pleasanter than ancient pleasant customs, graceful charities which are to go on forever, like the dole of bread and ale that has been given out for centuries at charming old Winchester, in England. And, as to the continued permanence of the dole of old St. John's, a man in charge of the building said to me, with fretful resignation, as of submission, but with frank unwil- lingness, to the inevitable : We can't stop givin' it : it's lor: the lor won't let us"! St. John's Park has a curious connection with the tragedy of the Blennerhassetts, who lived so romanti- cally on the Ohio, and who were ruined through their connection with Aaron Burr: for their son, helpless and an object of charity, lingered on till 1854, and shortly before his death was visited by J ames Parton, the historian, bearing a contribution from a number of sympathizers, and Parton tells of finding him in a miserable room near St. John 's Park, an elderly man, shabbily dressed, with a pallid, expressionless face. 74 MILLION-FOOTED MANHATTAN The graveyard of St. John's was at some blocks to the northward, on Hudson Street, and it was a roman- tic looking place, which a few years ago was turned into a children's playground and a sunken Italian garden and named Hudson Park. One of the old mon- uments is still preserved there ; a firemen's monument ornamented with stone helmets and firemen's trump- ets. A row of old-time houses, admirably preserved, looks into the park ; * * St. Luke 's Place, ' ' this used to be called, and long ago these were homes of prosper- ous sea-captains. St. John's Graveyard well deserves to be remem- bered, for, so the tradition has come down, it was through walking back and forth among its stones that the idea of the * ^ Kaven ' ' came to Edgar Allan Poe. A few minutes' walk from here, just away from the lower end of Sixth Avenue, is a little section centered in Minetta Street and Minetta Lane, which is the wretchedest part of the city in outward appearance : it is a center for poor-looking negroes, and some poorer whites, and the tiny area is a nest of narrowest streets, scarcely more than alleys, with unexpected crooks and twists. The houses are tumbledown and old, and originally were picturesque, with dormered roofs, with hips and gables, with their front steps of stone leading up sidewise to pillared doorways, and with many of the houses set, with no apparent reason, at delightfully odd and differing angles. Italians are thick-crowding up to this region, and near by, on Bleecker Street, is an Italian Church, that of Madonna di Pompei, with pillared front and Italian 75 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK campanile. The church looks unexpectedly old, con- sidering that the Italians have come here within but a few years — and you find that the dignified pillared front is really old, and that it is the recent successful addition of the slim campanile which gives the Italian aspect to the entire structure ! Broadway is not far away: wherever you are, in Manhattan, Broadway seems readily reachable: and not far from straight across from here, and about as far east of Broadway as this is west, is an interesting church of another type. It is old St. Patrick's, a dull- gray plastered building, built over a hundred years ago, and for years it was the Eoman Catholic Cathe- dral of the city. It was surrounded at first by an American population, then by the Irish, and now by the Italians who pack solidly the tenements round about; so solidly, that there are seven thousand chil- dren of school-age within the radius of a quarter of a mile. It faces on Mott Street and runs back to Mul- berry, with its side towards Prince. Within the church is buried that *^Boss" Kelly who long ruled Tammany with an iron and honest hand. Here, too, lies that Delmonico, founder of the line, who achieved world-wide fame through catering in things gastronomic and costly. And then comes a sudden thrill ; for, walking through the high-walled graveyard beside the church, one is suddenly back in the Revolu- tion, suddenly one hears, in fancy, the thunder of can- non, and sees Paul Jones, off Flamborough Head, dashing splendidly on the British in the **Bon Homme Eichard,'' one sees, in swift fancy, the Frenchman, 76 ^^MILLION-FOOTED MANHATTAN^' Pierre Landais, in his own much larger battleship, not helping Paul Jones, but holding off and, whether by accident or design, actually broadsiding the Ameri- can's boat. For here is the grave of poor Landais; and, according to the old inscription, he was * * ancien Contre-Amiral au service des Etats Unis, qui dispar- uit June, 1818, age 87 ans." And there comes not only the memory of that day of glory for Paul Jones and of disgrace for Landais, but the thought of the lonely suffering of the long years that followed, here in New York, for the French- man. He was tried by a naval committee, none of whom understood French, he himself at the time un- derstanding scarcely a word of English, and was dis- missed from the American service in disgrace. Again and again he sought in vain for a rehearing, and for forty weary years walked the streets of New York in proud and solitary poverty, now and then donning his old Continental uniform on some great national occa- sion, but always looked at by the people askance ; and at length it was here, in old St. Patrick's churchyard, that the saddened and friendless man found rest. The churches of New York add greatly, not only to the interest of the city, but to its looks : and none have a more striking situation than the beautiful structure at Broadway and Tenth Street. It is Grace Church, and it can be seen from far down Broadway, for it stands where the great thoroughfare makes a sweep- ing bend, and it is a beautifully spired, and inspired, mass of white stone, with the effect, from a distance, of rising in the very middle of the street. 77 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK It is a fine structure, with a sweetly gracious air; it is not a perched church, but sits close to the ground, with its gardens and greenery and shrubs nestled around it, and with its door opening in welcome from the sidewalk. It is amazing to see this broad open greenery on either side of the church and fronting the recessed rectory and tributary church buildings, in this busy part of Broadway. And on the grass is a huge dolium, a curiosity-awakening jar, brought here from across the ocean as if to prove the truth of tne Arabian-Nights ^ ' and its tale of Ali Baba and the forty thieves who hid in jars ! On the southern wall of the church, and a curious thing to find in America, is an outside pulpit of stone, remindful of the outside pulpit behind the delightful cathedral of Tours. This pulpit looks over an open space toward where, for years, night after night, there gathered the drearily pathetic and world-famous bread line, which disappeared with the passing of the kind-hearted Austrian's bakery and coffee-house from that corner. The front view of Grace Church, the iron fence, the hedge, the greenery, make a scene which became, on the stage, the best known piece of scene painting in America; for this was made the setting for one of the acts in the * * Old Homestead, ' ' a play which was played for so many years, and which became over and over again familiar in every part of the country. The chimes, too, which were always rung when tliis scene was presented on the stage, were remindful of the chimes of this church, which, sounding so often and so 78 MILLION-FOOTED MANHATTAN'' sweetly over the throngs of Broadway, seem among the sweetest chimes in the world. The interior of the church well carries out the in- terest of the exterior, with its stone pillars, the quiet coloring of the glass behind the altar, the admirable smaller rose-window, and the general air of repose. There never will be anything more dramatic than a certain funeral procession, in New York, and what led up to it; and I speak of it here because I saw the funeral when it was passing Grace Church. The setting of the dramatic story was in the romantic period of the world — which is only to say that any period possesses romance, and that it only needs to be recognized when it comes. Henry George, the Single Taxer, one of the striking figures in American life, was running for the office of mayor of New York in a fiercely contested campaign, the first mayoralty campaign of the Greater City, in 1897. Almost on the eve of election he died, and there was widespread grief. His body lay in state and a hundred thousand people solemnly passed by. At the funeral services there were addresses by a Eoman Catholic priest, a Congregational minister, a Hebrew Eabbi, and others ; to such varied minds had his teach- ing and personality appealed. As evening came on, the funeral procession moved. Down Broadway it came, on its way to Brooklyn and Greenwood, and profoundly impressive was the sight as the cortege swung around the bend of Broadway at Grace Church. Although but early evening, it was dark. Lights and shadows seemed mysteriously 79 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK blended. The heaviest bell of the church was slowly tolling and the tolling was sad and drear and of tre- mendous solemnity. The body of the dead man was borne high on a lofty open catafalque, which was all black, and the coffin shook and rocked as the wheels jolted over the roughness of the pavement. Alone, in front, with head and shoulders drooping, rode a man on horseback, the chief mourner and closest friend, Tom Johnson, himself a figure of national importance, but now likewise gone. Behind, came fifers playing the saddening notes of '^Flee as a bird to the moun- tain"; and behind these, marching solemnly between the black and deserted fronts of the business houses and past this church, there followed thousands upon thousands of men on foot. It made a picture of tre- mendous intensity. 80 CHAPTER VII UP THE BOWEKY EW YORK is one of the cities that have popular songs writ- ten about them; and perhaps none of its songs won such widespread popularity as the one that goes so swingingly with its : '*The Bowery, the Bowery, They do such things, and they say such things, On the Bowery, the Bowery — I'll never go there any more !" But of course what it meant was, that everybody would want to hurry right back there; whereupon it behooved the Bowery to do such things and to say such things as would give it the air of living up to its swaggering and swashbuckling reputation, with even more than a touch of the desperately dissipated and criminal. But, as a show, on the basis of such anticipations, the Bowery does not look the part! It is an ex- tremely broad street, with a line of elevated tracks along either side and an unusual number of trolley 81 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK tracks down the middle. It has quite a proportion of saloons, it is markedly a street of big cheap lodg- ing houses for men, there are restaurants and pawn- shops, and there are many stores, mostly smallish ones; it looks like a busy respectable street, and that it even has banks, gives it, surely, the final re- spectable touch. Even the men and women who throng its sidewalks are disappointingly respectable in looks! The wicked glories of the Bowery of the past, partly real and partly imaginary as they were, have gone, and the wickedness of to-day, when you come to look into it, is not glamorous. Wickedness, to be attractive, seems to need the haze of distant time. It is hard to feel pleasantly thrilled over Suicide Hall,'' and Nigger Mike's," and ^^The Bucket of Blood," even though their claims to fame have been eagerly pushed. It is hard to feel keen interest in Sloppy Mag Unsky or Tinky-Tin Cushman, or even in the man who set the example of bridge-jumping, and on the strength of this set up a prosperous saloon. However, people and places are here, and some friendly policeman or guide, or perhaps the megaphone man of a sightseeing car, will point them out. The fame of the Bowery of the past — romanti- cally evil, as it was in the past — came largely from the evil neighborhood and haunts of the Five Points and Mulberry Bend: but a great public park has there taken the place of the tenements inhabited by the lowest criminals, and busy Italians have since 82 UP THE BOWEEY thronged into possession of the present bordering tenements, and the Chinese quietly hold their own circumscribed district, a patient and on the whole a law-abiding folk. But one relic of the past does still remain there, and it is a joy! The puller s-in * ' of Baxter Street are still there! — the second-hand clothing spiders who seize the passing man of un- wariness and, dragging him indoors, outfit him in raiment of which it can be justly said that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. And it is proper to refer to Solomon, for the men of these dark little clothing shops are of his race. But this extremely successful race are more in evi- dence in New York than merely on little Baxter Street! To say that there are more Hebrews in New York than in Jerusalem would be to put it mildly. There are more here than there are in any other city of the world. They occupy great sections in the Man- hattan tenement district, they have a mighty Ghetto far over in that part of Brooklyn known as Browns- ville. On Broadway, one sees few business signs ex- cept those with Hebrew names. Not only are there synagogues for the poor, but there are also those for the wealthy, as notably the one opposite lower Central Park, on Fifth Avenue. Not only in business but in real estate have they won prominence, for it is stated, by real estate men, that Hebrews own sixty- five per cent, of the land of Manhattan. And, as a race, they independently aim to take care of their own charities, and a much smaller proportion than those of 83 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK other races get their names into the records of the criminal courts. On Center Street, not far from Mulberry Bend, is the great pile of buildings of the Criminal Courts and the Tombs. The famous original Tombs Prison, however, with its Egyptian-like front, has been re- placed by a modern structure on the same spot, but still the Venetian-like Bridge of Sighs connects the courts and the prison, and over it the prisoners pass to be tried, and return across it if convicted. The grim trials known to evil fame and eagerly dis- cussed throughout the entire country, have been many : vastly more have been those unnoticed ones which meant, in their outcome, just as much to the individual as if millions of people were every morning looking at their newspapers to see how the case was going. Frequently, a jury is ready to report at night ; and when this is expected, and the judge is in a good humor, he will wait patiently as the hours creep slowly by — slowly for the prisoner, at least, but not always so for the others interested, for I have seen the judge and the lawyers on both sides, with news- paper men and perhaps some interested mtnesses, ad- journ to one of the near places of refreshment, and gaily talk and banter, while, if they cared to think of it, and if any good could be done by thinking of it, they would realize that the prisoner was frantically waiting. At length a bailiff would come in with a whispering word. All would straggle back to the dimly lighted courtroom, where shadows were hiding in all the cor- 84 UP THE BOWERY ners and there would be a hurrying ^^Hear ye, hear ye ! ' ' and the jury would file soberly in, and the pris- oner would stand to face them. The Bowery^' is an odd misnomer. For it is a Dutch word, pronounced but not spelled this way, and it means a pleasant suburban home with a garden. Governor Petrus Stuyvesant had his Bowery, some two and a half miles north of the Battery, and to the road which, for the northern half of the distance, led to it, was given its name — the Bowery. The gallant General Knox rode down the Bowery at the head of the first detachment of the American army on November 25, 1783, on his way to the Battery, to take possession of the city after the evacuation by the British: he having been chosen for the proud honor by Washington, who followed him a little later, and met him, on his return, here on the Bowery, at what was to be its junction with Canal Street. At the upper end of the Bowery is the Bible House, with its output of over seven millions of Bibles a year, and at the southern end is dark little Chatham Square, covered with elevated tracks and station — and I re- member a modern little sign there, eminently suggest- ive, at the foot of a black little stair, reading Black Eyes Painted.'' Just oif the lower side of Chatham Square, on a little, old and very dismal street which has incongru- ously been given the name of the New Bowery, is the earliest Jewish graveyard in the city, dating far back to 1656. It is one of the loneliest, one of the gloomi- est places imaginable, and I never see it without 85 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK thinking of the sad little London burying-ground where ended the tragedy of the mistress of Bleak House. This ancient Jewish cemetery is tiny in size, it stands a little above the present level of the side- walk, and fronts gloomily out beneath the Elevated tracks which fill the narrow gloomy street. Those first Jews in New York were Spanish and Portuguese, and their records and tombstones were inscribed in Spanish, and their rabbis had romantic names such as Pinto, Seixas and Peixotto. Cats now prowl dismally among the time-blackened stones, and the windows of dilapidated tenements look down upon them; and from one of these windows, a third-floor one at 26 James Street; nearly a century ago — the quarter being then somewhat better than at present — little Joe Jefferson, afterwards to be Eip Van Winkle, used to look down into this strange, lonely God^s Acre. Most marked of any of the outward changes in the appearance of the Bowery is that which has come with the tearing down of buildings to make the plaza and approach, at Canal Street, for the great Manhattan Bridge. The result is superbly beautiful : great space has been taken for it, and the work has been done with strength of conception and architect- ural impressiveness. The old Bowery Theatre, full of interesting theat- rical memories, and knowTi for some years past as the Thalia, looks across the Bowery at this sweeping change: and the old theatre itself is doomed shortly to disappear, to be replaced by a modern business 86 UP THE BOWERY, structure of a kind befitting the changed looks of the neighborhood. It is well worth while to take a trolley car and cross Manhattan Bridge in the early evening, even if only to come back from its farther end, for it rises over the very roofs of block after block of tenements, and you look far down into streets that look like narrow slits, and down at lighted windows and busy streets and moving throngs. And the impression comes of endless cars, in long twinkling lines, flitting over endlessly on the Wil- liamsburg Bridge above and the old Brooklyn Bridge a little farther down; and it is all wonderfully im- pressive and tells vividly of the great surging life of the great city. Walk slowly up the Bowery, and you are pleased with the gregarious life and happiness of it all. Peo- ple are bustling, crowding, thronging, but all are quiet and orderly. Seldom is any one boisterous or drunk. The policemen, so quiet and capable, are just quietly looking on, ready to help or to answer questions. An old man with two heavy valises gets dazedly off a car, looks dazedly about, is lost. Instantly a policeman is beside him, genially and capably helping him, put- ting confidence into him, directing him. Not always the wicked Bowery of tradition, one realizes. At the end of the Bowery, at a cobweb centre of streets, rises the shapeless bulk of Cooper Union. It was founded long ago by Peter Cooper and has done great good through its many and varied classes, its generous aid to those who are struggling and ambi- 87 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK tious. For use in connection with the work of the School of Design, a notable collection has been gath- ered of the fine old furniture of early days, and there are also admirable details of early woodwork and metal work. The great reading room of Cooper Union, with its myriad of newspapers from myriad cities, is one of the sights of New York, crowded as it is with the homeless and the homesick, and with strangers eager to read the news from their home-towns. The meeting hall on the lower floor has long been a place for men of advanced ideas, or at least of ideas different from those currently received — the two things not being at all necessarily the same! The listeners are likely to be of the class often referred to as the *^half -baked''; blind gropers after a knowledge that has been denied them; and, looking in at some meeting there, you will notice the tense eager look, the look of mental hunger, on the faces of those who crowd the front rows. It is a hall that is also associated with important movements. Although itself without dignity of as- pect, there have been famous meetings here, most not- able being the one addressed by Abraham Lincoln shortly before his nomination for the Presidency, when he was an unknown figure looming like a nightmare to the well-tailored East. One who heard him has told me of the solemn and immense effect of his great speech; of how he began haltingly, even awkwardly, but of how he gathered strength and ease, and went magnificently on. 88 UP THE BOWERYi But when the meeting was over Lincoln was still but a nightmare. He was not yet a prophet. He was not yet a leader, here in the East, away from his own region. All felt the impulse to draw away from this tall, gaunt, ill-dressed, earnest man — for earnest- ness always jars unless you are earnest yourself, and it always jars the smug, the satisfied, the complacent. One man, so the story runs, led Lincoln to a street car and put him aboard, saying that a youth, also boarding the car at that moment, would show him the way to his hotel; but within a few blocks the young man himself, ashamed of the tall companion who had been given him, slipped away, after murmuring that the car would go to the side entrance of the Astor House. And so, after a speech that was to arouse, in the reading of it, admiration and amazement, and which is memorable even to this day, the great Lincoln, de- serted and alone, was jolted slowly on, in a gloomy horse-car, to the side entrance of his hotel ! Two or three minutes' walk from the northern end of the Bowery, is St. Mark's Church: *^St. Marks-in- the-Bowery," as it is still often called by old New Yorkers. **They say," and it used really to be believed by many and perhaps is even yet believed by some, that the ghost of old Petrus Stuyvesant still imperatively walks the aisles of this ancient church. Not that the church, old as it is — it was built in 1799 — goes back so far as Stuyvesant 's own time, for he died over a cen- tury earlier than that, but that it stands on property 89 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK that he owned, and on the site of a chapel that he built, and that his tomb, with an inscription plainly to be read from the outside of the church, on one of the foundation stones, is beneath the floor, close to the eastern side. The original chapel was of course Dutch, and it was specifically given by Stuyvesant 's widow to the Dutch Collegiate Church, which, however, declined to accept the property, not feeling the need for it, and in 1793 a great-grandson of the great Petrus offered it to Trinity Corporation, and the property thus became Episcopalian, and the present church was built. It is a broad-fronted church, all in browns, situated in the midst of a green space at the junction of Second Avenue and Stuyvesant Street. It stands sedately above the level of the sidewalk, with a broad open graveyard space on either side, and all about it are green grass and great trees and shrubs, with singing birds and a general airy pleasantness, and Japanese ivy growing lush upon its walls. It is comfortable, it is pleasing and, in spite of being rather squat, it is highly pictorial. In fact, it is an exceedingly pictorial reminder of long-past time. The stone lions sitting inside of the portico of this extremely old-fashioned church seem oddly incongruous, but, after all, they achieve interest the moment one thinks of them as Lions of St. Mark's." The church is now quite away from the homes of its natural congregation, but now and then it is filled to overflowing on some special occasion. But I re- member dropping in one week-day and finding the rec- 90 UP THE BOWERY tor going through the full service with only one man in the large interior to make responses, and the or- ganist to play. Besides the one man there was, in- deed, a poor cripple, but he had only humbly crept in and sat very silent and very still and was obviously desirous to efface himself. At another time, when the church was also empty and when no service at all was in progress, I noticed a lady there whom I knew to be the great-granddaughter of an old-time New York governor, a very great man in his day, whom they honored by burying near the sturdy Stuyvesant ; she had slipped in with gentle inconspicuousness, and somehow it seemed to give a sweet and charming con- nection between the vanished past and the present day, to see her kneeling where for generations her forebears had knelt. It is odd that Stuyvesant should be so often called Peter. Assuredly, he did not call himself Peter, and I do not see why any one else should use the name. His name was Petrus, and it was often enough signed to New York decrees and ordinances to fix it perma- nently in the mind of the city. But there has been an odd, although quite unintentional revenge; for the Dutch, in the use of the name of Hudson, who was an Englishman of the plain English name of Henry, long ago gave him the Dutch form of Hendry ck, and many English and Americans took this form from the Dutch, and in books and records, and even yet, and fre- quently, in conversation among New Yorkers, the name of Hendryck Hudson is still absurdly re- ferred to. 91 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK The interior of the church is notably broad, with a vaulted roof, with windows rich in new colored glass, with seven-branched candlesticks, with the Stations of the Cross upon the walls. The whimsical, irascible, tyrannical and highly hon- orable wooden-legged Petrus stumped through early New York so dominantly that he is still vaguely thought of as a sort of legendary good spirit of the city. He had fought in the European wars, and the wooden leg which came from one of the old battles, and which was often described as silver because it was silver-banded, and which threatened to put an end to his picturesque career, merely had the effect of send- ing him to win greater fame in America than ever would have been his in the long-forgotten campaigns of Germany and the Netherlands. That he was captain-general — good old name! — and governor-in-chief, and that he died in 1682, at the age of eighty : this may be read on the outside face of the ancient tomb, there in the foundation of the present church. He was governor from 1647 to 1664, in which latter year there descended upon the colony an overwhelming English force. For a time, Stuyvesant would not consider surren- der. **As touching your threats,'' he wrote to the English commander, **we have nothing to answer, only that we fear nothing but what God, who is as just as He is merciful, may lay upon us. ' ' But surrender at length was needful, and, bitterly disappointed and chagrined, Stuyvesant retired to his **bouwerie" here. 92 UP THE BOWERY His property extended from the East River as far as what is now known as Fourth Avenue, and an old pear tree that he set out at the corner of what is now Third Avenue and 13th Street bore fruit for over two centuries, growing more and more ancient looking and gnarled and giving promise of another century or so of life, even though it stood in a circle within the side- walk area. But not very many years ago a careless driver ran a heavy truck against it and knocked it down, and that was the end of the ancient tree. The place where it stood is still marked, and policemen will tell you that visitors, and even New Yorkers, walking from curiosity over in this interesting sec- tion, will still ask to be shown the Stuyvesant pear tree, in the belief that it is still growing there. After the surrender of 1664, the disappointed Stuy- vesant went to Holland to explain in person the cir- cumstances of his unavoidable surrender of New Am- sterdam. It had intensely humiliated him; he felt that if he had been properly supported from Holland the surrender need not have been made ; and after his explanation he returned to his **bouwerie" in his be- loved New York, for the city was still warm in his affections in spite of the change in government and in name ; and it was on this trip that he brought with him the pear tree, then but a tiny little thing, the merest of saplings, and he planted it as a memorial by which, he said, he hoped to be remembered: grimly cynical, he thought that this tiny sapling would better preserve his fame than the seventeen years of gover- norship that had ended only in disaster. 93 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK And all this sets the mind into the backward and abysm of time, for the career of Stuyvesant, who is so close to the New York of to-day that even the stories of his imperative ghost still linger, makes the city itself seem so old ! For he was a boy of seven years when Manhattan Island was seen by Hudson in 1609 : he was a lad of eleven when a few huts were put up here by Adrian Block in 1613 ; he was just entering on his twenties when the place was given what may be termed casual settlement, in 1624, by several families out of a shipload of Dutch who were really intended for the older settlement of Albany : and he had reached the age of twenty-four when, little suspecting that he himself was to go to Manhattan and be an important figure there, the place was formally settled by families intentionally taking their household goods to the spot. He was born when Henry of Navarre was King of France, when Elizabeth was Queen of England, in the year in which Hamlet" was written: he was made governor here by the Dutch, when England was un- der Cromwell: he died in the reign of Charles the Second. And yet it is customary to think of New York as a new city in a new country ! There is an admirable recent monument to Stuy- vesant, set close beside the porch of this church of St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery; a monument of broad-curving gray stone, surmounted by the bust of the irascible Petrus in bronze; but his body does not lie beneath this monument, but is within and below the inscribed foundation wall, over which ivy long ago began to clamber. 94 UP THE BOWERY Not only is Governor Stuyvesant buried here, but here too, and by the strangest of chances in the very same vault, is Governor Sloughter, the man who, as if changing **o'' to *'a," unjustly had poor Governor Leisler killed, with the formalities of justice. Also here, but not in the same vault with those two early rulers who are so strangely set cheek by jowl, is that famous Governor Tompkins, who was long known as the war governor, because of his being the chief ex- ecutive of the State during the War of 1812, and who was also Vice-President of the United States. Old St. Mark's makes so harmonious a whole that it seems odd that, although the main building was erected from 1795 to 1799, the portico — ^which makes the church look like St. Martin 's-in-the-Fields, on Trafalgar Square — ^was actually not constructed until the uninspired time of 1858, and that the steeple of this so homogeneous structure was set up intermedi- ately, in 1829; and the calm preciseness of St. Mark's is vastly accentuated by the calm preciseness of this steeple, running up, as it does, in lessening squares, to a square-cornered and sharply pyramidal shaft, topped with a round gilt ball and a weather-vane. The home of Petrus, that he so loved, and to which he came back to live even though he must live under an alien government, stood near this old church, and here he ended his life in patriarchal dignity. Each year, on the anniversary of the day on which, as captain-general, he had fought and overcome the Swedes — how curious to know that there was ever such a conflict on American soil! — there was always 95 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK a gala celebration on his place ; and as it was on April the First, Stuyvesant always saw to it that there were simple April First jests upon his ancient servants, negroes whom he had kept about him for years. Whenever Stuyvesant sat down, it was with his back to New York City, for its loss had caused him much bitterness: — but if his ghost should now sit down (and Scrooge thought that Marley's couldn't!) it would find it difficult to turn its back on New York ! When Stuyvesant died, it seemed as if every one in the colony, Dutch and English alike, came to the Bou- werie to follow his body in its short journey to the grave : and notable among the mourners in their piti- ful grief, were the gray-haired servants, his old negroes. 96 CHAPTER VIII SOME CONTRASTS OF THE CITY HEN one thinks of the con- trasts of New York it seems as if it is peculiarly a city of contrasts, almost a city that is all contrast: what- ever you see, you may also see its opposite. No city shows quite such contrasts as that of the very richest men in the world and men of absolute poverty : the greatest philanthropists, the greatest givers of money in all the world, and the greatest criminals : no other city can show such a total of motor-cars and motor trucks as New York : yet there are countless numbers among the throngs on the sidewalks who have never ridden in a motor — there are no jitneys in New York — and within recent years a sight has become com- mon, in the best business sections, that used to be rare except in the tenement streets ; that of little carts piled high with merchandise and pushed by men. No other city in the world has so many and so varied types of humanity, and in such vast numbers. 97 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK No other city shows such miles and miles of crowded life, and totals of massed humanity, yet in no other city is there so much of loneliness. The extent to which loneliness is prevalent is amazing. The number of rich and well-to-do and poor, not the homeless but those with homes, who know nobody, who have no callers and who never call, whose only social diver- sions are found in the theatres, the restaurants, the parks, the streets, is utterly amazing. The great stores of New York are the greatest in the world, as to cost of buildings, number of em- ployees, value of stock and volume of business, yet at the same time there are thousands of little, mussy, poorly equipped local shops, and many an attractive little shop as well. No part of the world is more busy, and at the same time more thronged, than the district of lower Broad- way and Wall Street and the wholesale district, dur- ing the day; and nowhere in the world is there a business district so deserted, so silent, so without life except for the solitary and infrequent policeman, as the mile after mile of this district at night. No- where in the world are there such lofty business structures and apartment houses, yet these are bor- dered and interspersed with buildings of ordinary height: there are two-story buildings that have held their own while business has mounted to the sky be- side them, and there are even vacant lots. There are the most expensive specialists, in medicine and sur- gery, and there are hospitals with the most expensive 98 SOME CONTRASTS OF THE CITY and modern equipment where surgical and medical aid is given free. There is the greatest and most reckless spending in the world, and there is the most pinching economy. You may stand beside some wealthy woman who negligently orders furs or gowns costing thousands, and in a few minutes may be in a shop where you will hear a poor child, who is buying a loaf of stale bread and a penny's worth of cheese, say to the clerk. Mother wants you to cut it with the ham knife to give it a hammy taste. ' ' While reckless spenders outdo one another in ex- pensiveness — and it was estimated just before the war that a million and a quarter of dollars was spent every evening in New York for dinners at the great hotels and restaurants — the careful savers have been daily increasing the immense totals in the savings banks. While the spending idlers, children of the wealthy, increasingly rival in number the wealthy young idlers that marked the life of London before the great war, the number is also increasing of those who toil and snip and baste and press and patch and sponge in sweat-shops wet and depressive with steam. While the number increases of those who with diffi- culty find ways to spend their money, the number also increases of those with no money to spend: I have seen the policemen, after midnight, moving stol- idly from park bench to park bench, effectually rous- ing the homeless sleepers by blows upon their feet: I have seen the derelicts disappear doubtfully into 99 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK the darkness : one cold morning at City Hall Park, I saw two poor fellows, pathetically anxious to keep up their appearance, wash themselves at the fountain, wipe themselves with grimy handkerchiefs, and then step into the post-office to dry the handkerchiefs on a radiator in the corridor. And I have heard rich New Yorkers boast offensively of their riches. In some degree, such contrasts are to be observed in other cities; but in none so strikingly as in New York. And often the contrasts are vivid. I have seen an archbishop of New York, at his silver jubilee, the central figure of a magnificent service in the Ca- thedral, with hundreds of the priesthood and of churchly dignitaries, of this and other cities, in his train, with pomp of silk and purple and cloth of gold, with the sounding of great bells, and the triumphant pealing of the organ and the sound of singing voices and the music of the horns and cymbals and strings of a great orchestra, and with a mighty congregation packing every inch of the edifice ; and I have seen the same archbishop conducting a service in the chapel on BlackwelPs Island, looking with tears in his eyes at the massed array of paupers and prisoners and crippled and blind, but dressed in his splendid robes, in cope and surplice and stole of cloth of gold, and with a mighty golden mitre upon his head, and in his hand a golden crozier, to show that high mass on BlackwelPs was the same as on Fifth Avenue. In- stead of great reverberant bells, a little bell in a little green-slatted cupola rang forth its summons: in- stead of splendid organ and orchestra and choir, there 100 SOME CONTRASTS OF THE CITY were a crippled player at an old melodeon, and a choir ] of four blind and crippled derelicts: and I noticed i that the tin vessels, just inside of the entrance, for the holy water, were soon dipped empty, and it was ' pitiful to see the late comers groping eagerly in the dry vessels for the water which they could not find. j As New York has always been ready with con- 1 trasts, I shall dip back into the past for one, and speak of that wonderful day of June 25, 1775, when Washington, on his way to assume command of the i Revolutionary army, crossed from the Jersey shore to Manhattan and received an ovation; he was re- ceived by cheering people, he was driven through the i city in an open carriage, drawn by white horses ; and ' the royal governor, Tryon, fearfully witnessed Wash- ington's crossing of the river from a ship anchored in midstream, but did not dare land until nightfall, ! and then went, neglected by the people, to his home j — and this, though it was more than a year before I the signing of the Declaration, and although Tryon | was a man who had won a reputation for ruthless | hangings in the course of his governorship of North | Carolina. i New York, representative as it is in the highest j degree of the eminently practical, has at the same 1 time always possessed emotional possibilities, and a favorite form of expression has been that of riots. ; As far back as 1788 there were savage riots, still kno\vn as Doctors' Riots, in the course of which a ; 101 ' THE BOOK OF NEW YORK number were killed and wounded, the cause being ru- mors that bodies were stolen and dissected. So in- tensely wrought up were the people that when the great Baron Steuben and John Jay went out to calm them, these distinguished men were incontinently driven away with volleys of stones. In 1834 there were serious Anti-Slavery riots; and in that same year, as if to give variety, there was the odd happen- ing of a stone-cutters' riot, which came about be- cause of the refusal, for some strange reason, of the workmen to use marble as a building material. One of the worst riots was that of 1849, in Astor Place, the basis of this being the jealousy between the friends of two actors, Forrest, an American, and Mac- ready, an Englishman. Forrest, so it was believed, when in England, had been slighted through Mac- ready's efforts, and so Macready was regarded with ill-will when he next came to this country. On the same evening each of these actors was to play Mac- beth — oddly enough, not even a play in which a man was the leading character was chosen! — and there came a riotous demonstration against Macready; a fight developed, and the militia were called out, and twenty-two people were killed and a great number injured. The Draft Eiots of 1863, with their horrible burnings and tortures and outrages and lynchings, with over a thousand people killed and numerous buildings destroyed, made one of the worst outbreaks that ever disgraced any city. Far back in 1837 there was a bread riot, caused by 102 SOME CONTRASTS OF THE CITY the high price of flour, and some shops were broken into and flour was thrown out into the streets and destroyed. Just eighty years after this, in 1917, there were demonstrations almost serious enough to call riots, caused by a great rise in the prices of foods of all kinds ; and disorderly throngs gathered and had to be dispersed. I saw one evening a most dramatic sight on Fifth Avenue. The poor, aroused by the leaping upwards of food cost to well-nigh impossible prices, had for several days been gathering in their o^vn quarters and had even gone so far as to beseech help of the mayor. Immigrants, most of them, from autocratic Russia or the Slavic lands, they had been brought up to believe their immediate ruler to be the wielder of power and the dispenser of aid; but they had not found the help they needed, and it was whispered among them that a greater man than the mayor, the Governor — and they liked the word Governor — was to be one evening at a great Fifth Avenue hotel ; and so as evening came on I saw them gathering, al- most all women, and almost all with children in their arms, gathering silent and sad, and kept moving by the police, but every few rods halting in groups of perhaps a score or so, listening to some one of the group, until the police roughly bade them again to go on. There were hundreds and hundreds, perhaps there were thousands, a doleful and woebegone sight. *^Bread!^' was their cry, and the wailing infants 103 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK seemed to echo it. Tlie women did not see the Gov- ernor; they were hustled and pushed and rudely or- dered about; after a while they crept off to their homes like animals to their lairs; and I thought, it was sights like this which, in Paris, preceded the French Revolution, although the gay and the rich ate brioche and paid no heed, and thought the complain- ing poor only uninteresting and tiresome. This highly practical city is always delightfully ready with romance. A gloomy old mansion, which only within recent years was destroyed, stood on Broadway, south of Madison Square, with a broad yard beside it within which was a walled garden ; and with the effort of a little neck-stretching, or from the vantage point of a carriage, one could see why it was that the place was kept up. For it was not, pri- marily, for the sake of maintaining a home on Broad- way ; it was more for the care of a peacock and a cow! It was a Goelet mansion; so no wonder it was a Goelet who married the Duke of Roxburghe and thus acquired, as a home, the castle of Floors, with its park filled with deer, and with its estate enclosed by the longest private stone wall in Great Britain: re- minder of the wall for the live-stock of Broad- way! On Fifth Avenue, a little south of 42nd Street, is a vacant lot beside a private house ; and the lot was kept open, beside this house, to be a play-space for a much-loved dog, although the otherwise unused bit of land represented the investment of immense potential 104 SOME CONTEASTS OF THE CITY capital. Well, the dog is dead now, and the owner is dead, and so the lot may at any time be built up. The old Van Beuren house on West 14th Street, particularly gloomy and black as it was, stood there before retail trade came sweeping northward with its immense tide of prosperity and its numberless build- ings ; and it still stands there, the only private house in that region, and about it are still the great green grounds, facing now the ebbing of that wonderful business tide as years ago it faced the flow ; and at the back of the huge old garden, with its moribund trees and shrubs, is an old carriage house with arched doors, and over these arches is a series of small open- ings through which, a strange sight for that dis- trict, pigeons still constantly pass in and out : doubt- less, pigeons of a long line of inherited Knicker- bocker blood! Of the human romance in this city which is mis- takenly supposed to think of nothing but the making of money or the spending of it, that too is likely to be typically away from the usual. It would be hard to find anything much more romantic than the way in which a short-story writer of New York carried on his courtship, for, happening to be in London and becoming engaged by mail to the girl he loved, who at the time happened to be in Chicago, he sent a mes- senger boy bearing the engagement ring from Eng- land to America, as naturally as if it were just around the corner. If, afterwards, divorce soon came — well, perhaps even that is not entirely untypical of present- 105 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK day conditions, at least among such of the New York- ers as live swiftly and feverishly : and if to this it be added that the writer died in the full flush of life, barely on the threshold of middle age, that also may be deemed typical of New York. 106 CHAPTER IX AMONG THE TENEMENTS ROADLY speaking, the tene- ments of New York are on the East Side of the city: there is enough of truth in the idea to justify the com- mon interchangeableness of ' ' East Side ' ' and ' ^ Tenement district" in ordinary talk. But there is no truth at all in the equally prevalent idea that the tenement region represents little besides poverty or ignorance or crime or all three, with a practical absence of the broadening or intelligently pleasurable features of life. An author died, on the East Side, in 1916 — an au- thor not known to the city in general, but whose works, in Yiddish, were familiar to a myriad of read- ers. An immense throng packed the streets through which his funeral procession moved, the people stand- ing reverently, in a weird silence. And as to what kind of a man this was, this Sholem ben Menachem Rabinowitz, or Sholem Aleichem as he was known, who had such a devoted following while living and 107 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK such masses of mourners when dead, his will may be deemed illuminative, for it began : Wherever I die I want to be placed not among aristocrats or among the powerful, but among plain Jewish laborers, among the very people itself, so that the simple graves about me should adorn my grave- stone even as the plain good people during my life- time illumined their f olkes-schreiber. " After all, it should be remembered that there are a million Jews in Greater New York : many times the total population, including all races, of Jerusalem, and three times as many Jews as has Warsaw, the city next to New York in Jewish population. And to know that such a man as Sholem Aleichem was an idol of the tenement dwellers is to revise for- ever the commonly held beliefs as to the standards of the tenements. But it is not necessary to go from one extreme of belief to the other : it is not needful to deem the tene- ment districts all admirable, merely because it is a mistake to deem them all the reverse of admirable. Yet it is well to know that a great part of the East Side holds itself pridefully, and that it is not without claim to consider itself intellectual. It would immensely surprise most New Yorkers, except the tenement dwellers, to know that, at the lower end of Second Avenue, is a big new theater where moving pictures are never given, and where the full desire is to give only intellectual plays. The plays are presented in German- Yiddish, and the au- thors are themselves Yiddish, either of this country 108 AMONG THE TENEMENTS or of Europe, or else the plays are translations, into German-Yiddish, from such authors as Shakespeare and Sudermann! The management prides itself on giving the highest average of play in New York! — but of course, unless one is conversant with Yiddish, it is a little difficult to form a definite opinion as to this. The theater holds two thousand people, the au- diences are generally large, and the admission, al- though lower than Broadway standards, is double that of the best Broadway moving pictures — box seats be- ing two dollars and orchestra seats one dollar. Many classes and conditions go to make up the life of the great East Side. There is poverty there, and there is inconceivable crowding, and there is lack of food and air and there is unspeakable misery and there is ignorance. But there is also much of happi- ness and there are great numbers — perhaps the ma- jority — who have plenty of money for comforts and gayeties. Many of the tenement dwellers have pianos. Eents, when a number crowd into a few rooms, do not seem so extremely high ; often, and even generally, it is the case that not only is the father a wage- earner, but that two or three children are also wage- earners, so that the total income of a family may be comfortably large even though their tenement rooms are uncomfortably small. Iron fire-ladders gridiron the fronts of the build- ings, and in hot weather they are gridirons in very truth, baked by the sun to a furious heat. Social life, the cheerful intermingling with one an- 109 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK other, makes a vital difference between the tenement section and all other parts of New York. Social clubs are a great feature: and if I mention a dance to be given by the Broken Shutter Association, with such sponsors as Rock Hennessey, Tony Ferito, Tips Bags and Sol Carsella, it is because I noticed in a window a printed circular, with these names, only to-day. But the streets themselves — to make a contradic- tion express a fact — are the real club houses of the tenements. The tenement population, except when the weather is too wet or too cold, and especially in the early evening following a hot day, are mostly am- bulatory, moving about with genial aimlessness and shifting back and forth on the pavements and side- walk. The shuffling of feet, the chirring hum of talk, the laughter of children, make a wellnigh indistin- guishable medley. The vibrant clink of glasses, the twanging note of a guitar, the grinding rattle of sur- face cars, the thunder of the Elevated, the distant clanging of a gong, the tolling of a bell, such are among the familiar sounds; and whether the bell is for a funeral or for a mass, and whether the gong is fire or police or hospital, is known, as if instinctively, to all : for these people come to know the streets and all that pertains to the streets with a loving intimacy. And, thrown close together as they are, in their crowded tenements and in the streets, the people know the life about them in its every phase. Their friend- liness, one to another, their mutual helpfulness, es- pecially the generosity of those of slender purse, puts to shame the calculated charities of the rich. 110 AMONG THE TENEMENTS And the very crowdedness of life makes much for mutual mindfulness. If a courting couple wish to monopolize a fire-escape balcony instead of wander- ing away from home, neighborhood courtesy is apt to yield it to them. The great public recreation piers have become of vast good in the opportunities made cheerfully possible for social pleasure; and the little parks that dot the city, numbers of them having been established within recent years, are also important social assets. When the rooms at home are few and crowded, young people will generally go elsewhere, and it is fortunate that New York has so broad-mind- edly provided respectable public resorts. The first tenement house of New York was built in 1833, on Water Street, on a spot which is now within the limits of Corlears Park (how few, of those who deem themselves real New Yorkers, have any idea where that is !) ; it was four stories in height, and each floor was arranged for one family. The East Side, largely so comfortable and prosper- ous, does not understand why the rest of the city, and the country in general, feel and express pity for it! But it accepts, appreciatively, the vast benefits freely offered it by settlements'' and associations; and if great part of the benefits go without cost to people who could well afford to pay, the efforts are none the less well meant, and often do real good, and are an admirable outlet for money that otherwise would probably be put to not nearly such laudable purpose. On the whole, the East Side, in spite of such poverty and misery and crime as may really be there (and 111 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK it may be remarked that too little money, too much unhappiness, and incidental illegal acts, are not char- acteristic of this portion of the city alone!) repre- sents the happiest portion of New York. Yet it must not be supposed that the tenement re- gion is in every aspect picturesque, for much of it looks very humdrum indeed. But much of it is full of interest. There are great districts of the city where it is almost hopeless to find an English-speaking per- son to answer an ordinary question, either on the streets or at the doors of the little shops. In these sec- tions it is equally difficult to find a newspaper printed