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MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE. 
 
 Vol. XXXIII. 
 
 JULY, 1905. 
 
 No. 4. 
 
 NEW YORK FROM THE FLATIRON. 
 
 BY EDGAR SALT US. 
 
 THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY PANORAMA IN THE WORLD-A SURVEY 
 OF THE AMERICAN METROPOLIS FROM ITS FOCAL POINT AT THE 
 CROSSING OF ITS TWO MOST FAMOUS THOROUGHFARES, 
 BROADWAY AND FIFTH AVENUE. 
 
 4 \ A /HAT do you know of New York? " too, of paradise. Manhattan may typify 
 
 said one wanderer to another. both. It represents other things also. 
 
 " Only what I have read in Dante," The latter, mainly, are superlatives, 
 
 was the bleak reply. From the top floors of the Flatiron you 
 
 Dante told of the inferno. He told, get an idea of a few. On one side is 
 
 Madison Square Garden and Tower. 
 
 East River. 
 
 Long Island City. 
 
 PA' 
 
 8*© 
 
 mm 
 
 _'4 
 
 Madison Square. 
 
 VIEW FROM THE UPPER FLOORS OF THE FLATIRON BUILDING, LOOKING TO THE NORTHEAST ACROSS 
 MADISON SQUARE TO THE UPPER EAST SIDE OF NEW YORK AND THE EAST RIVER, 
 
 Appellate 
 Court-House. 
 
 Dr. Parkhtirst'i 
 New Church. 
 
 Dr. Parkhurst's 
 Present Church. 
 
 WITH LONG ISLAND IN THE DISTANCE. 
 
 2 M 
 
;;s2 Ml'NSEY'S 
 
 Broadway. Barring t r:i»l«- rentes, Broad- 
 way i- the longest commercial stretch on 
 the planet. On the other side La Fifth 
 Avenue. Barring aothing, Fifth Avenue 
 
 MAG \Z1NR 
 
 The beetles arc cabs; the ants are be- 
 ings — primitive bu1 human, full of soap- 
 bubble loves and hates, of ephemeral 
 cares and j<»ys as insecure, hurrying 
 
 Qreenpolnt. East Kiver. 
 
 is the richest thoroughfare in the world. 
 From the t<»p floors of the Flatiron each 
 looks meaner, almost mean. In them are 
 things that you would take for hectics, 
 others that seem to you ants. 
 
 grotesquely over the most expensive spot 
 on earth. They hurry because everybody 
 hurries, because haste is in the air. in 
 
 the effrontery of the impudent "step 
 lively," in the hammers of the ceaseless 
 
NEW YORK FROM THE FLATIRON. 
 
 383 
 
 skyscrapers ceaselessly going up, in the the west is a fourth. Beneath them are 
 ambient neurosis, in the scudding motors, great ocher brutes of cars, herds of 
 in the unending noise, the pervading them, stampeding violently with grind- 
 scramble, the metallic roar of the city. ing grunts, and, on the microbish pave- 
 
 Williamsburg. New East River Bridge. Brooklyn. 
 
 Beyond is the slam-bang of the Sixth 
 Avenue Elevated careering up-town and 
 down, both ways at once. Parallelly is the 
 Subway, rumbling relentlessly. Farther 
 east are two additional slam-bangers. To 
 
 ments, swarms such as Dante may indeed 
 have seen, but not in paradise. 
 
 In the morning they are there, scurry- 
 ing to their toil; at high noon to their 
 food; at evening to their homes; at night 
 
M1NSKVS MAGAZINE. 
 
 Brooklyn Skyscrapers of 
 
 Bridge. lower New York. 
 
 VIEW FROM THE FLATIRON BUILDING, LOOKING TO THE SOUTHEAST, DOWN BROADWAY TO UNION 
 
 SQUARE AND REYOND. 
 
NEW YORK FROM THE FLATIRON. 38i 
 
 Skyscrapers of Staten Statue of Pennsylvania Jersey 
 
 lower New York. Island. Liberty. Station. City. 
 
 VIEW FROM THE FLATIRON BUILDING, LOOKING TO THE SOUTHWEST. DOWN LOWER FIFTH AVENUE. 
 