in English, though you may find on various stands newspapers printed in as many as twelve different languages or dialects. Perhaps no feature of tenement district life is so picturesque as that of the street markets, some of them busy daylight markets and some being markets at night. There is a fish market two evenings a week under the first arches of Williamsburg Bridge: the stalls, roofed by the bridge itself, and lighted by flambeaux, might be a market in an archway of ancient Florence. There are street markets, with long lines of push- carts lined along the curb, just outside of the side- walk, on Bleecker Street and just off Tompkins Square, and in many other places, and they are not only for fruits and vegetables but for cloth and hos- iery and kitchenware and a host of things. The market on Mulberry Street is of typical inter- est. Here the people are mostly Italians. In the 112 AMONG THE TENEMENTS windows of the dirty little stores that line the street are such signs as * * Eistorante. Prezzi 5 c. 10 c, ' ' and Trattoria Loganda/' and ^^Banca Italiana,'' and **Grosseria Italiani/' and Lager Beer" — this last being clearly untranslatable ! The gutters are lined with push-carts standing end to end. The sidewalks beside them are lined with booths and boxes and tubs and stands. There are apples and chestnuts and olives. Some of the women sit on the curb, and the basket of one, beside her, is partitioned into two halves, one part filled with or- anges and the other — delightful incongruity! — with onions. There are baskets and boxes and booths filled with nothing but bread, as if to indicate defiance of the saying that man cannot live by bread alone ; and some of the bread is white, but much is dark and sodden, and you notice that any prospective customer feels at full liberty to pick up the loaves, press and feel them with more or less clean fingers, and lay them down again. There are quantities of peanuts, there are sweet potatoes, there are many strings of brilliant red peppers, there is booth after booth filled with onions, there are tomatoes. There are great bars of yellow soap of a size and length such as no one ever sees elsewhere. There are many stands for selling fish ; perch, smelt, codfish and other varieties. There are numberless eels, some of them of monster size and others diminutive. The ceaseless chaffering and dickering, and the talk and laughter of the people who crowd each other on 113 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK the thronged sidewalks, and the cries of rival dealers calling attention to their wares, and the shouts of the children who are playing and dodging about, fill the air with discordant interest. The massed population, all about, is astounding, for it is not only that the buildings that line the street are filled to overflowing with poor humanity, but that behind these buildings are others, out of sight from the street, and reached only by narrow tunnel-like passages. New York is doing away with rear tene- ments, but numbers still remain. Many booths and stands are for the sale of all sorts of odds and ends, including cheap jewelry, and gaudy handkerchiefs, and woolen caps; and fish so thoroughly and completely dried that they are noth- ing but grisly skeletons. It amused me one day to see a Chinaman and Ital- ian holding a colloquy together. The Chinaman had thoughts of purchasing a string of some mysterious eatable, and the Italian was expatiating on its merits and its cheapness with a rapid flow of words. The Chinaman could not understand a word he was say- ing, but that did not check the eloquence in the least. The Italian gesticulated, he exclaimed, he made dra- matic pauses, he fluently began over again; hands, features and voice were all made to take part in his effort to make a sale, and throughout it all the China- man silently looked at him, and after some five min- utes of Italian eloquence he paid the price and took away the string. Most interesting of the night street markets is that 114 AMONG THE TENEMENTS of Grand Street. Grand Street is the Broadway of the East Side. It stretches off interminably in that part of it between the Bowery and the East River; that region being in the broadest part of Manhattan Island. It has long lines of shop fronts on both sides of the street, and on Saturday evenings, when the shops themselves are all brilliantly alight, the street market establishes itself along the curb in long lines. The movable booths and the standing push-carts are stacked high. In all, it is a vivid and picturesque sight. For on Saturday evening the Grand Street sidewalks are thick-jammed with thronging people, largely foreigners, dressed with the vivid colorings that foreigners love. The shops, the street booths, the people, the chirring happiness, the lights and colors, the eager rush of pleasure and of spending — it is a sight to be seen and to be remembered. Division Street, where the Second Avenue Elevated leads away from Chatham Square, is one of the dark- est and blackest of streets, for it is a narrow street, and is quite filled by the track structure that extends from side to side and blocks out all the sunlight. But this street has been picked out, in extraordinary fash- ion, for the hat and cloak and gown street of the East Side ! From Chatham Square to the Williams- burg Bridge the stores show nothing but hats and cloaks and gowns. In the w^indows are hundreds of wax figures, furnished forth with the most recent styles. For these shops are not makeshift shops, they are not second-hand shops, but are retail houses that handle, for the East Side, the fashionable garb 115 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK of the moment, but at unfashionable prices! And, after dark, in the early evening hours, every shop is brilliantly lighted, and the daylight blight of the Ele- vated is forgotten. East Side business must needs give opportunity to its people to buy at night, for so many of them work throughout the day. Allen Street is another of the exceedingly narrow streets of the East Side, and it is also black and dis- mal through being completely shaded by the Elevated tracks that occupy its width. The street has, for years, been the center of the Russian brass trade, with fascinating little shops glittering and gleaming with thousands of candlesticks and bowls and boxes and sconces and kettles made of brass. And recently, that portion of the street near Canal Street has been the object of the strangest of migrations. For one little shop after another has established itself here, on this street of narrow blackness, for the handling of delicate silk underwear, fluffy with soft lace ! There is no apparent reason for this : it seems but a freakish and needless choice. An interesting portion of the East Side is along the waterfront of the lower East River, where, al- though much of the seafaring life of old clipper days has gone, there are still doddering old taverns and lodging houses that shelter amphibious folk, and there are bowsprits still projecting far over the land, and there are strange sea smells of spices and for- eign things, and there are Lascars and such strange sailor folk leaning over the ships' rails. On the East Side there is a ceaseless shift and 116 AMONG THE TENEMENTS change of nationalities and religions. Churches change to synagogues and synagogues to churches. The Irish give place to the Hebrews, the Hebrews to Italians, the Italians perhaps to Slavs. But the sea- faring Greeks and their long waterpipes have tena- ciously held to a little district not far from Brooklyn Bridge, and the flower-dealing Greeks to a district near Union Square : — and yet, in writing of New York, one cannot with impunity say that anything is a con- tinuing fact : even as I write this, the Greeks may be migrating to some other locality. Most permanent of all have been the Syrians and Chinese; the Syr- ians most marvelously so, for decades ago they chose tumble-down tenements near the North Eivejr, at the extreme southern end of Manhattan: a locality that no one could have thought of as anything but tem- porary, for the most ordinary development would be expected to put up great business structures there. Yet the tumble-down buildings still unbelievably re- main, and the Syrians still inhabit them. Strictly speaking, there are many tenements in New York that rent for many thousands of dollars a year : for in the purview of the law an apartment house, no matter how expensive, is a tenement house. But in ordinary adaptation, nothing that is expensive is a tenement. Perhaps the most vital touchstone, of difference, is the front door, which in an apartment house is never left open but which, in a tenement house, is almost always left open. In many, and perhaps most, of the tenement houses — using the term again, in its accepted sense — there is 117 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK only the kitchen fire. The heat of the enclosed house, built tightly between other houses, the smallness of the rooms, the number of people in them, all make it possible to live quite comfortably with the heat of but a single stove. Many of the moderate-priced apartment houses have also but one fire, the kitchen fire, with no heat supplied in any other way; and some have heated hallways only. I have heard it es- timated that half the population of Manhattan has but the kitchen fire, but this estimate seems too high. A subtle change has within a few years past come over the mighty tenement district. A great part of its strength, its idiosyncrasies, its uniqueness, its characteristics, has come through its being unbrok- enly massed, in solid block after block of great houses. This unbroken massing gave it an aspect of being a city apart, a region by itself, a segregated section, and gave its people the feeling of being a people apart. All this is still, in the main, unchanged; and yet, the sense of being unbrokenly massed has been to some degree affected by the enormous tearing away of buildings for bridges and bridge approaches, for new parks, for public schools, new charitable institu- tions. There has been somewhat the effect as of dis- turbing and tearing apart an enormous ant hill, and thus setting its inhabitants into agitation. In the year in which ground was cleared for the Pennsylvania Eailway Station, a clearing which lev- eled block after block of tenements, a clearing was also made for one of the great bridges, and these two causes made together a tremendous increase in the 118 AMONG THE TENEMENTS number of eviction notices; for unless notices were formally given, any tenant might at the last moment refuse to move, and thereby hamper a great improve- ment. The number of these evictions was not in the slightest sense a matter of hardship between landlord and tenant, but they gave a man an opportunity to rise to prominence as an authority on New York life, for he wrote a book telling of the oppression of the people of the tenements, and expatiating on the cruelty of tenement house owners, and he proved his point by giving the positively startling total of evic- tion notices for the year which had just ended. It is not at all improbable that he was himself unaware of the reason behind the notices, and that in conse- quence he wrote with all the fire of mistaken convic- tion. Tompkins Square is an unusually large square east of Second Avenue, surrounded by a region of tene- ments; the square itself being now used mainly for public playgrounds for the thousands of children who come here, especially on Saturdays. But perhaps it is most interesting on account of the memories evoked by a stone fountain, designed with simple dignity, which stands over in the south- west comer. On the face of the fountain are two attractive little children, a boy and a girl; the boy standing protectingly over the girl and the girl nes- tling at his feet. The fountain was erected in mem- ory of those who lost their lives through the burn- ing of the steamer Slocum, in the East River, in 1904. Hundreds of women and children were needlessly 119 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK drowned or burned to death on that terrible day, and most of the families lived in the immediate neighbor- hood of this square. I remember one of the bereaved parents, a grievously saddened man, saying that he did not understand why, if God should take such trouble to save the Hebrews in the Red Sea, he did not save New Yorkers in the East River. The lower East Side was the part of the city where, in early days, the greater part of the rich and pros- perous dwelt. Most of the early shipping docked along the East River. It was on the East Side that warehouses and stores first arose. Throughout that region long rows of fine mansions were built. Mean- while, the West Side was slow in developing, largely because to quite an extent it was swampy land, or cut by channels of sluggish water. Until well into the nineteenth century the East Side retained its social and business leadership. The city gave solemn commemorative exercises on the death of President Harrison, **01d Tippecanoe," in 1841. Business was totally suspended for the day, the city was draped in black, and there was a proces- sion of some thirty thousand men, although it was a day of storm: and, to cover the very best part of the city, the paraders went from City Hall Park, by way of East Broadway and Grand Street and the Bowery, to Union Square, returning thence along Broadway : thus ignoring the West Side, and march- ing first through streets that are now in the very heart of the tenement district. Many a tremulous and superannuated old building 120 AMONG THE TENEMENTS still stands on the tenement streets, many and many a detail of interest has been preserved, many and many a charming old fanlight or fireplace or pillared door- way ; and at any time a house with such treasure may be torn down and if you are on hand at the time you may be able to carry some of the treasure away. Only yesterday I passed an old-time building near Washington Square that was in the last stages of demolition ; a quick look about the fast disappearing ruins showed that only one thing remained, but that was a carved newel post of solid mahogany; and, so it happened, it was something that I especially hap- pened to need ! Stanford White, the great New York architect, used to come home from Europe with treasure torn out of old-time buildings, which he put into buildings in New York; but he also knew the value of old New York remains; and I remember, in particular, a beautiful mantelpiece which he secured at the tearing down of DePauw Eow, on Bleecker Street, and built into a hotel which he was at that time erecting. De Pauw Eow, itself, had long been a romantic relic of the past, with its traditions of wealthy living, and its arched entrances to the curving drive within its inner court — which, by the way, made the place, after the depart- ure of wealth and fashion, a veritable thieves' para- dise from the various exits and entrances which fa- cilitated the dodging of the police. The most notable old spiral staircase in New York, a marvel of construction, was in the old Cafe Boule- vard on Second Avenue : and I read in a newspaper, 121 THE BOOK OF NEW. YORK which told of the destruction of the building, that the wonderful stair was torn to pieces and thrown away ! What an opportunity missed by the many who could have used it to splendid advantage. The most beau- tiful doorway in Deerfield, that Massachusetts village of ancient houses of sweetness and charm, was not made for the house in which it stands, was not made in Deerfield or even in New England, but was secured by an artist on the tearing down of an old house in the Greenwich Village section of New York City I Always and constantly, in New York, one notices changes. Going about, a few years ago, with an old gentleman of eighty, a visitor from the West, who had come back to New York to see the localities familiar when he was a man of middle-age, he was deeply in- terested in the retail business, which had advanced to the vicinity of 23rd Street, and he was amazed that it had gone so far north. How much more amazed would he now be, to find the center at 42nd Street, with no one able to say where it will be to-morrow! Then he insistently wanted to go down-town. Grand Street was the best shopping street of the city in his earlier years, he remembered, and so to Grand Street we went, where there had been the best retail stores, not merely for the East Side but for both sides of the city. But what changes he found! It was still a wonderfully busy street, but everything that he had known was gone. When I think of the picturesque things that I have seen among the tenements, always there comes the memory of the study-room of some rabbis, in a tum- 122 AMONG THE TENEMENTS ble-down old structure on Orchard Street ; a building of frame, standing tremulously as with the stoop of an old man. Perhaps the building has gone by now. I have not seen it for a year — and in New York all buildings, whether old or new, exist in the constant shadow of the terrible epitaph, ^^Torn Down''; but it is, if the usual New York fate has not befallen it, an interest- ing place, with this low-ceilinged room reached by two flights of stumbling stairs. Around the room were cases filled with books and manuscripts. There were a few small tables and some chairs. The room was lighted by lamps that seemed to burn but dimly, and the old men, poring over the Talmud and the parch- ments of rabbinical lore, had thick dark hair under close-fitting skull-caps, and beards of great length, and softly glowing eyes, and fingers tenuous and al- most clawlike from the constant handling of crumbly pages. It was a place of silence and dignity, a pic- torial place, with patriarchal faces half in shadow and half in light, and lambent lusters on sheets of golden yellow. It made a scene that would be remarkable even in the Ghetto of Amsterdam or Frankfort-on- the-Main. 123 CHAPTER X TAMMANY HEN the American army was awaiting formal disband- ment, at the close of the Eevolutionary War, and was lying in cantonments on the Hudson, ready to march in and take possession of New York and considered, so to speak, the entire Revolu- tionary incident closed, it came to the officers that it would be a fine thing to per- petuate their friendship in the bonds of an association. The idea, once thought of, was so attractive that offi- cer after officer declared himself enthusiastically for it, and an organization was effected. Washington was the first officer to sign the paper which represented the objects of the new society and outlined its plan. He signed in his oddly usual way, not with the George," as would naturally, at least nowadays, be expected, and not simply with the in- itial ^^G.," but with the abbreviation '*Go.,'' the tiny **o'' being scarcely noticeable above the line, and 124 TAMMANY with a pronounced flourish in the crossing of the *^t." Those first signers of the constitution of the So- ciety of Cincinnati make an interesting list. There is an unobtrusive ^'Nath. Green, Maj.Gen.''; then comes, with the flourish as of a schoolboy, a shakily written **Eufus Putnam, B.Genl."; there are lesser known generals, such as Greaton and Layton and Huntington; there is '^B.Lincoln,M.G.''; there are colonels and surgeons and quartermasters mingling with the generals; there is the odd signature of the mighty Major-General Knox, H.Knox," with the **H'' and *^K'^ making together a simple monogram; there is Baron Steuben, signing in his foreign way, without given name, and following with a fancifully scrolled *^M. G." The society was given its name of the Cincinnati because, **The officers of the American Army, hav- ing generally been taken from the Citizens of Amer- ica, possess high veneration for the character of that illustrious Roman, Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, and are resolved to follow his example by returning to their citizenship.'' The organization was not only to perpetuate friendships, but also to extend the most substantial acts of beneficence towards those officers and their families who may be under the ne- cessity of receiving it"; and the society was to con- tinue forever, through taking in descendants of the original members. All this arranged, and the planning of it having served to break the ennui of waiting for the British to complete their preparations and sail away, the 125 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Americans gaily marched down into New York ; Gen- eral Washington himself, first president of the Cin- cinnati, spending the night before actually entering the city at the Van Cortlandt mansion, still standing in Van Cortlandt Park, where he dressed himself, as is recorded, with particular care for the solemn occasion of taking possession of the place that the British had held for years. It would almost seem that no man in history has had quite so much re- corded about his clothes as George Washington ; and this was not because he was in the least a Beau Brummel, but that he deemed the matter of excel- lent clothes a matter excellently worth while seeing to, and that in this, as in everything, he impressed his personality on all who wrote about him. And so the officers of the army had become the Cincinnati — and without the slightest suspicion that they had done something that was to raise a mighty storm! For the people in general did not like the idea of the well-meant Cincinnati with their elaborate jeweled insignia. To the mass of the people it sa- vored altogether too much of aristocratic exclusive- ness ; they feared that the officers were to perpetuate themselves as a powerful body, set apart in interests that would not be those of the nation. Such a storm of opposition arose as threatened the very existence of the Cincinnati, and made it everywhere unpopu- lar; but no result of the general opposition was so important as the formation of Tammany. For Tammany was organized six years after the organization of the Cincinnati, in the year in which 126 TAMMANY Washington became President of the United States, and as a protest against the Cincinnati. As the first organization was held to represent an aristocracy of rank, the second was understood to stand for the in- terests of what are termed the common people. It is odd that the mighty New York organization of Tammany, which almost at once rose to promi- nence and power, should have taken as its name that of a Philadelphia Indian! For Tammany was a prominent Indian chief, commonly referred to as Tamenund, whose headquarters were in the vicinity of what is now Doylestown, a suburb to the north- ward of Philadelphia ; and that is why the Tammany men still call themselves **Braves,'' and why their headquarters is the *^ Wigwam.'^ As a political organization, Tammany became probably the strongest and best organized that the world has ever known. That it became not only a power, but at the same time a power for evil and for what is known as graft, is well known; but there have been many phases that are not well known, for Tammany is by no means all evil. A central head dictates the affairs and policy of Tammany. It is thus an autocracy. But under this central head, supporting the leader and in turn by him supported, is a wonderful body of leaders, each man the choice of his district. And Tammany is thus a democracy. The district leaders, in turn, wield their power and gain their information through an organization of local captains. That many a Tammany man is a man entirely un- 127 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK scrupulous is quite true : selfishness, the acceptance of bribes, the levying of contributions — these things, on the part of some, are not to be denied. But Tamm-.ny can fairly point out, on the other hand, that Reform'* is often, if not usually, but a screen behind which are hiding men quite as unscrupulous as any of Tammany. Politics develops both the good and the bad of man- kind. I have not the slightest thought of either de- fending or attacking Tammany; it is only that the organization represents a vital phase of New York life, and therefore ought to be understood. And it is well that there have been alternations in city control, between Tammany and Reform,'' for in that way there has always been a check upon both sides. And Tammany, and many a Tammany man, has done much for the city; much of excellence and fineness and much of permanent value. The district leader is a picturesque figure, repre- senting a picturesque condition. For a district leader, to be successful, must be a man of ability and deter- mination, the possessor of tact and resourcefulness. He is mediaeval! He is the head of a clan, his clan being every member of his party, every actual and potential follower, within the bounds of his district. He must know, personally as far as possible, and with absolute completeness through his captains and their assistants, the main facts in regard to everybody and everything in his territory. And he does ! He watches over his followers with a fatherly and watchful eye. He is ready to help them in a hun- dred ways. He sees to the getting of jobs ; generally 128 TAMMANY city jobs, but not infrequently jobs that are not politi- cal. And he sees that his clansmen vote right/' The district leader has the power and the responsi- bilities of a tribal chief, and he expects obedience. And when there is some upheaval imminent he must, even if he cannot prevent it, at least know all about it before it actually comes. The late Battery Dan," one of the strongest of all district leaders, expected, in advance of any election, to be able to forecast, with absolute precision, how from 93 to 95 out of every 100 of the men of his district, of both parties, were going to vote. And if ever his prognostication was wrong he felt deeply mortified. The motto of another leader, who made a point of being generous in regard to giving pleasant times to the children, was, frankly, that * ^ There 's votes in the crying of a baby made sick by a stomachf ul of free ice cream ! ' ' That the Tammany district leaders are always ready to be called upon for aid or advice has been an im- mense bulwark of their strength. One of them, run- ning for alderman, against an extremely wealthy and public-spirited candidate put up by the opposition, based his campaign — and it was a difficult campaign, as the normal opposition outnumbered him — upon the declaration, repeated at meeting after meeting : **You know me. Elect me and I'll be an alderman of the people, ready to help at any hour of the day or night. But elect a millionaire — and you'll be ar- rested if you ring his doorbell after dark!" And of 129 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK course he was elected. The leader of a neighboring district made himself a candidate for the State Legis- lature. **I^11 be better for you than a Daniel Web- ster ! ' * was his slogan — and he won. The district leader does not, as a rule, and unless for some special reason or the satisfying of some par- ticular personal ambition, take office : his power is ex- erted in selecting other men for office and in seeing that they are elected — if he can. For the important offices, beyond the local jurisdiction of the individual leader, the general council of leaders decides : or, as a matter of fact, the one man who is leader of Tam- many Hall and upon whose personal judgment the final decision must usually rest. Tammany displays, constantly, the successful practical combination of autocratic and democratic methods. Tammany has added so much of the interesting to New York life that, from the standpoint of pictur- esqueness, it is a pity that its power seems to be on the wane and its idiosyncrasies to be passing. The Sullivans, until death took them, one by one, held immense power as district leaders throughout recent years, and **Big Tim,'' the leader of the Sul- livan leaders, was a man of unusual personality. His annual picnic to College Point used to be one of the great features of the East Side. At least six thou- sand men would go, by specially chartered steamboats, and the day would be spent in games and play; for the day, the thousands of men were boys again. And that each member of the Sullivan organization had to pay five dollars for the day 's pleasure, which included 130 TAMMANY a grand dinner — the cooking for six thousand men being in itself an achievement of magnitude ! — was no deterrent. It was a favor to be permitted to pay the five dollars. And all the shop-keepers and contract- ors and other people, who hoped for favors, were glad to buy tickets even if they knew they could not use them. And the list of complimentary invitations was always small. The occasion was not made the excuse for an orgy ; it was always a well-ordered affair; only a few men would get drunk, and they were unostentatiously cared for in one way or another. The committee on fights" was a delightful feature, it being composed of a number of the huskiest fighters, one or another of whom, when a man began to be disagreeable or to act as if he wanted a quarrel, would patiently try to curb his belligerence by pacific words, and then, if the dis- turber still wanted a fight — would obligingly and very swiftly give it to him ! It was a remarkably success- ful committee. The home-coming was always in the early darkness, and there was a parade to the club headquarters on the Bowery, and the people knew over which streets the men were to march, and crowds packed those streets, massing on the sidewalks and on the steps and at the windows. Every man and woman and child was out, either marching or welcoming ! And as the procession, headed by '*Big Tim,'' in an automo- bile, went on, with the music of many bands, innumer- able roman-candles, sent up from both sides of the streets, formed a brilliant arch of continuous fire, and 131 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK everybody was wildly happy, and when the procession turned into the Bowery, up near Cooper Union, and headed southward, and every band blew full strength on the spirited marching tunes of ^ ^ Tammany, ' ' or *^The Bowery,'' and big bonfires blazed and vastly more roman-candles than on the other streets filled the air with colored fire, it made a strange and vividly inspiring sight. It was a great clan displaying pas- sionate devotion to its mediaeval head. Unless one knows something of the reciprocal per- sonal service and personal loyalty of leader and fol- lowers, the power of Tammany cannot be understood. A district leader who even yet wields enormous per- sonal power loves to make his annual picnic'' — a popular name, to describe varied forms of East Side happiness — an all-day affair at a great garden" up Harlemward, beginning early in the day, with the women and children, for whom all sorts of entertain- ment are given free, with free refreshments, and con- tinuing well on into the night. I have seen this leader stand as at a reception, meeting and greeting each one of an interminable stream, apparently knowing every- one, calling most by name; I have seen the men im- mensely proud at being recognized and greeted and having their hands shaken, and have seen the shy pride with which their wives were led forward to re- ceive, also, a handclasp and a few cordial words, and it has seemed as if here could be seen the strength of Tammany, the explanation of it all. And the leaders, as if to add to the mediaeval simili- tude, maintain a great degree of personal dignity; 132 TAMMANY their cordiality and approachableness do not take away, in the minds of their following, from the sense of their being on a higher plane ; they are friends, but they make it clear that they are also rulers. The character of many of the acts of Tammany leaders and the callousness of their attitude in regard to such things have given plenty of justification for attack and criticism. But that Tammany could suffer from the disclosures of the Tweed Eing** and, after a short eclipse, could again wield supreme power in the city, is the strongest proof of its deep-based strength. And it did this because its strength had been organized with practical wisdom and was founded upon the affections of the mass of the voters. That the strength of the organization is on the wane is mainly due to causes outside of itself. For years it withstood the attacks of foes throughout the State, who tried to defeat its men and measures at general elections and by means of the Legislature, but a mighty blow at its power was struck when Greater New York was organized, for the tremendous voting power of Brooklyn, with that of Long Island City and the Bronx and Stat en Island, none of which had sym- pathy with Tammany, was thus to be thrown into the scale at every election. But even yet it is a tremen- dous power. The secret of Tammany's success — quite an open secret, however little it may have been generally rec- ognized — has been that it has always had many men of education and capacity in its ranks. The Wigwam, the headquarters of Saint Tammany 133 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK — for, to add to the freakishness of it, the appellation of *^Sainf has from early days been attached to the Indian chief's name — is on East 14th Street, jnst east of Irving Place and the Academy of Music. It is a brick building, several stories high, particularly hum- drum and ordinary of aspect ; and this is odd, for con- sidering the important things, bad and good, that Tammany has done, the power that it has wielded, the plans that have been formulated, it would seem natural to find a headquarters building which looks as the headquarters of such an old and interesting or- ganization, with its mediaeval form of power, ought to look. But nothing could be more unpicturesque than this dull and commonplace structure, or more the re- verse of mediaeval. And, after all, it might be suggested by its enemies, as to the society itself, that it possesses more of the evil than the mediaeval. CHAPTER XI THE CITY OF FOEEIGNEKS 10 say such things as that New York has more Irish than Dublin and more Italians than Eome — and such statements, incredible though they ap- pear, are not jests but facts — only begins to represent the marvel of New York as a for- eign city. More races mingle here, and in greater numbers. than in any other city of any period of the world. There are, too, some Americans in New York ! As a New Yorker, Julian Street, has admirably expressed it, an American in New York is at the mercy of the Greeks, Italians, Russians, Irish, French and Swiss, with no American consul to appeal to ! That what used to be considered the American type has almost disappeared from the New York streets, is one of the interesting changes that have accompanied this making of the city into the melting pot" of the world. As a feature and a factor of the streets, the American type has been largely overwhelmed, oblit- erated, swamped, by the flood of new-comers. In the 135 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK course of years a new general type will be developed ; whether better or worse, more attractive or less at- tractive, to be decided only by time. Although it is to be regretted that a vast proportion of the foreigners who have come in within recent years have brought but little of their native picturesqueness with them, there is, if one but looks for it, much of the picturesque to be found. Turn aside from Fifth Avenue at 97th Street, and go eastward for half a block, and you may go straight into Moscow ! — for always, this is a city of potential surprises. Flush with the sidewalk, tight built between houses on either side, is a building with onion towers of blu- ish green, onion towers with the Kremlin twist ; and you enter the building, and are within the Russian Cathedral. Your first surprise is that, in this city of hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews, there are also enough Russians to have, not synagogues, but a cathe- dral. But so it is, for these are Russians of the Rus- sian Church. What first strikes you is color, colors of the Orient ; and yet not precisely of the Orient, for these colors are of shades that are entirely unusual, shades that give a sense of the barbaric, and yet which are at the same time highly effective in their combinations. The interior is very high, but the floor space is not large. There is a music gallery, filled with singers, and the voices, all male voices, richly chant, without instru- mental accompaniment, impressive Russian music with its unexpected time. 136 THE CITY OF FOEEIGNEES Across the entire front, behind the altar, is a rere- dos, brilliant with a line of archwaj^s each of which is filled by a richly colored holy picture ; and although the pictures are not art, as Western nations under- stand art, they are striking; and perhaps this effect- iveness comes because the long line of color adds to the general color effect of the cathedral. For the en- tire interior is rich in colors, and the rose and gold and blues, greens and grays and pinks, are just fas- cinatingly a little away from the pinks and grays and greens and blues and goli and rose that Americans know. The officiating priest, probably what we should term the archbishop, comes through an opening door from an inner shrine which seems a blaze of brilliant brass, like a room of gold. He is rotund of figure and oro- tund of voice; it is a voice which rolls and rumbles and soars and sinks gloriously. He is clad in a white garment, full-hanging, touching the very floor, a gar- ment of silver-tissue, a magnificent fabric; and in colorful contrast is his tall plain brimless Eussian hat, all black. There are no chairs. The congregation stand ex- cept at kneeling-times and then all plump down with- out hesitation, including fur-clad women and prosper- ous men. Most of the congregation are ordinary humble-folk, but all, and the priests themselves, seem of an im- mense sincerity, freely kissing the cross, freely kissing a holy picture as they leave; and, more than this, evincing sincerity in their general aspect and conduct. 137 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK The floor space is packed to the doors. Fully two- thirds of the people are men. Most of the women carry babies, and they edge their way to the side of the altar, where a priest in black deftly takes the babies and carries them to the back of the altar, and blesses and sprinkles them, and hands the little tow- heads — for all seem really tow-heads! — back to the Tartar-faced high-cheek-boned mothers who now, ra- diant with happiness, eagerly grasp them again and creep quietly away. And intermittently and for long periods the choir sings and the priests antiphonally chant. Would you go from Eussia to Southern France! You may do so by simply going from here to the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, over in Brooklyn. Behind the altar of the church is a representation of the Grotto of Lourdes, following it in shape and so far as possible in size, with imitation rocks and shrubs, and in the center of all an actual opening, a cave or grotto extending back for some fifteen feet. It is a church which carries on the idea, here in mod- ern New York, of the miraculous healing of the sick at the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France. A special service that I attended began at eight in the evening. The large church was packed to the doors. At the signal of a handclap, little lights began to twin- kle all over the church, for every one of the congre- gation had been holding a candle in readiness. Soon the twinkling became a great soft glow. A procession was silently formed, and it slowly passed behind the altar and in front of the grotto, 138 THE CITY OF FOKEIGNEES where, in a curving line, those were now kneeling or sitting who had come for cure. Leading the proces- sion was a white-veiled child, with a face of wonderful sweetness ; following her were acolytes, in white and red, and white-veiled girls, and then, in irregular or- der, the entire congregation, and then came the cel- ebrant and his attendant priests; the celebrant gor- geous in cloth of gold and walking beneath a purple and gold canopy upheld by four pole-bearers. The celebrant walked slowly past the group of suf- ferers, touching each with the monstrance, blessing all, inaudibly praying for all. And it was pitiful to see the sick ones gradually look about, in slow and puzzled doubt, as congregation and priests moved on and left them. Some sobbed quietly, a few got up and crept away or mingled with the departing congregation ; a few still knelt and prayed as, one by one, the sexton extinguished the lights around the grotto. Of Asiatics, two races have segregated themselves in New York in considerable number : from the west- ern verge of Asia, the Syrians, and, from the eastern edge of Asia, the Chinese, who have a quarter" in a tiny section, on Mott Street, between Bayard Street and Chatham Square, with Pell Street and Doyer Street immediately adjoining. It makes an odd little triangular quarter, with an illusive sense of the intri- cate. The buildings of Chinatown are mostly old and almost tumbledown tenement houses; some are even the old two-story houses with dormered attics, but by some magic the Chinese have managed to infuse into 139 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK the district more than a touch of the magic and the mystery of the Orient. Fire-escapes glowing with color, narrow streets permeated by the silent-stepping, soft-slippered olive-faced folk, with their long eyes seeming to see nothing yet seeing all ; the shape of an awning, the odd mingling of hues, the flowery gar- ments, the projecting vertical Chinese signs, the tun- ics, the queues, the trinkets and fabrics and porcelains in the windows of the little shops, the idols, the vases, the silks, the sweetmeats, the boxes of tea, all tell of the distant Orient. An old Chinaman, at a window, is playing, on a Chinese flute, a tune that is older than the Chinese Wall: **Eiver of the Lotos," or some such name, a Chinaman will tell you that it is — if you are so for- tunate as to hit upon a Chinaman who will translate for you. But most of them, even of such as under- stand English, will not talk with strangers, and pre- tend to know nothing but prices. And from the olive masks that serve them as faces their slits of eyes look out at you with curious impassiveness. The soft clanging of a gong, the indistinct sounds of Chinese music, perhaps the clash of cymbals or a thrill- ing dissonance of strings, from some entranceway or floating down from some window or coming vaguely out of nowhere, some slender strain, vivid with its touch of something different and alien and Oriental ; the soft voices in an unknown tongue, the serene and silent gravity ; all mark it as a place apart. And the maker of rice-cakes : — watch him on a hot night work- ing over the fire which is burning in his window ; how 140 THE CITY OF FOKEIGNEKS oblivious he is to the heat of the fire and of the night itself ! how cool and placid he is ! The private affairs of Chinatown are conducted by a committee, of a dozen or so, elected by themselves, and an annually chosen mayor,'' so called. But the rival Tongs are the forces which seem to an onlooker the most important: the On Leongs and Hip Sings, whose sleepless rivalry often becomes so fierce that murder is in the very air and death lies in wait at corners and in passageways. And for a few minutes following a tragedy there is a rush and a tangle, a scurry and flurry, a brief break in the placidity, and then the police, alike the uniformed and the plain- clothes men," pounce right and left to seize and in- terrogate, while the district swiftly resumes its baf- fling calm. And it is odd that such a folk, who walk and talk so quietly, should usually choose the noisy pistol rather than the quiet knife. The police are seldom out of sight in Chinatown, and the one familiar crime is that of killing, and the familiar misdemeanors those of gambling and opium-smoking. There is a joss-house, with incense and candles, that has great attraction for the sight-seers who pil- grimage to Chinatown, and there are restaurants where these pilgrims are given what they take to be Chinese food. There was long a theater there, but it has lately been discontinued : a theater which fol- lowed the best traditions of the Chinese stage, pre- senting plays without footlights, without scenery, without orchestra, to a Chinese audience that 141 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK watched without applause. Historic plays they usu- ally were, given with odd fancies as to action and ac- cessories. The tottering old tenements are cleaner than the average tenements of the city: for there is a neatness and orderliness and dislike of dirt among these peo- ple. Incredibly packed as they are in their restricted quarters, in their old houses with little rooms, their neat-handedness, their carefulness, their self-com- mand make their district by far the safest of all the tenement districts as to fire : in fact, a fire is a very rare event: and I remember into what a wild com- motion they were thrown, one day, by the dashing of engines and firemen into their narrow streets in response to an alarm. It was an excitement such as no mere killing could have caused! The Greeks of the city, picturesque from their long-tubed water-pipes, are mostly merchants in a small way: like the Chinese, they bring their own secret societies and racial ways, but if they must needs use a weapon they prefer the knife. But they are mostly a quiet folk, not always above a little genial guile. I noticed one day a Greek name over the door of an olive-oil shop: a positively lovely name, of precisely ten tempting syllables : and I said to myself that here would be the pure, unadulterated article from some sunny hill-slope by the blue ^gean, and when I looked in the window and saw bottles and demijohns of delectable shape I felt still more pro- foundly the sense that here was absolute reliability, that olive oil must be perfect if bought of a Greek 142 THE CITY OF FOEETGNEES whose name took ten syllables and if carried away in one of those delightful glass shapes: but at the door I hesitated — for at the back of the little shop I caught sight of three barrels, on each of which was plainly stenciled * * South Carolina Cotton Seed Oil ' ' ! Wigged women of the Ghetto may still be seen — those of a branch of the Yiddish who, following an anciently established custom, cut their hair short at the time of their marriage so as to make themselves unattractive to other men than their husbands — who, of course, are expected still to be pleased with their looks ! — and thereafter wear coarse black wigs. But the number of these wigged women seems to be decreasing: one does not so often see them: nor does one quite so often see the old Hebrew with a long curl hanging down in front of each ear. And one does notice, markedly, a new development in the American-born daughters of certain classes of the Yiddish, who, at work-quitting time, throng on the sidewalks and crowd into the street cars, with a push- ing boldness of manner and appearance which makes a new type that is neither European nor American. And there are still thousands of children in New York, the children of those who have been coming over from Southern Europe in cargo loads, who, in spite of the sanitary efforts of school teachers and visitors from the settlements, ' ' are sewed up when winter comes on, not to be unsewed until spring, thus keeping the children constantly warm and sav- ing the mothers a great deal of trouble ! The Italians have retained in New York a vast 143 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK amount of their native Italian ways. In the first place, they feel at home here, and especially those of the southern part of Italy. The tenements and tene- ment streets of New York are curiously like those of Naples. In both cities there are solid rows of tall buildings, filling street after street, with each build- ing a hive of human life. The chestnuts on long strings, the ninepin-shaped skins hanging full of lard, the cheeses of all colors, the dried mushrooms in garlands, the silvery garlic, the pastry-cakes of varied hues, the white sheets of macaroni, the red or green peppers, the street cries, the music — it is a veritable Naples. Nor are the Italian quarters of the city without the love of literature. There are the lives of. S. Eocco, S. Girolamo, S. Luigi, S. Anna; there are little paper chapbooks on Guglielmo Tell and Pablo y Virginia, and I even noticed a paper-backed trans- lation of **Ivanhoe," which the dealer handled re- spectfully, knowing it to be the work of an honored author, and pronouncing it, of course, with the ac- cent on the second syllable, *^Ee-van-ho-ay." Some of the streets leading northward from Chat- ham Square; the district immediately southwest of Washington Square; a great district around Prince Street, west of the Bowery; some of the tenement streets of the East Side up in Harlem — such, to- day, are among the most prominent of the Italian quarters. And all is so colorful! You see bright yellow headcloths, red kerchiefs, purple and lavender waists, 144 THE CITY OF FOREIGNEES neckties of magenta or pink, strange Italian greens and blues, a man with a soft shirt in a pattern of red and yellow roses, a yellow neck handkerchief for tie and a cap of startling hue, a woman with skirt of red and waist of purple and handkerchief of blue. The American-born New Yorker has come to like the Italians: they are sunny-dispositioned and smil- ing and are born with manners: they are fruit and vegetable lovers: and these things make them seem human and kindred in spirit. Saint's Day in an Italian street of New York is unreservedly an Italian festa. The streets, arched with little oil lights in tumblers of colored glass, the flags, the banners, the festoonings, the tinsel, the flowers, the color and life of the throngs that are at once so gay and so devout, the scarlets and violets and saffrons and greens, the baldachino set up in the open air, in the open street, with its effigies of the Madonna and Child — yes ; it is a veritable Naples ! And, as in Naples, the language of the hands, the arms, the fingers, an elaborate language of gesticula- tion, is freely used. It came into use over there from the ease that it gave to conversation between any one in an upper room and one on the pavement, and the importance was accentuated by the constant police surveillance of the Neapolitan Camorra. You see an Italian, at an upper window, make a swift motion of the hands, away from the body, with the palms outward and a handkerchief in the right hand; and one who understands the sign language would know that he is saying to some distant friend, 145 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK don't want to go." The motion is slow, with a long sweep, and with the head thrown back, whereas precisely the same motion, with the head held nor- mal and still, and the motion itself made short and several times repeated, means, **I11 go" — and such a message may be the acknowledgment of an invita- tion or perhaps a warning. A sweep of the right hand, curving outward, with forefinger extended and head slightly inclined forward, means, ^'To- morrow. ' ' The motions and signs and variants are infinite. As an Italian put it, one day when I spoke of this language of gesticulation — his name was, delight- fully, Giannottasio, and he had translated his first name into Michael — *'For anything the heart say, we have the gestickle." 146 CHAPTER XII TWO NOTABLE SQUAEES OW much higher, one won- ders, was the Tower of Babel, than this which so overtops all of central Man- hattan? Not so tall, surely. This tower of the Metropoli- tan Life building rises to the height of seven hundred feet: indeed, to write with meticulousness, one must needs say seven hundred feet and three inches. Un- fortunately, no record was left us as to the Tower of Babel, but surely it was not quite so high as this? Nor did Babel look down upon such a confusion of tongues as does this sky-piercing tower of New York. And instead of, as with Babel, the confusion of tongues bringing about a scattering of the people to the ends of the earth, it means more and more a drawing together of people from the ends of the earth. The main part of the building rises massively, in its light gray stone, story after story, and above this the tower, superb in design, continues the upward 147 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK mounting, rising as if interminably, and at length, and foursidedly, coming to an end in a pillar-sup- ported octagon surmounted by a lantern of gold. It is not only that the building has massiveness and size, not only that it harbors daily as many peo- ple as would make up the population of many a busy town — for the offices collectively have over three thou- sand occupants — but that it has positive distinction, and splendid beauty. The tower would be deemed a thing of beauty in any city of the world, no mat- ter how rich in traditions of architecture. The clock and its solemn striking, its flashing- lights to mark the time noiselessly at night, add to the interest of it all. And to mention the size and weight of one seemingly little thing, far up there, will give an unexpected impression of size and im- portance; the apparently little thing being the min- ute-hand of the clock, which, in actuality, is seventeen feet in length and weighs half a ton ! Literally, time weighs heavily on the hands — an unusual thing in New York. The totals of business transacted in this great building, by the company which built it, befit the size and cost of the structure: and yet, as a contrast, I one day came upon a curious fact, which is, that not only does the normal and usual business of such a company extend to all corners of the country, but that it also extends to a totally unexpected quarter — to the almshouse dwellers on BlackwelPs Island! For many a pauper, looking from the Island to this superb tower of an insurance company, glistening 148 TWO NOTABLE SQUARES in the sun, plainly in view, knows that it represents escape from a pauper 's grave. On the same side of the square, but in the farther corner, is Madison Square Garden, designed by Stan- ford White; but, as with everything in New York, one cannot with certainty write *4s," for everything that stands is but waiting the usual New York fate, and Madison Square Garden, with all its traditions of fashion and Horse Shows and great public meet- ings, is understood to be doomed. It was a superb architectural thought that put this building here, in its immense area, with its Spanish architecture and its Giralda-like tower and with so charming and graceful a Diana over all. In the towering beauty of its tawnj terra-cotta and brick it is a charming thing, and its tower and its arcaded sidewalks give a distinctly foreign air. The tower was once so high, now overtopped though it is by the surrounding buildings, that from its summit the Battery could be seen. Well, changes come — and although the Battery can no longer be seen from the Diana 's tower, it may still be seen from the far loftier tower of the Metropolitan. On the same side of the square is the notable and uncompromisingly classic Madison Square Presby- terian Church, better known as Doctor Parkhurst's Church," superbly fine, with its front a triumph of restrained color, and Pantheon-like in design. The blue in the pediment, the white of the angels, the dull- gold tops of the pillars, with blue behind, the splen- did granite shafts of the pillars, of a gray that is 149 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK almost green, the apple-green overlaid with gold in the line of the eaves, the yellow and cream — yet all so qniet, so harmonious, so unobtrusive! These three great buildings on one side of the square are so important and so interesting that the eye almost fails to see the fine white building of the Appellate Court, which would attract notice in any other city. The Fifth Avenue Hotel, for so many years an im- portant center of New York life, stood facing out from the opposite side of the square, where Broad- way crosses Fifth Avenue on a long rakish angle. Long, very long, is the list of famous folk who were guests there, of the politicians who made their head- quarters there, of the notable receptions that were held there. For a quarter of a century it was pre- eminently the most prominent hotel of the city. It was in this hotel, and I mention it not so much for its importance as for its curious interest, that the minister, Burchard, made the alliterative declaration about **Eum, Romanism and Rebellion'' which de- feated Blaine for the Presidency and elected Cleve- land. The declaration attracted no apparent atten- tion when uttered: the politicians who heard it scarcely noticed it : but the newspapers published it and it swept like wildfire through the country. At the edge of the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, at the northern end of the square, is a statue of Farragut, on a bench-like base, the base and statue together making a united design of unusual effectiveness ; the statue being by St. Gaudens and the base by Stanford White. 150 THE TOWERS OF MADISON SQUARE TWO NOTABLE SQUAEES And one remembers that the funeral procession of Farragut, in 1870, went by this spot. The Admiral had died in New Hampshire and his body was brought to New York for burial in Woodlawn Cemetery, and as it was borne up Fifth Avenue and through Mad- ison Square, followed by thousands of troops, and the most distinguished civilians, and President Grant and members of his Cabinet, a drenching rain was steadily falling. Madison Square has other statues also, including one of Eoscoe Conkling and one of Chester Arthur; reminders, these, of a close personal and political friendship, bitterly broken by the tragedy of Gar- field's death and the succession of Arthur to the Pres- idency. What a figure Conkling once made! How power- ful he was — and now, almost forgotten. Yet his con- test with President Garfield roused the nation to in- tense excitement; his holding together of the three hundred delegates for Grant, for ballot after ballot, day after day, at the National Convention where the effort was made to give Grant a third term, roused the nation to intense even though reluctant admiration. A great figure : but somehow, not much more than his superciliousness seems to be perpetuated by this bronze and he died from the effects of walking out in a terrible March blizzard — just as if it had been the Plains instead of the center of Manhattan. Over yonder sits Seward, looking a little bored and thoughtful on his noisy corner, and with some bronze books tucked under his bronze chair. In this square 151 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK too is the Worth monument, a tall memorial over the grave of a worthy officer, now quite forgotten, who fought bravely in a war of which America has al- ways been ashamed. Not the least among the attractions of Madison Square is an auction establishment, with an unprom- ising exterior, which, once entered, leads up and back in labyrinthine fascination, with stairs and passages and one large room after another. Here at this Christie's or Hotel Drouot of New York have been held many of the city's most interesting sales of col- lections of antiques, paintings and objects of art. As night comes on, Madison Square becomes a spe- cial haven for derelicts, many of whom sleep on the benches until the policeman arouses them by beating on their feet ; and as for women derelicts, who would, if they could, sleep sitting, the benches are too high to permit them to put their feet on the ground. And finally, before leaving Madison Square, the question comes whether, after all, the widest and longest fame, in definite connection with it, has not been won by Miss Flora MacFlimsy of Madison Square, whose complaint, so characteristic of the ex- travagance of New York, was that she had nothing to wear. A few blocks south of Madison Square is Union Square, with Broadway leading into and away from it and sweeping curiously along one side. Until re- cent years it was one of the greatest centres of New York life, but it has been left behind in the city's swift advance. 152 TWO NOTABLE SQUARES Here, where Fourth Avenue reaches Union Square, stands an equestrian statue of Washington ; a capable, excellent statue ; on the spot where the General stood when he was welcomed by the citizens of New York on the great day when he returned, with his army, to take possession at the time of the evacuation of the city by the British. It has frequently been stated that the statue stood originally where Cooper Union now stands; but I think that misapprehension arose from the fact that Fourth Avenue, from Cooper Union to Union Square, used to be deemed part of the Bowery, and that this statue stood, therefore, at **the head of the Bowery," so that, when *^the head of the Bowery" came to be at Cooper Union, the wrong idea likewise came as to the location of the statue. The great occasion of Washington's reception makes it extremely interest- ing to have the precise locality in mind. Not far away is a Lafayette, eagerly bending for- ward on his pedestal, as if to hasten to the great leader whom he so worshiped ; as if, indeed, actually in the act of motion toward his chief. At least it is so as I write, though in this city of change, Lafayette may be made to face in some other direction, or Washington may be moved away, if it happens to be some commissioner's whim or if it should be de- manded by some matter of subway construction, in this burrow of Manhattan. The statue of Lafayette brings the memory of a ride, one cold and drizzly morning, toward that lonely part of France, the Nez de Jobourg, in a tiny dili- 153 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK gence; for an old Frenchman, a fellow passenger, learning that I was an American, told me, with pride, that Lafayette went to America to aid in gaining our freedom, and then he told me that another French- man, Bartholdi, had made for America a great statue of Liberty to stand in New York harbor ! Confirma- tory knowledge of these things on the part of the American delighted the old Norman very much, and he was ecstatically happy when I told him that the statue of Lafayette himself stood in a square called Union Square, in New York City, and that Bartholdi was the maker of the statue ! Ever, in New York, the human happening is of im- portance: and ever there are occurring things dra- matic, full of interest. And here, in Union Square, there comes the picture of a political meeting, when a young orator from the West, who was looked upon in that, his first national campaign, as a sort of prophet, was to speak here in his o^vn campaign for the Presidency. It was a rainy night. A huge crowd, with umbrel- las raised, massed in front of the stand. After a long wait a carriage rounded a corner and came to- ward the stand, and beside it, in the rain, came a running mass of men. The orator, Bryan, came out upon the platform — and every umbrella was instantly lowered and not a man moved away, though the rain poured down; all stood there, massed and expectant, heedless of the drenching, waiting pathetically for the expected words of gold — though I should in this case call them silver. But the candidate opened his 154 TWO NOTABLE SQUARES lips only to ask that patient and drenched gathering to excuse him from speaking! — as if to show that not every man, given opportunity, is able to rise to the opportunity. This square used to be a notable place for public gatherings and we are told that in April of 1861 over one hundred thousand people came here, gathering in a patriotic meeting, presided over by the **If any man dares to haul down the American flag'' Governor, John A. Dix. At the southwest corner of Union Square, calm and thoughtful at a little whirlpool of traffic, is Abraham Lincoln in bronze, overlooking what was long deemed the most dangerous street crossing in America, **Dead Man's Curve," whose perils are now outdone on every street and road since the advent of the automobile. Near this statue, just one block down, at Univer- sity Place and 13th Street, there has been set into a building a tablet which Lincoln would have read with grievous pity and pride: for it tells that from this spot, on March 27, 1861, the Ninth Regiment marched away in defense of the Union, 850 strong" and that on June 11, 1864, ^^the return home was with 17 officers and 78 enlisted men." Both of these squares, Union and Madison, have as- sociation with the most famous name in American gastronomy. For, in turn, each of these squares has had the world-famous Delmonico's. The original Delmonico was, almost a century ago, chef and waiter and proprietor of a tiny restaurant 155 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK on William Street, with chairs, tables, table-ware and cutlery of the commonest. But the supreme excel- lence of his cooking brought him custom, and he moved to a larger place, and then, with his brother, to a still larger at William and Beaver Streets (still operated under the Delmonico name), and as his sons grew to manhood they also joined him, and a place was opened on Broadway near the City Hall. Long ago, this main establishment was removed to Union Square, and then to a building just past the northern edge of Madison Square, and at length, years ago, to the present locality at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. Just before Dickens sailed for home, in 1868, after his second visit to the United States, he was given a banquet, at the Delmonico 's of that time, by some two hundred men of the American press, and the bill of fare named such literary dishes as *'creme d*as- perges a la Dumas," ^^cotelettes a la Fenimore Coo- per,'' ^^agneau farci a la Walter Scott," and ^4es petites Zimballes a la Dickens." Horace Greeley presided, and told how, many years before, he had chosen, to print in his first weekly newspaper, a short story, that he had noticed in an English periodical, written by an unknown author who signed the name '*Boz!" — the story being ^*A Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle." It was at this dinner that Dickens made his famous declaration that, on his arrival in England, he would, in his own English periodical, '^manfully, promptly, and plainly in my own person," tell of the ''gigantic changes" that he had seen, and that he would also 156 TWO NOTABLE SQUAKES tell that, wherever I have been, in the smallest place equally with the largest, I have been received with un- surpassed politeness, delicacy, sweet-temper, hospi- tality, and consideration,^' and that ^Hhis testimony, so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall cause to be published, as an appendix, to every copy of those two books of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do, be- cause I regard it as an act of plain justice and honor. ' ' So Dickens **ate crow," and a very large dish of it, at that dinner, though it was not on the bill of fare — not even under the disguise of ^^corbeau a la Dick- ens. ' ' 157 CHAPTER XIII GRAMEKCY AND STUYVESANT AND OLD CHELSEA EW YORK architects and build- ers reveled for years in the building of humdrum, high- stoop houses: many and many a street is still double-lined with their monotony: and yet, that these commonplace build- ings may be made into build- ings of beauty, that the com- monplace may be changed into charm, has been shown on East 19th Street. For that street, for a short distance east of Irving Place, has been delightfully made into a studio street by the intelligent cooperation of artists and architects, who have taken in hand the prosaic old houses that have long stood there — fortunately, not the really narrow and mean houses of which the city has so many — and have altered them by taking away the steppy stoops, by setting down the doors to the level of the sidewalks, by adding little wrought iron balconies, with flower-boxes, by changing roof -lines, by putting on gables of old Dutch shape, by using red tiles, by differently grouping the windows, by chang- 158 GRAMEECY, STUYVESANT, OLD CHELSEA ing the glass to smaller panes, by the use of pictur- esquely heavy sash, by using such wood-work colors, quiet but at the same time noticeable, as verdigris green, by putting brass knockers on the doors. Such things have been done with comparatively small ex- pense; nothing compared with tearing down the old houses and putting up new; and the resultant effect, with these made-over buildings, is a street of repose and good living and distinction and charm. On one of the roofs are a couple of storks, and, absurd though the idea may seem, the effect is not in the least ab- surd but very pictorial. That artists and others who love the picturesque in Europe, refer to this street as being *4ike a bit of Paris, **a bit of London,'' **a bit of Amsterdam" — each one reminded of some place which holds pictur- esque memories for him — represents the most cordial appreciation of the efforts of those who carried out the alterations. It is really something much better than a bit of Amsterdam or London or Paris, it is an expression of American blood and feeling, here in New York, and its importance lies in its showing how easily some miles of at present humdrum houses could be altered to some form of excellent good looks. As if with intention, those who chose this particular section for picturesque living chose one that lies be- tween picturesque old Gramercy Park and the still picturesque Stuyvesant Square, and near to both. To many, even of those who know their New York well, Gramercy Park is a place that is hard to find: it seems not to be just where you expect it to be : and 159 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK yet it is eminently central and convenient, between Fourth and Third Avenues, with its north side 21st Street and its south side 20th Street, and with Irving Place leading to it from below and Lexington Ave- nue from above. It is a pleasant park, a tiny little park, a charming little park, an attractive, felicitous, captivating little park, a park of which it may be said that it is one of the things that still stand for good old New York living and at the same time that it is remindful of many a little park in England. Here, in former days, dwelt David Dudley Field and Cyrus W. Field, John Bigelow and Nicholas Fish and the Coopers and Stanford White; and most of the old houses still remain. It is not that they are, in- dividually, models for other buildings, but that as a whole they give a sense of the comfortable and worth while. The park, as a small residence section, buttressed by a little residential section in the streets immedi- ately around it, is notable, close as it is to Broadway, to busy 23d Street, to the rush of Third Avenue. It is reposeful. In that, I think, lies its chief merit. It is a quiet little pool, in the heart of swift currents of humanity and business. What has kept it a place apart has been, princi- pally, the greenery of its central space, its trees, its shrubs, its flowers, its grass. For all this space is enclosed within an iron fence, and only the owners of property facing into the park have keys, and thus strict privacy is assured in its walks and paths, and 160 ORAMERCY, STUYVESANT, OLD CHELSEA a few nursemaids and children are usually, in pleasant weather, to be seen there, happy and cheerful. This shutting off into exclusiveness of the central space is not only successful in giving and maintaining the air of charming seclusion, but it has kept the park from being overrun by tenement dwellers ; a tenement sec- tion is within a few minutes ' walk, and the park would tempt to general gregarious gathering were there benches there and a space for public playing. Naturally, clubs were drawn into this quiet little eddy. The Princeton Club was attracted to the oc- cupancy of a fine old house on the northern side. On the southern side, at 15, is the mansion that was the home of Samuel J. Tilden, lawyer, governor, al- most President, and the building was acquired by the National Arts Club ; it is a mansion of huge size, built in a style of chocolate-colored grandeur, a large-win- dowed house, with rooms cavernously large. Next door, at 16, is the Players ' Club, also a large building, of comfort and spaciousness, the fine gift of the great Edwin Booth, who gave everything freely, house and furniture, merely reserving one room for his own use and one for Lawrence Barrett — the close friendship of these two actors, who might so easily have been unfriendly rivals, being one of the treasured mem- ories of the American stage. Booth's room is pre- served as it was on the day he died, even to the book which he was reading, which is open at the page where he left it when death came. Gramercy Park, in spite of the fact that none of its houses is very old, gives an impression of pleasant 161 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK old-timeness ; or, perhaps one might say that it looks, not old, but middle-aged. As a matter of fact, it was not laid out and set aside as a park until the early 1830 's. It is a pleasantly reposeful spot for which New York ought to be — and is — thankful : and I like to think of it as owing its name, in some never to be explained way, to this idea of thankfulness. The origin of the name has been laboriously traced, and perhaps but fanci- fully, to **Krom-merssche,'' meaning Crooked little swamp ' ' ; but I should like to think of it as being the delightful ^^Gramercy'' of the olden time and of Spenser and Walter Scott, meaning not only thanks, but * ^ grandmerci, ' ' many and unusual thanks! I have heard the peasants in out of the way corners of ancient Normandy use the old time syllables with de- lightfully prolonged accent on the first — pronounced, I need not say, * ^ grah-mer-cy ' ' — and I like to think that the long-ago use of the word in New York may have come from some picturesque connection vdth. the picturesque Huguenots who refugeed here, or perhaps from some of the French who came in such numbers at the time of the Revolution. Of course, the laboriously made out * ' Krom-merssche ^ ' derivation would also be interesting from its connection with the picturesque Dutch; but the Dutch gave name to another old- fashioned park, Stuyvesant Square, just a few blocks from Gramercy, so there would be no partiality in giving Gramercy to the French and leaving Stuy\^es- ant with its derivation from the domain of the worthy Petrus. 162 GRAMERCY, STUYVESANT, OLD CHELSEA Stuyvesant Square is a large area, consisting of two separate sections divided by Second Avenue, a little north of 14th Street, each section enclosed within high iron fencing, and unusually thick with trees and shrubs. Far down town though this now is, and over in the midst of the thronging East Side, it is one of the peaceful places in New York. Like Gramercy, it is restful and quiet, except for the gay twitter of birds, and this twitter itself seems to add to the sense of quietness and rest; and yet, though an attractive place, it is without the quite unusual charm of Gra- mercy. Facing the south-west corner are some buildings of dullish red, looking out into the greenery; Quaker buildings these, already growing old, for they were built in 1860; and they are built with much of the old-fashioned prim Quaker restraint such as one finds with the old Quaker meeting-houses in the vicinity of Philadelphia. The dull red of the brick, the white of the stone trimmings, the white of the slender pillared prim porticoes with their prim tops, the brown shut- ters, the window shades of Quaker drab, all unite to make a primly pleasant impression. Adjoining, and as if for a contrast to Quaker sim- plicity, is the brown mass of St. George's Church, long the most fashionable Episcopalian Church, even after fashion so long ago deserted this old Knicker- bocker center. It is a great brown structure, with two towers indicated but never built up. It is a mass- ive-fronted building of generous and dark interior. Its pulpit at the front of the altar is elaborately 163 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK designed and carved, and is inscribed with the state- ment that it was put up by the congregation in mem- ory of J. P. Morgan, who was born in Connecticut in 1837 and who died in Kome in 1913. Such a man, a veritable emperor of finance that he was, actually more powerful, more of a world force, than by far the greater number of those who wore the Eoman purple, would have felt his fancy titillated — for he was a man of imagination — could he have known that it was in once imperial Eome that he was to end his financially imperial days. But I have seen him in this church, gravely walking down the aisle and gravely passing the collection plate to other men of wealth, thus de- manding money of them even on the Sabbath; and somehow there came the impression of Wall Street rather than of Eome. The square used to be a center of wealthy and cul- tivated life, but wealth and fashion have left; they would not stay over here, east of Third Avenue. Forming, in a general way, across Manhattan from side to side, a line of old-fashioned neighborhoods which still retain their old-fashioned charm, it seems as if Stuyvesant Square and Gramercy Park come nat- urally into association with attractive old Chelsea. And always, with Chelsea, there comes prominently to mind its association with Santa Claus : for, incongru- ous though it seems for any part of this ultra-modern city to be associated with so old-fashioned a belief, so quaint and old-fashioned a fantasy as that concerning good old Santa Claus, New York has precisely that association, because of Chelsea: for it was a New 164 GRAMERCY PARK AND THE PLAYERS CLUB GRAMEECY, STUYVESANT, OLD CHELSEA Yorker, a dweller here, who wrote those preeminently Santa Clausish lines beginning, * ^ 'Twas the night be- fore Christmas.'' In New York, Santa Claus must go down a pipe in a kitchenette, or come up a furnace flue, or struggle with hot-water pipes, or be broiled with steam. It is not an encouraging city for old-time Christmas tradi- tions. It is not a place for stockings by the fireplace. And so it seems astonishing that any New Yorker should have been inspired to write these lines. And then one remembers that, after all, it was in the house- living days of New York, before the apartment days, that the verses were written ; although they are so gen- erally familiar, and give so entirely modern an im- pression, that one at first takes it for granted that they are of recent origin. As a matter of fact, they were written by a man who lived in New York a cen- tury ago. And he lived in this section, to which even yet tenements have not come. Old Chelsea, once Chelsea Village, still retaining much of its old-time comfortable aspect, its pictur- esqueness, is in the vicinity of 23rd Street and the North River. And he who would know New York must, from the first, know that the city is divided, not officially but none the less surely, into a great number of divisions, such as Yorkville, Poverty Hollow, Mur- ray Hill, Hell 's Kitchen, Sunken Village, Penitentiary Row, Manhattanville, Harlem, Battle Row, Corcor- an 's Roost, Greenwich Village and Chelsea. The author of the Santa Claus verse was Clement C. Moore, son of Bishop Moore, and he inherited from 165 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK his father most of the great area of Chelsea, and gave, or leased forever without rent, a large part of his possessions to a theological seminary, which put up interesting college buildings in English style, and ce- mented jagged glass on the tops of stone walls to dis- courage trespassers — also in English style! — and on the whole gave such an atmosphere of peace and charm as to make Chelsea quite remindful of some pleasant ecclesiastical village of England. Delightful folk came to live in the vicinity of the college buildings and the professors ; and even yet, in spite of the north- ward sweep of commerce and business, this section re- mains an oasis of charm. The first house in the Chelsea neighborhood was built by Captain Thomas Clarke, about 1750, and the name of Chelsea seems to have been reminiscent of old Chelsea by the Thames, in England. Clarke's house was burned when he was on his deathbed, and he was carried away from it to die, but his widow bravely re- built on the same spot; but this second house also long ago disappeared. During the Eevolution the widow and her two daughters, frankly loyal to England, feared injury from the Americans during the brief time that the Continentals held New York, and there is a pretty story about General Washington himself hearing of this and riding over in person, one day, to assure the ladies of full safety. Indeed, our American George could be a very courtly gentleman when he chose. A vague story has also come down that a British frigate which had been doing target practice turned 166 GEAMERCY, STUYVESANT, OLD CHELSEA its guns toward the Americans when Washington's party was seen and that a cannon ball actually crashed into the Clarke house ; but this story seems to have no basis except that of legendary interest. The property passed from the possession of the Clarkes to that of Bishop Moore about the year 1800, but it still kept its name of Chelsea. And not only was the son of the bishop the author of what may fairly be termed the classic of child- hood, but he was also author of so utterly different a work, so absolutely unchildlike in its appeal, as a Hebrew lexicon! And the suggestion amusingly comes that if this classic of erudition could be as widely known as the classic of childhood, converse would be easy with the race who are more in evidence than any other of the many races of Manhattan ! 167 CHAPTER XIV UP FIFTH TO FORTY-SECOND IFTH Avenue marches off su- perbly from a noble gateway, an arch placed like a gateway at its lower end, where the avenue leads away from Washington Square. It is a distinguished arch, an arch of proportion, of grace, of dignity, of beauty, it is an arch of gray stone, and it rises effectively from a sweep of gray asphalt pavement, with the soft greenery of grass and the swaying green of great old trees close by, and it rises against a sedate background of the mellow red of old mansions. It is not a large arch. It was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe of Paris just as that had been inspired by the arches of Rome ; indeed this is far more like the arch of Titus than like the Parisian arch. At each corner of Fifth Avenue, and facing to- ward the arch, is a house of large and generous size, of ample and fine proportions; each is of mellowed brick, each has great wistarias, drooping clusters 168 UP FIFTH TO FOKTY-SECOND of purple over its balconies, each has a garden nooked behind a high brick wall, **a garden circum- mured with brick, ' ' each has the smoothest of narrow lawns and each is bright with flowering shrubs. If houses were human these might be twins, so delight- fully alike they are in general air and aspect. Fifth Avenue is a wonderful avenue, in its great straight length of mile on mile, in its setting forth of much of the very best that New York can offer, of people and homes and churches and clubs and hotels and places of business and parks, and in its posses- sion of the finest of American museums. For many years an avenue of homes, it now has as many busi- ness establishments as homes, and it still retains its leadership among American avenues. A white-fronted hotel, foreign-looking and distin- guished, just a little above the square, keeps in mind the name of Brevoort, the man who long ago owned acres and acres of land hereabouts, his estate extend- ing even beyond Broadway. He was born thirty years before the Revolution and lived for thirty years after the beginning of the War of 1812, and for his almost full century of life left the memory of one notable achievement : the preventing, by a bitter legal fight, of the cutting of 11th Street through his prop- erty, from Broadway to Fourth Avenue, his objection being that it would destroy a favorite tree — and hence the still unbroken space immediately adjoining Grace Church on the north. The junction of Fifth Avenue and 9th Street is of varied and unusual interest. At the south-east 169 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK corner is a rather narrow house, of three stories and a high basement, a house of red brick with imitation Venetian windows; not at all a distinguished house, yet here it was that Mark Twain came, to spend the closing years of his life. It has always seemed to me that the explanation of his choosing this home, whence he could look out upon great currents of human travel, was the feeling, perhaps subconscious, that Fifth Avenue itself was a sort of landward Mississippi Eiver, here in the East. I remember that on pleasant spring evenings he would stand at the top of his front steps, clad in the fa- mous white suit with which he won such attention in England, smoking his cigar (inveterate smoker that he was, he loved to say that he had made it a life- long rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time!) and looking out thoughtfully at the currents of life, of the passing people and vehicles. Across the street, at the north-east corner, lived old General Sickles, long surviving the war that had made him famous, and maintaining to the last his tulip bed as if it were a battalion holding a desper- ate position; and indeed it required determination and vigilance to hold those tulip lines ! Bluff old sol- dier that he was, his friends liked to remember that when he had lost his leg at Gettysburg, and his faith- ful negro body-servant blubbered about it, there came a curt admonition, with the words: Don't you see you'll only have one boot to polish after this!'' It gives the 9th Street junction a still further inter- est, and an interest of fiction instead of fact, that 170 UP FIFTH TO FORTY-SECOND the square-fronted house at the north-west corner was the house of Van Bibber's burglar — thus bring- ing freshly to mind the memory of that kindly club- man, the delightful conception of the early career of Richard Harding Davis. At 10th Street is the Church of the Ascension, built of a rough and reddish stone, and with a square tower rising above its unpretentious but dignified front. A stone pavement is about it and there are privet bushes of great size, and the church is finely open daily, as a number of New York churches are, for rest, meditation and prayer ; and at services the seats are free. Inside, the interest goes at once to a great painting behind the altar, a painting of the Ascension by John LaFarge, occupying the entire end of the nave and rising with curving top to the ceiling. It is in soft blues, in tawny colorings with touches of subdued rose, and shows some two-score figures of angels and disciples and friends, and on the whole is a notable thing. The interior of the church is effective. It is a lesson in good taste. It is most satisfactorily a churchly church, in its Gothic style, and with its stone floor, its stone columns on either side, its black and ancient-looking oak, its stained glass, already finely mellowing. As the organ softly sounds, a golden light streams in through the yellow glass of the high windows over the doorway, and you feel, in that dim religious light, as if you are infinite miles away from the busy city. This is a church by Upjohn, the archi- 171 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK tect of Trinity, a man of very real ability, who did so much to give ecclesiastical buildings of distinction to the city. West 10th Street, for the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, is an interesting old New York street, an almost romantic street, a street mainly of individual houses instead of flats or apartments : and here still stands an old-fashioned block of studio buildings, the studios of the *^01d Masters" of New York, the studios of men who cheerfully painted and struggled for fame in the long ago, and whose pic- tures now sell from, say, from two to twenty thou- sand dollars each. Here, in Chase's studio, Car- mencita danced, as she dances forever in Sargent's painting in the gallery of the Luxembourg, in Paris : here were gay and happy times : but these * * Old Mas- ters '' are dead, and the footsteps of a new generation of artists sound upon the red-tiled floors. That these old studio fronts are generously broad is a chief source of their comfortable cheerfulness of aspect; and this is remindful that the cause, more than any other, of a certain meagerness, a cramped uncomfortableness, which mark many miles of New York buildings, is that some one discovered how to build flats which, by dividing the frontage of a New York lot, gave to each family the width of half a lot — which was admirable for land and building specu- lators but the reverse of admirable for the city's looks. At 11th Street and Fifth Avenue is another Up- john church, the First Presbyterian, a church not un- 172 UP FIFTH TO FOKTY-SECOND like that of the Ascension, but with a broader and larger interior, with side galleries and a groined roof. This church occupies an entire block and has there- fore much of an air of spaciousness, and there is much of greenery roundabout, and there is a privet hedge behind a Gothic iron fence, and above the church rises a square Gothic tower. It is of rough stone, dark and reddish, and has in its outward aspect a little more of elaborateness of stone detail than has its sister church on the corner below. It should not be forgotten that it was on the stone ledge of the base of the iron fence in front of this church that George William Curtis, in ' ^ Prue and I, ' ' placed the old apple-woman from whom the daily apple was bought, and whose basket was so distress- ingly overturned when the man was eagerly gazing at the pretty girl passing in the carriage! — for of such light things, with their sweet and wholesome flavor, was the literature of half and three-quarters of a century ago made ! On past 14th Street, with towering business blocks on either side. Fifth Avenue marches, and straight as an arrow through Madison Square, here crossing Broadway and aiming directly on to a far-distant northward. At East 29th Street one's eyes are drawn aside by the greenery and charm of the Little Church Around the Corner, so interesting in its name and its appear- ance and its setting, so delightfully unexpected as a bit of downtown New York landscape, so associated with fiction that seems as real as fact and with fact 173 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK that has all the interest of fiction. It is but half a block from the avenue. The marriages that have taken place at what was so long looked upon as New York^s Gretna Green represent romance illimitable; and one thinks first of the delightful marriage at which the always lika- ble Van Bibber was the deus ex macliina, while he sent the angry brother off on a wildgoose chase to Chicago — and afterwards was mildly sorry that he had made it farther than Jersey City. Weddings at all hours so established the pleasant fame of this church that funerals seem almost incon- gruous ; and yet it was a funeral through which the fame of this church of marriages began, the funeral of George Holland; nor can one forget that grim lit- tle story of Brander Matthews' in which he tells of the funeral of an actor, while the woman he was to have married sat unnoticed by the door in the most hopeless of all agony ; and perhaps that story came to him from noticing how like the drop scene of a theater this church appears, in its long stretched-out but shallow surroundings. The long nave of the church is even parallel with the sidewalk, as if in an effort to accentuate the drop scene effect. The formal name, if one must have formality, is the Church of the Transfiguration, but its name of the Little Church Around the Corner is that by which it is always lovingly known. George Holland, an actor of useful career and unblemished character,'' to use the words of Joseph Jefferson, his close friend, died at the age of eighty, 174 UP FIFTH TO FOETY-SECOND and Jefferson, accompanied by Holland's son, went to the minister of the church on Fifth Avenue that was attended by Holland's sister, to arrange for the funeral. The minister named the time; but then, learning from a remark dropped by Jefferson that Holland had been an actor, he absolutely declined to have the service at his church ! Jefferson was frankly shocked by this refusal, whereupon the minister carelessly remarked that ^Hhere was a little church around the corner where you might get it done. ' ' * ^ Might get it done ! ' ' We have Jefferson's own statement that those were the minister's words. And Jefferson, fine man as well as fine actor that he was, was equal to the occasion. *^If this be so, then God bless the Little Church Around the Cor- ner ! " he said, thus giving the church its lovable name by the swift adoption of the minister's flippantly meant phrase. Thus christened, the name was affec- tionately seized upon by Jefferson's friends and by the public. No church in the world has been more fondly referred to. From Holland's funeral there have come to be a long, long line, not only of funerals but in particular of weddings, and its reputation long ago made it the most romantic pilgrimage spot in New York. The ivy-clad little crowded clump of buildings nes- tles oddly away among the tall business structures closely surrounding it. It is of brick, with sharp- pointed gables. Its center square tower, prettily vil- 175 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK lage-like, runs up to a cross-tipped and pyramidal roof. The church buildings are very low set, almost as if seeking seclusion behind the hedge that borders the sidewalk. All is pleasantly Gothic in design. The windows are narrow and lancet like. The in- terior of the church is longer than would be expected from the outside; it is dusky and low, with almost the impression of the roof being close upon you. Outside there are grass and shrubs within the nar- row little space and even some trees ! And there is, of all things for central New York, a lych-gate, which gives an air as of peacefully setting the church apart from the street. Business long ago invaded Fifth Avenue, but now it has conquered great sections from down near its beginning to far up toward Central Park. Nor are the businesses of the kind which first appeared here on this avenue, so long exclusive. At first they were expensive establishments for the sale of jewelry and furs, hats and flowers, china, costumes, paintings, en- gravings; and there were expensive hotels and res- taurants of world-wide fame. And these are still here ; the most expensive and exclusive of shops, and the most exclusive of dining places : but there is also now an admixture of shops that sell poorer and cheaper things, and of restaurants that are neither expensive nor fashionable. Most of all, a change has come through the mass- ing in this vicinity of garment makers, who have rec- ognized the importance of a Fifth Avenue, or near Fifth Avenue, address, as a business asset, and have 176 UP FIFTH TO FORTY-SECOND j therefore moved into this region. At the noon hour, now, the sidewalks of a great part of the avenue, below 34th Street, are packed, for blocks, solid with foreign-faced garment workers; all men, all quiet and orderly, almost all dressed in black, and all standing here or softly shuffling about getting a little sun and air before returning to take up the after- noon's work. These men, who swarm so thickly on weekdays, vanish as evening comes, and on Sundays are not in evidence at all. And on Sunday mornings Americans come back here! You see again the American faces that you thought had disappeared from the New York side- walks! And you see Americans without foreigners. And not merely in the motor-cars; as a matter of fact the motors on Sunday are largely from New Jer- sey, over for a safe city spin, or even from Connecti- cut ; but the sidewalks from, say, 34th Street to Cen- tral Park are thronged with Americans. The high silk hat, too, polished to dazzling bright- ness, glowing, resplendent, is again brought out from the hiding place into which for the rest of the week it is thrust, and goes proudly along as of old. And under the silk hats you may pick out the face of this or that well-known New Yorker, this or that busi- ness man or lawyer. There are New Yorkers who know each other ! You see them bowing and smiling at each other in greeting. This is not the case on other days of the week, for in general New Yorkers are strangers to those who pass them by. One day I saw twenty-five thousand strikers, mostly 177 i THE BOOK OF NEW YORK garment workers, marching up Fifth Avenue. There was not an American face in the entire twenty- five thousand. It was an object lesson as to whose are the hands into which we are throwing the con- trol of our country. The faces wore an expression of triumphant sullenness. It was as if they were warning Americans — as in very truth they were. And the crowds massed to watch them were mainly composed of men and women and children of their own class, immediate friends and sympathizers. And I noticed that with the marchers and spectators alike, the average physical size was quite beneath that of American citizens of the times now vanish- ing. The entire throng were frankly undersized, so markedly that any one reaching an average Ameri- can height was noticeable. And not only were they undersized, not only were there no American faces, but the tunes to which they marched — for they had a number of bands — were not only not American but were almost all of revolu- tionary tendency. There was no Irishman marching — but **The Wearing of the Green*' was a favorite tune. There was not a single Frenchman — but far more than any other tune the bands vied with each other in the Marseillaise.'' Unexpectedly and very pleasantly, in much of New York, and notably on Fifth Avenue, one sees flowers and greenery and vines in front of the shops, in lines along the sidewalks, in rows above the front-doors, in dots, in singles, in pots, even in hedges, giving in all a pleasurable sense of sweetness and color; quite 178 UP FIFTH TO FOETY-SECOND Parisian, I was going to say, only in this regard really better than with the shops of Paris; more like the greenery showing on the shop-fronts of London. And to add to the homelikeness that still lingers, with the wealthy homes, there is often an unexpected bit of greenery over a wall, and even now and then the homely touch of a clothesline full of clothes. The big hotel at 34th Street, the Waldorf-Astoria, which has probably been more talked about than any other hotel in the world, is still a place where, if you will but sit down in the lobby, your friends from any corner of the world will in time appear. For every- body still seems to drift in here, even if but to see and be seen, even though fickle New York never keeps any hotel on an exclusive pinnacle, but is always reaching out for something new and more expensive — and with hotels, as with everything else, the new and more expensive is always given when looked for ! And the greatest hotels rival one another in vast number of rooms and vast number of guests and vast number of servants; the figures offered seem like fantastic dreams of incredible quantities. And with all this and in spite of all this, there have been times in recent years, when every hotel in Manhattan was literally full and when those who could not find room had to go to sleep, not merely over to Brooklyn, but to towns in New Jersey; even Philadelphia claims part of this overflow of visitors, who would take an early train to New York each morning and return each night. Biggest of all the New York hotels — until some new 179 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK one shall outdo it ! — ^will be that of the Pennsylvania Railroad, put up opposite its station by the railroad itself because of the hesitation of outside capital as to buying a hotel site beneath which is a tunnel through which trains are forever to go: and this hotel, with its two thousand rooms and a private bath for every room, is not only to lead New York but, of course, the entire world. The big brown hotel at 34th Street, with its tea rooms, its Peacock Row," its permeative touch of wellrgowned femininity, has been the main influence in bringing about an interesting change. For it used to be that a woman at a hotel was condemned to se- clusion and monotony. Only a few years ago, the Ladies' Parlor," on the second floor of all hotels, was a thing of gloom and dread. It was stern and solemn and severe. It was scant of light and air. Its atmosphere was hushed. Its voices were always low. Its furniture was soberly upholstered. No chair was ever to be moved. To go to a hotel was, for a woman, matter for penitence. She was a flower to blush unseen. But now it is understood that there must be brightness and music and gayety and lights for women as well as for men : and already this fact is as generally recognized as if it had always been self-evident. Nowadays, the revel of woman's beauty, the glitter of woman's gems, the sheen and glimmer of charming fashions, are openly a pleasure to the eye, in any good hotel. Busy and thronging with life is the Avenue at 34th Street, but even more thronging, more full of the 180 UP FIFTH TO FORTY-SECOND splendor of life, is the corner of 42d Street, which seems, on the whole, to mark the crest of present-day New York life. It is a wonderful sight that one sees, on a pleasant sunny day, from the terrace in front of the great library building at this corner. Four mighty streams of traffic, east and west on 42d Street and north and south on Fifth Avenue converge and meet and pass here. Within the ten busiest hours of the day there pass this corner, so say those whose busi- ness it has been to count, 18,800 vehicles, the great majority being motor vehicles, and 113,780 pedestri- ans: making an average of one vehicle every two seconds and of three pedestrians a second: but fig- ures even such as these seem small when compared with the immense sight of the immense traffic itself, moving on in orderly lines; and from time to time halted, in a few moments, into lines of motor-cars stretching up and down the avenue for blocks. And it is not merely the mass, the numbers, the movement, the busy life of the scene; it is opulence and glitter, it is splendor and beauty and wealth. One does not on this corner think of the tenements or poverty! On this corner it would seem even more absurd than on Wall Street to remember that the entire island of Manhattan was purchased from the Indians for some beads and ribbons of the value of twenty-four dollars ! The golden sunlight glows and glitters on a golden street. The very heart of the proud city is seen. *^That great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and 181 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls Here at 42d and Fifth, there was built, in the mid- dle of the last century, a building which, though it burned down shortly after its erection, is still remem- bered, as a memorable thing, by this city which so readily forgets. For it was the Crystal Palace. It stood not precisely at the corner, but on the space behind the present library building, and it was deemed one of the wonders of the world: and this, and its being still kept in memory, was much more from its having contained thirty-nine thousand square feet of glass than because it was built as a great exposition building or because it displayed, among many other things, the first important collec- tion of painting and sculpture ever seen in the United States. Paintings, and particularly those by famous art- ists, have become one of the extravagant items of New York life; this line of expensiveness has devel- oped within the last hundred years, although even a century ago there were sums paid that were quite high for that period. In 1811 a certain Michael Paff opened a gallery at 208 Broadway for the exhibition of *^a collection of original paintings,'' and there he exhibited what, whether originals or not, would now be deemed priceless examples of Teniers, Eubens, Vandyck and Wouvermans. I do not know what prices he obtained for most of his pictures, but a Wouvermans was offered for $2,000. Paff an- nounced that he had been upwards of ten years col- 182 UP FIFTH TO FORTY-SECOND lecting his pictures **and fitting them up in superior style.'' Likely enough, some of his paintings are now in the Metropolitan Museum or in prized pri- vate possession, and one can only hope that his om- inous phrase of fitting them up'' meant nothing serious. At the corner of 42nd Street stands the Public Library; a great and noble building, occupying the space from 42nd to 40th Streets, and fronting Fifth Avenue with splendid pillared and terraced effective- ness, and with tall Venetian masts set charmingly in front. A building, this, which would be an honor to any country or any time ; and, as it is always the case that in New York the cost of anything is held im- portant, it may be said that the great and beautiful structure cost, exclusive of the cost of the land, nine millions of dollars. But it is more important to say that the building holds more than eight hundred thousand volumes, and innumerable manuscripts, in addition to the vast number of volumes contained in its many branch libraries scattered throughout the city. Within, the atmosphere is of restful studiousness, and the great central reading room, the impressive length of corridors, the admirable service, the rows on rows of books, the galleries of prints and engrav- ings and paintings, unite to make it notable among the libraries of the world; a noble building, nobly used. Its picture gallery is comparatively little known, but, though not large, it contains some extremely 183 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK interesting examples, and especially of American artists. Here is that Washington, by Gilbert Stuart, which was the proud possession of Alexander Hamilton: a Washington holding a scroll and a sword, with a background of the sea and ships: a highly dignified Washington of lace ruffles and black velvet — and it is pleasant to remember somebody's felicitous com- ment that it was fortunate that in Washington's time a painter existed who was able to hand him down to posterity as the fine gentleman that he was. There are in existence a number of Gilbert Stu- art's Washingtons. Stuart had painted abroad, among many notables, George the Third and the prince who later became George the Fourth, but he gave up his English career for the purpose of coming back to America to paint a far greater George than either of those royal ones ; and this Washington, here in the library, is believed to have been a gift to Ham- ilton from Washington himself. And one likes to remember that quaintly wise and quaintly humorous declaration by Mark Twain, that if George Washing- ton should rise from the dead and should not resem- ble the portraits by Stuart, he would be denounced as an impostor ! Two other of the interesting portraits are by an exceptionally famous New Yorker who was not at all famous as a painter, S. F. B. Morse. He studied un- der the great Benjamin West in England, and came back to America determined to win fame as a painter of portraits. And he had excellent sitters and made 184 UP FIFTH TO FORTY-SECOND numerous pictures. And then he made one of the most amazing of changes ; for he quitted art and in- vented the telegraph. And it is recorded that this New Yorker (he was not born here, but, typical New Yorker that he was, came here to live and become famous) received more medals and honors and deco- rations from foreign governments than were ever given to any other American. Here is Morse's portrait of Fitz-Greene Halleck, and it is interesting to see what the famous New York poet looked like, in the eyes of the inventor of the telegraph, for Halleck wears a snuff-colored coat with a high velvet collar, he is a ruddy-faced, black-haired man of perhaps forty, and he smiles a little fatuously from the canvas. Here, too, is Morse 's portrait of Lafayette, painted when the distinguished Frenchman was in America in 1825. It is an excellent bit of work, presenting Lafayette as a great-eyed, long-nosed, long-faced, highly likable man, with high-set eyebrows and nar- rowish forehead, with choker collar and ruffled shirt, dressed in black, with a dark red cloak. The por- trait is an example of how one's private griefs must often be submerged in one's work: for Morse's wife was taken ill in New Haven when this portrait was but half done, and he hurried to her bedside, and she died, and then he returned to the completion of this painting. It was in 1837, when Morse had rooms in the picturesque University Buildings, on Washington Square, that he completed his telegraphic invention, 185 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK and the monument which stands in Central Park can not be said to have been set up *4n his memory/' for he was given the unusual honor of having the statue made and set up while he was still alive. He and Franklin, both Americans, had subjugated electricity, and so, when in 1872 a statue to Franklin was to be unveiled in Printing House Square, Morse was invited to be the unveiler. He accepted; but it was a bitter January day, and he was in his eighty- first year, and the doing honor to his mighty prede- cessor caused his death from the cold and exposure. 186 CHAPTER XV ABOVE FORTY-SECOND ■^'^EW YOEK is a clubable city. Every New Yorker is supposed to belong to at k least one club. Many be- ^ long to many clubs. Some join so many clubs as to seem to be trying to make a collection of clubs. Fifth Avenue gives the impression of having a great proportion of the clubs: and it does really have some of the best or most interesting, from the Salmagundi, with its new home far down toward Washington Arch, to the Millionaires' Club," the Metropolitan, opposite lower Central Park. The most interesting of New York clubs have some special tang or atmosphere or character, from their representing the fine fleur of art or the stage or sci- ence or literature; and in this they follow the ex- ample of the early clubs of the city. The first New York club that was worthy the name of a club was the Friendly Club, organized shortly 187 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK before the Kevolution. That Washington, when he lived in New York, liked to visit its rooms, would alone be sufficient to mark it as a club most highly- worth while, and it had among its members such in- teresting men as Charles Brockden Brown, who cut such a figure over a century ago only to become en- tirely forgotten, and the still famous James Kent, Kent of the Commentaries, one of the great lawyers, great judges, great legal writers of the English-speak- ing world; and it would be curious, were it not, for New York, so entirely typical, that he is not thought of as a New Yorker by this city where his fame was won! Had he lived in, let us say, Boston, and had done such permanent work, you would keep running against his statue, you would constantly keep reading about him, you would not be permitted to forget that he was a Bostonian. But while he was alive. New York honored him, and when he died his funeral was attended by an immense throng, and flags hung at half mast all over the city and even on many ships in the harbor. The second club of importance was the Bread and Cheese, founded in 1824: and that the club was founded by James Fenimore Cooper and had among its members such men as William Cullen Bryant and Fitz-Greene Halleck made it a club with typical New York tang. Bread and cheese were used in balloting for membership, bread meaning the affirmative and cheese the negative. Cooper himself has never been considered a New Yorker, because he betook himself to Cooperstown, and identified himself with that 188 ABOVE FORTY-SECOND place, and died there ; but he had so much to do with New York, and was here so long and so often, that any other city than this great indifferent city would be busily engaged in claiming him. But at the time of his death New York remembered him long enough to hold two special meetings to honor his memory: Washington Irving presided at the first, and Daniel Webster, with Irving sitting at his right, presided at the second. Even then, New York events were metro- politanly planned. That an author may not require, absolutely, that his surroundings fit his book, was shown by the fact that Cooper wrote the greater part of **The Prairie," which in point of sequence closes the Leather Stock- ing series, at 345 Greenwich Street, in this city, and finished it in France ! — not writing the opening book of the series, *'The Deerslayer," until fifteen years afterwards at Cooperstown. And one of the most curious of all literary sayings was that of the mighty Balzac who declared that, Undoubtedly Cooper's re- nown is not due to his countrymen or to the English : he owes it mainly to the ardent appreciation of the French.'' Of the present day clubs, the Union Club is the old- est, dating back as it does to 1836 : its club house has gone naturally more and more northward, from one location to another, for the clubs of New York share to the full in the restless city's restlessness and change. The Lotos, until its recent removal to West 57th Street, was among the noted Fifth Avenue clubs, and 189 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK it was on Fifth Avenue that it won its proud record for entertaining distinguished men. As General Horace Porter pleasantly said at a dinner in his honor, realize that not to be dined by the Lotos Club would cause in life the feeling of failure and regret/* The University, in its splendid home at the corner of West 54th Street, is one of the important Fifth Avenue clubs: for it is really a Fifth Avenue club even though the entrance to its club house is on the cross-street. The Century, too, whose members must be men who have achieved high personal distinction, is a Fifth Avenue club, although its club house is just away from the avenue, at 7 West 43d Street. Immediately north of 42nd Street, in the streets in the first Forties, to the right and to the left of Fifth Avenue, have gathered many of the fascinating shops of the city: not the greatest establishments, but the shops for specialties, the shops for embroideries, table-fittings, hangings, ivories, books, the shops of decorators and of purveyors of what may be termed small works of art, and the shops are remindful of the delightful specialty shops of Paris. At the corner of the avenue and 48th Street stands the Church in the Fort." Conforming to full for- mality, it is known as the Collegiate Dutch Reformed Church, but it is really the principal of the lineal de- scendants of the little church which, in the long, long ago, stood within the stockade of the little fort which the Dutch set up in what is now Battery Park. It is claimed — for when New York forgets itself and really claims something of the past the claim is sure to be 190 ABOVE FORTY-SECOND well worth while ! — it is claimed that this church is the descendant of what was not only the very first Prot- estant church organization of New York, but the old- est Protestant church organization in the Western hemisphere. The bell which hangs in the steeple of this Fifth Avenue church is not so old as the original church in the Fort, but was cast in Amsterdam, almost two hundred years ago, in 1728. Tradition still tells — and is confirmed pictorially, so far as early pictures show — that the ancient Church in the Fort had a shingle roof and a wooden tower, a bell, but no clock, and a sundial. At one time in its history there were three kinds of service held within its wooden walls, for the Dutch held their meetings in the forenoon, the French at noon, and the Church of England in the afternoon. And the three services were conducted in the three languages. In the time of Governor Dongan there was also a Roman Catholic service, not in the Fort Church itself but in a little chapel close beside it. And so this modern church at 48th Street brings up very old-time matters indeed. Occupying the block between 50th and 51st Streets is the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Patrick, bright and clean, as if new built, although it was put up half a century ago, James Renwick being the architect; a building antedating its surroundings but looking as new as any of them. The cornerstone was laid as long ago as 1858, in the presence of more than a hun- dred thousand people, who were massed upon the va- cant lots around about. With its twin gray spires, it is a finely impressive 191 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK building, standing just above the level of the side- walk ; an excellent building, a successful and pleasant building, really a most admirable building. Some- how, a much greater sense of spaciousness has been secured, by its being on a terrace and by the treatment of the terrace, than could have been expected for such a great building in a single narrow block, and there is an undoubted effect of freedom and of airiness. It is thirteenth century Gothic in design, and even for those who know the magnificent cathedrals of Eng- land and France there is much of the extremely satis- factory about it. In its interior it is large and long and lofty, and its pillars, its clustered shafts of stone, are fine and dignified. At 53d Street is another church edifice in Gothic style ; the best example of Gothic construction of the present day, designed by a profound lover of the Gothic, the Bostonian architect Cram. It is the Epis- copal Church of St. Thomas, and represent", more than does any other, combined wealth and social po- sition. It has much of the charming, much of strength and delicacy, but its lack of space, its being built in too tightly, is a drawback. At 59th Street we come to the Plaza, at the south- east corner of Central Park; the main approach to the park, overlooked by towering hotels ; and with its oncewhile great open space now mostly occupied by an expanse of stone fountain, finely designed. Directly in front is General Sherman by St. Gaud- ens, riding finely out from among elm trees ; he is all in gilded bronze, on a gilded horse, and a gilded Vic- 192 ABOVE FOKTY-SECOND tory floats ahead of him at the horse's bridle; all is on a pedestal of dull red granite and the entire monu- ment is superbly done ; although I think that Sherman himself, or any other good soldier, would have ob- jected to any woman, even Victory, running into a battle in front of him. Business, which has been alternating with homes for many blocks past, has ceased, for the present, to push farther north along the avenue than the Plaza, so that from this point onward it is still an avenue of homes, facing into Central Park ; but even up in this northerly region the homes are no longer, all of them, single dwellings, for apartments have begun to make their appearance in this section above 59th Street. And it is not an unmixed evil that apartment houses are rapidly replacing individual homes even in such neighborhoods as those bordering Central Park and Eiverside, for under the new system a far greater number of people will be able to enjoy the air and the view and the openness of life, and by so much there will be more of health and of happiness. And it may fairly be supposed that there will be something of what is known as exclusiveness when it is understood that there are apartments in these favored regions renting for as much as twenty or thirty thousand dol- lars a year. In a general way this upper part of Fifth Avenue for some blocks north and some blocks south of 59th Street, as to the homes of the avenue itself and those close by on the cross streets, has come to stand in the public mind for the richest of New Yorkers, for 193 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK the greatest of wealth and social power. With the permeative butlers and chauffeurs, with every symp- tom of costly living, with its air of orderly peaceful- ness and of holding aloof from the ordinary problems of ordinary mankind, it is the district which seems to be the most absolutely differentiated from those hum- ble sections of the city where crime is understood most to flourish, and degeneracy, and the short and simple scandals of the poor. But without any exploitation of the seamy side of life, it is well to know that scandal and crime and fam- ily dissension are not exclusively characteristic of the moneyless. Over yonder, in this district of great wealth, lived a man who rose from the penitentiary to world-wide prominence and the possession of millions of dollars. In that other house, easily within view of the 59th Street corner, lived a man of vast financial, social and political power, with the additional power of mighty family connections: but scandal came quietly into his life, and, indeed, quietly snuffed that life away — for a woman crept into this great palace one night, and faced him in his stately, somber library — and apoplexy was quietly set down as the cause of his sudden death. All, here, must be done quietly. The amour propre of these exclusive people must not be disturbed, even when trouble has come, as it so often has come, from what may be termed ''amours impropre/' Those who may have been disappointed by the gen- eral orderliness of aspect of the Bowery will note that there is the same outward orderliness in Fifth Ave- 194 ABOVE FORTY-SECOND nue. And if I mention that crimes, divorces, scandal- ously swift new marriages, have come here, and that the entire gamut of disgrace has been run within some of these palatial homes, it is only to be remindful that the rich and the poor are brothers and sisters under the skin, and that shame and opprobrium come where there is no excuse of poverty and of straitened lives. If, to the numerous unhappy happenings of private life, it were advisable to add the savage tragedies of business in which dwellers hereabouts participated, and the ruthless ruin wrought by some of them in Wall Street, and the betrayals of friendship for gold, it would merely point out, still further, that the pos- session of money does not necessarily add to the sweetness of life. But there are many wealthy homes here that have remained untouched by scandal or by crime; there have been many wealthy folk here who have lived self- respecting lives, and many others whose only offense has been in a perhaps too ostentatious expenditure, and others, or at least one other, who lived in so pe- nurious a way that his clothes were cheaper than those that any clerk in his own office would dare to wear. Of this man, who left seventy millions or so, which is being administered in public-spirited undertakings and charities since his death, it used to be told that he loved to ride in the now vanished horse stages, on Fifth Avenue, for the fare was five cents, or six tickets for a quarter, and the money was passed from hand to hand up to the man at front who was driver and con- ductor in one; and this cunning seventy-millionaire 195 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK would take his seat by the money-box, would buy his quarter 's worth of tickets, and, after putting his own in the box, would sequester the other nickels as they came and in place of them would put in tickets, thus making five cents, or on fortunate days even ten, on a single trip. It kept his hand in. A great society leader who lived not far above 59th Street, the greatest leader that New York society ever had, used especially to flaunt in the faces of her fol- lowers a magnificent necklace, one so altogether in- comparable that society worshiped it as the very sign and symbol of leadership. But after the great social dictator's death, it was necessary to have an appraisal of her wealth — whereupon it was discovered that many of the jewels of the rich necklace that society had so worshiped were false ! — a striking example of the worship, by society, of false gauds. Quite a proportion of the homes of Fifth Avenue, now some and now others, are always shuttered and closed; in summer because it is warm, in winter be- cause it is cold, in spring or fall for unguessable rea- sons ; all with blinds drawn, doors boarded up tight, shut, repellent. A restless city this, with too much money. Many an owner of this or that home is in Florida or Maine, in the Grand Canon on the way to the Pacific coast, or at Newport, in Bermuda, or in the Berkshires or in Europe. Fifth Avenue above 59th Street shows wide variety of architecture. There are imitation chateaus, some of them poor imitations, and some successful copies of the gay and laughing French Renaissance: there 196 ABOVE FOKTY-SECOND are dungeon-like fortresses, the house of this or that sugar king or banker without taste : there are houses of that unattractive period known as Victorian : and there are also, among the newer homes, some that are simple and graceful and of real beauty. At 70th Street, and occupying the block to 71st is the finest of all, the finest private house in Manhattan. It was built by a typical New Yorker ; that is to say, a man who came here from another city — the Pitts- burgher, Frick, and if I should add his first names, Henry Clay, it would show, in good American fashion, that he was born when the Mill Boy of the Slashes was at the height of his fame. The Frick house is French Classic in design ; it is restful, restrained, simple, not high, admirable in proportion and symmetry ; and in front is a broad open space finely greened with grass and thickly edged with old box — one wonders what ancient garden in Maryland or Virginia was depleted to furnish forth this box! A few blocks farther up the avenue than this best house in New York is the house of a western copper king which fills a great corner with a fantasy in rococo, a fantasy in stone and bronze on which has been lav- ished more money than on any other home in New York. The block between 90th and 91st is occupied by the home of Andrew Carnegie. It is built in the old Co- lonial way and is admirable so far as the Colonial is followed; that is to say, up to the dormers, which are not precisely pleasing. On the whole it is an effective and even charming mansion, built of brick of a soft- 197 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK colored red, and with trimmings of a gray stone that is ahnost white. Like the Frick house, this has gen- erously been given setting and spaciousness, for a great open garden is in front of it ; the house itself, rather oddly, facing 90th Street instead of Fifth Ave- nue; and about the open space is a great open-work iron fence with magnificent stone posts. And it is one of the most striking facts in regard to New York that what may be considered the three most distinguished private homes in the city, the Frick and Carnegie homes and the Schwab home on Riverside Drive, are the homes of wealthy men of Pittsburgh who came to New York after their fortunes were made! For New York is a magnet that draws not only young men eager to make their fortunes, but older men whose fortune has been gained. And all this makes for the noticeable lack of homogeneousness in the city. Most New Yorkers meet none with whom they are on terms of lifelong friendship. There is a marked absence of first-name intimacy. It is largely, and indeed mostly, a city of detached human units. Facing the Carnegie front is a bare lot, squalid and squatter-like, unsightly, even immensely ugly. For years the multi-millionaire has faced this squalor, but, as I write, he has belatedly bought the corner and will sell it to some one who will build a home there and not an apartment house. A curious feature of Fifth Avenue, in the portion facing upper Central Park, is that even yet there are 198 ABOVE FORTY-SECOND some spots which have never been built upon; there is land which has stood absolutely vacant, held for high prices during all these years of the city 's growth. Central Park, stretching from 59th to 110th Streets, and from Fifth to Eighth Avenues, is one of the noble city parks of the world, in dimensions, in beauty, in variety of water and trees and rolling ground and levels, in flowers and shrubs, in great spaces given over to play. There seem to be miles of rhododen- drons blooming on the banks, there is splendid dog- wood blossoming white, and everything is beautifully cared for. Retaining all the charm of wildness, with the characteristics of the best of landscape gardening, it fits finely that fine Wordsworthian line, ''the pomp of cultivated nature. ' ^ The prettiest feature of the park is the May Day parties, when many a Queen of the May leads her fol- lowers there, all gay and blythe and happy, all bub- bling with anticipation, all in holiday garb and fancy dress, which is usually white and tinsel and gold with ribbons of all shades, and usually there are vari-col- ored streamers for the girls to hold as they dance around a Maypole, and often there is music. So many parties ask for permits that time and space must be allotted, and not only does the first day of May make the great open space of the park gay and delightful, but for days thereafter many a party still comes gaily to the park. Toward evening after their day of proud excite- ment, the little girls trail homeward, tired, but still 199 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK steeped in happiness, ready to lie down sleepily and to dream of the excitement of the May Day of the year to come. The Metropolitan Museum, a great mass of build- ings which have gone up gradually since the founda- tion of the museum in 1870, is located in Central Park, just above Eightieth Street, and faces out on Fifth Avenue in a great long frontage. The distinguished collections, gathered here into spacious housing, make this preeminently the museum of America ; indeed, it has already become one of the great museums of the world. There are galleries of paintings by the greatest masters of the past and the present. Titian and Rem- brandt and Raphael are here. Van Dyok and Velas- quez are here, Botticelli and Franz Hals and Reynolds are here, and here also are the American, Sargent, and others of the recent and present years. The sumptuous collections seem to cover every branch of art and of artistic activity, and have been gathered from every corner of the world. There is a splendid collection of sculpture. There are laces and textiles that represent the finest technical artistry of the world. There are silver and glass and bronze and copper and iron. There are glorious gatherings of porcelain. There is a noble presentation of ancient armor. There is the work of unknoAvn men of the past and there is the work of artists and artisans who won fame with their genius. Notable among all these things is what is known as the Rospigliosi Coupe, a wonderful cup by the won- 200 ABOVE FORTY-SECOND derful Florentine, Benvenuto Cellini, perfect in its gorgeousness, in its shape, in its gold and enamels and jewels. There are models of the most beautiful architecture of the entire world, temples, palaces, cathedrals, thus admirably bringing to New York the beauty of the world. In the labyrinthine rooms, endless in extent, there is opportunity for each to find the particular kind of col- lection which interests him ; and perhaps one will no- tice in particular a replica of Houdon 's Washington ; the French sculptor having been brought from France to America, through the efforts of Franklin, that he might give to the world George Washington in imper- ishable marble; and there is also Houdon 's Paul J ones, this being a replica from Houdon 's studio, and precisely like one which is given a high place of honor in, of all places, Edinburgh! — for one would expect Paul Jones to be far from popular in Edinburgh, as he landed, an American privateer, at Edinburgh's port of Leith, frightened away the soldiers, and levied contributions at will. But I suppose the Scotch look on him after all as a famous Scotchman, even though as an adopted American he frightened Greai Britain with American ships. There is an excellent collection of early American furniture, not only of the Sheraton and Chippendale and Heppelwhite styles, but also of pieces which set the collection in a class by itself through definitely representing the American point of view. For exam- ple, importance is given to the furniture of that Dun- 201 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK can Phyf e who, a New Yorker, with a shop near Cham- bers Street, made admirable pieces of furniture in the early eighteen hundreds, and won high reputation as a worker and designer of artistic skill. It marks dis- tinct advance in national taste and knowledge, that the best museums, such as those of New York and Boston and Philadelphia, include the furniture of a century and a century and a half ago among the products of real art — shapes and makes that may still be gathered — and it was this cabinet maker of New York, Phyf e, who, more than any other worker on his side of the Atlantic, carried on fine furniture making as an art. A further matter of interest from a local New York standpoint is a glorious punch bowl, of mighty dimen- sions, with a view of New York harbor covering its entire bottom. It was made in Canton and is of Chi- nese Lowestoft, and was presented to New York City on July 4, 1812, by a long forgotten General Morton. The view is from Brooklyn and shows the sky-line of early days ; and the bowl was until recent years kept on exhibition in the City Hall, and flowed with punch at all civic jollifications. Close behind the Museum buildings, stands what is almost forgotten in these busy modern days, although for a long time it was one of the most visited objects in the entire city. It is still referred to as Cleopatra Needle, although it is far older than the time of that friend of Mark Antony. It is a tall obelisk, covered with hieroglyphics, and was brought here from Egypt years ago, towed in a box-like receptacle, behind a 202 ABOVE FORTY-SECOND steamer, and it is typically American that the one fact generally referred to in regard to it is that the cost of getting it here from Egypt was one hundred thousand dollars. It is seventy-one feet high, and was quarried in the sixteenth century before Christ, in the reign of Thotmes the Third, at Syene. Its weight is 488,000 pounds. It was set up before the Temple of the Sun, at Heliopolis. Its journey to New York, less than half a century ago, was not the first journey in its history, for it so attracted the attention of the ancient Romans, as standing for art and what even then was ancient his- tory, that it was carried down to Alexandria and set up there as a mighty trophy, it then being about six- teen hundred years of age. And this great obelisk, with its inscriptions of thou- sands of years ago still plainly upon it, stands here in the heart of New York ; this splendid relic of a mistily distant antiquity rises beside a park driveway in this most modern of cities ! It has outlasted wonderful civilizations. It saw the fall of Egypt. It stood while Rome rose to world su- premacy and sank to nothingness. Through the course of centuries, other mighty powers rose and fell. It was after it had stood at Alexandria about as long as it had before that stood at Heliopolis, that it was brought to New York ; and it may well be wondered what other journey, in the course of coming centuries, may yet be in store for it. As compared with the sixteen hundred years that it stood at Heliopolis, and 203 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK the eighteen hundred years that it stood at Alexan- dria, Americans need not think that any particular permanence is represented by the petty forty years or so that it has stood in Central Park. 204 CHAPTER XVI ON" MUKRAY HILL HARLES DICKENS, when, from curiosity and interest, he attended an exhibition of the Spiritualists, felt that an excellent test could be made by calling for the ghost of Lindley Murray, whereupon he did so, and was rewarded by catching the ghost in a grammatical blunder — which to Dickens was evidence sufficient that it was not really Lindley Murray's spirit, for Lindley Murray was looked upon in England as the highest possible authority on English grammar; his supremacy was unchallenged — and this in spite of the amusing and amazing fact that he was an American, and that the home of his parents has given name to that aristo- cratic section of New York City known as Murray Hill. When Sydney Smith, in 1820, published his cele- brated gibe on America, demanding to know, among other things, who ever read an American book, he was too intelligent a man not to know that Washington 205 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK Irving of New York had been hailed as a great au- thor by the greatest of British authors, and he also knew that a book by another New Yorker, Lindley Murray, had been accepted as the standard authority on writing by all British writers, and that he, Sydney Smith himself, paid it deference. The house of the Murrays was the scene of one of the finest and prettiest stories in all American history. It was a mansion standing in the midst of a large estate, in the vicinity of what is now East 37th Street and Park Avenue, and a tablet on a bowlder, set against the railed-in greenery in the middle of the avenue, marks the spot where the house stood. The district now known as Murray Hill reaches in a gen- eral way from 34th Street to 42d Street and from Lexington Avenue across Madison and Park to Fifth. It is still somewhat of a hill : a slight rise is noticeable in mounting Fifth Avenue, and the trolley-car tunnel on Park Avenue is even more of an evidence. The district, in spite of the inroads of business, still carries itself with an air. In the Revolutionary period the Murray mansion stood in isolation. There was great excitement there on a day in the middle of September in 1776, for British troops had landed nearby, on the East River shore, and were pre- paring to advance across Manhattan Island. The general military situation was serious. The British under General Howe had occupied Staten Island early in July, much to the disturbance of Wash- ington, who had had no means of preventing it. Soon afterwards Howe^s brother, Admiral Howe, arrived 206 ON MURKAY HILL from England, and other forces came up from the southward, making a total of fully 24,000 men. The British did not, however, attempt to cross the bay directly to Manhattan, but, after more than a month's reflection, went over to Long Island, landing at Gravesend. On August 26th was fought the unfortu- nate battle of Long Island, following which Washing- ton achieved the marvelous feat, which immensely astonished the British, of safely transporting his beaten and outnumbered army to Manhattan Island. Washington hoped to hold New York, and stationed his troops at various points to prevent a British cross- ing. For over two weeks the leisurely British made no attempt to get over the East Biver, but on Septem- ber 15th, when they were quite ready, they began send- ing boatload after boatload of soldiers and landing them at Kip's Bay, on the lower edge of the great Murray estate, at the end of what is now East 34th Street. Washington had left his army in a dangerous po- sition through the desire not to lose prestige for Amer- ica by giving up New York and Manhattan Island. A little later in his career, when he had been broadened by experience, he would not, even to please the Pro- vincial Congress and to encourage the people in gen- eral, have taken such a risk as to leave his army scat- tered over many miles of a narrow island, liable to be separated and cut in half. He trusted to a vigorous defense by his soldiers and swift concentration of more troops at any threatened point — but when the moment of trial came, the American soldiers at Kip 's 207 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK Bay, at the very appearance of the British, fled in dis- order, without firing a shot; whereupon more and more of the British landed and in leisurely fashion prepared to march across the island. Washington galloped toward the danger point. He reached the fleeing troops not far from what is now 40th Street and Park Avenue and tried to check the re- treat. He was in a fierce rage. He struck at the men with the flat of his sword, he clicked his pistols at them, he fiercely ordered them to halt and form, but in vain. Panic had seized them, and they would not heed. He knew, in those moments of bitterness, that this almost surely meant the destruction of his army and therefore the loss of the war. He turned his horse *s head toward the British and moved, alone, in that direction. And one thinks of Napoleon in the rout of Waterloo, turning his horse's head as if to ad- vance on the British but drawn back by an officer who seized the bridle and demanded to know if the Em- peror would charge the enemy alone ; for here on Park Avenue a young officer seized the bridle of Washing- ton's horse and urged the general to come away; which, after a moment's hesitation, Washington, al- ways superb master of himself, did. Then he sent messengers galloping swiftly to Gen- eral Putnam, who was in command at the southern end of the island, ordering swift and instant retreat to the northward, and he checked, at length, the disor- dered huddling of the flying men. Fortunately, there could have been no better man, ready for action at an instant's notice, than Israel 208 ON MUREAY HILL Putnam, * ^ Old Put. ' ' Had Israel Putnam lived thou- sands of years ago, his single-handed struggle with a wolf in its den would have put him in the legendary class with Ulysses and the lion — and probably, after all, that lion of Ulysses was only a magnified wolf. Had Putnam lived in mediaeval days Scott would have immortalized him in verse on account of his gallop down the rocks at Greenwich. Had he been a general under Napoleon or Wellington such an achievement as his on this day of Murray Hill would have kept his name prominently honored in history. But since he was only an American of the Revolution he is just '^Old Puf The moment he received his orders he collected his troops and started northward. Alexander Hamilton hurried along, in charge of a battery. The redoubt- able Knox drew in his men and cannon from a fort on a slight eminence that, on account of Boston memor- ies, had been given the name of Bunker Hill, and which was on what is now Grand Street. And Aaron Burr, capable and brave as he was, guided the entire force, by obscure paths and lanes, keeping them as near the North River as possible, to increase the chances of safely escaping the British. What a scene it was, and what men took active part : Washington, Putnam, Burr, Hamilton, Knox ! In Edinburgh, in Paris, in Rome, in London, such a day, with such men, would forever be written about in prose and in poetry, and especially from the de- lightful end of it all, which was to come with a ro- mantic tang from the Murray mansion. 209 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK General Washington waited in an agony of anxiety. At length his scouts brought word that the British had halted near the Murray mansion. And the cause of it all was amazing. The greatest man of his time had vainly done all that man could do to stop the British — and then a woman made the at- tempt and won! She won with woman's weapons. It was one of those desperate days that come to New York in mid- September. Mrs. Murray, Mary Lindley Murray, whose husband was Robert Murray, well known to be a British loyalist, and whose son was Lindley Murray, was herself in entire sympathy with the Americans. She had watched their disorderly retreat; she knew, or at least divined, what overwhelming disaster was imminent. And so she seized the moment when some of the leading officers were passing her house, to check them. And it was so simply done! She in- vited them in to rest and take a glass of wine and some cake! Handsome, a lady of high degree, an American grande dame, the wife of a loyalist, her in- vitation was accepted. The day was hot. There was no hurry, thought the easy British. And so Lord Howe and his leading officers entered Mrs. Murray's home, and the British soldiers threw themselves loungingly on the grass and under the trees. Thus the British advance was halted. And meanwhile, Putnam's men were swiftly marching northward. And one cannot but picture the feelings of Mrs. Murray who, smiling, cheerful, cordial, well-gowned, hiding her intense anxiety, receiving the homage of 210 ON MUEEAY HILL the scarlet-coated men of title, listening to their flat- tering toasts, was also listening and intensely hoping for something that would tell her that her effort was not in vain. And by the time that the leisurely British were ready to march, and had made their farewell compliments and adieux, the forces of Putnam and Washington had united and the danger was over. The spot where the two generals met is still remem- bered. It is on Broadway, between 43d and 44th Streets ; and a commemorative tablet has been placed on the building which stands there. And it makes the event the more striking, that the meeting place was on Long Acre Square, in the center of the present theater and dining and pleasure district of the city! From this spot the two generals moved their united forces northward to Harlem. Two nights before the visit of General Howe and his officers, the Murray mansion had had an even more distinguished guest, for Washington himself had stayed there ; and Eobert Murray, Quaker and Eoyal- ist sympathizer though he was, could not but feel hon- ored by the visit of so great a man, even though it was made on account of military convenience and was a visit which could not have been declined. And there can be no doubt that the recent presence of Washing- ton, and the immense impression that he always made, on men and women alike, had the direct result of spur- ring the patriotic Mrs. Murray, so shortly afterwards, to her delightfully superb effort. The Grand Central Eailway Station, at the north- ern edge of Murray Hill, is among the great railway 211 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK stations of the world, for size and for vastness of pas- senger traffic handled. The railway tracks come into the station after several miles of burrowing beneath the streets, and enter the station itself on two levels of tracks, one above the other. In the quiet car-less eddy of Madison Avenue below 42d Street, where the hill shows very plainly in the vistas down all the streets, stands the big, square- fronted house that was the home of the late J. Pier- pont Morgan ; it is but a dull-looking house, after all, one thinks : not such a home as would be expected for a man of world-wide financial power who was at the same time a princely collector of objects of art. But around the corner, on 36th Street, is a building which he put up to represent his ideals, and to house a pri- vate collection, especially of books and manuscripts, which had cost him fabulous sums. The building is an architectural gem ; it is of white marble, low-set, tem- ple-like, small, yet with an air of gentle spaciousness and surrounded by a small area of exquisitely kept grass. 212 CHAPTER XVII MI1>ST PLEASURES AND PALACES Oit the typical pleasures of New York, according to popular fancy, people go to the Great White Way" and its palaces — and if the palaces are largely those which are colloquially of the kind termed lobster," the idea still holds. But a curious thing about this White Way" part of Broadway, which is supposed to be so representative of the city, is that in the day- time it is far from being the best looking part of the city. There are not serried rows of mighty business buildings. There is not the air of wealthy comfort that attends those portions of the city where great new apartment houses vie with individual homes. On the gay night region of Broadway most of the buildings are unattractive, and even ugly: they are uneven, irregular, bizarre of effect; and taken col- lectively the effect is even less desirable than when taken building by building or block by block. This most famous portion of Broadway has much of the rough irregularity of the main street of a mining city ; 213 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK and, furthermore, the street itself is in a chronic state of being torn up, for repairs or new pavement, or for putting in new sewer pipes, or for building or alter- ing a subway. At night it is really a region of gayety. Then the ugliness of torn-up street and of uneven and unat- tractive architecture is undiscerned or unregarded. A new Broadway has come with darkness, a Broad- way of lights and lightsomeness and lightheartedness. A great part of the people who move along the * * Great White Way ' ' are not New Yorkers, but visit- ors : and it is these who furnish the chief support of much of the more vicious and vivacious features. The New Yorker himself, unless he is one of the idle sons of the rich, has his daily work to do. He goes to the theater, if he is a typical intelligent New Yorker, often enough to keep in touch with the best or most notable plays and shows'' of the season. He often dines at some well-kno^v^Ti restaurant — although, be- ing a New Yorker, he is quite likely to choose a place that is just away from the rush of pretentiousness. And he goes home at an hour neither particularly early nor particularly late, for he must be clear- headed at his office next morning. He is not an early- to-bed man. But he is not an all-night rounder." But the visitor to New York is different. The vis- itor has money to spend and prefers spending it dur- ing the hours of artificial light. And he isn't in any hurry to get to his hotel and bed, for he doesn't care if he sleeps until noon next day. The closing of res- taurants and cabarets at one in the morning, on ac- 214 MIDST PLEASURES AND PALACES count of our entry into the World War, affected New Yorkers comparatively little but visitors a great deal. The visitor is apt to be frankly in search, not only of the high-priced and hectic but of the lax and loose. At his home in some distant city he is probably a quiet enough citizen, a staid business man, but on Broadway he is likely to get a fifty cent cigar between his teeth and fling extravagant tips, and become arro- gant and boastful, and make it clear that he *^has the price''; and if, afterwards, he offers an excuse, it is the world-old plea that *Hhe woman tempted me and I did treat/' It is this class of man who, inviting and receiving the attentions of swindlers and robbers and sharpers, gets into the police courts and gives New York more of a reputation for wickedness than it de- serves. For, after all, the average New Yorker is neither victimizer nor victimized. The spender'' is a feature of New York night life. It is estimated, by such as have particular opportun- ity to know, that merely for holding the checkroom privileges of the popular restaurants and hotels, from two to ten thousand dollars is annually paid and that, for special cab and taxi-stand privileges, the annual payment may be from two thousand dollars up to ten or twenty or even thirty thousand — for the real spender must never walk! There are many visitors who, though they have yearned for the sparkle and gayety and lights, and have longed to be part of it, desire perfect respecta- bility: people who love to catch their breath at the 215 THE BOOK OF NEW YOBK edge of wickedness, but who are not going to be even a small particle wicked. I remember a dear old university president from the West, now dead, who looked me up one day to say, with delightful hesitations and backings and fillings, that as he had known me for years he wanted to ask me to show him about the city and take him into places which a dignified old university president could scarcely find alone. ^ * Nothing out of the way * ' — he was absolutely sincere about that — *^but — ^you know — something not too deadly respectable." And I remember his smile as he said this. He wanted a little of the spice, pepper, tabasco of life, and it was easy enough to find them within the desired limita- tions. And I remember that he did not want to go to bed at his usual home hour : it was the usual lure of the Hghts. It is estimated, by railway officials, that, entirely exclusive of commuters, fully two hundred thousand visitors enter New York City every day! And a large part enter through the station of the Pennsyl- vania Eailroad, a palatial structure, a mighty, mass- ive pillared building built over a great area, near Broadway, for the entire two blocks from 33d to 31st Streets. It is literally palatial : the word is no mere figure of speech. It is mighty, it is wonderful and it is beautiful. It is of superb classic design, as if it were **the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Eome ' ' put into stone in modern America. Its vast interior extent, its breadths and heights, its groined roofs, its stone stairways mighty of width, 216 CLASSIC PILLARS OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATION MIDST PLEASUEES AND PALACES its air of princely magnificence — yet all this, not the artistic dream of some monarch of unlimited wealth who a stately pleasure dome decreed, but the work of a railway company for the use of the public ! It gives the impression more of an enormous concourse for the reception and departure of people than a place of trains, for all the trains run in excavated courses, underneath; none are for surface traffic on Manhat- tan ; they come under the East Eiver from New Eng- land and Long Island, and from the westward be- neath the Hudson Eiver, and intermediately burrow beneath the city streets. In never-ceasing throngs visitors are arriving at this terminal, at the Grand Central, and at the terminals of the other railroads. And every visitor is certain to see Broadway at night. It must not be thought that when night falls New York is quietly at home, leaving Broadwa;, in the pos- session of strangers! During much of the evening New Yorkers are much in evidence. And this is nat- ural. With an immense proportion of the popula- tion, with almost all in fact, there is compression of home life ; and this, not only in the tenements but in apartment houses. From that compression the peo- ple must get away. The theaters, the restaurants, the moving pictures, the recreation piers, the lighted streets, all draw them, and it is natural that they should be drawn. The more or less legendary ex- ample of the five families occupying one room, with one family in each corner and one in the middle, and all getting on comfortably until the family in the middle began to take boarders, illustrates the com- 217 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK pression of the city's life, which thrusts its people out upon Grand Street as on Broadway. But New Yorkers, poor and rich alike, have their work to do next day, even though at night the rich man may have waited for a while in what has been termed the * * silk- stocking bread line,'' for his chance at a table in a hectically fashionable dining-room. One of the strildng differences between the gayest region of Paris and that of New York — and these two cities are naturally to be compared, for they are the gayest cities of the world for spenders"; and I am referring, now, not to war-time but to normal times of peace — is that so much of the Parisian gayety is cheerfully in evidence at boulevard tables, a feature quite omitted in New York, which interprets the open- ness of the boulevard into terms of lofty roof -gar- dens. New York is the diamond stick-pin on the shirt- front of America. And I do not mean to imply or state that, because average New Yorkers get to bed earlier than average visitors, New Yorkers are an economical race. For those who have money to spend love to spend it ! While one half of the city is trou- bled with the high cost of living, the other half learns, conversely, the cost of high living; and it may be added that neither half knows how the other half lives. Broadway has always been loved. Mrs. John Adams, Abigail Adams, when necessarily removing from New York to Philadelphia, that having been made the national capital and her husband being 218 MIDST PLEASURES AND PALACES Vice-President, wrote, *^And when all is done it will not be Broadway.'' And this from a Boston woman, a Quincy and an Adams ! The theaters of the city are vast in number, and throngs night after night fill them. The theaters are of all sizes, from those which are so tiny that people on opposite sides of the intimate little auditorium can almost shake hands across the intervening space, to the show-places of immensity, with their rows of seats stretching off through in- credible space into incredible remoteness. No other city rivals New York in theaters. And yet it ought to be pride-chastening to know that ancient Rome had a theater that seated many thousand more spec- tators than New York's greatest. Still, even that Roman Coliseum was alone. There was no aggrega- tion of theaters in Rome, ablaze with lights, thronged nightly with a huge total of tens of thousands ; and in this total of theaters, catering as they do to every class. New York stands unexcelled. Moving picture houses are infinitely numerous, and they vary from the humble five-centers to the great theaters, built especially for picture-giving, whose seats will range from fifteen cents to a half dollar. These great new theaters offer at their best a delight to the ear and to the eye, comfortable seats, a glow of color, a great deal of music, and an entertainment which in all is likely to be of quite as good an influ- ence as the plays at the high-priced theaters next door; and these movies," with the big vaudeville theaters, represent a revolt of the people against 219 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK high prices for an evening's entertainment and against late hours of beginning, and against long waits between acts, and against that absence of music which marks a growing number of the expensive theaters. New York unquestionably is the center for the American drama; the legitimate.'' Whether its judgment is right or wrong, it is practically final, for no play is deemed a success in America unless it has won Broadway approval, or what is called Broad- way," for the most important plays, presented by the best actors, are nowadays much more likely to be given, not at the theaters actually on Broadway, but at this or that of a new order of theater, built close to Broadway but just off it ; new theaters with little insignificant lobbies through which the people hurry as fast as possible, instead of the great foyers of not many years ago where everybody liked to see and be seen. This has had a marked effect on the general char- acter of the Broadway after-theater throng ; for most of the better-looking people, the more intelligent and less noisily dressed, leave the theaters on these side streets, and make their way home in their own motor- cars or by subway or Elevated or Fifth Avenue bus, without even setting foot on Broadway. The inter- esting, vivacious, well-groomed after-theater throng of the past, crowding the Broadway sidewalks as it did, has thus gone. That the hotels in New York have become of im- mense size and growing importance, is due not only 220 MIDST PLEASURES AND PALACES to the increasing number of visitors, but to a marked tendency on the part of certain well-to-do classes of New Yorkers, and suburban home-owners who spend a month or two in tow, to make their homes at hotels, and also to the increasing use of hotels by New York- ers who live in apartment houses. This last development is singular, but at the same time has been inevitable. For even the rich cannot entertain freely in their apartments. There is not enough room there, and so more and more they enter- tain at the great hotels. The daughters of the rich are married at hotels, there are dinners at the hotels, there are dances and receptions at the hotels, instead of, as in the New York of the past, at private homes. East Side parties or weddings or dinners, at an East Side restaurant or hall, became long ago the East Side's way of getting over the lack of tenement-house space, and in recent years the wealthy have adopted this idea for themselves and carried it out with their usual lavishness of expense. Afternoon tea has become another feature of Amer- ican life, and the New York hotel tea-rooms and the dining and lunching rooms, and the hotel corridors and down-stairs lobbies, now give opportunity for the display of woman's beauty and woman's gowns. No city in the world is so alive with light, so bril- liant, so glowing, so radiant, so gleaming, so spark- ling, as is New York. The Hessian Baroness Rie- desel lived for a time on Long Island when her hus- band, the Baron, had his soldiers there, in Revolu- tionary days, and she wrote: Every evening I saw 221 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK from my window the city of New York entirely lighted up.'' And the city, except for after one o'clock in the morning war orders, still maintains its lighted-up characteristics. The dweller in Manhattan forgets what night is. That is to say, he forgets the meaning of night and of darkness in the sense in which night and darkness are known to people of other places, not only in country regions but in other cities. Throughout the night brilliant lights are everywhere. No Manhattan dweller ever knows whether or not, at night, the moon is shining, and that he should have any knowledge as to whether or not the stars are out is ridiculously un- thinkable. Had Emerson been a New Yorker he would never have written his advice to hitch your wagon to a star ! The lights of New York began with the Broadway lights of 1679, and they would seem to have been some- what different from the Broadway lights of today, for they merely carried out the orders of the city authorities that every seventh house should hang out a pole with a lantern and a lighted candle, on nights when there was no moon; and the expense of this elaborate lighting was to be divided among the house- holders, not only of the seventh houses but of the in- termediate sixes as well. New York was slow in coming to any marked ad- vance in lights. There were for a time merely more lanterns and candles, and then there were years of oil (not coal oil, not kerosene, but whale oil), and at 222 MIDST PLEASURES AND PALACES length came gas, the first gaspipe being laid in Broad- way, from the Battery to Canal Street, in 1825. With this encouragement New York began to be, for those times, very brilliant; and when old Niblo's, at Broadway and Prince Street, pioneer as it was in vari-colored lighting, began to dazzle Broadway with gas jets in red and white and blue glass cups, strung on an iron pipe, for the purpose of advertising, to the street, the particular attraction of the time, it was a triumph indeed. And at length came electricity. Even in the massed tenement streets the dwellers do not know the meaning of real darkness. From every side, in every window, is the glow of light. It shines into every room. It makes brilliant the streets. Even the courtyards are but murkily half shadowed. But when the lights of New York are mentioned one thinks at once and especially of the brilliant lights of the theater district. They are the aurora borealis, come to Broadway. In a general way, as I write, the district of most brilliant light is from below 34th Street to above 59th, with shoots of dazzling brilliancy on some of the cross streets. I say, ^ ' as I write, ' ' for it is a chang- ing city, and in spite of the cutting it in half at Cen- tral Park, may within a few years push its dazzling brilliancy and its theater crowds still farther up Broadway. The dazzling glow is one of the sights of the world. One need not say that it is beautiful, for it is garish and it is crude ; but it is bold and strik- 223 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK ing and wonderful. There are the verve and the individuality of a city that thinks for itself. The lights flare and sparkle and glow in dazzles of electricity, on the fronts of buildings, up to the roofs, and even far above the roofs on great frameworks. There are streams and lines and circles and squares and cascades and fountains of light. The lights are infinite combinations of red and white and green and yellow and orange. And everywhere is the sense and glow of movement, of restlessness; everywhere is the monstrously fantastic. The lights are, of course, advertisements. They exploit the claims of theaters and of hotels ; they de- clare the alleged merits of corsets and stockings, of chewing gum and perfumery, of whiskies and wines, of a host of things. Huge flowers, scores of feet in height, bloom in topaz and diamond. A kilted High- lander, monstrous in fifty or one hundred feet of height, dances in shifting lines of fire. Monstrous squirrels, of red lights, whirl constantly about within monstrous wheels of myriad lights of white. Butter- flies and birds of many colors, and of size beyond that of the wildest dream, flap their wings and fly. Can- non made of lights fire, repetitionally, electric shots which burst into sparkling words. And everywhere there are brilliant lines and circles and squares and masses of light, and everywhere the lights are twink- ling or flying with a feverish haste. ^^But," as the Englishman demanded, when it was described to him, *4sn't it — ah! — ^very conspicuous?" It is very wonderful, all this ; properly considered, 224 MIDST PLEASURES AND PALACES it is miraculous; it is power, it is strength, it is ri- valry, it is achievement, even though it is feverish, garish, gaudy, hectic, flashing, pretentious, ever-rest- less — and is not this great city rich in all these quali- ties, desirable and undesirable alike ! These huge signs, essentially dreadful, essentially childish, are but a natural phase of New York devel- opment, and they will pass, as other things have passed. As recently as some twenty years ago it was customary to cover the fronts of buildings with huge lettered signs, not in lights, but just great plain signs of lettered wood with the names of firms and their goods set forth in the boldest ugliness, and almost entirely covering the unattractive fronts of most of the business buildings of that time. But a beautiful style of building has come in, and on the best of them it has become the New York custom not to have any sign at all ; a stranger may seek in vain for even the name of the firm itself on some of the largest and most exclusive buildings of to-day ; and on scarcely any, ex- cept those concerns which cater to a trade without standards, is there more than an inconspicuous and dignified setting forth of business. The era of those old-time lettered signs has gone, and the era of the garish electric signs will in time go. The lights of Broadway shine on thronging streets and sidewalks, on the just and on the unjust, on the rich and the poor, the real and the rouged, the happy and the miserable, the ruler and the ruled — the fierce light beats, as O. Henry expressed it, upon the throne and the thrown dowa. 225 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK And there is a never-ceasing roar, the mingled sound of myriad voices, of myriad feet on the pave- ments, of rattling street cars, of countless motors, the mingled sound of chirring, grinding, rumbling, whiz- zing, rattling, roaring, talking, laughing — it is sight and sound run riot ; it is an orgy. The great hotels are thronged and busy and the res- taurants crowded to the doors. Eleven o'clock comes, and there is not the slightest appearance of sound or throng diminishing; midnight comes, and although there is now some lessening of numbers, still the dazzling lights are flaring, still there is a ceaseless tramp and surge on the sidewalks, still there are hundreds of motor-cars congesting the streets and every few minutes held back in long lines at the cross- ings. Very many of the people have now gone into the restaurants, for the feast at midnight is beloved of many. The people do not want to leave the lights. Even the less prosperous, after an evening in the cheaper seats at the theaters or at the moving pic- tures are reluctant to leave Broadway, and you will see them crowding into the cheaper restaurants or literally packing the drug stores to revel economically in undesired sodas and hot chocolates. Thousands who wished to spend money, or at least to feel themselves a part of the mad gayety, went after midnight to the roof -gardens and cabarets, till war made closing rules, and sat at tables and listened to gay orchestras, and watched pictorially clad dan- 226 MIDST PLEASURES AND PALACES cers, and listened to the gayest of singing, and spent money to their heart 's content. The hectic night, the dazzling artificiality — how dif- ferent from the clear bright air of the best of New York days! For New York, in every sense, has an air ! And its air is crisp, fresh, sparkling, full of life and verve, full of power, of inspiration. And often, as evening comes on, a wonderful tender purple light comes down over the city; it is a light that Whistler would have loved and which he would have spent his life in painting; it is the light that pre- cedes the dusk on a clear fair evening; it is best ap- preciated when seen from an upper window and in facing the north; and it enfolds the city in its ethereal coloring. The purple light of a perfect New York evening is a thing sweetly to fill the imagination and the memory. 227 CHAPTEE XVIII SUPERSTITIONS OF THE CITY HEEE are so many things that point out New York's childishness! The constant deserting of streets to ad- vance to new streets, as restless children drop toys for the mere sake of picking up new ones, the needless tearing down of beautiful buildings, just as a naughty child would tear a beautiful picture or book — this, too, is one of the signs of civic childishness. There was a distinguished Academy of Design on East 23d Street, a building beautiful as well as distinguished: when it was dedicated, the aged William Cullen Bryant, delivering the princi- pal address, felicitated the Academy upon having finally, after a number of removals, obtained a per- manent home. Permanent! Bryant ought to have known his city better! And there have been the great granite building of the Lenox Library, which vanished from the earth ; the fascinating Gothic halls of the University on Washington Square; the de- 228 SUPEESTITIONS OF THE CITY serted Colony Club building on Madison Avenue, so exquisite and delicate; Madison Square Garden, doomed and temporarily reprieved — but I shall not itemize further. In its extravagance, its luxury, its expensiveness, its general carelessness with money, New York is like a child that has not learned self-restraint but has its pockets well filled. ^*We put up prices be- cause we know that New Yorkers will pay, ' ' cynically said to me the manager of a great establishment. New York is in the grasp of a money madness, an extravagance of living, not seriously to be checked by the World War. And this matter of extrava- gance brings to mind two fish set in almost the same year before two men: one, Louis the Sixteenth, the other. President Washington, when his home was on Cherry Hill in New York City. At the last pub- lic dinner ever given to Louis the Sixteenth a special dish was a carp from the Ehine that for reasons of scarcity and transit had cost two thousand livres. The King barely tasted it. ^^Take it away,'' he said with indifference; **I don't care for it." The other fish was an early shad from the Delaware that had cost four dollars. **Take it away," said the Presi- dent sternly; **that was too expensive to buy for me." From which it may be seen that Washington was not a typical New Yorker, even though he was living here, and that Louis the Sixteenth would have taken naturally to the ways of the New York rich. Even as recently as the beginning of this present century, a * ^ silk-stocking man ' ' was a term implying 229 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK pernicious extravagance; but for one New Yorker who wore silk stockings then, at least fifty do now. The demand for silk stockings for women has im- mensely increased; ^^whenas in silk my Julia goes'' has permeated all layers of the social structure, and none are so humble as to abjure the real or the near- real in hosiery. One single shop tells me that it now constantly carries in stock two hundred varieties, in size, quality, color and kind, in men's stockings, and three hundred in women 's ! The city is swept on by a wave of extravagance. Money has been made so largely and so easily that people have got into the way of spending it largely and easily. In what are termed the fashionable restaurants, which have increased amazingly in number and ex- pensiveness, the new national spirit of spending, the gay financial heedlessness that makes things dear, is markedly apparent in New York, where so many come to spend; for twenty times as much money is spent in such restaurants as was spent ten years ago. It is as if the motto in New York were **Eat, drink and be merry." Rents in the city have gone up amazingly, and peo- ple pay them with positive happiness : they feel that it gives them a touch of importance and distinction to pay an enormous rent. Extravagance of spending is rampant. And yet, there is also a mighty contrast. Great masses of the citizens of this great city toil and save : and the total deposits in the savings banks continue to increase. 230 SUPEKSTITIONS OF THE CITY New York is an exceedingly superstitious city, because of the immense medley of races in this poly- glot city, with the infinite variety of superstitious traditions and ramifications brought here from every corner of the earth. In this great modern city, the very embodiment of twentieth century progress, thrives superstition, gray with countless centuries of age. When the night wind wails through the gorgelike streets of the great East Side, thousands tremble, for the restless cry is from the souls of children un- baptized. Where thick-packed multitudes mass, many a charm is said over the sick, many a spell is mystically woven, even as spells were whispered and charms woven in the forests of Northern Europe, centuries ago. Black art has not been banished by the electric light. Myths hold their own in spite of the railroad and the telegraph. Not long ago a quadroon was taken into court for preying upon the negroes of the Eighth Avenue col- ony. He claimed magic power, and his arrest was brought about by a woman whose son remained ill despite the virtue of three green seals and a magic belt. Recently the will of a German woman, a dweller in Stanton Street, was disputed because she had profoundly dreaded witches and had hidden throughout her clothing incantations to drive the witches away. It is seldom that the black art of Manhattan at- tracts the attention of the law. To find the terrible Slav who is in league with the devil, to find the seer 231 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK who makes a child proof against poison by writing magic words, in blood, upon its forehead, to find the man who in consternation discovered skull and crossbones sewed upon his garment, to find where love-philters may be bought, with full instructions as to their administration, one must patiently come to know the mankind of the tenements. Ghosts are told of in the crowded region north of Grand Street. There are tales of demonology in Chinatown. Almshouse dwellers, sitting in the sun, watching the surging tide and the glistening water, tell of spirits and banshees and fays. Curious it is to find, in Essex or Ludlow Street or East Broadway, a belief in Lilith, the legendary first wife of Adam; but among these East Side women who pronounce incantations against her she is not Lilith as we know her in Rosetti, marvellously beau- tiful and eternally young, snaring the souls of men in the meshes of her enchanted hair, but a malicious personification of evil, forever watching to steal away or injure the new-born child. Races that never heard of the predecessor of Eve share in the fear that new-born children are liable to be stolen away; they hold that fairies are the thieves, and that in the stead of infants taken away there are changelings, children deformed, the progeny of gnomes. There are women who cruelly beat or torture the changelings that have been foisted upon them, for they hope thus to induce the child-pilferers, from very pity for the gnomish offspring, to make restitu- 232 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE CITY tion; and there is no doubt that some of the appar- ently inexplicable cases of fierce wrath toward chil- dren, on the part of sullenly reticent parents, ob- scurely root their motives in this grim belief. Superstition is seen, luminous in its ineradicability, in a little book of necromancy, especially for the sick, which is widely studied in the tenements. It tells how to make oneself invisible, how to become im- pervious to shot, how to cure diseases. That many of its rules demand incantations which it is impera- tive properly to pronounce, or that there is desig- nated some strange substance for medicine, often makes necessary the services of a Wise Woman. Magic words and letters play their part in these dogmas of demonology. The blood of a basilisk, a black tick taken from the left ear of p cat, a stone bitten by a mad dog, the right eye of a live serpent, — such are some of the charms or medicines. If one would be secure against shot, the following is infallible; but one sees why the interpretative Wise Woman must needs be called in : **0 Josophat; O Tomosath; PlasorathI These words pronounce Jarot backwards three times." It was through the case of a girl who was suffering in a shabby little room in a shabby tenement that I came to know of this school of necromancy and of the crass strength with which it holds sway. The girPs foot had been painfully crushed, yet all that the mother was doing for her was to have a Wise Woman come three times a day and drone over her a conjuration. 233 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Yet the Wise Woman who droned the jargon over the poor child's foot was far from witehlike in ap- pearance. Of middle age, shrewd, impassive, slow, rather short, clean, clad in a plain black gown and knitted shoulder-cape — the very commonplaceness of her appearance gave an additional tang of disquiet. It would be a mistake to think the superstitions of New York obtain among the ignorant only. The rich and the well-to-do dread thirteen at table — the re- sult of a superstition which goes back to the Last Supper, where one was a traitor. In his great paint- ing of the Supper, Da Vinci illustrates a prognostic in which many in Manhattan have faith — for Judas has just upset the salt! Educated men ward off rheumatism with horse-chestnuts. The Easter-egg custom comes from rites and beliefs of unknown an- tiquity. Many, in moving, will not carry away a broom. Many count it unlucky to take the family cat with them to a new home. Many still put horseshoes over their doors — thus recognizing a superstition which apparently arose from the warding away of evil by the horseshoe-shaped blood-splash of the Passover. There is a Wall Street broker who must have his right cheek shaved first, and the initial stroke must be upward. A certain horse-owner is confident of success if, on the morning of a race-day, he accidentally meets a cross-eyed man. Many a New York matron will under no circumstances re- move the wedding-ring from her finger, for dire ill luck would come. A New York financier whose name is known throughout the world holds active supersti- 234 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE CITY tions in regard to cats. People watch the placing of valuables in a cornerstone, without suspecting that the custom is thought to have a far-distant necro- mantic origin in the use of human beings to strengthen buildings and bridges. The original be- lief still holds in out-of-the-way corners of the world, and many of the Chinese believed the absurd report that the Czar of Eussia was to safeguard the Man- churian railway by means of this ancient form of black art. The Italians have brought with them the supersti- tions of Italy, and belief in demon possession and in the evil eye is wellnigh universal among them. A leading churchman was believed, by a host of devout Italians, to have the power of the evil eye, though none believed that he ever wrongfully used it; and there are men and women in Roosevelt and Elizabeth Streets, about Mulberry Bend and in the Little Italy of Harlem, who are held to be the possessors of this attribute. "With the Italians the very commonness of magic has rendered imperative and customary a multitude of counterbalancing charms, beginning with the stringing of certain shapes of coral about the necks of children. And there is a way of so holding the fingers as to neutralize the evil, the method being to fold the two middle fingers into the palm, leaving the others projectively pronglike. A few years ago an Italian vice-consul went from New York to a neighboring town to investigate the murder of an Italian there. The slain man, it ap- 235 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK peared, had sold his soul to the devil, and could at any time call that personage to do his bidding. This, not unnaturally, had the effect of minimizing the popularity of the man, and, in fact, of raising up ene- mies against him. The devil, it was learned, had made his life secure from steel, poison, or bullets; whereupon certain hard-headed compatriots fell upon him with clubs and tossed him into a pond to drown. A curious epidemic of devil frights," which fol- lowed each other in the schools of the East Side a few years ago, showed a readiness on the part of oth- ers than Italians to believe in the personal presence of the being that old Petrus Stuyvesant legendarily shot with a silver bullet at Hell Gate. Time and again, while the epidemic lasted, schoolrooms were emptied by a panic following the cry that the devil was at the window. Among many there is a strange readiness of belief that Christians, especially those of certain settlement schools, strive by spells and branding-marks to win the children of Hebrews from their faith. And one evening I met a Hebrew, excited and eager, who told me that he had seen with his own eyes the branding on a child who attended one of these schools, and he offered to take me to see it. He led the way to a decrepit rear tenement in Orchard Street. Men and women were agitatedly huddled in the hallway and upon the shaky stair, and others were crowded into an ill-lit room where a tall man, broom-bearded and gauntly gaberdined, was 236 SUPEESTITIONS OF THE CITY bending over a little girl, upon whose arm had been burned the letters O D E.'' **Iesus Omnium Dominus Est — Jesus is the Lord of all, ' ' interpreted the old man, gutturally grim. The little child, not too little to be proud of the at- tention it was exciting, again told the story of how a black man'' had met her in the hallway of the settle- ment school, and had seared the marks with a hot iron ; and at that the room was filled anew with quer- ulous Yiddish. Yet the explanation was in the adjoining room, where a hot fire burned in a cooking-stove; for the door of the stove, upon which was the word D E L," was the branding-iron. All of the word had been burned upon the child's arm except the * ^ L " and the first three strokes of the * ^ M. " The girPs brother had pushed her against the stove, and had so frightened her with threats that she had feared to tell. "With the stoicism of the poor, she had suf- fered in silence for a while ; and then the mother, dis- covering the burn, had leaped at once to the conclu- sion that this was the dreaded branding of which she had often heard, and the neighborhood had been thrown into profound excitement. To understand how oddly it came about, print the letters D E" on a piece of paper; lay the paper, with the ink wet, against another, and you will see the four letters reversed; turn the slip around, as the brand would appear looking down upon it on the arm, and you will read the letters in their order, ^^lODE." 237 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Where all the continents pour their mingling hu- man tides — in those thick-populated parts where silent Greeks smoke their long-tubed water-pipes, where turbaned Hindus bend above their rugs, where Lithuanian and Pole, Armenian and Swiss, Austrian, Scandinavian, and Slav, throng together — there are many strange beliefs. And far down along the East Eiver, where great bowsprits stretch far over South Street, where there are casks and bales and endless rope and chain, you may hear in ancient taverns, nod- ding dreamily toward the water, marvelous tales from them that go down to the sea in ships, for these weather-beaten men retain belief in ancient sailors' lore. Down in Mott Street, where gleaming lanterns swing from the balconies, where the smell of incense is in the air, where joss-sticks burn and sallow-faced men bow before the figured idol, there is unques- tioned belief in fiends and devils, in magic and in spells. The silent, watchful men seldom speak to you; those who know English are apt to shake their heads, and to do business in abbreviations, backed up by signs ; but now and then one is found who, if his Eastern soul opens, will tell you strange tales of things unseen. And I remember the case of Lee Gull. He is dead, and he died because he was possessed by devils; at least that is what the Chinamen of Mott Street firmly believe. He had planned to start for China on a certain day: instead, he was taken on that day to the morgue. 238 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE CITY Lee Gull was far from being a handsome man. He was stoop-shouldered from a life of toil at the ironing table, and his cunning face was creased with a myriad of wrinkles. His almond eyes blinked with an elusive sleepiness. His fingers were long and claw-like, as if made to grasp money; and, indeed, they were typical of his character, for in the thirteen years that he had lived in this country he had gath- ered enough money to support him in China in afflu- ence. Devils paid him a visit. They told him to dress himself in his holiday attire and go out on Mott Street. That is the story that he solemnly told and that his countrymen believed. He put on a black cap, gayly tasseled, and a plum-colored tunic of silk, woven with green dragons, and a pair of wide trous- ers of blue satin, and shoes of silk, with soles of felt. Lee Gull believed that the shadow of death was upon him because of the appearance of the devils, but he made no sign of fear. He plunged madly into the dissipation of Chinatown, for he wanted to be happy as long as the devils would let him. Chinese phi- losophy accepts death as a natural incident that is not to be greatly feared. But his almond eyes took on a strange glare, for they were peering into an eternity, that he felt was close at hand. To a friend, he said that he had again been visited by the devils, and that they directed him to go to a certain house, wherein another Chinaman had died, and to break in the closed door and go to sleep. He knew that the soul of that dead man would 239 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK come for him, but unresistingly he obeyed the order of Fate. He went to the house, broke in the door, lay down, and death came lonelily to him just as he had foreseen. 240 CHAPTER XIX STREETS AND WAYS LIKE to think that Nassau Street — named, like William Street adjoining, from William the Third — was origin- ally the Street of the Pye Woman, and that prosaic Exchange Alley was in the long ago Oyster Patty Alley, for such gastronomic names raise gastronomic fancies of the good old days. And some, lamenting the passing of any- thing of the past, even regret that Tin Pot Alley and Shinbone Alley have vanished from the street nomenclature of New York. New York has still its Pearl Street, dating from early Dutch days, and its Whitehall Street has come down from the White Hall which Governor Stuyve- sant built there, and Stone Street is to be forever reminiscent of the fact that it was the first New York Street to be paved with stone, the time being in the late 1600 's. The city did away altogether, or nearly so, with street names remindful of English royalty, and it took a fair proportion of American names, such as 241 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Washington, Franklin, Madison, Monroe, Hamilton, and it kept some that came from old Dutch families, such as Coenties, Eoosevelt, Stuyvesant, Bleecker, and it kept that elusive little thoroughfare, Dutch Street, but as it expanded it adopted the numbering system, which thenceforth did away with colorful or charming possibilities. New York has been frugal with its street names. Not only is there Broadway, but East Broadway and West Broadway; then there are Park Row and Park Street and Park Avenue and Park Place; and there are many more examples, such as Madison Street and Madison Avenue, Greenwich Street and Greenwich Avenue. One of the unexplainable minor mysteries of New York is in reference to this very Greenwich Avenue, for, before the Revolution, a monument was placed here by admirers of General Wolfe, of Quebec fame : the monument being of stone and not lead, it offered no temptation for bullet making, and Wolfe was pop- ular and continued to be so, here in America: yet that monument completely vanished away, and no ex- planation has ever been found as to what could have become of it. It was a well-known landmark, too, which makes its disappearance the more strange. Washington, when President, and living in New York, set down in his diary that one of his favorite drives with Mrs. Wash- ington, out from the city, was to this avenue, then a country lane, and around the Wolfe monument, where he usually turned homeward. 242 STREETS AND WAYS There are two ways of looking at the New York streets. Seen from a lofty window or the top of a great office building, they are deep and narrow can- yons of great length : I do not know of anything in any other city even approaching this almost startling effect, except the view down into the deep and nar- row streets of Naples from the great height of the monastery of San Martino. Seen from the pave- ments, the New York streets are likewise canyons: and the winds that go sweeping through them are frequently fierce canyon-like winds. The buildings rise to such terrific heights in story after story, and their foundations go down to such great depths, in story below story, that a French- man declared that New York was always torn up with buildings rising to heaven and excavations go- ing down to hell. A large proportion of the streets of New York are always so rough and torn up as to give the impres- sion of a frontier town, with everything raw, rough and incomplete: — and, after all, this is a frontier town, a town on the frontier of Europe, taking in and assimilating countless thousands of strangers unac- quainted with our institutions and needing to be trained in the very basis of our citizenship. Always one comes back to the idea that New Yorkers are not born but made: they are not born New Yorkers, but make themselves New Yorkers: broadly speaking, those who do not come here from Europe — and 78.6 per cent, are from Europe or of immediate European extraction — come here from 243 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK the East or the South or the West of our own land. New York is a city of transplanted families. It is a city where State societies flourish. The Penn- sylvania or Ohio Society dinner, the New England and California gatherings — if they were all held on one night how few New Yorkers would be dining at home! The **home town'' is not New York, for most of the American-born who live here, and allegiance is often shown to the old home when death comes, for a great proportion of the notices mention burial in some distant place. This accounts, I think, for the comparatively small importance of the modern ceme- teries for the dwellers in Manhattan. The streets of New York are such busy and such crowded streets! One thinks of the Kentucky girl who, at her first sight of a sidewalk throng, thought that the mail must have just come in. In a street- ear I heard, one day, a little girl say to her father, '*But what are so many people in the street forf And if one could only tell it all, what romance and what tragedy there would be, what sorrow and what happiness, what touches of the dramatic along with the inevitable commonplace! Among the business signs on New York streets one sees the cryptic, Skeletons for Ladies and Gents/' or wonders, noticing Young Housekeepers Sup- plied," what they are supplied with or whether the supply is of young housekeepers themselves. Black eyes painted" is not the sign of the beauty 244 STEEETS AND WAYS shop; and of course there are the absurdities of Shoes blacked inside/' and *^ Funerals supplied/' and *^01d Bows rehaired'' — and, as if for the would- be clever ones, *^Good retorts; new and second- hand ' ' : and what a rushing business that place would do if it could really furnish good and original re- torts ! Over one door I noticed the brave words : *'If you want it in wood I'll make it"; there are such signs as ^^Connorized music," and Brushes for advertis- ing, ' ' and ' ' Paragon Pants Are Art ' ' : and the sign of *^This is the life," may presumably be taken as an invitation to enter a place of amusement. There are signs in as many languages as there are races in this polyglot town: even Greek is common on such a street of general use and traffic as Sixth Avenue. On Sixth Avenue, at the corner of 4th Street, is an interesting sign, a reminder and memorial of long ago, the figure of a golden swan projecting in front of the corner of an oldish building — the only figure sign that I remember, at present, in the city, al- though a few years ago there were two or three oth- ers, such as a Moor's head over a drug shop on the East Side, and a great gilded bunch of grapes at the old Grape Vine at Sixth Avenue and 11th Street. But as I write there comes the memory of another figure sign, although it isn't really a sign, after all. It is the figure of a saint, of a black saint on the front of a Roman Catholic Church on West 53d Street, the figure, as the dusky brothers and sisters of the par- ish, unctuously proud that a black man was a saint 245 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK of the Church, will tell you, of *^Sam' Benedick' de Mooh'M Because the street traffic is of greater volume than in other cities, there are swifter moving motor-cars to obviate the always threatened congestion ; and the type of driver is more capable, more alert; and the traffic officers are obeyed as swiftly and as completely as the much-talked-of English policemen of the Strand. The number of people who are on the streets is so vast, and such great numbers are foreigners of the ignorant types who have so largely come within re- cent years, and the tenement and apartment-house living puts such numbers of children on the streets, that, with such totals as there are of vehicles and of people, accidents are many. From twenty- one to twenty-three thousand people are hurt, on the streets of Greater New York, every year, and more than a quarter of the number are hurt by automo- biles. Of the total injured, from six to eight hun- dred are injured fatally. In New York, old customs have almost vanished. New Year's calling, that pretty New York custom which came from the Dutch, and which President Washington hoped to see kept up forever, has van- ished from here as from the cities which imitatingly adopted it: and almost every other old custom has also gone. But sugar is still most commonly sold in three-and-a-half -pound lots : a strange unit of weight, one thinks, until he finds that it is a survival of the stone," this being a quarter of a stone; and eggs 246 STREETS AND WAYS are still sold, in some of the smaller shops, at so many for a quarter, instead of for so much a dozen. The knife-and-scissors grinder may still be seen, go- ing about with his grindstone with its two wheels and two stopping pegs ; the street-organs and street- pianos, which only a few years ago were common, and to whose music little circles of girls loved pret- tily to dance on the pavement, have been mostly frowned and licensed away, and no longer do the paper-wrapped nickels and pennies fall like the gen- tle dew from heaven out of the upper stories of tene- ments. The streets are noisy in the extreme: many are even thunderously noisy: and the general voice is in consequence harsh and shrill. Motor trucks have not entirely displaced horse- drawn trucks, but the old-time horses and carriages of pleasure, the old-fashioned family carriages or bug- gies or runabouts, are so seldom seen in Manhattan as to compel a second look when they pass by. With the disappearance of the horse and carriage, there has also come about the practical disappearance of the hand-pushed baby carriage! Manhattan has seen practically the last of it. In the tenement dis- tricts, where the children swarm by tens of thou- sands, where babies litter the sidewalks, there are practically no baby carriages, for there is no room for them. A few babies in carriages are still to be seen in some of the uptown parks, hovering there like j3uttered birds in a refuge. In some well-to-do sections, the baby carriage has disappeared because 247 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK there are no babies. The very wealthy enjoy, to some degree, the luxury of babies, but with them the motor-car and not the baby carriage is used for air- ings, or the baby is carried by a highly uniformed nurse. So unusual is a baby carriage in a rich section, that it assumes instant importance when it does appear, and recently the question of whether or not, in a so- called fashionable apartment house, a family should be permitted to wheel the baby out of the front door, occupied the attention of one of the Supreme Courts for day after day. New York, city of tenements and apartment houses that it is, possesses a Janitors ' Society, and the sjma- bol of the association is, naturally and proudly, crossed keys and a broom. In a growing degree, there has come a natural transition, for many New Yorkers, from apartment houses to apartment hotels. Fewer wives appear at breakfast with their husbands. It is too much trouble to keep house. The dweller in an apartment hotel escapes the servant problem, escapes the plumber and the coal man, does not have to bother about house-heating or burglars, about beggars, agents, process-servers, undesirable callers of any sort. Life is thus made more simple and at the same time more lavish. For such results, many a New Yorker leads a pigeon-hole existence and sleeps in a room so small that he must hold his elbows in. Many a seeming duchess in the bright light of restaurant life has not where to lay her headgear and must keep 248 1 STREETS AND WAYS her hats under her bed. And this adds to the number of gay diners-out, the restaurant diners in public places. The great amount of extravagant dining-out, in New York, accounts for the absence, or at least the great shortage, of fine pastry and ice cream supply shops, such as abound in Philadelphia and Boston. Nor are meat and game markets numerous, of the kind that cater to wealthy living. Wealthy homes, whether separate houses or apartments, which still do most of their own cooking, are comparatively few and growing fewer, and the hotels and famous res- taurants and clubs have wholesale supply houses and sources of food that are not in retail evidence. No other city of the world has so many great stores, huge department stores, for retail trade, as New York City. At the same time, street after street is full of tiny little places of trade, offering myriad kinds of merchandise to the small buyers. This is largely because the great stores close at half-past five or six, partly because many poor people feel that they are not welcome in the palatial stores, and to quite an extent because hosts of people do not live very near the department stores ; although I remem- ber hundreds of little shops, apparently prosperous, within a very few blocks of the great places. There are a great number of picturesque little shops, reached, perhaps, by going down basement steps, or up passageways, the shops of expert arti- sans of idiosyncrasies, oldish men, of foreign birth, who work in wood or metals. And there are great 249 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK shedlike places, far over at the western edge of Man- hattan and far over at the eastern, where you may- buy any kind of wreckage from destroyed buildings ; doors and windows, cornices, pillars, mantelpieces. I think that it is not realized to what an extent people are constantly scattering, away from New York; that it is not just a matter of coming here. The whirling city exerts not only centripetal force but centrifugal. The disappointed, disillusioned, dispirited are constantly giving up the struggle; many others depart, not because of failure or ill- health, but because they think they see a particular success in some other place. But although the out- going movement is always strong it is far from equaling the incoming. New York exerts a tremendous appeal upon the ambitious and the restless; and markedly, therefore, it has been drawing to itself the newest of the **new women.'' And here the **new woman'' is a sign and a symbol of change, contending, in the everyday as- pects of her life, for what she deems desirable free- dom, deeming social guards to be but old-fashioned restrictions, considering herself her own best pro- tector. In Boston, the **new woman" is self-pos- sessed, busily occupied, competent, looking on eman- cipation as giving the chance for independent work, and extremely glad to run back home over Sunday. In New York the **new woman" is to a great extent a very young woman indeed, probably just out of col- lege, and she much prefers to take a bachelor-girl apartment and consider father and mother and home 250 STREETS AND WAYS a closed issue. There are, of course, many excep- tions; but the Boston type, deeming a visit home a privilege, and the New York most prominent type, deeming home a place from which to escape, stand as the representatives of an important movement. New York real estate is supposed to be among the very best possible of investments, a sure thing in an investment world of uncertainties, the only question being as to the amount of profit. And New York has undoubtedly given many a man millions, and the story of one of the early invest- ments of John Jacob Astor is illustrative. He sold a lot on Wall Street for eight thousand dollars, and after the sale was completed the purchaser said with a smile of triumph that he had secured a bargain, for in a few years he would be able to sell that lot for twelve thousand dollars, whereupon Astor replied: **Yes, but with your eight thousand dollars I shall buy eighty lots above Canal Street which, when your lot is worth twelve thousand dollars, will be worth eighty thousand dollars." And they were. But although there may be profit and although there has often been very great profit, there may be stagnation or even heavy loss. The very chances of business and of living that pile up huge fortunes for some, tear down the fortunes of others. Many a business block, giving a splendid income for years, finds its revenue so falling off that it is sold for its mortgage and fetches far less than the mortgage. Many a once prosperous apartment house has seen its rents dwindle to less than interest and taxes. 251 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Many a house is deemed not worth the cost of altera- tions, and in its fall in value drags down its neigh- bors. Only recently the owners of an apartment house looking out over Washington Square decided, rather than meet some looming expenses, to turn it into a loft building for light manufacturing — an ap- palling possibility for one of the most charming quar- ters of New York. In this case disaster was averted because of great improvements near by, which re- vived residential values. Scattered through old New York are many build- ings which are shabby and gloomy, out of repair and perhaps half closed and half used. The curious fact in regard to many of them is that they belong to lost heirs or have a title tied up by litigation. Such facts explain some shabby blocks of tenements and some haunted houses." These old estates stand unimproved, with no available money to put new buildings on the land and with no prospective pur- chaser desirous of **buying a lawsuit." New York has always been a city of costly living. The dashing Knox, passing through New York in 1775 on his way to Crown Point and Ticonderoga for guns for Boston, notes in his diary that he is **glad to leave New York, it being very expensive." And it seems to be illustrative of New York that, just the other day, when one of the banks moved its offices from one building to another a block and a half away, it took out, to cover possible loss in transit of money or securities, an insurance policy, for twenty-four hours, for the sum of ninety millions of dollars. 252 STREETS AND WAYS New York has a rich class who feel no sense of noblesse oblige in regard to the poor of the city. To them the poor are aliens and strangers. There is no bond of having grown up together, of even the fore- fathers of one class having worked for the forebears of the other, of both classes having mutually looked on at the development of the city. The two classes do not know each other. The rich stay in their part of the city and the poor stay in theirs, and there is no harmony or happiness common to them. And I think this is shown, with peculiar clearness, in the attitude of the well-to-do New Yorker toward the city itself in the hot summer months. He is him- self away all summer if he can manage it, and at least for a long vacation; and, besides the vacation, he either runs out of the city every night during the hot term or at least every week-end, dividing his enforced time in the city between his office and his club: to him, the city is closed up'': nobody is at home : he is absolutely sincere in his belief. Yet he is quite mistaken, for New York's toiling millions are still there ! In the matter of actual charity New York is gen- erous. No city in the world gives so much and so freely. There are enormous hospitals given by in- dividual wealth or built by the city; there are huge charitable institutions in infinite variety; every- where that one looks or walks there is some chari- table building with millions of an endowment. There is, too, an increasing centralization of giving, under the name of efficiency. Yet the fact remains that 253 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK poverty does not decrease, in spite of the increase of charity. In any other line of activity such a fact would be looked upon as a condenmation of methods. Any business man facing a condition of increased ex- penditure without increased results would set him- self to some kind of change. There seems to be no doubt that more than half a million people in Greater New York are recipients of some form of charity. One of the most notable charities is Sailors' Snug Harbor, whose founder. Captain Richard Randall, gave a great acreage, northeast of Washington Square, a little over a century ago, to be adminis- tered for the benefit of a home for old American sailors. The land is never to be sold, but rented; the property has become so valuable that more than seven hundred old sailors are cared for from the in- come, in the buildings of the Snug Harbor, which are great dignified pillar-fronted structures, on Staten Island, looking out over the water of the Kill van Kull : and in founding the bequest the donor directed that the sailors should never be deemed paupers, but his heirs. There is an organization that sends libraries to sea on ships ; another was founded to relieve victims of shipwreck; another is restricted to the care of needy sailors of the vanishing, full-rigged, ocean- going ships ! One society furnishes * ^foster housewives," to scrub floors, wash dishes, wash and dress the chil- dren, when mothers are sick. Another gives vaca- 254 STREETS AND WAYS tions to nurses, teachers and governesses" in need of them. Another gives outings to little girls whose mothers give them the care of littler ones. A fund was established, far back in 1798, and is still administered, for the benefit of industrious widows of good character, with at least two children under the age of twelve ; the widows, so it is carefully specified, not to be totally destitute but able to aid somewhat in their own support. One philanthropist specializes in filling the uncon- ventional want: the pair of shoes, the glass eye, the pair of spectacles, the set of teeth. Which is remind- ful that New York dentists are often asked to buy the gold fillings out of the teeth of hard-luck unfor- tunates. At the southern edge of Greeley Square, on 33d Street near Broadway, is an unobtrusive fountain (its existence threatened, when last I noticed it, by subway work), to the memory of Jerry McAuley, who founded, in 1872, near the waterside, between Cherry Hill and the East Eiver, a mission which is continuing the noble work that he nobly began, that of helping those who are absolutely down and out, men and women who are hungry, who have perhaps been criminals, who are probably drunkards. Mc- Auley had himself been down and out, and he knew the needs of those who could not qualify as respect- able and sober citizens. A little west of Broadway, in the vicinity of Canal Street, is a barbers ' school : and as the students must practice, and can scarcely charge for practicing, they 255 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK cut hair, and shave, free of charge : and a pitiful line of men wait their turn, men literally without a cent, many of them, and all without a cent to spare : and almost more pitiful than to see the waiting line is to see the new life and hope with which the men, fur- bished and rejuvenated, step out again into a world that would not hire them unkempt and unshaven. That is domg good, without being in the least a charity. And as to other good that is done without ostentation and not in the least as charity, I look on the tallest building of the city — the tallest of the world — as the finest of exemplars, for it was built by the man who, in his vast series of stores, sells things for five and ten cents, making it possible for those of straitened means to buy, with self-respect, many a needful thing which they would otherwise have to do without. On East 68th Street are the buildings of what is among the sweetest and most beautiful of all chari- ties. It is the New York Foundling Hospital, and, as its name implies, it receives children who have no parents, children whose parents cannot or will not care for them, hapless and helpless infants, victims of poverty or crime. The Foundling Hospital began modestly in 1869 down on East 12th Street, and the first infant was left on the opening day about dusk, and was sur- veyed with wonder and pity by the Sisters, who in- stantly decided that it should be called Joseph Vin- cent, in honor of St. Vincent de Paul, the special patron of forgotten infants : and their disappointment 256 STREETS AND WAYS was great to discover a scrap of paper pinned to the infantas clothing asking that it be christened Sarah. From the first, and until recent years, a little swinging open-work crib of wicker stood just out- side of the door, and it was the privilege of any mother who so wished to leave her child in the crib and Iturry off unknown in the darkness. Always, night and day, there has been a Sister on watch at the door ready to take at once any child left there. It was some years ago decided that the swinging crib should be set just inside of the door, instead of outside, and now a mother must at least be seen, and may then if she chooses go off into the darkness and leave her child forever. The institution receives and cares for an average of twenty-five hundred infants annually, and in the half century of its existence has received a total of over sixty-five thousand. CHAPTER XX THE REGION OF EIVERSIDE T is one of life's little ironies that the most romantically distinctive and distinctively romantic of Bos- ton movements should have resulted in giving to New York three of its most notable citizens. For the movement was that bravely breezy movement of Brook Farm, which • )^^' in the promised and picturesque practicality of its prospects drew the attention of all America and stood for the best of Boston. George William Curtis was a Brook Farmer, he of whom it has been so well said that he was superbly artificial yet that his artificiality was natural ; and his literary fame is that of his beloved city of New York. Charles A. Dana was a Brook Farmer, and his fame is linked with the rise and power of the paper into which he flung his superb vitality. Isaac Thomas Hecker was a Brook Farmer : and afterwards he be- came a Catholic and entered the priesthood, and, the fire of originality still glowing in his heart, as in the hearts of the few others of the remarkable group, he planned the foundation of an order of priests whose 258 THE EEGION OF EIVEESIDE native tongue should be English. He founded the order of St. Paul the Apostle, commonly known as the Paulist Fathers, and the church of the order is a structure of stone, on Columbus Avenue a little north of 59th Street, a building of solemn and impressive interior, with groined ceiling showing all the stars in the heavens in the very position in which they stood at the time of the dedication of the church. In New England, Brook Farm made '^The Blithe- dale Romance. ' ' In New York it made the New York *^Sun,'^ and *^Prue and I," and the Paulist Fathers. A little to the north and west of this huge church, near the North River, is an unsavory tenement re- gion, of mingled whites and blacks, known in frequent reports of police activities, as San Juan Hill; and there is a great tangle of railroad switching tracks — and all at once, at 72d Street, begins the superbly beautiful Riverside Drive. But there is a delightful way of reaching the Drive, by following 72d Street, which, between Central Park and Riverside, is maintained by the city as practically itself a parkway. Riverside Drive runs for miles along the Hudson, bordered on one side by homes and even more by great apartment houses, and on the other side by a beautiful park and the river. Riverside Drive is not straight; it is far from straight, and thereby is its beauty greatly enhanced. It curves and bends unceasingly, it dips in long and sweeping grades and climbs with easy swings. And always it is well above the Hudson, always it offers 259 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK views of sweet superbness. And here and there is an admirably placed monument, such as the Soldiers' and Sailors ' or that to General Sigel. Not only is the Drive bordered by buildings with indications of plethora of wealth and comfort, but the streets leading from it give likewise an aspect of admirable living. Noticeable almost at the begin- ning of the Drive is the house of Charles A. Schwab, a costly and beautiful structure, and Chenonceaux- like in effect, even though so far above the water instead of, like its Touraine prototype, standing upon and over a stream. The view is fine and fair and far expanding. There is the splendid sweep of water; there are the dark green heights, across the river; in the distance is the splendid Indian Head. It is a view with a sense of somberness, a view of sober beauty, a view suggesting strength and might, a wonderful view for a city. Under a brilliant sun the same view flashes at you like a view unsheathed. Yachts and motor-boats dot the water. Great warships sway gently at anchor. Go up the river, for miles, and it is more and more to be seen how unceasingly the city is using, for joy and pleasure, this superb river beside which it is set. Evening comes on, and the heights across the stream are of a purple beauty, and the water glim- mers mistily, and into the view there comes a subtle weirdness. And there are splendid sunsets across the water, splendid sunsets trailing clouds of glory. Riverside Drive is the most beautiful city drive of 260 THE REGION OF RIVERSIDE any city in the world, the drive that is the most filled with varied charm and fine beauty, a drive that is beautiful by night and day; and a fine way to enjoy it is to ride on the top of one of the great motor buses that run over here from Fifth Avenue and go out beyond Grant 's Tomb. Late one afternoon, opposite 80th Street, an elderly agitated woman hurried up to a policeman, and she pointed up into a tree, and her voice quaveringly rose as she declared that her eyeglasses were up there! This was an emergency not provided for in his instructions. But he began to talk soothingly to her. *^But I mean it!'' she cried. *^My eyeglasses are really there!'' — Whereupon he looked where she pointed and there her glasses dangled. ^*I was on the front seat of that stage and a branch caught them!"— Opposite 122nd Street, in a great open space, in the center of the parkway, rises Grant's Tomb, a structure of massiveness, of balanced lines, of grave proud dignity. It was Grant's own desire that his body should rest somewhere in New York City, and the committee that assumed charge thought at first of Central Park. But some obstacles developed, whereupon it was decided to set it upon a certain street-corner space — but this idea was hastily abandoned when it was noticed that if put there it would face a cancer hospital : for it was remembered that Grant died of cancer. Then River- side was chosen, and this spot fixed upon: and there could not be a nobler and more fitting site, with the 261 THE BOOK OP NEW YOEK park itself, with its greenery and paths and throngs, the noble breadth of river, the warships that often lie here at anchor, the splendid up-stream stretch of beauty to the empurpled hills of the distances ; and, close by the great monument, the little grave, which by a century antedates it, of the amiable child Grant's Tomb is a massive structure, Grecian in de- sign, measuring ninety feet on each side, and rising, above the Doric faces of the square lower portion, in circular constructions which decrease to a conical top one hundred and fifty feet above the ground. The interior aims frankly at an effect of splendid dignity similar to that gained by the interior of the tomb of Napoleon. The sarcophagus is hewn from a single block of red porphyry, and it rests in a crypt down into which the visitors look from an encircling gallery. And, high above the sarcophagus, rises a stately dome. Near the spot where stands this tomb much of the Battle of Harlem Heights was fought, and it went to its bitterly contested finish in the nearby locality, just off Eiverside Drive, where now stand the buildings of Columbia University. Measured by numbers of men engaged it was not much of a battle. But it was a victory at a time when victory was sorely needed, and it is therefore finely memorable, even though no mil- lions of men were engaged and although the total American loss was but a hundred and fifty men, with that of the British a little more. Columbia University began its history in 1754, far down in lower Manhattan, as King's College, and its 262 THE KEGION OF RIVERSIDE most famous student was Alexander Hamilton. The Revolution gave it its still continuing patriotic name, and the first to graduate, under the new name of Columbia, was De Witt Clinton. The university buildings are of competent, capable aspect, and the library building, with its great dome, is a very beautiful structure, built with terraces and approaches and with an air of having plenty of room, something which is not characteristic of many New York buildings. It is indeed a most notable building, splendidly imposing. The university graduates over two thousand stu- dents each year; and it is curious that so great an institution should seem to have so little to do with the life of the city. New York is so big and so preoccu- pied with its own progress, that it absorbs, in incon- sequential fashion, even such an enormous institution as this. The city does not neglect it, does not ignore or belittle it, but simply does not, as a city, pay much attention to it. The name of the president is recog- nized as familiar whenever mentioned, and the fact that the university exists, with a huge attendance, is known, but beyond that the attitude of New York is one of readiness to notice important work if any one connected with the university shall perform it. This attitude toward Columbia represents the city's attitude toward the several other big institutions of learning which are located here : A ' ' Harvard man ' ' means a good deal in Boston ; a '^U. of P. man'' means a good deal in Philadelphia ; but New York refuses to consider university or college men as, in themselves, 263 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK important entities. Even the Hall of Fame, kept up solemnly under the auspices of the University of the City of New York, is little regarded here except as an admirably designed building, for it does not repre- sent fame that has been accorded by New York. On Riverside Drive, a little north of Grant's Tomb, is the Claremont, a building a century and a quarter old, but altogether altered from its original aspect by galleries and porches. It was occupied ui 1807 by Viscount Courtenay, afterwards Earl of Devon, who from this Claremont (named from the estate of Prince William, Duke of Clarence, years afterward to be King William the Fourth), watched the first passage up the Hudson of Fulton's steamboat, the Clermont. One notices how the English titles roll up! A few years later Joseph Bonaparte occupied this building. Now it is a restaurant, owned by the city. The beautiful Drive extends for several miles be- yond Grant's Tomb, to the very end of Manhattan, at Spuyten Duyvil; and nothing in the growth of New York is more striking than the recent development, made possible by the subway, of that high-set river- side region. Not far inland from the Drive, at 156th Street and Broadway, is a building which suggests what fasci- nating variety of interest a great city may offer; for here is the Hispanic Museum, a long, low, beautiful building, filled with examples of Spanish art: here are the glories of old Spain : here are Spanish paint- ings by Vel-iSquez and Murillo and Goya: here are 264 THE EEGION OF EIVERSIDE lusters of iridescent loveliness, here are wrongM- iron work and incomparable carvings in Spanish leather — it is the best that the arts and artists and artisans of old Spain can show. Eeturning to the Drive, it becomes a road at the foot of heights; opposite 175th Street it passes little Fort Washington Park; a little above this, by leaving the Drive and climbing the hill, Fort Wash- ington itself may be reached, about opposite 187th Street. This is the highest point of Manhattan Is- land, the land being two hundred and seventy feet above tidewater. Parts of the earthworks of the fort are stiU to be seen, for private ownership of an estate has pre- served them, and it has recently been announced that one of the wealthiest of New Yorkers has purchased a great tract, including Fort Washington, with the intent of turning all of it over to the city to be a pub- lic park forever. It is strange to find, within the limits of Manhattan Island, the earthwork walls of Fort Washington still in existence, amid oaks and maples and black locusts and horse-chestnuts and umbrella-magnolias that have freely grown up here. Grass grows deep and lush, and it is a spot of wild beauty, with constantly the splendid presence of the Hudson down at the foot of the steep height. It will still be beautiful, if it be- comes a park, but presumably the wildness will dis- appear. On a November day of 1776 this fort was attacked by the British in numbers much greater than those of 265 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK the garrison, although the garrison was more than three thousand men. General Greene was in com- mand and had delegated the charge of the fort to Colonel Magaw. Washington had strongly advised Greene to evacuate the fort, but had left the matter to his discretion, Greene being a highly trusted officer. The British, attacking, advanced with intrepidity, and a desperate defense could not check them. They stormed onward, killing many and capturing those who remained, and thus won control of the river. Washington, deeply concerned, had hurried back from a journey of inspection up into the Highlands, to look over the situation in person, learning that the fort was in peril; he reached Fort Lee, on the New Jersey side of the river, across from Fort Washing- ton, and from that point saw that the attack was actually in progress. He saw the lines of British sweeping up to and over the redoubts — these very redoubts that are still here ! He saw, through a tele- scope, many of his men bayoneted after throwing down their arms and surrendering. He rushed to a boat, leaped in, and ordered the rowers to row des- perately. The river is here of great width, and be- fore he got to Fort Washington he met a boat con- taining General Greene, who had himself hastened across the river to the aid of his subordinate, Magaw, but had turned back when he saw that actually to land would be but futile. Washington's grief and anger were for a few min- utes unrestrained. It was one of the few times in his life that he permitted his passionately strong feelings 266 THE EEGION OF RIVERSIDE to show. He wept with rage ; he furiously swore ; it was one of those swearing fits when those near by, if they were wise, made way ; he blindly wanted to go on, as at Murray Hill, and force back the British single- handed; but soon he controlled himself and ordered his men to row back to the farther side. And what he said to Greene, who was not in a position to make way, but had to listen, must have made that officer regret a number of things and spend an extraordinarily un- happy quarter of an hour. You may still see about where the two boats must have met — just down there, somewhat on the New York side of the river. 267 CHAPTER XXI TO JUMEL AND VAN COETLANDT OTHING better illustrates the changes that have grad- ually come over New York City than the changes in the location of the churches. That St. Patrick's Cathe- dral should go from Prince Street to 50th is one of the illustrative touches, but there are many other churches which have moved a number of times with the changing of the character of the surrounding popula- tion. An excellent example is a German Reformed Church which long ago, in 1758, stood far down on Nassau Street. After many years it moved to For- syth Street, and after a while, following another shift in population, to Norfolk. And in 1897 it moved to 68th Street, far over toward the East River, in what had become a German settlement. The church is very clean, it is shiningly varnished, and its tower holds a bell which was sent over as a 268 TO JUMEL AND VAN CORTI.ANDT gift because of the interesting connection of this Ger- man Reformed Church with a great man of the Revo- lution. In the vestibule is set a mural cenotaph, which was first set within the old church on Nassau Street, and which has accompanied the church in each of the steps of its migration. It is a most romantic looking thing in a most unromantic looking building, and it is in honor of that distinguished soldier. Baron Steuben, who did so much to aid the Americans, and who, when the Revolution was over, lived like a feudal prince on the great estate which was granted him in Central New York, coming down to the city frequently to see and be entertained by his friends, who were in turn generously entertained at his country-seat. The mural memorial, with its oddly pointed top, sets forth in long recitation his virtues and achieve- ments, with the statement that ''the highly polished manners of the Baron were graced by the most noble feelings of the heart.*' It states also that he was a Knight of the Order of Fidelity; and it may be men- tioned that the cross, surrounded by diamonds, which he loved to wear on his breast and which is so famil- iarly known from his portraits, was the cross of this order, and that it was given him by the Prince Mar- grave of Baden. The one who placed the memorial to Steuben in the original church was willing to remain himself un- known; and merely closed his lengthy eulogy with the statement that the memorial was set there by one **who had the honor to be his aide-de-camp, the happi- 269 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK ness to be his friend.'' And in the course of time and of migrations the church itself has quite forgot- ten the name of the original donor, who was Colonel William North, an officer of notable bravery. Baron Steuben was among the most delightfully interesting of men. Everybody loved him. One of the few recorded conversations in which Mrs. Wash- ington figures, was a conversation with Steuben in regard to a fishing experience in the Hudson River. *^And what did you catch whale, my lady,'' was the reply. **A whale!" was the astonished ex- clamation. ^*A whale! You caught a whale in the Hudson River at New York!" ^^Yes, my lady." But soon it was discovered that the delightful Baron had been misled by his limited knowledge of English and that he had no intention of rivaling that other baron, Munchausen, and that what he had caught was in reality but an eel. When Steuben died, at his lonely log house built within his sixteen thousand acres, he was buried in a lonely grave in the forest, with but a handful of mourners accompanying his body. And it is pleasant to think that he is kept in mind, in New York City, by this curiously peripatetic memorial. Where this church stands is in oncewhile York- ville, well on the way toward Harlem. The nucleus of the district known as Harlem, which in popular fancy stands as peculiarly representative of the apart- ment dwellers of New York, and which is generally taken to mean that part of Manhattan Island north of Central Park and as far as 155th Street (the region 270 TO JUMEL AND VAN CORTLANDT beyond that, where the island narrows between the Harlem River and the Hudson, being known as Har- lem Heights and Washington Heights), was a little settlement which was given this name by Governor Stuyvesant, who, when a committee came before him, each man urging, amid clouds of tobacco smoke, that the settlement be named after his o^vn native Dutch town, took the matter under sage advisement and, re- flecting finally that none of the urgent committeemen was from Haarlem, deemed it wise to use that name, to avoid jealousies ; and Haarlem, but without one of the **a's,'' it has since remained, in its expanded area. A little northwest of the northwest corner of Cen- tral Park, on a lowish cliff above Morningside Park, is the new Episcopalian Cathedral, now under con- struction, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The cornerstone was laid a quarter of a century ago; its final stone will not be laid for perhaps half a century still to come. Its tallest tower will rise to the height of 455 feet. The total cost of the structure — ^this must be mentioned, or it would not seem like New York — is to be more than six million dollars. Massive, huge in bulk, rising with much of mediaeval promise, it already gives indications of impressive- ness. In magnitude of conception it rivals the great cathedrals of the old world. As planned, it is to be of the immense length of 520 feet ; six feet longer than the Cathedral of Canterbury! The continued con- struction of this mighty structure will be watched with interest not only by New York but by all America. Twenty-five blocks due north from this, at West 271 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK 138th Street, at the edge of a rocky cliff, is the Col- lege of the City of New York, a widespreading mass of buildings, high-placed but not themselves high, im- pressive in their Tudor style, really beautiful in strong-contrasting dark and white, with a main tower, impressive and dignified, standing in domination of far-flung pinnacles and crockets and gables. The buildings are of native rock, and there is free use along the corners and around the windows and doorways of what looks like white stone but which is really glazed terra-cotta. In all, the buildings give an Oxford-like impression, and have beauty and distinc- tion, with their mullioned windows, their gargoyles, their towers, their pointed gables of stone, their fine doorways, their admirable design throughout. All they need now, to make them still more like Oxford, is a few centuries of existence and a long list of famous names associated with them. At 160th Street, on a height above the Harlem Eiver, stands a beautiful mansion, which has stood on this commanding height for more than a century and a half. Its outlook is widespread. As an ad- vertisement for its sale, as far distant as 1792, ex- pressed it : * * The house commands an extended view of the Hudson, of the East Eiver, the Harlem Eiver, Hell Gate, and the Sound. In front is seen the city of New York, and the high hills on Staten Island, dis- tant more than twenty miles. To the left are seen Long Island, Westchester, Morrisania, and the village of Harlem with its cultivated surrounding fields." The house was built by a British officer, Colonel 272 TO JUMEL AND VAN COKTLANDT Roger Morris, as a home for himself and his bride, that Mary Philipse whom Washington, as a young man, had warmly wooed : and in refusing George, who was to inherit a beautiful home in a superb situation, and in accepting Roger, Mary Philipse at least chose a man who could put up a beautiful home in a superb situation. It was a home of wealth. Pillar-fronted, balconied, fan-windowed, the house stands on its lofty height in sweet serenity. When the Revolution came, Morris and his wife fled to England, and this property was confiscated. For a month and a half it was Washington's headquarters previous to the loss of Fort Washington; and a tradi- tion — difficult to adjust, as to time, with the Fort Washington and Harlem Heights fighting — has it that a young woman, a very pretty vivandiere, approached him, at this house, and, reverently touching him on the arm ^reverently" is the word that has come down with the story), whispered to him what must have been a warning, for he and his staff were off like the wind, and in a few minutes a British regiment (tradition retains even the name of the regiment, which was the 42nd Highlanders, the famous Black Watch!) came creeping up the rocks, intent on a sur- prise and capture. The charming house, so charmingly set, has always maintained an atmosphere of fine living, except for some years following the war and the confiscation. It was during this period of neglect, when a farmer was in charge as caretaker, that Washington one day planned a delightful picnic. He and Mrs. 273 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK Washington drove out to Fort Washington : — it seems odd that he should have chosen a place of such tragic and unhappy memories for a picnic, but, presumably, it was on account of the mighty changes that had come that he chose the spot : for the United States had been established and recognized and he was its President on this day in July of 1790. The picnic party that gathered at the fort included John Adams, the Vice- President, and his wife, and General Knox, the Secre- tary of War, and his wife, and Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, and his wife, and Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, then a widower, his wife, who had worked and planned with him in the building of wonderful Monticello, having died. The picture of these great and charming folk pic- nicking out here, on the highest point of Manhattan, and wandering about the redoubts, and talking of what had already become ^^old times,'' is one to fascinate the fancy. And after a while, all left Fort Washing- ton, and drove over here to what we now call the Jumel Mansion, and there a formal dinner was served, with Washington as host, he having ordered it sent out from the city. One may presume that the thought must frequently have come to him, that he was in the house which had been the home of one whom he would gladly have made his wife ; and it may equally be pre- sumed that this was a fact which had never entered into his confidences with the agreeable Widow Custis, and did not now enter into his spoken recollection in the presence of the stately and still agreeable Mrs. Washington. 274 TO JUMEL AND VAN COKTLANDT But the associations most strongly connected with the house are those connected with the remarkable Jumels. For Stephen Jumel and his wife were indeed remarkable people. They had personality. They im- pressed themselves. Jumel was a French merchant doing business in New York. He bought this house in 1810. He had married an American woman of whose antecedents and personal history little was generally known, but there seems to have been no real ground for malicious stories which rival hostesses loved to whisper. Jumel and his wife became prominent as entertainers of the most distinguished foreign visitors to New York, and it was this remarkable success which made some rivals gossipingly ungenerous. The Jumels were rich. They were clever. They were likable. They were people of fine taste, and had lovingly repaired the fine old building, and restored it, just as it deserved to be repaired and restored. They could make themselves desired by great and brilliant folk, and they were themselves brilliant folk. Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain and of Naples, was entertained at this house by the Jumels. So was the King of Westphalia, Jerome Bonaparte. So was the Prince de Joinville. Lafayette was a guest here in 1825. And these were but a few of the great ones. Louis Napoleon was Madame JumePs guest here, in 1837, Stephen Jumel having died, and Napoleon went to France, assisted by her money, to make one of hiiS earlier attempts for ruler ship there. General 275 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK Sherman, in Civil War days, was among the latest of celebrities to be a Jumel guest. Jumel himself died in 1832. He and his wife had shone socially in the best circles in Paris as well as in New York, and especially under the Napoleonic regime. It was always understood and believed, al- though the matter cannot now be settled by what is termed positive proof, that either after the disasters preceding Elba, or those preceding St. Helena, Jumel had a ship, manned and equipped, ready to take Bona- parte to America, where, it is know, he very much wished to come, at least after Waterloo. In 1814 the Khedive of Egypt sent as a gift to Napoleon several hundred African cypress trees, young little trees, each with its roots wrapped up in a little bag filled with native earth. Napoleon's en- forced trip to Elba kept him from doing a great many things, including the planting of these trees, and the Jumels, finding them thrown aside, neglected, in the garden of the Tuileries, saw the opportunity to do a pretty thing. They could not take Napoleon to America; but they could take those trees, and save them from dying; and they did! And they planted them in their grounds, around a fish pond which was part of the estate of their mansion, at what is now the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue and 159th Street ; and many of them lived there, for almost a full century. I remember seeing some twenty of them still standing as recently as about 1910. The Jumel Mansion has been bought by the city to be preserved as a public possession and museum, and 276 TO JUMEL AND VAN CORTLANDT contains much old-time furniture. The house is roofed with shingles of great size; it has charming doorways ; it has a broad hall and admirable rooms ; catalpa and box bushes grow round about, the box having been procured from the box garden of Mt. Vernon. The history and associations of this house, and the personality of the Jumels, make altogether a bizarre and colorful picture in the history of New York. And most bizarre of all the associations was the second marriage of Madame Jumel. For here, the year after Jumel 's death, she was married to Aaron Burr. She had engaged Burr to attend to some law business, and he made court to her with the ardor of youth, almost eighty years old though he was, and she a woman of approaching sixty. She refused his suit, but, not willing to take such a rebuff. Burr one day appeared at the house and told her that he was there to marry her. He had with him the very minister who had officiated at his first mar- riage, fifty-one years before! The very boldness of it succeeded, and she permitted the marriage to pro- ceed. But the married life of the curious couple was short, and was ended by a separation and then a divorce, and Mrs. Burr continued to be known as Madame Jumel. And as Burr shortly thereafter died, the incident was thus doubly closed. Madame Jumel lived till about the age of ninety, not dying until 1865. Her life spanned American his- tory from Lexington to Appomattox. An old New Yorker tells me how^ she used to look in 277 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK her later years. She was still the grande dame, and he remembers seeing her driving, daily, in a high- swung calash; she impressed him — ^he was a young man then — as overdressed but impressive ; she usually wore canary-colored satin, and rouged her cheeks. They had never met, yet, passing each other daily, she seemed to recognize in him a young friend, and he liked to receive her friendly, stately bow. Fitz-Greene Halleck used to visit here, and it has always been understood that it was while he was a Jumel guest, in this house associated with the great- est men of our Revolution, where he could hear talk of Napoleon and his marshals that came from personal acquaintance with them, that, thus inspired, he wrote his right brave fighting lines : * ' Strike — till the last armed foe expires ; Strike — for your altars and your fires ; Strike — for the green graves of your sires; God, and your native land ! ' ' Far to the northward of the Jumel Mansion, on the farther side of the Harlem, close to the northern edge of Greater New York and the line of Yonkers, in the midst of one of the city's greatest parks. Van Cort- landt, still stands a delightful pre-Eevolutionary home, the Van Cortlandt Mansion. It is set in the midst of a level plain, hemmed in by low-rising slopes. It was built in 1748. It is spacious, dignified, and al- together sweet and charming in its setting in the midst of sweeping greenery. In its interior it is of fetching interest to those who 278 TO JUMEL AND VAN COETLANDT love the old, with its fireplaces, its paneling, its wain- scoting. It is kept up as a public museum to set forth the furniture and fittings of the past, and particu- larly of note are the fascinating chintzes, old wall hangings, with their pictures of such scenes as Penn ^s Treaty; and also of particular interest is the great cellar-kitchen, homelike and comfortable. But little of definite association or history is con- nected with this pleasing memento of the past. A wounded British officer died, within these walls, in the arms of his fiancee. Washington slept one night here, in 1781. He slept here one other night, in 1783, and this second time changed a traveling suit of clothes for a suit more fitting for New York. Which re- minds me of the house in Keswick, in England, where a tablet on the wall declares that within that building the Prince of Wales once changed his shirt. 279 CHAPTER XXII HAMILTON AND BUKR PLEASANT description has come down to us of pretty Eliza- beth Schuyler playing back- gammon with Benjamin L Franklin, at her home, the home of her father, the great Schuyler, in Albany, when she was but a charming young girl. '^He was very kind to me," she said long after- wards. The picture is not that of the usual Franklin, a man immersed in affairs, but of a kindly, a s^Tupa- thetic Franklin, a very human Franklin. Did his wise old eyes, which had seen so much, discern some sug- gestion of a sad future in the soft brightness of hers? It was not like busy old Benjamin to spend his time playing backgammon with a young girl, when his country needed all his thought. ^*He was very kind to me.'' One likes Franklin so much the better for these simple words of a girPs appreciation! She became the mfe of Alexander Hamilton, and a future of happiness seemed assured. But her eldest son was killed in a duel on the Weehawken bluffs. Three years afterwards, her husband was killed in a 280 HAMILTON AND BURR duel with Burr on the same spot. And then there fol- lowed a saddened widowhood of fifty long years. The Hamilton and Burr duel still looms vividly as the most intimate tragedy of New York. It is as if it took place but yesterday. The quarrel, and the duel, and the death of Hamilton, are still matters of concern. That Weehawken dueling ground was a fatal place in early New York days. It was a level spot on the face of the rocky cliff. There was no access from above : except at low tide it could not be approached even from below except by small boats. And finally it was blasted quite out of existence: although not until it had blasted a good many lives. Dueling was recognized by most men of Hamilton's day. He himself had once acted as a second. And so, when he carried on a long campaign of vilification against Burr, using fighting words," and using all of his great influence to keep Burr from the Gov- ernorship of New York and from the Presidency of the nation, it was not strange that a duel ended it all. The comparative character and aims of Hamilton and Burr have been so unquestioningly established by what is known as history that it would be altogether unprofitable to attempt a revision. One was abso- lutely good, the other absolutely bad, for history has it so. Almost all history represents the judgments and passions of the time of which it treats. The more deeply the historian delves, the more passion and prej- udice he unearths. The passion and prejudice may 281 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK represent the truth, in which case history will repre- sent the truth ; but it may be untruth, or it may be a mixture. The feeling of their day was intensely for Hamilton and as intensely against Burr, and there- fore we find the feeling perpetuated. Hamilton must have possessed great and admirable qualities. He had done great things. He had made powerful friends, and had even won the warm friend- ship of Washington. He had married into one of the great families. He had gained popular admiration. And he was killed by his rival, which added the final touch of glory to the one and of depravity to the other. The two men and their rivalry made so vivid an impression, not only in New York but in the whole country, that their story is as if of only yesterday. They were within less than a year of each other in age. They were within an inch of each other in height, and the height was below the average. They were greatly alike in ambition, in personal magnetism, in certainty of thought and swiftness of decision. For a time after the Eevolution, they were friends, and dominated the New York bar. One or the other was sure of the important cases. Judges feared their dominant way, their intellectual superiority. Then came political rivalry and jealousy. Hamilton, hon- ored and admired though he was, was not much con- sidered for high elective office ; his triumphs in office were in appointive service. Burr, on the other hand, had the kind of following that rallies at the polls, and he tied Jefferson for the Presidency, and became 282 HAMILTON AND BURE Vice-President when the election had to be decided by the House of Eepresentatives. It was in 1804 that the fatal clash came. The home of Hamilton was at that time the Grange, as it was called, a building still standing, moved indeed from its original location, but still in the same general neigh- borhood, it now being on Convent Avenue, close against a modern brown-stone church. It seems curious that Hamilton, a lawyer in active practice, should have made his home, in those early days, far up there on Washington Heights, miles northward from what was then the city, although within the limits of Manhattan Island. But it was because he was a far-sighted man financially ; because he anticipated vast increase in land values; and, too, because he personally loved to live in the coun- try. The appearance of his house has been largely al- tered, but it may still be seen what it originally was : a square-fronted house, with a huge portico, and with a projecting central octagon room. The fine cornice lines show the original dentils and triglyphs ; there is a fine old doorway, with glass in designs of easy-curving circles and semi-circles; and the roof and the portico are liberally balustraded. It was from this house that Hamilton went forth to his death in his duel across the Hudson, and it was from this house that Mrs. Hamilton and the seven children were hurriedly driven far down to 82 Jane Street, in Greenwich Village, when the news of the duel came, to see him before he died. The 283 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK house to which he was carried was that of a friend, William Bayard, and it has now disappeared. Burr at that time lived in the great mansion known as Eichmond Hill, which stood a little north of St. John's Park, where Charlton Street crosses Varick or, more strictly, on a knoll in the center of an estate within the block now bounded by King, Varick, Charl- ton and Macdougal Streets. Though long ago de- stroyed, Eichmond Hill is still remembered as a name which, more than any other, stands in the popular imagination as representative of old New York. It was built by a British commissary in 1760 ; it was afterwards occupied, in turn, by Lord Amherst and Sir William Carleton; in 1776 it was lived in for a short time by Washington; it w^as the home of John Adams when he lived in New York as Vice-President ; and afterward it became the home of Aaron Burr. On what is now Spring Street, just west of Mac- dougal, was the gateway through which Burr quietly walked on his way to the duel, and through which some hours later he returned, outwardly so calm and unconcerned that one who knew him well, and talked with him in the library of his splendid home, merely noticed that he was, as usual, calm and perfectly at ease ; and when the friend left and went out into the streets, he was amazed to learn that Burr had that morning fought a duel and that the city was aflame with excitement over Hamilton's impending death. Down in Old Trinity churchyard is a simple monu- ment, rising pyramidally from a base with curved corners; it was long ago erected by the corporation 284 HAMILTON AND BUKR of the church in honor of Hamilton, who is buried beneath it. The very unostentation of this memento mori would give no indication of the tremendous im- pression which his death in reality made. The entire city mourned. Guns boomed from the vessels in the harbor, both French and American, while his funeral was in progress. It is still told that his sword and his hat lay on his coffin, and that in front of this was led, by two black servants, his favorite gray horse, with spurred boots swinging reversed ; the black men being dressed in white, with white turbans bound in crape. And more than any other citizen of the city, Alexander Hamilton still fills the eye of New York. Burr, the rival, was a man of singular personal charm. There was probably, one may presume, something untrustworthy in him, to explain how he could gain the deep distrust of such men as Washing- ton, Jefferson and Hamilton; and yet, the friends of Burr declared that the other two men were mainly moved in their judgment by Hamilton's bitter ani- mosity to Burr and by their confidence in the judg- ment of Hamilton. In private life, the characteristic for which Burr is most held in opprobrium, his relations with women, was a characteristic of Hamilton also, although he has escaped the odium ; an advantage that came from his being a popular idol. Whatever of the sinister or the unscrupulous there may have been in Burr's methods and aims, and there seems to have been much, he was a man of pro- found mind, of deep sagacity, of infinite daring, of 285 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK sweeping ambition. When he saw that the duel had closed forever his hopes of further power within the United States, he pictured a mighty empire to rise be- yond the Appalachians, with himself as its head. His plan would have taken the Mississippi Valley from the United States, and had he been a loyal American he could not, therefore, have considered it; but the temptation was immense, and he felt embittered be- cause the United States had so turned against him. One of the most romantic episodes in American history was that of Burr's projected empire. He was stirred by the example of Napoleon, then in the sweep of power. As Napoleon had carved for him- self an empire in Europe, he would do the same in America. Burr would be another Napoleon. And he was not only a lawyer and statesman but had been an excellent soldier. The country beyond the Appalachians had from the first exerted a charm on brave and romantic minds. Sir Walter Scott has said that the adherents of the Young Pretender" planned a kingdom for him on the other side of these mountains after the failure of 1745 ; and what a romantic effort it would have been! Jefferson and Burr, most romantic- minded of American statesmen, were alike in seeing the possibilities of the great West; but the broad patriotism of Jefferson brought to achievement the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clarke Expe- dition, whereas Burr expected to develop the West for himself or not at all. With the Mississippi Val- 286 HAMILTON AND BUEE ley he would have united Mexico, then ready for a strong and astute ruler to assume control. The whole episode of Blennerhasset Island, and Burr's winning of the profound allegiance of the learned Blennerhasset and his attractive wife, who had made a bookish paradise in the distant wilder- ness, is among the real things of history that are full of what seems impossible romance. How little any one could have suspected, in those days of splendid dreams, that Mrs. Blennerhasset was to die, in wretched poverty, in New York City, cared for in her last moments by a Sister of Charity who learned of her plight, and that Burr himself, with all his am- bitions at length crushed, was to creep about New York in the shadow of straitened means and scorn ! Men and munitions were gathered there on the Ohio Elver island for the beginning of the attempt, and the flotilla started down the stream; and in the bravery of it all, the wonderful picturesqueness, the gay insouciance, one almost forgets that in the pro- jected seizing of New Orleans, and making it the capital of the Mississippi-Mexico Empire, Burr was acting treasonably. But it all failed, failed absolutely, and although the trial of Burr for treason also failed, the man himself had won only an added degree of distrust and dislike. He went to England; and there for a time one sees him in his most attractive aspect, meeting the literary and the artistic and walking and talking with rigid Jeremy Bentham, for that man of unclarity of ex- pression found delight in the absolute clarity of Burr. 287 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK And now Burr learned that England feared him! Jefferson, his great enemy, who had carried on the bitterness of Hamilton, was now President, and let it be quietly intimated to England that she was har- boring a man with Napoleon-like ambitions; where- upon Burr was asked to leave the country. Very well, he would go to France. **But no!'* Then to Ireland. * * No, a thousand times no ! ' ' Then, asked England, suavely — how her mind even then ran to putting opposition leaders on rocky islands ! — Won't you go to Helgoland? It is a pleasant little island with fine sea breezes?" At which Burr laughed, and, not caring for a rocky island, accepted instead the invitation of the Swedish Minister to visit Sweden, whence he went to Paris, and there again he busied himself with meeting the literary and the artistic as if politics and ambition had never disturbed his mind. He was watched closely by the secret police of Napoleon, who were quite puzzled by him. By the great Corsican himself America was always taken very seriously, and he must have wondered just what Burr was planning to do, and meanwhile was frankly puzzled by the presence of this handsome and urbane American. After a while, Burr quietly went back to New York again and again took up the practice of law, but he did not now make much of a success of it, as great clients stood aloof, for the public mind was so set against him that although, in the past, courts had scarcely dared decide against him, it was now the case 288 HAMILTON AND BURE that courts scarcely dared decide in his favor. He went quietly about the city in an atmosphere of aver- sion. Toward the end of his long life he married Madame Jumel, but was quickly unmarried, and soon thereafter went to his grave. 5| 289 CHAPTER XXIII WHERE MANY THOUSANDS DWELL ANY thousands still dwell on Manhattan Is- land, in spite of the spread of business sec- tions and the immense increase in growth of suburban population ; in fact, Manhattan is still the dwelling place not only of thousands but of many hundreds of thousands; but other hun- dreds of thousands prefer to live in the other boroughs or in the surrounding towns near by, and to come in, they and their families, for business and for a great part of their pleasure. Those who do not live within the liniits of Manhattan are rather disrespectfully re- ferred to as sleeping outside of the city,'' by the true Manhattanite, who will not even admit Brooklyn to the fold, although in the late nineties Brooklyn became officially part of Greater New York as the Borough of Brooklyn. It had long been the third city in the Union, in size, but was quietly absorbed, 290 WHERE MANY THOUSANDS DWELL and has since increased hugely in size ; subways and new bridges have opened all of it to easy access, and its once marked characteristic of miles and miles of individual homes is swiftly changing to miles and miles of apartment houses, and whole areas of tene- ments, filled with foreigners, are in the quiet old streets of the part long called Williamsburgh. Plymouth Church, a great barnlike structure on Orange Street, is by far the most famous building of Brooklyn, for it was for forty years the church of the most eloquent pulpit orator that America has pro- duced. And it should not be forgotten that Beecher won his way superbly in England and was there a splendid force for America in the dark days of our Civil War. And of what strange characteristics was he com- pounded — this orator-preacher who liked to have in front of him at dinner a dish full of uncut gems, for the sensuous pleasure of running his fingers through them, and feeling them, and watching them sparkle and glow! But he was more than a great preacher and a great public man ; he was also a man of vast kindliness, never too occupied or too weary to help any one who needed help. Prospect Park is something else of which Brook- lyn is justly proud, for it is so big and so attractive, and it includes what is still known as Battle Pass, which was a critical point in the Battle of Long Is- land, and its principal entrance is through a striking memorial archway set up in honor of the men of the Civil War. Brooklyn has also an important and 291 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK growing museum, and it has Greenwood Cemetery, to which every visitor to New York from other parts of the country w^as expected to pilgrimage in the good old days. And Brooklyn has a great Navy Yard, and here, beside it, in Wallabout Bay, were moored the dread- ful prison-ships, the Jersey and others, in Eevo- lutionary days : and in Fort Greene Park are buried most of the men who died in those ships, their bodies having been long ago gathered by the Tammany Society, which buried them here with honor. I think the general impression in regard to these prison-ship martyrs — really martyrs, for most of them died through cruelty and not from the necessities of war conditions — is that there were but a few men in all, but in reality the bones of fully eleven thousand of them rest here. The horror of those English hulks made an indelible impression upon the people of all the Thirteen Colonies, and traditions of the harrow- ing inhumanity exist to this day. And of these men Whitman, with noble appreciation, wrote: * ' Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander, Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones, Once living men — once resolute courage, aspiration, strength, The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America/' Two miles or so due east from here, still within the city but in the Borough of Queens, is Jamaica, where, in King Park, is preserved a square-fronted house 292 WHERE MANY THOUSANDS DWELL with a gambrel roof, which was the country home of Eufus King, who was one of the first two United States Senators from New York, and Minister to England under three Presidents. Some miles to the northeast of Jamaica is ancient Flushing, also within the present limits of the city. It was settled by the Dutch, and given the name of Vlissingen, in honor of the old port in Holland, Vlis- singen, or Flushing. Here there still stands a very ancient house, al- though not quite so ancient as the settlement, and it was built by an English Quaker named John Bowne. It is in all probability the very oldest building in or near New York. It was built in 1661 : which was so long ago that the news of the Stuart Restoration had scarcely reached this country ! The Dutch ruled New York then, but shortly thereafter the English seized the colony. Fox, the great Quaker leader, was a guest in this house when on a visit to America. It is a smallish house, dormer-windowed, a house of atmosphere, and in some curious way manages to give an effect of quaint Quakerism. And it vividly, by its very existence, its very presence here, is re- mindful of the far distant Dutch rule. The entire Long Island portion of Greater New York, both the Borough of Queens and that of Brook- lyn, is a vast district of homes: and not only is it where so many hundreds of thousands sleep, but it is where many, even from Manhattan, sleep their final sleep, for Long Island has been given many a ceme- tery. Brooklyn has, in particular, Greenwood, and 293 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK there are great areas of cemeteries of all kinds and qualities in the Borough of Queens, the ferries from Manhattan to Long Island City and Greenpoint fre- quently having two or three funerals at one time on them, with other carriages left on the pier for the next boat. It is stated that more than a fifth of the area of Queen's Borough is given over to graveyards. Enormous numbers of New Yorkers make their homes in New Jersey, or Jersey" as it is often called, or even ^'the Jerseys"; this delightful and old-fashioned-seeming phrase being still in use; and the usage has meaning, for in early Colonial days New Jersey was long divided between two govern- ments, like the Carolinas. If the fact of being in another State had not pre- vented, a great number of the New Jersey suburbs would long ago have been taken into New York City, just as so much of Long Island has been annexed and what is known as the Bronx, the great annexed ter- ritory beyond the Harlem River, with its half mil- lion of people. The name of Bronx comes from that of the earliest settler there, Bronck, who is on record as having owned six white shirts : and it is worth while to re- member that Morrisania, an old manor, and then a village within the present Bronx, was once seriously proposed to Congress as the Capital of the United States, and that City Island, which is also in the Bronx, was to out-rival Manhattan in business pros- perity. Wolfert Webber lived somewhere in Bronx-land, 294 WHERE MANY THOUSANDS DWELL and, as imagined by Irving, took to his bed from grief when he learned that streets were to be cut through his property, but arose joyously when his lawyer explained that it meant fortune and not ruin. Well, streets have been cut through the Bronx, streets infinite in number: and Irving was clearly a real- estate prophet, though without sufficient confidence in his own insight to get real estate profit out of it. Far over in the eastern part of the Bronx is Hutch- inson River, reminder of the fact that the persecuted Anne Hutchinson, driven from New England with her children, made her home near this bit of water, and that the cabin was burned by the Indians and she and her children were slain: and it is not pleasant to know that the stern Boston clergy — it was at the time of the beginning of the Cromwell wars — offered up thanks because ' ' God had made a heavy example of a woful woman." Within the present Pelham Bay Park, Colonel Glover, with only seven or eight hundred men, halted a force of some four thousand under Lord Howe, for a long enough time to permit Washington to make a move towards White Plains : and in 1814 two British gunboats bombarded American batteries located in what is now this park — this being the last time that British guns were hostilely heard in New York. In Eastchester still stands a charmingly attractive old church, that of St. Paul's, built in 1765, and still looking out over the ancient churchyard, with its flock of old white stones, which date back many years be- fore this to the time of a still earlier St. PauPs. It 295 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK is a romantic-looking church of field stone, a high- shouldered church, with a square tower set in front, topped with a little white belfry; the kind of old- fashioned church and churchyard that makes you think of the curfew which tolls the knell of parting day and of lowing herds winding slowly o'er the lea, in spite of the fact that this charming reminder of the past is now threatened with eclipse through changing surroundings. The Bronx also has great Botanical Gardens and a Zoological Garden, which are largely under the city's control ; and it is believed that nowhere are wild ani- mals exhibited in such a striking and extensive en- vironment of trees and rocks and water. So immense is the area of the city that the suburbs do not begin until one is miles away from the city's center. Except for Jersey City and Hoboken, which are independent cities rather than places of suburban living, the suburbs of New York do not begin within less than a dozen miles or so; whereas with other cities with important suburbs, such as Boston and Philadelphia, the suburbs mainly end within a dozen miles. New York, beginning its suburbs at the dozen miles, claims suburbanites and commuters from far- flung towns that are forty or even fifty miles away. To the eye of the trained New Yorker, one who has opportunity to know all types and who has habituated himself to look closely at them, there are certain marks of differentiation. The Westchester family can usually be picked from the family of New Jersey, 296 WHERE MANY THOUSANDS DWELL and the New Jersey family from that of suburban Long Island; and the Brooklyn family is in a class by itself. New Rochelle, up the Sound a little beyond Pelham Bay Park, touches the imagination because of its having been settled, in the long ago, by Huguenots who fled from religious persecution in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The visitor finds few reminders of those early times, but the blood of those long-ago Huguenots is a prized strain in some of the leading New York families. New Rochelle represents religious persecution ; but it also is remindful of something very like irreligious persecution, for the brilliant Thomas Paine, he of the * ^ times that tried men 's souls, ' ^ was given by Congress a confiscated estate of three hundred acres at the edge of the village of New Rochelle for his services in the course of the Revolution, and he lived there for a time, but did not find the place entirely congenial as a home, his beliefs making him persona non grata to the leading people ; whereupon he went to New York, and thence to its Greenwich Village, and it was there in Greenwich that he died. His last request was that he be buried by the Quak- ers, his father having been one of that sect, but on account of his infidel opinions the Quakers refused the request. His poor funeral on the long, lonely journey from Greenwich Village to his New Rochelle farm, has been described, with brief eloquence, by Ingersoll: **In the carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead — on horse- 297 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK back a Quaker the humanity of whose heart domi- nated the creed of his head — and following on foot, two negroes, filled with gratitude. ' ^ Strange as was Paine *s career in America, in Eng- land, in France — ^in France he was elected a deputy to the National Convention, and when Louis the Six- teenth was tried urged that his life be spared and that he be sent to America — the most striking event of his extraordinary career was, to use a Hibernian- ism, something he did not do, for he was chosen, by Napoleon, to arrange and introduce a popular form of government for Great Britain after he. Napoleon, should have conquered the island! After he had been buried on his farm in New Ro- chelle for some years, his friend, the English agitator, William Cobbett, decided to remove his bones to England; and he actually got them over there, in a bag ; that they were * 4n a bag ' ' has been remembered ; but he seems to have mislaid the bag of bones some- where, perhaps forgot it in hurrying out from some inn to catch a stage, in which case one may imagine the disappointment of the waiter who examined it. And thus vanished *^Tom'' Paine. Paine 's home in New Eochelle is still standing, and maintained as a museum: a pleasant cottage stand- ing in a hollow beside the present level of the road ; an attractive-looking old house, shingle-sided, green- shuttered, with a pleasant garden beside it with old- fashioned flowers. A romantic memory of New Rochelle is that the 298 WHERE MANY THOUSANDS DWELL Huguenots, before they had built a church for them- selves there, used to walk to New York, on Com- munion Sundays, to worship at a church of their faith ; and they sang together old French hymns and chorals, as they walked the long and weary way ; and it is a picture that remains with one and shows what manner of men the early settlers of the Empire State were. The road has little to remind one, now, of that early day; but still, in fancy, one hears those French voices. It is romance at our very doors. The church in New York to which they used to walk was that of St. Esprit ; it was built in 1688, in Petti- coat Lane, now Marketfield Street, beside the Produce Exchange. Afterwards the congregation worshiped for one hundred and thirty years on Pine Street, and are now located at 45 East 27th Street ; and the service is still held in the French tongue, just as the Huguenot service survives in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral in England. The commuters of to-day would not care to walk to New York from New Rochelle, or from any of the myriad other suburban towns from which they come in, six mornings of the week, filling every seat of innumerable trains. And suburban living has im- mensely increased through the influence of the motor- car, which has added such unexpected pleasures and possibilities to home life away from the city. Of course, the kind of suburban living that ties down the father to a life divided between office hours and travel hours has its disadvantages : one of them 299 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK being the slight acquaintance that can come between himself and his family : and it is not entirely humor which makes the basis of this story told me as true, about a small boy over in New Jersey, who was being most carefully and particularly brought up by his devoted parents. He had reached the age of six with- out such an unhygienic thing as a pet when the ice- man, who was sorry for him, brought him a pup, a genuine one with a short tail, a real bark and great devotion. The small boy loved the pup at sight and his parents had to yield and let him keep it. It was named Paddy in honor of the iceman and came to be the object of the boy's devoted love. One day when the boy was away, the dog was run over by an automobile and killed. The mother, think- ing there would be great grief and distress when her small son learned of it, waited until the boy had had his supper and then said : ^*My son, I have news that will grieve you. This afternoon your Paddy was killed by an automobile. ' ' The boy looked at his plate and then at his mother and said: am very sorry." Then, quietly after a pause : ^ ' May I go out and tell the boys ? ' ' He was gone half an hour and came back and went quietly upstairs with his nurse to go to bed. Sud- denly there were wild cries and wails from the bed- room, loud and many of them, and his mother went upstairs two steps at a time. * ' Mother, mother, Paddy is dead ! " he cried. * * Yes, my son, but why are you so excited now? He 300 WHERE MANY THOUSANDS DWELL is no more dead than when I told you about it an hour ago. ' ' **Yes, I know you told me — sobbed the boy — **but I did not understand — I thought you said Daddy was dead.'' 301 CHAPTER XXIV UP THE HUDSON HE viewpoint of the Dutch of New Amsterdam of three hun- dred years ago was always dis- tinctly their own. For exam- ple, when they made the pali- saded wall which in time gave name to Wall Street, it was not as a precaution against In- dians, but to provide a defense against the probable advance of New Englanders, who were expected to come sweeping down from Massachusetts and Connecticut. "When they named the Hudson the North River, thus geographically puzzling the gen- erations, it was not because of any relation of the river to New York, but because it was the principal stream along the northern part of the Dutch posses- sions, just as the Delaware, the South River as they called it, was the principal stream in the other direc- tion. The North River was slow in coming to prominence, except as a waterway to Albany. Verazzano must have sailed up far enough to see the Palisades, be- 302 UP THE HUDSON cause, in his description, he tells of the steep hills'' from amid which there ran down to the sea **an ex- ceeding great stream of water/' But there was no farming country along the river 's banks ; there were just the swampy * * Jersey Meadows, ' ' behind the Pali- sades, and then miles and miles of wonderful scenery. The ice remained longer in the North River than in the East, because the East River is mainly salt water and the North mainly fresh; in addition, Manhattan Island, on the side toward the Hudson, had much of swamp and sluggish water and hills, and was a region not to be compared, for practical development, with that on the eastern side of the island, therefore busi- ness and residences sought, for a long time, the east- ward side. But at length the North River won supremacy. It won the most important ferries. It won the great ocean steamers. The total mileage of docks of the en- tire harbor of New York is more than double that of London, and more than four times that of Liverpool. In one particular, that of ferries, there are fewer boats in the New York waters than there were, for the great under-river tunnels are more and more taking their place ; but the ferries are more than replaced by an increase in other ships. The ferries were a fea- ture in New York life that mightily struck the fancy of Walt Whitman ; they afforded him, as he expressed it, * ^ inimitable, streaming, never-failing living poems." As you go up the great Hudson, you pass, on the right, old Greenwich and Chelsea, and on the left the 303 THE BOOK OF NEW YO'KK heights of Weehawken, where used to be the duehng ledge. The long stretch of Eiverside Park is passed, with Grant's Tomb looming lofty and grand; and on the left one sees the Palisades, basalt cliffs rising abruptly for miles from the river's edge; and in the distance looms Indian Head, misty and mysterious and pictorial. There is constantly increasing beauty and in a few miles Yonkers is reached; and it is a place of fasci- nating memories, for here, as a girl and as a young woman, lived that Mary Philip se whom Washington loved and whom he wished to marry. He was then only twenty-four, but was staider and steadier than his years by reason of his early meeting important responsibilities, and Mary Philipse on her part, then twenty-six, was probably younger than her years, for she was rich, lived in a beautiful home, was univer- sally admired, and had a host of friends. The old Philipse Manor Hall still stands, in Yon- kers, in the heart of a business district which in noth- ing else displays any romantic tendency; but a portrait oi Mary Philipse herself shows her as an exceedingly wholesome young woman, dressed decol- lete, with eyes which seem demurely alight with fun. The rose on the bodice, the sloping shoulders, the short curls piquantly in front of the ears, the little flat lace cap with bow tied primly beneath the chin, the long nose, the high-arched brows, the candor of ex- pression, all these assist in showing why the suscep- tible George liked her. And another reason for lik- 304 UP THE HUDSON ing her was that she was the daughter of a very great family and at the same time wealthy in her own right. The old Manor Hall was built in 1682 by artisans imported from England for the finest work, and was enlarged in the following century. The greater part of its splendid gardens and hedges, which ran down to the Hudson, which was then in full view, long since disappeared, but even yet there is a general air of charm and spaciousness, and the house is interesting even in the midst of uninteresting surroundings, standing as it does with towering old horse-chestnuts beside it, w^ith green grass round about, with thriving old box bushes at the southern doorway, and with a hedge of privet. The shutters of solid wood, the balustraded hip-roof, the dormer windows, the pillared and dentiled little porticoes, the broad door opening in Dutch fashion in two halves (for the original Philipse of over a century before the Eevo- lution was himself a Dutchman), instantly rouse in- terest. The great fireplaces still remain. There is wealth of ancient paneling and cornices, and the main stair- case is notable among American staircases, with its great twirl around the newel post and its twirled baluster and banister-rail with a charming ramp. There are delightfully suggestive window seats; and always one thinks of Washington and Mary Philipse. It was a place of splendid hospitality. In the garret were quarters for fifty servants. Distin- guished visitors and travelers, who arrived in New York, were, as a matter of course, asked to visit here 305 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK at Yonkers. And so it naturally happened that "Washington was invited, as he was a distinguished young Virginian and officer; and in addition, he was a close friend of Beverly Robinson, also a Virginian, who had married Mary Philipse^s sister. It is one of the most curious facts in regard to New York City, that not only was George Washington con- nected with many of the most important happenings in its history, but almost every old building, that has been preserved in or near the city, had some interest- ing connection with his career. It was in 1756 that Washington was at Yonkers. He was then in the military service, and was on his way to Boston to confer with Governor Shirley in re- gard to some military matters and also to describe to Shirley the circumstances of the death of his son at Braddock's defeat — a trip which gave Washington in- valuable information in regard to Boston, where he was to be in command, and besieging the British, twenty years later. For that early trip to Boston Washington had equipped himself with even more than usual mag- nificence; with gold lace, with silk stockings and ruffled shirts, with blue velvet and broadcloth ; and he was accompanied on the trip by two white servants, each dressed in complete livery, with much of scarlet, and each wearing a silver-laced hat. And it is inter- esting to know that Washington's horse was elabor- ately outfitted with the Washington crest on the housings. For his own use the young officer, a gay cavalier indeed, also had with him three gold-and- 306 UP THE HUDSON scarlet sword-knots, three silver-and-blue sword- knots and a gold-laced hat. And somehow, when one thinks of his seemingly ceaseless sartorial solicitude, there come to mind the lines of the irreverent versifier who wrote : George Washington worked hard, they say, And went unshaved on many a weary tramp, And very seldom looked the way He does upon a postage stamp. ' ' Washington stayed in New York and Yonkers from February 18 to 25, and for much of that time, in both places, was in the company of members of the Philipse family. His diary mentions his expenses on the trip, and several items are for the entertaining of ladies'' in New York; among other things, he took the ladies, one of whom was Mary Philipse, to a play called **The Microcosm." He also notes the spend- ing of considerable sums for new clothes — he being neither the first man nor the last to spend money on ladies and new clothes in New York ! There can be no positive proof that Washington wished to marry Mary Philipse. He was a gentle- man, and not even in his diary, to which he confided so much, did he set down that he had proposed to Mary Philipse and had been refused; neither did Mary Philipse, w^ho was a lady, make it public that Washington had asked her to be his mfe; but that all this was really the case, is as certain as anything very well can be, and is very much more certain than the greater part of what generally passes for history. 307 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK Washington called again on the Philipse family on his return, through New York, southward, and when he reluctantly left he asked a friend to keep him advised as to what might happen, and after a while this friend, who was Joseph Chew of New London, Connecticut, a frequent visitor to New York and a fellow guest with Washington at Beverly Eobinson's, wrote several letters to Washington in one of which he gave the information that ' ' Colonel Eoger Morris was pressing his suit,'' which tailor-like warning was followed by strong advice to take action. With the free and easy capitalization of the time, he wrote: **How can you be Excused to Continue so long at Philadelphia? I think I should have made a kind of Flying march of it if it had been only to have seen whether the Works were sufficient to withstand a Vigorous Attack — you, a Soldier and a Lover. I will not be wanting to let Miss Polly" (by which name he usually referred to Mary Philipse) ^^know the sincere Regard a Friend of mine has for her and I am sure if she had my Eyes to see thro, she would Prefer him to all others." The descendants of Mary Philipse in England long retained, and believed, the story that Washington, on receipt of this letter, hurried to New York, and, arriving there on a winter's evening, sought and ob- tained an interview with Mary Philipse at once, but only to find that she was already the promised wife of his rival, Eoger Morris. Eoger Morris had been a fellow soldier with Washington in the Braddock campaign, and after his 308 UP THE HUDSON marriage served under Wolfe at the capture of Quebec. He and his wife together planned and built the house on Manhattan Island which is usually referred to as the Jumel Mansion. Close to beautiful Lake Mahopac, which lay within the tract of forty thousand acres that Mary Philip se owned in her own right, they made a little summer lodge, whose foun- dations may still be seen, overgrown by a tangle of vines. To the entire Philipse connection the Eevolution brought disaster. Their property was confiscated, and they fled to England under penalty of death should they return. The grim proclamation may still be read, specifying not only the men of the Philipse family, with Beverly Eobinson and Roger Morris, but, also by name, Susannah Eobinson and Mary Morris, the two sisters of Frederick Philipse, Lord of the Manor, for the two sisters were each of them immense holders of real estate in their own right; the unfamiliar-seeming ^^Mary Morris" being, of course, she who had been Mary Philipse. In the solemn quiet of the ancient cathedral of Chester, in Wales, there was called to my attention, as an American, a forgotten tablet set into one of the great pillars, a tablet which, with measured and lengthy phrasing, tells that it was placed there in memory of Frederick Philipse. It sets forth his domestic and religious virtues, his devotion to his King, his great losses for loyalty, his fleeing for life from his confiscated estates; but I noticed also that in the record of self-sacrifice it could only mention 309 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK that he had fled, not that he had fought, and that it did not refer to the fact that the English government paid him, when an exile in England, the, at that time, enormous sum of sixty thousand pounds as at least a partial recompense for his losses. Eoger Morris, a banished man, though frankly- opposed to the war, died while the man whom he had rivaled was President. And Mary Philipse herself, his widow, died in 1825, at the great age of ninety- five; and both husband and wife are buried in old York of England instead of in the New York of their early lives. In 1776, before the confiscation and while there was danger of the horses and cattle of the Philipse estate being seized by American soldiers, Washington wrote to the wife of Mary's brother, Frederick Philipse, the Lord of the Manor, he being absent and Mrs. Philipse being in charge of the estate, assuring her that every possible consideration would be show, and adding briefly, as a postscript, beg the favor of having my compliments presented to Mrs. Morris.'* On the walls of the ancient house is a collection of portraits of distinguished Americans ; they are paint- ings by Sully and Eembrandt Peale and Copley, and others, including even Gilbert Stuart; a few are copies and the others are originals; there are por- traits of such men as Laurence and Lee, Jefferson and Monroe, General Gates and General Knox, and there is even what claims to be a portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin West: in all, a fascinating galaxy. 310 UP THE HUDSON \ Beyond Yonkers, at Dobbs* Ferry, is what is left of the old Livingston mansion ; near here the French soldiers under Rochambeau joined the American forces; here the papers were signed by Washington and Sir Guy Carleton for the evacuation of New j York; opposite this point, on May 8, 1783, a British ; sloop of war fired the first salute given by Great j Britain in recognition of the government of America. j A little beyond Dobbs ^ Ferry the Hudson opens out j into the superb Tappan Zee with its width of three < miles ; and on the right, at the beginning of the Zee, ^ is Irvington, where still stands Sunnyside, the de- 1 lightful house so kept in loving memory as the home j most associated with Washington Irving. ' It was built after the Revolution on the site of a i preceding house which had been burned by the j British ; it was a little farmhouse when Irving bought i it, and he named it Wolfert^s Roost, and described it ) in one of his stories. He gradually rebuilt and en- \ larged the place to its present dimensions. It is freely ornamented with corbels on the gables, remind- i ful of the Dutch, and has a sort of Spanish tower at ) one side, reminiscent of his residence in Spain as ^ United States Minister. i The house stands on a level spot just a little above the river; it is a sort of day dream of peacefulness, a stone house, low-set, rambling, many-gabled, ivy- clad. Nothing is more certain than that houses often express the character of their owners, and this house : is to this day expressive of its romantic, traveled, imaginative, fireside-loving owner. 311 i i THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK Irving 's own description of it before he made the alterations was as a little old-fashioned stone man- sion, all made up of gable ends, and as full of angles and corners as an old cocked haf ; and this word * kittle," used more as a term of endearment than as literally descriptive, although it might have fairly described the house before he began his enlarge- ments, certainly does not well describe the house at the present time, except by contrast with the huge erections, its neighbors, the homes of the rich folk of the present day. Less than three miles above Irvington, and looking out upon the Tappan Zee in its broadest part, is Tarrytown, beloved of wealthy folk and especially of the Rockefellers; a town placed in a setting of ex- quisite beauty. All of this region, along the Hudson, glimmers softly in the twilight of romance, for it is so fascinat- ing in itself and in its legends and has been so touched with unforgetable beauty by the pen of Irving. A magnificent motoring roadway, lined by residences, leads on parallel to the river, and is never very far from the waterside, along the line of the old post-road; and a monument, surmounted by the figure of a watching scout, is noticed, and you stop and look at its inscription — and you feel a swift thrill, and in an instant the present has vanished and you are back in the distant past, for this marks the spot where Major Andre was stopped by the three American scouts. And what a picture vividly comes ! 312 UP THE HUDSON — the annoyed and gradually very much concerned major, and the ragged Americans searching this very fine gentleman and finding the proofs of his disgrace- ful dealings with a traitor. And in particular comes the picture of one of the three, who wears a long green shabby coat, for with- out this coat there would have been no arrest. For Paulding, one of the scouts, had been a prisoner in one of the dreadful New York military prisons, and had made his escape through the aid of a negro wo- man whose sympathy he had won and who had been able to give him a Hessian green coat as a disguise to escape in — and this coat Paulding was still wearing, and it was this which caused Andre, when unexpect- edly stopped here, so near the British lines, to declare at once that he was English. Immediately above the scene of Andre's capture is Sleepy Hollow : name of delicious memory, for this is the region where Ichabod Crane seems to be forever galloping on, even though the original bridge over which he and the Headless Horseman clattered has vanished and even though the road itself has here been slightly changed from its original line. And the name of Sleepy Hollow evokes also the picture of others of the Irving creations, for even though they did not live precisely here. Sleepy Hollow is the name which seems most to represent them. The atmosphere of it all is still here, and here is Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, with its ancient little church, and with its names of Dutch magnates of the 313 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK early days. And that Washington Irving himself is buried in this graveyard, not far from the little old church, is the finest and sweetest of memories. *'Here lies the gentle humorist, who died In the bright Indian Summer of his fame ! A simple stone, with but a date and name, Marks his secluded resting-place beside The river that he loved and glorified. ' ' *^A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land^': thus Irving himself wrote of it, and the words may still be used, in spite of millionaires and non-millionaires, in spite of modern homes and whiz- zing motors; for mountain and stream and sky and forest still give the region an air of loneliness. Ten miles above Tarrytown, on the other side of the river, a rocky, thickly-wooded, slender-necked peninsula juts prominently into the stream: it is well above the water, but has no height when com- pared with that of the surrounding mountains. Rem- nants of fortifications are still plainly to be found — and this is Stony Point, the scene of one of the most brilliant military assaults of all history. Anthony Wayne led the Americans, following a plan carefully devised by Washington. **I11 storm hell if you'll plan it ! '' declared Wayne ; whereupon, with a twinkle : Hadn't we better try Stony Point first?" On the eastern side of the river, diagonally across from Stony Point, is a broad low projection called Verplanck's Point; and here was a great level drill- ing ground, which, more than any other place, is asso- 314 UP THE HUDSON ciated with the invaluable drilling given to the Con- tinental troops by the immensely capable Baron Steuben. Should you wander over Verplanck's Point you would find, for it is of great extent, fields and mead- ows and woody paths and clay banks, and here and there some shabby ancient house; on the whole, the district is not very different from what it was in Rev- olutionary days, except that it shows less of comfort- able living and more of brickmaking. Looking at Verplanck's from the river you see the old-time road leading down to the gravelly ferry landing of the old King^s Ferry, so vitally important in the Revolu- tionary War. So much is the present aspect like the aspect of the past, that the past seems very, very real. The river twists among the mountains, great black mountains, massed with trees, that tower up rug- gedly from the very water ^s edge. And of course such a wild region, so near New York, could not es- cape legends of Captain Kidd and his treasure. Among these heights on the western side of the river has been built, for miles, a bowlder-bordered road of smoothest macadam. It is the Harriman Drive; built for the free use of the motoring public. Beginning a little south of West Point, it sweeps and curves for miles among heights and valleys that have hitherto been unknown and inaccessible ; sweeping up and around Bear Mountain, it goes superbly on its way, amid continuous scenes of beauty and glory, and always loneliness, and leads finally to Tuxedo. Amid the sternness of the mountains of the Hud- 315 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK son's eastern shore, as well as on the inland West- chester roads and their localities just beyond these bordering heights, is the region made memorable by Cooper and his **Spy." 316 CHAPTER XXV WEST POINT T is natural to think that a spot of glorious beauty must be connected with only the finest of traditions. And this makes West Point, notable as it is among the world's places of beauty, a place unusual, for its \ principal association is with ^ the treachery of a trusted gen- eral. And it is a curious fact, although I think history has never given it consideration, that the treachery would have been successful had not General Benedict Arnold formerly been a resident of New Haven. When Andre was captured, Lieutenant-Colonel Jameson ordered him and the incriminating papers to be sent to Arnold. If this had been done Arnold's treasonable plans would have been carried out. But to Major Tallmadge, next in command, the entire matter had a different aspect. To Jameson, a pass signed by his immediate superior officer, the mighty General Arnold, and papers in his handwriting, were sacred; but to Major Tallmadge, the important fact 317 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK was that Arnold, like himself, was a man of New Haven. He knew that Benedict Arnold, as a mer- chant of New Haven, was the son of a bankrupt and had himself afterwards gone through a suspicious bankruptcy; and so, now, when traitorous-seeming papers written by General Arnold were found on Andre, he deemed at once that Arnold was a traitor. The fact that Arnold was a powerful general did not weigh a particle. Tallmadge was a New Haven man, judging in regard to a business man who had made a bad reputation in that town, and he protested so strongly to Jameson against letting Andre, supposed to be a man called Anderson and not knowTi to be a British officer, go free, that Jameson yielded; al- though his fear of General Arnold was still such that he sent him word of the capture of Anderson, and this warning enabled Arnold to escape to the British lines. The importance of West Point lay in its command of the Hudson, and in safeguarding a passage be- tween the New England Colonies and the Colonies to the southward. Had the British, holding New York, also been able to control the Hudson, the two halves of the American Confederation would have been hope- lessly separated. Washington, as early as 1783, suggested that a mil- itary academy be founded at West Point. Not, how- ever, until 1802 was a law passed to found an acad- emy there, and on July 4th, of that year, it was opened. Cadets must now enter between the ages of seven- 318 WEST POINT teen and twenty-two, they must be unmarried and in perfect health, and each one is given his training and tuition free, with six hundred and ten dollars a year in money. Each cadet is on precisely the same foot- ing as every other; the richest cannot buy with his money any pleasure or luxury not open to the poorest. As I think of these cadets, trained to the highest possible military perfection, there comes a memory of a parade in New York City in which they took part ; a woman near me, noticing their superb step and ap- pearance, but only half catching what was said by her neighbor as to who they were, and taking it for a ref- erence to a well-kno\\ai part of Long Island City said, **Well, them Greenpoint Cadets certainly do march fine!'' When Benedict Arnold came here, he felt actively disaffected because of an official reprimand in regard to some matter of money. He disliked Washington, and thought him unfitted to win. He had plunged inextricably into debt. Before he was given the com- mand of West Point he had somehow let it be known that he was ready to treat with the English. And General Clinton sent Major Andre to carry negotia- tions to a conclusion. It is strange that Andre has been so intensely and so persistently idolized. He entered, without hesita- tion, into a kind of conspiracy from which a man of honor would have shrunk. It was not merely that he became a spy. Men of noble ideals have risked their lives as spies. But Andre did something far beyond this. When aiding a trusted American officer to be a 319 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK traitor, he did it under the safe-conduct of that very officer. But the white flag, as Washington calmly pointed out, was never intended, by military stand- ards, to cover dealings of this kind. Andre was personally a man of winning personal- ity. He danced well. He was a gay acquisition for any party of pleasure. He was an excellent com- panion. In Philadelphia he had been lionized by society. He made sketches and easily wrote a sort of verse. And so a great many people were shocked by his execution rather than by the revelation of what he was perfectly willing to descend to. It seems strange that when his verses on *^The Cow Chace'' are referred to, it is only to point out that he inadvertently forecast his own fate. But it is also well to know that in those verses he so far forgot what was due to an enemy officer of character and honor, as to imagine, with what the English thought transcendent cleverness. General Anthony Wayne, than whom a braver man never lived, telling his sol- diers to do the fighting while he in safety drove in the cows and versifically adjuring them to spare no ex- cess in their treatment of the Tories' wives and daughters. A few words will tell of Arnold's career after his treason and escape. He was given, as had been prom- ised, a sum of money and a brigadier-generaPs com- mission in the English service: then instead of put- ting him aside and letting him bear his commission in disgraceful solitude, the English set him at the work, of which he greedily availed himself, of burning de- 320 WEST POINT f enseless Connecticut towns ; he did not bum quite so many as General Try on had similarly burned, but did very well for a man without previous practice in that kind of warfare. When the war was over he dropped out of sight, joined his wife in England, and after a while quietly died. Andre was sentenced to death by a court-martial whose members were so wisely selected by Washing- ton as to include several officers from the armies of Europe, including Lafayette and Steuben. Most of the buildings of West Point Academy are on a level plateau, almost two hundred feet above the river. The greater part of the plateau is a broad clear grassy space, a magnificent parade ground, of- fering an open view up the river, with the buildings of the academy fringing the plateau, and with this bordering space dotted with elms and maples, many of them of great size. At the edge of the plateau rises a monument, a lofty monolith of polished granite on a tiered gran- ite base, and from the foot of this monument is a wonderful view of the Hudson, one of the notable views of the world. The mountains rise on either side of the great broad shimmering river. Beyond, in the distance, in softly swelling beauty, rises height over height, and the river bends and sweeps gloriously. There is not only immense beauty in the view but an immense solem- nity, grandeur, loneliness ; all is water and rocks and trees ; it is as if it were an uninhabited region. Yet, it comes to mind that it was three hundred years ago 321 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK that white men first sailed past this point; and thoughts come of those days, when Albany, far above, was founded, and for a time was looked upon as more promising as a future city than New York! How far, far away those early times, those early ships and men, seem! — and how busy, at times, has this very spot been, with the river full of boats and regiment after regiment crossing and camping here ! — and now, what loneliness of aspect ! As I look off at the miles and miles of splendid wilderness, a train, seeming like a toy-train, curves distantly into view and tnen slips quietly out of sight into a tunnel ; a f ew minutes more and a steamer rounds a distant bend and comes on prettily down the mighty stream. The plateau stands rockily and precipitously above the water, and is approached from the landing-place at the river 's edge by a pleasant up-leading road, past massive buildings set with much of medieval effect against the rocky plateau site. On the level of the plateau, where the principal buildings stand, most of the old-time buildings have gradually been destroyed, within the past quarter century, to make room for new structures. But on that wonderful plateau one does not much look at the buildings; one looks at river and forest and rocks — and at the cadets themselves, who, hun- dreds of them, come marching splendidly out upon the parade. But the World War has taken away most of the cheerful aspect of West Point, and given it a grimness. In every direction there is interest: there is a 322 WEST POINT Winged Victory by MacMonnies, an admirable and high-perched Victory, with an air; a flag flies from a tall white flagstaff topped with gold ; the clock-face on a square stone tower shows through thick-massed branches; cannon balls, relics of the past, are piled like the cheeses of Alkmaar Market, and there is an enormous chain, made of enormous links, which was flung across the Hudson to control navigation at the time of the Eevolution; it stands curiously for the old-fashioned methods of the past — and then one suddenly realizes that this represents the most up-to- date kind of water defense of even the present time. This chain, so tradition tells, was seventeen hun- dred feet long, weighed one hundred and eighty-six tons and was floated down, by means of log-booms, from New Windsor, and was here fastened to rocks on either side of the river. There was also another chain flung across the river here, which was ham- mered out, link by link, by blacksmiths of the coun- tryside, gathered, at the request of the military au- thorities, at Cold Spring. There is a monument to Washington, an excellent equestrian, set up in 1915, presented by a modest donor who does not let his own identity appear but who simply describes himself as ^'a patriotic citizen" and a veteran of the Civil War. There is a monu- ment to Kosciuszko, the Polish soldier who came across the ocean to assist the American cause, and who is principally remembered by the lurid declara- tion that Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell." 323 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK (This Polish general was remembered by Brooklyn in the naming of a street; and Brooklynites love to tell that a young policeman, following instructions to enter in his notebook every happening or discovery, began to write that he had found a dead dog at the corner of — and then, looking up at the street-sign and seeing that it was Kosciuszko, took the dog by the tail and dragged it down one block to a street with an easier name.) Memorial Hall, Grecian in style, with Ionic details, is a striking building, built at the very edge of the plateau, with its outer half supported by stone abut- ments; it is an unusually beautiful building, nobly perched, with a superb water-view terrace along its outer side. The library is of Tudoresque appearance, with dia- mond-paned windows and Gothic halls, with not only books, but a notable display of portraits of Americans of early time in a high-ceilinged notable room. There is a Washington by Gilbert Stuart, and there is also a copy of Stuart's General Knox, the original being in Boston; and this copy, oddly enough, considering that it was made for a military school and is a por- trait of the great artillery officer of the Revolution, omits the cannon on which Knox's hand, in the orig- inal, is resting. There is an exceptionally good portrait of Thomas Jefferson, a full-length by that notable Philadelphia artist, Sully, whose forte was more the painting of beautiful women than of men, but who with this pic- 324 WEST POINT ture of Jefferson achieved a triumph. But the J eff er- son who was an exponent of simplicity and who was in the habit of publicly carrying simplicity to an os- tentatious extreme, is not here ; it is a different Jeffer- son, the Jefferson of the aristocratic and distinguished Monticello, a Jefferson in formal court dress; and, yet, after all, it is a very simple court dress indeed, with black silk stockings, black satin breeches, and a long coat worn with a grand air; in all, a long slim portrait of the long slim statesman. The old quarters of the officers are lined along the back edge of the parade ground, nestling at the foot of higher hills. They are low-set, broad-hall-in-the- middle old homes, big chimneyed, and attractive with old shrubs, sweet gardens, and places to sit in the shade. High perched, part way up a height behind the plateau, and surrounded by heavy masses of trees, is a great long impressive building, square towered and splendidly effective, which gives a marked impression of being, in shape and setting, like the ancient Cathe- dral of Durham — with the important difference that this building is very new. It is the chapel of the Academy, and inside, as with some of the English cathedrals, it is lined with flags projectively and pro- cessionally hanging, very, very still in the still air of the great long interior; it is extremely impressive, this use of the flags on their staffs, in this old-world style. Still higher up, mounting the hill that rises behind 325 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK the plateau, is old Fort Putnam, five hundred feet above the river, built in the time of the Eevolution^ afterwards dismantled and fallen to ruin, now re- stored, with old moss-grown casements beneath the newer superstructure. The view from this height is amazing in its sweep, and in its impression of profound loneliness. Abruptly towering heights rise on the farther side of the valley behind. Nowhere, looking inland, away from the river, is even a single house or a single clearing to be seen. All is unbroken forest on ap- parently impassable heights. Whatever may really be there — and there is very, very little — is hidden from view by the thick-massed miles and miles of trees. And here within old Fort Putnam I came upon an- cient Pan ! He was a lad, scarcely more than a boy, lying at full length on the grass, surrounded by three or four nibbling sheep and tootling a tune on a flage- olet. Looking straight up into the sunny sky, with his flageolet — his Pan's pipe! — pointed directly to- ward the zenith, he was playing a simple shepherd- like air. I did not speak to him, I did not ask him where he could possibly have come from, with his handful of sheep, from among those miles of apparently un- broken solitude; it was almost uncanny, and it was certainly too picturesque to spoil. I preferred to have it remain a mystery. He did not see me. He and his sheep were as unconscious of my presence as were the ghostly Dutchmen of the presence of Rip 326 WEST POINT Van Winkle, and I left him there, with the sheep still nibbling quietly about him, and with the simple tune still sounding pleasantly, and with his eyes still look- ing up into the distant sky. 327 CHAPTER XXVI DOWN THE BAY LL roads lead to New York I Everybody comes here or at least wishes to come here, not only from all parts of Amer- ica, but from the most distant points of the earth. Some come here without even having planned it, as was the case w^ith Henry Hudson, who found himself most unexpectedly in New York har- bor, although under definite orders from his employ- ers, their High Mightinesses, who seem to have real- ized the lure of Broadway even though it was then non-existent, not to deviate from his course toward a Northwest Passage. Verazzano, preceding Hud- son, was much the same, for, as Mark Twain wrote about Columbus, he certainly did not know where he was coming and had never been here before. Cornwallis tried determinedly to come here, and to bring his army with him, but he was unexpectedly detained in Virginia. General Burgoyne wanted to come; and only the stress of circumstances too pow- erful to be resisted kept him away ; which is remind- 328 DOWN THE BAY ful that so great and so clever a man as Bernard Shaw, in his play, **The DeviPs Disciple,'' which he wrote on America, set down, in all seriousness, that Burgoyne marched his army from Boston to Sara- toga ! — the kind of mistake which no American would be pardoned for making in regard to any important campaign in European history. But the English never will learn the geography of America! Dick- ens wrote, in a very serious part of his very serious attack on this country, that he one day crossed over from New York to visit an asylum on an island, whether Ehode Island or Long Island he had quite forgotten — and of course, English-like, he would not take the moment's necessary time to look it up in a gazetteer. But, though Dickens frankly did not care for America, but only for American dollars, he himself was another of the many who came here. Sir Wal- ter Scott had a strong fancy to cross the ocean, and almost achieved his wish, for in a trip to the Hebrides, during the War of 1812, he saw on the horizon an American privateer, and imagined his feelings should it capture his boat and carry him to New York ! Prince William Henry, forty-nine years later to become King William the Fourth, came to New York to help the English cause, in 1781, but found the cause to be in rather a bad way. Freneau, the old-time American poet who wrote of the Revolution, versified the future King in a poem which described how the young man looked about in disappointment at the cramped extent of the English dominion, and said: 329 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Where all your vast domain can be, Friends, for my soul, I cannot see ; 'Tis but an empty name : Three wasted islands and a town In rubbish buried — ^half burnt down, Is all that we can claim." William was treated with great deference, on ac- count of his relationship to royalty, although it could hardly have been thought possible, at that time, that he should ever become King. He was dined and welcomed by the officers in high command, and it is still remembered that one of the houses where he was entertained at dinner was the old Kreuzer house at West New Brighton on Staten Island, one of the buildings, built before the year 1800, which are still standing in this city. There are some fifty, includ- ing churches and homes, within the entire immense area of all Greater New York. On the whole the most interesting of the visitors to New York, but this perhaps from the romantic unexpectedness of it, was Lord Nelson, the great Nel- son of Trafalgar. He had not, at the time of his visit, fought his great victories, for this was far back in 1782, but to find him here, in command of battle- ships, during our Eevolutionary War, is fascinating. He was only twenty-four years old at the time, and had recently been in the Bay of Boston, and there was pursued and almost captured by the French, as I remember reading in one of his letters. Thence he went to Quebec, and there received orders to sail, in command of a squadron, for New York — and, so he 330 DOWN THE BAY wrote, it was so cold that the sails were frozen to the yards. He spent several days here, and even after the departure of most of his squadron for the West Indies, remained for a day or two more. Always the lure of New York, one sees, and always the desire to stay here! Old Petrus Stuyvesant de- terminedly came back here to end his days, even though he had been deposed from the governorship and the Dutch no longer ruled. Governor Dongan remained here after his term was over, and would fain have stayed longer had he not felt it necessary to flee back to England during the Leisler troubles; he being that Roman Catholic governor of the late Stuart regime, whose name is still kept in mind by the names of Dongan Hills and Castleton, marking his oncewhile estate on Staten Island, and kept in mind, too, by a tablet on the front of old St. Peter's on Barclay Street, just at the edge of the Elevated, a very broad church, fronted with stately pillars, dating from 1838, but standing on the site of the earliest Catholic church in the city, which was built in 1786. Citizen Genet, the French Minister to America who was ordered to return to France on account of his insolence and arrogance, and who is generally sup- posed to have returned as ordered, was another who so loved New York that he did not wish to leave; and so he stayed here even though he dared not live on Manhattan Island, but retired to a farm, which had been given to him by DeWitt Clinton, whose daughter he had married, across the East River, in 331 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK what was in time to become part of New York City. Benjamin Franklin was at one time a sufferer from the attractions of New York. For he was here in 1757, with his passage engaged for England on board of a ship that was to sail under convoy of the fleet of the Earl of Loudon. In daily expectation of sail- ing, Franklin and the other passengers remained almost constantly on board for more than six weeks, and not until that long period had elapsed, with Lou- don daily expected to sail but daily finding cause to remain, did the Earl at length summon resolution to tear himself away and let the fleet sail. Among the millions who have come to New York only a few can be mentioned. Long ago came here that Louis Philippe who was afterwards, unexpect- edly, to be King of France, and there also came here Joseph Bonaparte, who had been King of Naples and then of Spain, but to whom America looked very attractive. The great Napoleon himself, after Wa- terloo, planned to come here, and what a figure he would have made! What strange things he might have achieved! It was not his fault that he did not come sailing into New York Bay. The waterside of lower New York is crowded with memories. Here Washington landed on July 25th, 1775, about where Laight Street now leaves West, on his way to Massachusetts to assume command of the American army that had gathered for the siege of Boston after the battle of Bunker Hill. Near Washington's landing-place, it was later planned to land and kidnap General Clinton, when 332 DOWN THE BAY he was in command of the British in New York, and the plan fell through only because of the strenuous protests of Alexander Hamilton, who urged that General Clinton was so incompetent as to do no harm, but that a general sent in his place might be one of ability ! A little nearer the Battery, a landing was to be made to capture Clinton's protege, Benedict Arnold, who was living with the British down on lower Broadway, after his treason: the plan was worked out by a soldier who went to the British as a pre- tended deserter, and it was frustrated only by Ar- nold's unexpected departure on the first of his house- burning trips. And near this spot, almost precisely a century aft- erward, there landed a certain Robert Louis Steven- son who, after crossing the ocean in the steerage, went to a sailor's tavern on West Street in an open wagon, in a drenching rain, and found a place where, to wash himself, it was necessary to go out into an open courtyard to a tin basin and slippery soap — and then he wrote about it and put it in his book, **The Amateur Emigrant," in a way to give the im- pression that this was quite a usual manner of re- ceiving foreigners in New York, and the kind of ac- commodation they were likely to be given; and he also wrote of his amazement that he was not well re- ceived by publishers and others, when he went and stood in their offices (the smell of the steerage still, as he says, being on him), with water literally drip- ping from him in a circle on their floors. 333 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK Should you sail out, yourself, from this shore, and should your vessel steer for the Narrows, you may be going toward either Europe or Coney Island, such being among the cheerful possibilities of life open to every one and constantly; only this time, let us sup- pose you are going just to Coney Island and that you are looking at places on the way. In a few min- utes you are abreast of the Statue of Liberty, ped- estaled on a little island; a Liberty not chic, rather dowdy in fact, and yet undoubtedly French, for she was sent over to the United States as a gift to this nation, by France, in 1883. It used to be that West- erners were told by their newspapers that the statue lighted the harbor with a great glow, whereas its light was really very insignificant; but it is now lighted with diffused light thrown upon it from be- low. A few years ago, visitors landing on the little island were apt to find themselves caught in little flurries of ashes, for it was for a time quite the thing, among widows and widowers with cremated partners, to mount to the top of Liberty and toss the ashes to the four winds. Near the tiny islet that holds Liberty, is little Ellis Island, where incoming immigrants are examined as to health and means and prospects. The American, returning home from abroad, has glanced with inter- est on the gay and talkative throng of steerage folk, and as New York is neared he notices a silence fall, and sees the bright-clad foreigners line the forward end of the ship, looking, looking, as if striving to 334 DOWN THE BAY see what it is that the great city holds in store for them; and now and then, as they see towers and buildings and bridges, an eager hum arises, and sweeps over them, and then sinks into silence; and after he has landed, the immigrants are taken back to meet the tests of entrance to this, their Promised Land. At your right, as you approach the Narrows, is Staten Island. Over on its eastern side, but out of sight from the boat, are the columned buildings of that Sailors' Snug Harbor, for old American sailors who should make their life anchorage here. Over the low-rolling hills, passing where once were great estates and where still stand scatteringly a few old houses and taverns and tide-mills, and churches that perhaps have silver that was given them by Queen Anne, is Tottenville, where there still stands the Billopp house, a century older than the Revolu- tion, built of rubble stone, with a line of square two- story pillars along its front. Here, in September of 1776, General Howe, then in command at New York, received Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Ed- ward Rutledge, who at his request had been sent to him by Congress to talk of possible peace. It developed that Howe could talk only of the par- don of such as should lay down their arms and re- turn to kingly allegiance, and as this was not the idea of the delegates they returned to their boat, Howe accompanying them and expressing his feeling that their stand was painful both to him and to themselves; to which Franklin, always delightfully 335 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK ready with good American replies, said that *'The people would endeavor to take good care of them- selves, and thus alleviate as much as possible the pain his lordship might feel in consequence of any severity his lordship might deem it his duty to adopt.'' Embarrassed by this, Howe expressed to Adams his regret that he could not recognize the committee in a public character, whereupon Adams promptly replied that he was willing for a few mo- ments to be regarded in any character except that of a British subject. Before going on, and entering the Narrows, you will pass the spot where, a century before submar- ines came into use, an American inventor showed their possibility. The inventor was the versatile Eobert Fulton, who after going to England and living for a time as an art student under that American, Benjamin West, whom the English made president of the Royal Acad- emy to succeed Joshua Reynolds, turned his mind to things mechanical instead of things artistic, and invented what he himself termed a * * submarine boat ' ' or plunging boat.'' His experiments convinced him that with a submarine and torpedoes he could sink ships. Full of the idea and its possibilities, he hurried over to France, and blew up in the harbor of Brest a boat obtained for experimentation. Fail- ing to interest the French, he returned to England and in an English harbor showed that, with his sub- marine and torpedoes, he could sink ships. Again there was no encouragement, whereupon he came to 336 DOWN THE BAY his native America and in 1807, in the harbor of New York, successfully torpedoed an old hulk. But again nothing came of it all. In the War of 1812, the English thought of Fulton with dread. They remembered his submarine, and the memory gave them immense concern. Although he made no actual attempt against the British, while they had ships in the vicinity of New York, it was afterwards learned that his mere presence, with the dread that it inspired, materially checked and ham- pered the plans of the British commander. In an attempt to capture Fulton, British soldiers landed one night and surrounded a house where they ex- pected to find him visiting, but he was not there. Still, America would not adopt his under-water in- vention, and, disappointed, Fulton turned his mind exclusively to steamboats, after formally writing it down as his belief that, in time, submarines would revolutionize aU warfare. On Staten Island, and where he could look out upon the Narrows, through which passes the shipping of the world, lived for a time, as a tutor, Thoreau of Concord, exponent of what is now termed the simple life and the nature schooP'; he was a home-loving writer, who could at any time pick up material for a couple of hundred pages within a walk of a couple of miles, and to go as far as New York was for him a notable event. As we enter the Narrows there are to be seen two old-fashioned and pictorial forts; for a fort with any appearance of age is always somewhat pictorial ; 337 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK and in the Narrows, although not from one of the forts, was fired the last shot of the Revolutionary- War. For the British, sailing sulkily away from the city they had so long held, and angered by the signs of joy on the part of the populace, nailed the British flag to the top of the Battery flagpole and greased the pole below it so that it could not be climbed; and their chagrin was intense, when, from their departing ves- sels, they saw a ready-witted young American, John Van Arsdale, swiftly mount the pole by nailing cleats in front of him, and then remove the British flag, which in a little while was replaced by the American. The British were so chagrined that, when their ships were in the Narrows, and the derisive crowds on Staten Island were so close as plainly to be both seen and heard, a cannon was fired into the mass. But, fortunately, it did not hurt any one, and merely showed the English to be bad losers. As to Van Arsdale, the honor was given, to him- self and his descendants forever, of raising the American flag on the Battery on each anniversary of Evacuation Day ; and the fine privilege has year after year been exercised. On Staten Island, not far from Richmond, and on a little height, is still to be seen an old-time, star- shaped, earthwork fort, Fort Izzard, covered with grass and overrun with mid strawberries; a peace- ful spot, but meant for serious work when it was put up by the British as part of their system of New York defense. 338 DOWN THE BAY On the island there lived, for a time, the Italian patriot Garibaldi, who fled to America after a defeat in Italy and lived here for a time engaged in making soap and candles : the house he lived in is preserved. Emerging from the Narrows the boat enters the Lower Bay. And over there on the right, on the Staten Island shore, is New Dorp, a place of early Moravian settlement and still a Moravian town. Its earliest church, built in 1763, still stands, although no longer used as a church. It is always delightful to find an old custom pre- served in America, and the Moravians have one of the prettiest of old customs; their sunrise service of Easter morning. The people gather in their church, decked as it is with Easter flowers, before darkness has vanished ; and a service begins ; and as the first faint light of coming dawn touches the church win- dows, the congregation, with choir and musicians, and led by the pastor, walk out, into the ancient grave- yard, and there, in the cool, sweet mystery of earliest morning, before the sun has risen but when actual darkness has gone, the service is sweetly concluded; and then the sun, as if waiting for a signal, glowingly emerges from the farthest edge of the bay. At length your boat approaches Coney Island, there at the left on the southern shore of Long Island. Your preliminary impression is of low-lying huddled structures of frame, with gaudy towers and peaks and pinnacles and gaudy roofs, in greens and reds and whites and browns and grays, with here and there some strange spidery skeleton structure stand- 339 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK ing up, or some great monstrous slow-turning wheel, bearing baskets black with dots that you know must be people. The great beach is thronged with people ; in the water and on the sand it is people, people, everywhere ; indeed the principal and constant inter- est of Coney is that of the innumerable people that it gathers. Coney Island has much that is admirable. The first thought is to condemn it, for its noise, its com- monness, its cheapness, its garishness, but the in- stant that it is realized that it is the ocean play- ground of the public, the only one open to the general public, the feeling changes. And that New York has so freely bought an immense stretch of beach from private ownership and devoted it to the free use of the public is but one of many admirable features. The bathing suits and caps are in gaudy colorings innumerable. Everywhere are life and movement and gayety, everywhere distracting noise, every- where clamor, everywhere the clash and clang and whine and bang of music, everywhere the endless res- taurants, everywhere the cry of pullers-in, every- where dancing and talk and laughter and drums and bands and orchestras. Mechanical horses race for- ever over long tracks of steel, boats rush down for- ever from impossible heights, packed with people who forever go shrieking down into the water. Everywhere are throngs, on the sidewalks, in the streets, in the mighty shows, on the beaches, or jump- ing up and down in endless lines in the surf. It is blissful happiness ; crass happiness if you will, 340 DOWN THE BAY but very human happiness : it is life, variety, motion, endless amusement in endless variety, and all stand- ing for happiness. Of course there is also wicked- ness, both tucked away and brazen; but on the other hand, I have never observed that riches either ex- clude wickedness or have any monopoly of virtue; and people of perhaps ordinary tastes who earn by toil the money to pay for a few hours of diversion, may have among them quite as small a proportion of wickedness as the wealthy folk, at wealthy watering places, who recklessly spend great sums which most likely they have not even had any part in earning. Size, at Coney, means much. There are dancing places of immense area; there are restaurants of in- finite capacity; there are private shows, which them- selves contain immense variety in amusement and which represent the investment of millions of dollars of capital — and incidentally a high order of brains. The mighty beach, the great sea stretching off inimit- ably — all is vastness. There is a great deal of quiet restfulness to be gained at Coney, by tired folk who come here to breathe the breezes sweeping straight in from the ocean, to bask on the sand in the sun, to soak in health from the sea; but the greatest part of the enjoyment is taken noisily, feverishly, and in any case always happily. Far different is this mad, gyrating, garish, danc- ing, noisy common Coney from the ordered gayety of such a place as the famous Brighton in England, with its air of permanence, its primly discreet bath- 341 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK ing wagons. Different, too, is Coney from the quaint semi-freedom of Scheveningen, the pictorial ocean- side gathering place of Holland. Coney, indeed, is in a class by itself. In externals, it is somewhat like Blackpool, a resort for the working folk of Liverpool and Manchester, but Blackpool is coarser, ruder, without the likableness of Coney and without the splendor of expense and variety and numbers. The editor of a Blackpool newspaper said to me that a young woman from New York came there, with a friend of his, and that he showed her all the sights. took her to pavilions and roller-coasters and res- taurants and shows, and I was sure she was im- pressed, and she thanked me very prettily, when the day was over and she said,'' thus the editor con- cluded with a rueful smile : " ' Now, when you come to New York, you must let me take you to Coney Island, and I shall show you everything you have here — and a great deal more ! ' " CHAPTER XXVII IN GEEENWICH VILLAGE 'HERE two or three artists are gathered together, there shall be a Bohemia in the midst of them; or at least they shall be in the midst of a Bohemia. And as there are more than twenty-five thou- sand who are listed as artists in New York City, including paint- ers, sculptors and architects, industrial art designers and commercial draftsmen, it naturally follows that New York has a Bohemia. In fact, the city has a number of Bo- hemias, for it has quite a number of studio centers; and some of the groups represent such prosperity that Bohemia is lost and one gets barely a glimpse of its Coast: for to make the really fascinating Bo- hemia custom demands that there be an atmosphere of hard work and hard times, or at least a pseudo- atmosphere. And so, from this, Bohemia has come to be repre- 343 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK sented by Greenwich Village and the vicinity of Washington Square — for these adjoining districts freely offer the outward and visible signs expected of a Bohemia. There is not too much of uninterest- ing prosperity. Art students come here. Begin- ners, striving for a foothold in art, gravitate here. Cubists and Futurists find lodgment. There are also artists. The public come here to catch sight of artists and students — and the artists and the students are not loth to be seen ! It has even been suggested that among the real artists and the real students in Greenwich Village are some who are but pretenders ; some who enjoy being classed as artists and living among artists. To say casually, *^My studio,'' does not necessarily mean that it is really used for pic- ture-making; it may be merely a place for a pic- turesque and picaresque sort of life, very enjoyable to the domestically unattached. There is an important studio center gathered in the general vicinity of Gramercy Park; there is an- other important studio center clustered on and about West 55th, 56th and 57th Streets; another center is some ten blocks to the north of this, another has gathered on East 67th and 66th Streets, and Chelsea also has a studio center; but most in evidence and by far the most in the public eye and mind are the studios and little art shops and little restaurants of the region of Washington Square and Greenwich. And, too, quite a number of writers have gathered in this Bohemia, and are as much Bohemians of the Bohemians as are the picture-making ones. 344 IN GREENWICH VILLAGE Bohemia, in this city of change, must needs change like everything else. It used to hover, so recently as "Whitman and the early days of Howells, at **Pfaff%'' on Broadway; but it shifted away from there, just as it had shifted there from nearer City Hall Park, and after a while it shifted to Greenwich Village, where there were still to be found old dormer windows and even gambrel roofs, old fanlights and pillared doorways, and wrought-iron newel-posts at the steps of the houses, and fireplaces to make them homelike; and if there are not enough of these for all to live with, there are enough to look at and talk of and sketch and to give that aesthetic atmosphere which is the breath of life to these enthusiasts. And so, as O. Henry expressed it, **to quaint old Green- wich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunt- ing for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs, and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a * colony.' " All this region has become so permeatively **Bo- hemia'' that whereas, in earlier times, people have spoken and written of * Agoing down to Bohemia," they now merely say, going down to Greenwich Village.'' Within a few years past, many of the interesting old houses have vanished and some of the streets have lost their most interesting charac- ter, through a mighty sweeping away, mainly for the Seventh Avenue extension and its subway construc- tion, but there is still much of the interesting left. Officially and formally, no Greenwich Village is 345 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK now to be found on the map. But in the general mind and in general knowledge it is very much on the map. Speaking geographically, it is the region immediately south of Chelsea, and it might, in a way, be said to be the region dominated by the striking tower of Jefferson Market. It is a region of delight- fully tangled streets which follow in considerable degree the haphazard lines of the early village lanes ; for this was really a village, in the long ago. That, in Greenwich, West 4th Street actually crosses 11th, is the last word in unexpectedness ! In the very shadow of Jefferson Market tower is a fascinating bit, a cul-de-sac, a little back eddy of smallish old houses, a tiny court opening directly oif the busy sidewalk of Sixth Avenue, between 10th and 11th Streets, in a region of little stores. It is bizarre in its unexpectedness : it is a bit of Old London here in an extremely busy part of New York : it is a little tri- angular space, a flagged courtyard, bordered by a few little, neat, quaintish, narrowish old houses: it was part of one of the old streets of the village, and was left, in its tiny triangular seclusion, when the immedi- ate neighborhood was altered, in the long ago, by the laying out, with iconoclastic breadth and straightness, of Sixth Avenue. It is quite the oddest bit, geograph- ically speaking, in all New York, and rejoices in the name of Milligan Place ; which is not at all a modern name, as it merely takes the place of the Milligan Lane of early days. To begin with, the honorable condition of this Green- wich Village, as a place in which to live, is formally 346 IN GEEENWICH VILLAGE recognized in Westminster Abbey. The founder was a British vice-admiral who cut quite a brave dash in his day, Sir Peter Warren, K.B., M.P. — and with doubtless other letters and titles in the usual English fashion. He obtained a good bit of land, some 300 acres or so, and built his house here. The name of Greenwich then came naturally from the sailors ' Greenwich, on the Thames, and this sturdy seaman thought it a pleasant locality in which to end his days. He came here some five years before Cap- tain Clarke settled at Chelsea ; he was not literally the first settler here, but the first of any consequence. Admiral Warren lies in Westminster Abbey, and his tomb is marked with one of the large and ornate mon- uments for which that structure is notable. It bears an interminable inscription, concluding with the curi- ous statement that the Almighty was pleased to re- move him from a place of honor to an eternity of happiness''; and any real Greenwich Villager would be ready to admit that the place of honor'' which the Almighty had in mind was Greenwich Village; for the artistic villagers are nothing if not loyal. Warren's wife was a daughter of the old American house of DeLancey, and two of his three daughters became the wives of peers ; one being married to the Earl of Abingdon, whose name is perpetuated by Ab- ingdon Square, here in Greenwich, and another being married to Baron Southampton. Even in those early days, it will be noticed, New York girls had an attrac- tion for the English peerage. That the third daugh- ter did not marry a baron or an earl seems to have 347 THE BOOK OF NEW TOEK been because she fell in love with a colonel of the pro- saic name of Skinner. But she was by no means ashamed of the name, and an important Greenwich thoroughfare was named Skinner Eoad; but in the course of time it did not seem aristocratic enough to newcomers, and, besides, Colonel Skinner had become disliked as an American who was an active Tory, and so the road became Christopher Street ; a name which it still retains. (The Skinners*' of the Neutral Ground, however, in the region north of New York City, were not British, but American, and the Cow- boys," their antagonists and rivals, were British, al- though rejoicing in a name which now seems so dis- tinctively American.) Old-time mumming is still existent in Greenwich Village ; and it is a fascinating survival : it is like some old-time custom in an ancient European town. The children of the village go out on the streets, on holi- days, and particularly on Thanksgiving Day, in singles or in parties, mostly in groups of from half a dozen to a dozen, some with masks, but most of them with- out masks and merely fantastically dressed in simple home-made costumes. For the day they have the free- dom of the village, and old residents look for them as an institution, and kindly white-haired men , them- selves relics of the past, emerge out of the past and stop them and pat them on the head. Pennies and nickels are handed to the children; but that is not what they are after; it is not in the least a begging matter, and this feature, thus slightly kept up, is but a reminder of the old-time custom, in the old coun- 348 IN GREENWICH VILLAGE tries of the world, of handing out money to mummers and masqueraders who came out to make the people happy. It is a pretty custom ; it is one of the oddest things of New York ; and it is to be regretted that a somewhat ruder and rougher and less pleasant class of children than formerly have within recent years begun to ap- pear as the mummers. The village long retained an exclusiveness, even after New York began to expand, for there was no di- rect approach to it on account of streams and canals along the North Eiver side of the island, and the usual way was to follow up what is now the Bowery, and, at where is now Astor Place, go across the island to the westward. A yellow fever epidemic of 1822, which drew out all the people of New York who could possibly get away, gave the first real impetus to the growth of Greenwich, for it was deemed a healthful locality. Not only did people hurry here in large numbers, to escape from the fever, just as they fled from Philadelphia to Germantown, but even business came, and the name of Bank Street is still reminis- cent of the fact that the banks of New York carried on their business here, deserting down town, including the one which was specifically the Bank of New York, the first bank to be incorporated here after the close of the Revolution, for it deserted its quarters in the made-over Walton mansion on Franklin Square, a house which long ago vanished but whose grandeur was such as to make it a matter of discussion in the British Parliament, and came to Greenwich. 349 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK Old-time New Yorkers like to tell that a minister named Marcellus used to declare to them, when they were young, that so great had been the throngs who fled panic-stricken to Greenwich, that on one Saturday he saw corn growing on a certain 4th Street corner, and that on Monday, two days later, he passed by again and saw that in that brief time a boarding- house had been built, big enough to accommodate three hundred people! And of course, being a min- ister and speaking of Greenwich Village, he would not exaggerate ! From time immemorial it was the custom in New York to celebrate election night by bonfires in the streets; but gradually the custom fell into disuse throughout the greater part of the city, frowned upon as it was by the police. But Greenwich Village has never been like the greater part of the city. Here, it is customary to cling to old customs. And therefore, here, the bonfires blazed high and merrily when they ceased to burn in other sections. Indeed, there was no effort at all to check the election bonfires of Green- wich until the stone pavements of that neighborhood were largely replaced by asphalt. It so happened, that the burning places themselves had been fixed by tradition, and that asphalt came to those very spots, whereupon it literally became a burning question between the Greenwich boys and the police. The ingenuity of the boys had always been phenomenal in gathering packing-boxes and burnable debris and now, to this ingenuity, was added that of dodging the police and at the same time having their 350 IN GREENWICH VILLAGE fires on the time-honored spots. I remember passing one night, at Gay Street and Waverley Place, a huge bonfire, with towering flames, and seeing not only the customary packing-boxes on the pile, but even trunks and chairs and a great old sofa, apparently storage loot from some cellar. That a large proportion of the inhabitants of the village — it is still called Greenwich Village by every- body, and not merely by artists as a fad — have con- tinued to be an English-speaking people, either Ameri- can or folk of English or Irish descent, has aided ma- terially in preserving old-time ways. Until quite re- cently, and even yet by old-timers, Greenwich has been called ^ ' the American Ward, ' ' and this alone is explan- atory of much. Thomas Paine, of the Eevolution, intensely Bohe- mian as he was, gravitated naturally to Greenwich, as if feeling instinctively that it was to become Bohemia a century after his time. A contemporary descrip- tion has come down to us of his appearance when he lived, with Madame Bonneville, on Henry Street be- tween Christopher and Jones — or, as the description by present names would be, on Bleecker Street be- tween Grove and Barrow. He used to sit, a spectacled man, at an open window, with a decanter of brandy by his side, a book on the table beside it, his elbow on the table, and his chin in one hand and the other hand on the book. In the last month of his life he moved to the house on Grove Street, just around the corner from this, in which he died in June of 1809. Both of these houses have disappeared. 351 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Washington Irving used playfully to say that he particularly liked the color of red, because of its being the color of his own slippers and Jefferson's hair and ^^Tom" Paine 's nose. I do not know what was the incentive to such inconsequence, but very de- lightful the inconsequence seems. I remember a description by a contemporary of the appearance of Jefferson at a dinner in Greenwich Village, when Adams was Vice-President: it was at Richmond Hill, at the edge of Greenwich; and Jef- ferson was dressed with red waistcoat and red knee- breeches, which, with the hair to which Irving so hu- morously refers, must have made him a striking object indeed. Indeed, one thinks of the cheerful lines by Eugene Field about any color being the best so long as it's red! For at this very dinner the French minister wore not only earrings but red-heeled shoes. It was a time of colorful possibilities in men's clothes; as witness Gilbert Stuart's portrait, painted in New York, of the Spanish Minister Don Josef de Jaudenes, now in the Metropolitan Museum, for the portrait shows him dressed with much of scarlet gorgeousness. Greenwich Village still retains much of its old-time charm. Its narrow streets with their totally unex- pected angles and turns — ^Waverley Place frankly forks and continues in two directions under the same name! — its gambrel-roofed attics, its ancient gables, its unmistakable air as of a place different, all give it attraction. No wonder it became a haven for the young and the adventurous in literature and art. Not 352 IN GREENWICH VILLAGE only did it offer the desired north windows to artists, but windows looking in every conceivable direction through the very crookedness and unexpectedness. Throughout the region are dotted odd and original shops, little shops of individuality, a sort of green- ery, yallery, Grosvenor gallery" sort of art shop, shops where may be seen such curiosity-provoking signs as * * Costumes for the Pagan Revel, ' * or where there may be such deliciously startling statements as ^*The only Art Center in New York,'' shops of fan- tastic and interesting names, shops largely stocked by art students and school-of-design graduates, who have found increased and unexpected opportunity in the lessening of imports of artistic knickknacks and decorative objects from abroad on account of the war. And in Greenwich, and hovering about Washington Square — for to this district, in general nomenclature and understanding, Greenwich has expanded — there is also many a restaurant, quietly housed in old unal- tered houses, perhaps with some such name as the White Mice, or the Squirrel Hutch, or the Danish Oven, or The Jolly Beggars, where there is good food at reasonable prices, where there is likely to be a great deal of tobacco smoke, where there is wine that at least makes up in redness if it chances to miss any- thing in flavor, where there is a pleasant atmosphere of gayety and mild excitement and happiness, and a meeting and greeting of cronies and fellow-craftsmen. Some of the restaurants have a Montmartreish-seem- ing air. Some display no sign or name at all, ap- 353 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK pealing to such as are delighted by knowing of a place that every one cannot find. The aim at most of these restaurants is to give a suggestion of the Italian or French or Dutch, and there are Boul' Miche walls or sanded floors or little scrubbed tables or ghostly long entries faintly lit or queer cellar stairs to descend, to give the zip that seems as necessary in Greenwich Village as in their prototypes in Paris or Laaren or Munich. And there are fine and well-set-up dining places, too, with city- wide reputations for their perfect cuisine, restau- rants that seem to be bits out of a costly Paris : for although the general atmosphere of all this sort of life must be that of a shortage of money, there must al- ways, at the same time, be places where money may be freely spent for the good things of life. After all, one finds in any Latin Quarter pretty much what he takes there : if he takes youth and ambi- tion and happiness, he finds happiness and ambition and youth. If he takes a cynical mind and a doubting heart, he sees only doubts and cynicisms. A difference between this life in New York, of the present day, and the Bohemia of not many years ago, is that not many years ago there was an older aver- age of habitue. Nor do I merely mean that the younger people of that day have grown older. I mean that this Latin Quarter life used to draw men and women of from, say, twenty-five to fifty years, and that now its chief appeal is to young folk of from eighteen to twenty-five. The older writers or artists do not so much frequent these haunts : Greenwich Vil- 354 IN GREENWICH VILLAGE lage life, in its youthful untrammeledness, has got away from them : insurrection is in the air, in art and literature, in manners and morals, in life. In the past, besides beginners and the seekers after the curious and the interesting, many who had them- selves done notable things were attracted ; but Green- wich Village attracts mainly those whose fame is still to be made. Bohemia used to be mostly for men, and women went there only to look and to listen: in to- day's version of this life, women may be said to out- Bohemianize the men — and they are mostly very young women indeed, and most of them not long out of college, all of them bent on * heading their own lives,'' as they express it, and many of them staked by their families while they dream their dreams and keep their shops and write their dramas and their scenarios and their poems and their little revolution- ary editorials for their own very ^ liberal" publica- tions. Greenwich Village stands for unrest, but it also stands for happiness. It gives an outlook upon life. It gives music and conversation and touches of res- taurant happiness to those who cannot afford the ex- travagance of uptown. It gives color to many a life that would otherwise be but drab. And it is interest- ing to see and to hear Greenwich Village working and talking, eating, drinking, dancing, and making merry, or taking life seriously. In the studios and in the res- taurants you see some who are thrilled and some who are amused : you hear eager discussion of everything on earth or below or above the earth ; you are your- 355 THE BOOK OF NEW YOKK self amused or interested, you feel tolerant or critical: when you must find your way to a restaurant, by dim lamplight, through a covered passage and across a littered yard, you find it difficult to take Greenwich Village seriously : but somehow it must be taken with a good deal of seriousness because it takes itself so seriously ; as when in a restaurant you will suddenly hear a young man declaim his own verses, passion- ately, to his young companions. 356 CHAPTER XXVIII WASHINGTON SQUAEE HE American Revolution gave the English an unusual oppor- tunity, of which they were prompt to take advantage, to give honor to such as are of what may be called irregular pedigree; for England does not frown upon irregularity, if it be royal, or even only noble. General Howe, Viscount Howe, the commander at New York, was the son of an illegitimate daughter of King George the Second, which fact made his advancement easy. Admiral Howe, Earl Howe, Ms brother, who brought the fleet to New York — and it will be noticed that there was never a shortage of titles for the distinguished in descent — was equally fortunate in winning place through the same royal connection. General Bur- goyne was not so fortunate as to be left-handedly re- lated to royalty, but this omission was graciously overlooked in consideration of the fact that he was left-handedly the son of a lord. The royal governor of New Jersey, William 357 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK Franklin, was the illegitimate son of Benjamin. And that the future William the Fourth was here during the Eevolution seems only natural when it is remem- bered what left-handed additions he was himself to make to the British peerage. I shall not look into the entire list; but it may be mentioned^ in passing, that although the gallant Percy, afterwards to be Duke of Northumberland, who so bravely fought America, was legitimate, his brother, who after the Revolution became associ- ated both picturesquely and importantly with the United States, was but his left-handed brother after all. Lord Cornwallis seems to have been of pedigree irreproachable : and yet, there comes to mind a curi- ous story. When his son was to marry the daugh- ter of the celebrated Jane, Duchess of Gordon, he, Cornwallis, broke off the match, telling the duchess frankly that it was on account of the insanity that would be inherited from her husband. Whereupon the duchess told him, plainly, that he need have no fear, as there was not a drop of Gordon blood in her daughter's body. At which, the loser of Yorktown unhesitatingly allowed the marriage to proceed, not objecting to actual illegitimacy so long as the form of respectability was observed. Nor does this story come from some American source. It is on the authority of Samuel Rogers, the poet, than whom no man was ever more British in feeling; and he tells the story with glee. In his more than ninety years of life, always meet- 358 WASHINGTON SQUARE ing the most interesting people, what myriad stories Eogers heard, what friends and acquaintance he made, in what a vast number of homes he was enter- tained ! And one of his comments, as he neared life 's close, remains especially in the memory, because, al- though he was himself not thinking of New York, but only of his beloved London, it sets forth one of the most vital differences between New York and London. For his comment was, that to any Lon- doner who has reached an advanced age, a walk through the streets of London is like a walk in a cemetery, because he passes so many houses, now inhabited by strangers, where he used to spend happy hours with those long since dead and gone. But nobody could write thus about New York, for in this city not only have the people of the past gone, but the houses in which they dwelt have long since also vanished. Indeed, there is only one region left, where an American, old enough to look back like Rogers, over nearly a century of life, could find the homes of friends of long ago, and that district is Washington Square. A few other cities, notably Boston and Philadel- phia, profoundly possess what may be termed the feeling of home respectability, that feeling of family pride which comes from permanence of home, but in New York there is a complete absence of this feeling, except in Washington Square. To have a house in Washington Square, and to be able to say that you inherited it, marks the highest point of social ex- clusiveness. 359 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK Speaking generally, in New York a man must stand on his own legs and not on those of his grand- father. There is little of ^ ^family,'' as the term is generally understood. It is not a factor in everyday life. Washington Square is the only part of the city which gives a background suggestive of family and of old-time descent. It is, too, the spot in all the city which best retains the old-time picturesqueness ; and this although it is only, after all, the northern half which has fine old homes. The northern part is of such strength and dignity that it dominates. The ordinary park has air; but Washington Square has atmosphere. The square itself is a great, sweet area, thick with elms and sycamores, and has long been the part of New York most often made use of by story writers, not necessarily to point a moral but certainly to adorn many a tale. But whereas it used to be that every author used to have a heroine on the north side of the Square, it has suddenly become the custom to write of the southern half, with its connection with Latin Quarter life, and with the tenement dwellers sweeping up from the southward against it. It was long ago that Bunner, in his once famous Midge," chose, for the house that was that story's setting, a gloomy old iron-balconied dwelling now at the edge of where Sullivan Street has been cut through to the Square. And Townsend, he of ^'Chimmie Fadden'' fame, once wrote a short story, **Just Across the Square," in which with tragic insight he made the north and south sides react upon one another. 360 WASHINGTON SQUARE The Washington Arch at the center of the north- ern side, the fine old houses, which are wealth and social standing personified, the Italians from the nearby tenements — it is the combination of all this, and an atmosphere of distinction, that give Washing- ton Square its charm. On the south side of the square, looking out over the greenery at the Arch and the old mansions, stands a church, the Judson Memorial, designed, in beautiful Italian style, by Stanford White; he loved the tawny yellow buildings of old Italy, and loved to follow them, and this represents his finest tawny-yellow tri- umph. The campanile, with its arcaded summit, rises Giotto-like, with its use of Giotto's ideas of the relative size of tower windows, with small ones at the bottom and large ones, increasingly, toward the top. And every night, as it has done every night during the quarter of a century that the church has stood here, a cross of light shines on the top of the campanile. It is one of the facts that illustrate the changes that have come in New York life, that when this church, with its Italian style, was built, no Italians, or prac- tically none, lived near by, but that gradually they have filled up the tenement streets immediately to the southward to the practical exclusion of other races. And off at one side of the Square, a Garibaldi stands pedestaled, with half drawn sword in hand as if with some thought of holding this district for the Italians forever. Many French used to congregate near the square, 361 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK nor have they even yet entirely disappeared tinder the preponderance of the Italians, and I remember noticing a Fourth of July meeting here, with the Declaration of Independence read in French and a fiery address delivered in Italian by a grandson of Garibaldi. Near the church, on the southern side of the square, is a day nursery, with its lower floor iron- latticed, and as evening approaches it is a sweet and at the same time a pathetic sight to see the little chil- dren swarming and climbing on this lattice, looking out eagerly for their returning mothers. In the spring, many birds come here, and, in par- ticular, scarlet tanagers love, in mid-May, to make the square their stopping-place for a few days, flit- ting about, among the greenery, in a glow of such vivid beauty as to seem unreal, as to seem, indeed, here in the heart of New York City, almost a vagary of the imagination. The fine old houses are not really so very old, al- though they carry themselves with such an air of established permanence. They are not Colonial: in period they are not even of that early nineteenth cen- tury which gave so many notable dwellings to other of the Eastern cities. They are of a date subsequent to 1825 ; most of them of the early 1830 's ; some of the '40 's. After all, it really would not do to have the buildings too old which are most markedly typical of the best of New York. The glimmering greenery, the lushness of growth, rouse thoughts of the tens of thousands who were 362 WASHINGTON SQUARE carelessly put here to sleep their last sleep beneath where are now the grass and pavements of this square ; it has been estimated, but personally I feel a little doubt of the figures, that more than one hun- dred thousand paupers were buried here ; at any rate, there were very, very many. Before it was Wash- ington Square it was the Parade Ground, and before that, until the 1820 's, it was the city's Potter's Field. The stately houses look statelily over the once- while pauper burial-place, aristocratically uncon- scious of anything disagreeable in the past. They are houses of aloofness: quite superior to what might repress the pride of houses of weaker char- acter. I mention what was here in the past, not only be- cause it was a striking feature of the city's develop- ment which set the most exclusive Knickerbocker families looking over a great Potter's Field, but also because it points out, to use a famous Tennysonian couplet, New York's method of rising on stepping- stones of its dead selves to higher things," and be- cause it is always well to remember that it is the present that counts, not only with squares but with individuals, and not the past. In 1830 Washington Square witnessed a curious celebration. It seemed to New York, for some in- scrutable reason, that it ought to meddle with Euro- pean affairs by celebrating the dethronement of Charles the Tenth, King of France, which had taken place in that year, and so a procession marched from the Tammany Hall of that day to Washington Square, 363 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK and here there was a great meeting, presided over by Monroe of the Doctrine, who was then a resident of New York, and in the group on the platform were gathered a few most curiously notable men : for there was Alexander Whaley, who long before had been one of the Boston Tea Party,'' and there was Enoch Crosby, who had been in the secret service in the Revolution and was supposed to be the original of the hero of Cooper's then world-famous book, the ^^Spy," and there was John Van Arsdale, who had climbed the Battery flagpole and taken down the British flag on the day of the Evacuation of New York, and there was Anthony Glenn, a Revolutionary officer bearing the American flag which he had hoisted in place of the one that Van Arsdale brought down, and there was David Williams, one of the three scouts who had captured Major Andre. Aaron Burr, one notices, was not invited. What a fascinating group they made, those venerable men who have come down from a former generation." How the very thought of it brings up pictures of the great events in which they had taken part, half a century before they thus came together in Washington Square ! Following the Spanish War, the Seventy-first Regiment came back to New York, bearing their dead. On the way to their armory they marched through Washington Square, and I remember what a hush fell as they approached the Arch. Between throngs of bareheaded men, and women in whose eyes shone tears, the soldiers slowly marched. The Dead 364 WASHINGTON SQUARE March sounded solemnly. Then there was but the muffled beat of drums, the slow footfalls of the sol- diers, and now and then the gentle clink of steel. A profound silence fell upon the crowd as the colors passed, all draped in black, and then came the slow rumbling of wheels, as the flag-wrapped coffins, upon caissons, went by. Many an important parade has passed through Washington Arch, but none can dim the memory, for those who saw it, of the home-com- ing of the Seventy-first. But, turning from serious matters, it is a delight to think of the Washington Square pump of long ago. For in defiance of the laws of hygiene, of all consid- erations of health, of the laws of sanitary science, as the present day understands hygiene and health and sanitary science, the favorite drinking water of these fashionable folk, before the days of Croton water, came from a pump that stood just a trifle to the east of the base of the Arch. Even after the Croton water was really in the houses, in the 1840 's, it was with reluctance and only gradually that the use of this pump was relinquished — and all this although the antecedent use of the square was of common knowl- edge. The water was supposed, and no wonder, to have a piquant tang of individuality, which made it a rival of the famous Tea Water Pump at the corner of Roosevelt and Chatham Streets which was pas- sionately held by its devotees to supply better tea water than any other pump in the city. In early days, preceding the advent of Croton, the Manhattan Company operated a water system through a consid- 365 THE BOOK OF NEW YORK erable part of the lower New York of that period; and the upper part of the city, which then meant, say, Greenwich Village, Washington Square and there- abouts, had the opportunity to get water from a sup- ply that was gathered in cisterns where Jefferson Market now stands and from there was pumped to a reservoir at what is now the corner of Broadway and 13th Street. But it was hard to lure New Yorkers away from street pumps, which had been set up, through the early city, at intervals of about four blocks. Behind the stately homes of the north side of the square is a sort of circumscribed spaciousness, giv- ing openness of air and aspect and sunlight, and the rear windows of the houses look down over smallish, ordered, walled-in gardens, into Washington Mews, behind the houses east of Fifth Avenue, and into Macdougal Alley behind those west. The Mews, retaining its old-fashioned designation from the days of horses and carriages, is now within great iron entrance-gates, and has largely been given over to artists' studio-homes, which are picturesque in the extreme, in blendings of soft grays and greens, and with enclosed and formal gardens — which show what all New York could do if it chose ! — ^between the new studios facing into the Mews, and a line of beau- tiful studio buildings, also recently built, and inten- tionally of old-European effect, facing on Eighth Street. Macdougal Alley has also become a studio resort for sculptors and artists, and a ^'festa" given there 366 WASHINGTON SQUARE for the Red Cross attracted the attention of the en- tire city, and of every visitor, by the triumphant transformation of a narrow way, lined with plain little buildings, into a bazaar and plaisance of de- light, with pinnacles and towers of beauty. The Washington Square mansions are not nearly so costly, not nearly of so great size, as are the more ostentatious mansions of upper Fifth Avenue and Riverside, but they hold their own with distinction. *^Prue and I'' used to see diners-out go trippingly down the steps of these sober-fronted mansions as evening approached. And only last evening, as I passed one of the broad-fronted old homes, the owner and his wife went down the steps and crossed the sidewalk to their waiting motor, walking on a long red velvet carpet which had been laid for them, al- though the steps and sidewalk were absolutely dry: and the motor, with two liveried men on the box, rolled away, and two other liveried men, bent double, walked backward, heavily drawing in the rich carpet which had kept the shoes of wealth from the contami- nation of stone: and I could only think of ^^The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness'' — But that, with the somber summary of what would follow from pride, was written well over three thousand years ago! Henry James, in his novel of Washington Square,'' pictured Doctor Sloper, in 1835, building himself *'a handsome, wide-fronted house, with a big 367 THE BOOK OF NEW YOEK "balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of white marble steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white marble"; this struc- ture and its neighbors being **very solid and honor- able dwellings," and Washington Square securing through them ^*a kind of established repose." There is a mellowness about these homes, an air of leisured ease, of serenity, of tranquillity, which are the more to be remarked from being in a city not notable for tranquillity, serenity or ease. There is a classic dignity about them, with their straight roof lines, and their attic windows looking out through open-work grills of Eoman-key, and their balustrades and rails, their large-windowed, broad-fronted ampli- tude. They are sedately charming and sedately aloof, with their white marble steps leading up to their fine doorways, with straight-edged sidelights and overlights; with glimpses of great broad vesti- bules in exquisite creamy white, of silver doorknobs, and of great staircases. In the narrow spaces be- tween house-fronts and sidewalk — for the houses all stand aloofly back — is pleasant greenery, with little evergreens and box; and one old box-bush still re- mains, a survival of the past. And up the fronts of a few of these old brick houses still rise old wistaria garlands, the typical and greatly loved wistarias of an earlier New York, that gloriously toss their purple plumage in the air of spring. The effectiveness of the square is due in great de- gree to the beauty and the dignity and the noble open setting of the two houses at the Fifth Avenue corners ; 368 WASHINGTON SQUARE and the final touch of felicitousness was given to it when Washington Arch arose, in all its fine brave dig- nity, its captivating charm. For the dedication, in 1889, of the temporary arch which immediately preceded this arch of white gran- ite. New York arranged a program which followed so far as possible the events of 1789 which marked the beginning of the United States as a nation under a Constitution. President Harrison came to the city, and was landed as Washington on his coming had been landed, at the foot of Wall Street, on the East Eiver. He went to church service, as Washington had gone to service, at old St. PauPs on Broadway. But when he came to Washington Square to preside at the dedication of the commemorative arch, he came to a place which in Washington's day was existent only as uncultivated fields. The present arch, honored by New Yorkers above anything else in the city, is especially to be honored for the words which it bears imperishably across its top ; a motto to be read by looking up from the open square, on the southern side of the memorial; for the words are those of Washington's nobly imperishable adjuration : **Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair." I 369 INDEX — A.— Accidents, street, 246 Allen Street, 116 Andre: capture of, 313; with Arnold, 317, 318, 319, 320; slandering Wayne, 320; exe- cution of, 321 Appellate Court building, 150 Aquarium, the, 38 Architects: Cram, 192; Mc- Comb, 64; Ren wick, 191; Up- john, 45, 171, 172; Stanford White, 121, 149, 150, 160, 361 Arnold, Benedict: 317, 318, 319, 320, 333 Arthur, President: home of, 31; statue of, 151 Ascension, Church of the, 171 Astor Place, 102 — B.— Bacon, Lord, 12 Bancroft, George, 17, 47 Bartholdi, 154 Battery, the, 34-40, 338 Baxter Street, 83 Beeeher, 291 Bible House, 85 Billop house, 335 Blackwell's Island, 100, 148 Blennerhassets, the, 74, 287 Block, Adrian, 3 Bohemia, 343, 345, 354, 355 Bonaparte: Joseph and Jerome, 275 Booth, home of, 161 Boroughs of New York, 4 Botanical Gardens, 296 Bowery, the, 81-87, 163 Bowling Green, 40-1 Bowne house, 293 Brevoort, 169 Bridges, 68-9 Broad Street, 53-56 Broadway, 70-71, 98, 213-227 Bronx, the, 294, 295 Brook Farmers, in New York, 258-9 Bryan, William Jennings, 154 Bryant, William Cullen, 17, 18, 188, 228 Bunner, 29, 39, 360 Burr, Aaron: on the Battery, 35; at trial of Weeks, 64, 65; charm of, 285; his quarrel and duel with Hamilton, 281-3; marriage with Madame Jumel, 277, 289; his power in the courts, 282; home of, 284; his projected empire, 286, 287 ; visit to Europe, 288-9 Burr, Theodosia, 35 — C— Cardiff Giant, 39 Carnegie, home of, 197, 198 Castle Garden, 37, 38, 39 Cathedrals: Episcopalian, 271; Roman Catholic, 100, 191; Russian, 136-8 Cemeteries: Marble, 32; old Jewish, 86; St. John's, 75; Trinity, 48-50; in Brooklyn and Queens, 293 Charities, 253-7 Chatham Square, 85 Chelsea, 164-7 INDEX Cherry Hill, 67 "Chesapeake" and "Shannon," 49 Chinese quarter, 117, 139-142, 238-240 Churches and chapels: St. Bene- dict the Moor, 245; St. Esprit, 299; St. George, 163; St. Mark, 3, 89-95; St. Pat- rick, 76-7; St. Paul, 57-59; St. Paul Eastchester, 295; St. John, 72-5; St. Peter, 331; St. Thomas, 192; Ascension, 171; Collegiate, 190; First Presbyterian, 172; German Reformed, 268; Grace, 77-80; Little Church around the Corner, 173-6; in the Fort, 190; Madonna di Pompei, 75; Madison Square, 149; Mora- vian, 339; Judson Memorial, 361; Quaker, 163; Trinity, 45-51 ; Our Lady of Lourdes, 138 Cincinnati, Society, 124-7 City Hall, 59-65, 67 Claremont, 264 Cleopatra's Needle, 202-4 Clinton, De Witt, 63, 263, 331 Clubs: Bread and Cheese, 188; Friendly, 187; Lotus, 189; Metropolitan, 187; National Arts, 161; Players', 161; Princeton, 161; Salmagundi, 187; Union, 189; University, 190 College of City of New York, 272 "Colonel Carter," 28, 30 Collegiate Church, 190 Colonnade Row, 22 Columbia University, 262-3 Coney Island, 339-342 Conkling, 151 Cooper, J. Fenimore, 188, 189, 316 Cooper Union, 87-S Cram, 192 Crawford, F. Marion, 29 Croton water, 365 Crystal Palace, 182 Cunningham, Provost, 50 Curtis, George William, 173, 258, 259, 367 Customs, old, 246, 348 — D.— Dana, Charles A., 253 Davis, Richard Harding, 29, 105, 171, 174 Delmonico's, 76, 155 De Pauw Row, 121 Dewey, Admiral, 37 Dickens: and Irving, 23; Liud- ley Murray's ghost, 205; literary banquet, 156; his American geography, 329 District Leaders, 128-133 Division Street, 115 Dobb's Ferry, 311 Dongan, Governor, 331, 191 Drake, Joseph Rodman, 24, 25 — E.— Edward the Seventh; in New York when Prince of Wales, 47 Evictions, 118-9 — F.— Farragut, 150-151 Federal Hall, 51 Fifth Avenue, 103, 104, 150, 168- 204 Fifth Avenue Hotel, 150 Flushing, 293 Fort Izzard, 338 Fort Washington, 265-267 Forty- Second Street, 181, 182, 183 Foundling Hospital, 256-7 Franklin: in New York, 332; Elizabeth Schuyler, 280; re- ply to Howe, 335; statue of, 186 Fraunces Tavern, 55 Frick, H. C, home of, 197 Fulton, Robert, 336-337 INDEX Furniture, early American: in City Hall, 64; in Metropolitan Museum, 201 — O.— Gallatin, 48 Gardiner, Julia, 22 Garibaldi, 339, 361 Genet, Citizen, 331 George, Henry, 79-80 George the Third; lead statue of, 41-43 Goelet mansion, 104 Golden Hill, 18, 19 Governor's Room, 61 Grace Church, 77-80, 169 Gramercy Park, 159-162 Grand Central Station, 212 Grand Street, 115, 122 Grant: home of, 31; tomb of, 261 Graves : Drake, 24 ; Gallatin, 48 ; Grant, 261; Hamilton, 48; Irving, 314; Kearney, 49; "Boss" Kelly, 76; Landais, 77; Lawrence, 49; Monroe, 32; Montgomery, 57; Nor- deck, 59; Osborne, 49; Roche Fontaine, 59; Sloughter, 95; Stirling, 49; Stuyvesant, 94; Charlotte Temple, 49; Tomp- kins, 95; Revolutionary pris- oners, 49, 50 Greeks, the, 117, 142 Greenwich Village, 343-356 — H.— "Hail, Columbia!" 52 Hale, Nathan, 65 Halleck, Fitz-Greene: City Hall verse, 2; lines on Drake, 25; "Marco Bozzaris," 25; at Jumel mansion, 278; portrait of, 185 Hamilton, Alexander: home on Broadway, 45; home on Wash- ington Heights, 283; mobbed, 64; at Weeks trial, 64-5; at King's College, 263; General Clinton, 333; portrait of, 62; desk of, 64; marriage of, 280; quarrel and duel with Burr, 281-3; funeral of, 285; grave of, 48; monument to, 284 Harlem, 270-271 Harlem Heights, Battle of, 262 Harriman Drive, 315 Hebrews, 83, 86, 107-109, 122-3, 143, 167, 236 Hell Gate Bridge, 68 Henry, O., 345 Hispanic Museum, 264 Hotels, 169, 179, 180, 220-221, 248 Houdon, 201 Howe: General and Admiral; 9, 335, 357 Howells, William Dean, 28 Hudson, Henry, 91, 328 Hudson Park, 75 Hudson River, 302-317, 321 Huguenots, the, 297-9 Hutchinson, Anne, home of, 295 — I.— Illegitimacy, and British gen- erals, 357-8 Inman, portraits by, 62 Irving, Washington: 13, 18, 189; birthplace of, 19; Central Park, 17; Knickerbocker His- tory, 19, 20; meeting with Washington, 21; Colonnade Row, 21, 22; home on Irving Place, 22; admired by Scott and Dickens, 23; "Tom" Paine, 352; John Howard Payne, 23; the Bronx, 294-5; home at Irvington, 311-12; Sleepy Hollow, 313; grave of, 314 Italians, 143-6, 235, 236, 361 Izzard, Fort, 338 James, Henry, 28, 46, 367 INDEX Jaudenes, 352 Jefferson, Joseph, 86, 174-5 Jefferson, Thomas: portrait of, 324; costume of, 352 Jefferson Market, 346 "Jerseys, The," 294 Jones, John Paul, 76-7; statue of, 201 Judson Memorial, 361 Jumel Mansion, 272-278 Jumels, the, 275-278 — K.— Kent, James, 188 Kidd, Captain, on Wall Street, 53 King, Rufus, home of, 293 King's Ferry, 315 Kipling, 70, 71 "Knickerbocker," 19 Knox, General: 85, 252; portrait of, 324 Kosciuszko, 323, 324 — L.— La Farge, 171 Lafayette: love for New York, 1; visit in 1824, 36-7; statue of, 153; portrait of, 185; at Jumel Mansion, 275 Lafayette Place, 21 Landais, Pierre, 76-7 Lansing, Judge, 64-5 Lawrence, Captain James, 49 Leisler, Jacob, 65-67 Liberty, Statue of, 154, 334 Lights, the, of New York, 221- 227 Lincoln: at Cooper Union, 88- 89; statue of, 155 Lind, Jenny, 38 Litchfield, 42 Little Church around the Cor- ner, 173-6 — M.~ Macdougal Alley, 366 MacMonnies, 65, 323 Madison Square, 16, 147-152 Madison Square Garden, 149 •^Manhattan," 5 Manhattan Bridge, 68, 86, 87 Marble Cemeteries, 32 "Marco Bozzaris," 25 Markets, street, 112-115 May Day parties, 199 McAuley, Jerry, 255 McComb, John, 64 Metropolitan Life Building, 147-9 Metropolitan Museum, 200-2 Milligan Place, 346 Minetta Lane and Street, 75 Monroe, President: home of, 31; where buried, 32 Montgomery, General, 57-9 Moore, Clement C, 165 Moravians, the, 339 Morgan, J. P., 53, 164, 212 Morris, Roger, 273, 308, 309, 310 Morse, S. F. B., 184-6 Mulberry Bend and Street, 82, 112 Murray Hill, 205-212 Murray, Lindley, 205, 206 Murray mansion, 206 Murray, Mrs., 210 — N.— Narrows, the, 337, 338 National Arts Club, 161 Nelson, Admiral, at New York, 330 New Dorp, 339 New Rochelle, 297-299 "New Woman," the, 250 New York: boroughs of, 4; pop- ulation, 5; seal of, 10-12; plan of, made in 1811, 14-17; lit- erary characteristics of, 27 "Night Before Christmas," 165 Ninth Regiment, 155 North River, 302, 303 — O.— "Old Homestead, The," 78 INDEX Oldest house in New York, 293 Osborne, Sir Danvers, 49 Our Lady of Lourdes, Church of, 138 — P.— Paine, Thomas, 297, 298, 351, 352 Parkhurst, Dr., church of, 149 Paulist Church, 258-9 Payne, John Howard, 23, 24 Pelham Bay, 295 Pennsylvania Railroad: hotel of, 180; station of, 216-7 Perry, Oliver Hazard, 63, 64 Philipse, Frederick, 309, 310 Philipse Manor Hall, 304 Philipse, Mary, 273, 304, 306- 309, 310 Pirates, 53 Players' Club, 161 Plaza, the, 192 Plymouth Church, 291 Poe, 26, 27, 75 Population of New York, 5 Portraits: Clinton, 63; Halleck, 185; Hamilton, 62; Jaudenes, 352; Jefferson, 324; Lafayette, 185; Perry, 63; Mary Philipse, 304; Seward, 62; Van Buren, 62; Washington, 61, 184, 324; in Philipse Manor Hall, 310; in Public Library, 184-6; early sale of, 182 Prison ships, British, 292 Prospect Park, 291 "Prue and I," 173, 259, 367 Public Library, 183-186 Pumps, 365 Putnam, General, 125, 208-9, 211 -Q.- Quaker Meeting House, 163 Queensboro Bridge, 68 — R.— "Raven, The," 26, 76 Real Estate, 251-2 Ren wick, 191 Richmond Hill, 284 Riots: Doctors', 101; Bread, 102; Draft, 102; Astor Place, 102 Riverside Drive and Park, 259- 265, 304 Rochambeau, 311 Roebling, 69 Roosevelt, birthplace of, 31 Russian brass trade, 116; cathe- dral, 136-8 — S.— Sailors' Snug Harbor, 254, 335 St. Esprit, Church of, 299 St. Gaudens, 45, 150, 192 St. George's Church, 163 St. John, Cathedral of, 271 St. John's Chapel, 72-5 St. John's Park, 72, 74 St. Mark's Church, 3, 89-95 St. Paul's, 57-9 St. Paul's Eastchester, 295 St. Peter's Church, 331 St. Thomas' Church, 192 Schwab, home of, 198, 260 Scott, Sir Walter, 20, 286, 329 Scott, General Winfield, 47 Sculptors: Bartholdi, 154; Hou- don, 201 ; MacMonnies, 65, 323; St. Gaudens, 45, 150, 192 Seal of the City, 10-12 Secession proposal, for New York, 7 Seventy-first Regiment, 364 Seward, 62, 151 Shaw, Bernard, 329 Shops, 249, 250; Allen Street, 116; brass, 116; Division Street, 115; specialties, 190; department stores, 249; pic- turesque, 249 Sickles, General, 170 Signs, 244-6 Sleepy Hollow, 313 Slocum fountain, 119 Sloughter, Governor, 66, 95 INDEX Smith, F. Hopkinson, 28, 29, 30 Standard Oil Company, 44 Staten Island, 331, 335, 337, 338, 339 Statues: Arthur, 161; Colum- bus, 39; Conkling, 151; Far- ragut, 150; Franklin, 186; Garibaldi, 361; George the Third, 41; Hale, Nathan, 65; Kosciuszko, 323; Jones, Paul, 201; Lafayette, 153; Liberty, 154, 334; Lincoln, 155; Pitt, 41; Seward, 151; Sherman, 192; Sigel, 260; Stuyvesant, 94; Verazzano, 39; Washing- ton, 52, 153, 201, 323 Steuben, Baron, 125, 269-270 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 333 Stirling, Lord, 49 Stock Exchange, 54 Stony Point, 314 Studio quarters, 158, 159, 172, 344, 366 Stuart, Gilbert, 184, 324, 352 Stuyvesant Petrus, 89-96, 271, 331 Stuyvesant Square, 162-4 Submarine, of Fulton, 336 Sully, 324 Superstitions, 231-240 — T.— Tallmadge, Major, 317, 318 Tammany, 124-134, 292 Tappan Zee, 311, 312 Tarry town, 312-314 Taylor, Bayard, 39 Temple, Charlotte, 49 Tenement District, 107-123 Tennyson, 49 Terry, Ellen, 10 Thackeray: dinner to, 28; opin- ion of New York, 9; a Pick- wickian adventure, 10; on Broadway, 70 Theaters, 219-220 Tilden, home of, 161 Tombs, the, 84 Tompkins, Governor, 95 Tompkins Square, 119 Tottenville, 335 To^^^lsend: "Just Across the Square," 360 Trinity Church, 45-51 Trollope, Mrs., 12 Trumbull: portrait of Washing- ton, 61; of Hamilton, 62 Twain, Mark, 170, 184 Tyler, President, 22 — U.— Union Square, 152-7 "Unrest," the, 3 Upjohn, Richard, 45, 171, 172 — v.— Van Arsdale, John, 338 Van Beuren house, 105 Van Bibber, 171, 174 Van Buren, portrait of, 62 Van Cortlandt Mansion, 278 Van Vredenburgh, 40 Verazzano, 3, 39, 302 Verplanck's Point, 314 Visitors to New York, 216 — W.— Waldorf-Astoria, 179 Wall Street, 44, 51-55, 164, 302 Wallabout Bay, 292 Warren, Sir Peter, 347 Washington Arch, 168, 361 Washington, George: and Gen- eral Howe, 9; meeting Irving, 21; his dogs, 9; his Battery walk, 34; inauguration of, 52; at Fraimces Tavern, 55, 56; his pen, 59; his desk, 64; portraits of, 61, 184, 324; statues of, 52, 153, 201, 323; landing in New York, 332; in Chelsea, 166-7; his attention to clothes, 126, 279, 307; in 1775, 101 ; his signature, 124; on Murray Hill, 207-211; the early shad, 229; on Cherry INDEX Hill, 67-8; at Fort Washing- ton, 266-7; at Jumel Mansion, 273, 274; at Van Cortlandt, 279; and Anthony Wayne, 314; and Mary Philipse, 304, 306-9; imperishable words of, 369 Washington Mews, 366 Washington Square, 29, 359- 369 Wayne, Anthony, 314 Weeks, trial of, 64-5 West Point, 317, 327 White, Stanford, 121, 149, 150, 160, 361 Whitman, Walt, 70, 292, 303 William the Fourth, 329-330 Williamsburgh Bridge, 68, 112 Winthrop, Theodore, 29 Wolcott, Oliver; the George the Third statue, 42-3 Wolfe; his lost monument, 242 Wood, Fernando, 7 Woolworth Building, 60 Worth monument, 152 — X — — Y.— Yonkers, 304 Yorkville, 270 Zoological Gardens, 296 377 1 1 I I ( ( i (