386 MrXSEY'S 
 
 to amusements more laborious than their 
 work. When they are nol then- you do 
 not know it. Save at night, when the 
 crowd moves elsewhere, always are there 
 
 Jersey lloboken. 
 City. 
 
 MAGAZINE. 
 
 rearing its knifish face with the same dis- 
 dain of tlie ephemeral that the Sphinx 
 displays, knowing that she has all time 
 as we all have our day. 
 
 Castle Oranpe Mountain 
 
 Point. (in distance). 
 
 Sohmer West Twenty- 
 
 Building. Second Street. 
 
 VIEW FROM THE FLATIRON BUILDING, LOOKING WESTWARD TO THE HUDSON RIVER AND BEYOND IT 
 
 TO THE NEW JERSEY SUBURBS' — 
 
 compact throngs, always are there Ages ago the Sphinx was disinterred 
 
 stream* of incarnated preoccupations, from beneath masses of sand under which 
 
 pouring from whence yon cannot say, it had brooded interminably. Yet in its 
 
 to where yen cannot tell; human streams simian paws, its avian wings, in its body 
 
 which the Flatiron cleaves indifferently, which is that of animal, m its lace which 
 
NEW YORK FROM THE FLATIRON. 
 
 387 
 
 is that of a seer, there, before Darwin, 
 before history, by a race that has left no 
 other souvenir, in traits great and grave, 
 the descent of man was told. 
 
 Weehawken. 
 
 cisely as these huts were once regarded 
 as supreme achievements, so, one of these 
 days, from other and higher floors, the 
 Flat iron may seem a hut itself. 
 
 West Shore The Subway 
 
 Station. Palisades. Power-House. 
 
 West Twenty- Fifth Avenu 
 
 Third Street. Hotel. 
 
 — THE RETAIL SHOPPING DISTRICT OF NEW YORK CENTERS AT ABOUT THIS POINT ; IMMEDIATELY 
 ABOVE IT (TO THE RIGHT ) BEGINS THE REGION OF HOTELS AND THEATERS. 
 
 There remained his ascent. Ages hence 
 the Flatiron may tell it. For as you lean 
 and gaze from the toppest floors on 
 houses below, which from those floors 
 seem huts, it may occur to you that pre- 
 
 Evolution has not halted. Undiscern- 
 ibly but indefatigably, always it is pro- 
 gressing. Its final term is not in existing 
 buildings or in existing man. If human- 
 ity sprang from gorillas, from humanity 
 
388 MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE. 
 
 Upper Victoria Upper Fifth Belmont 
 
 Broadway. Hotel. Avenue. Hotel. 
 
 Fifth Avenue 
 Hotel. 
 
 Worth 
 Monument. 
 
 VIEW FROM THE FLATIRON BUILDING, 
 LOOKING TO THE NORTH UP 
 BROADWAY AND FIFTH 
 AVENUE. 
 
 gods shall proceed. The story of 
 Olympus is merely a tale of what 
 might have been. That which 
 might have been may yet come to 
 pass. Even now, could the old 
 divinities, hushed forevermore, 
 awake, they would be perplexed 
 enough to see how mortals have 
 exceeded them. The inextinguish- 
 able laughter which was theirs is 
 absent from the prose of life. 
 Commerce has alarmed their 
 
NEW YORK FROM THE FLATIRON. 
 
 389 
 
 afflatus away. But the telegraph is a 
 better messenger than they had, the 
 motor is surer than their chariots of 
 dream. In Fifth Avenue inns they could 
 get fairer fare than ambrosia, and be- 
 hold women beside whom Venus would 
 look provincial and Juno a frump. The 
 spectacle of electricity tamed and do- 
 mesticated would surprise them not a 
 little, the Elevated quite as much, the 
 Flatiron still more. At sight of the latter 
 they would recall the Titans with whom 
 once they warred, and slink to their 
 sacred seas outfaced. 
 
 In the same measure that we have suc- 
 ceeded in exceeding them, so will poster- 
 ity surpass what we have done. Evolu- 
 tion may be slow, but it is sure ; yet, how- 
 ever slow, it achieved an unrecognized 
 advance when it devised buildings such as 
 this. It is demonstrable that small rooms 
 breed small thoughts. It will be demon- 
 strable that as buildings ascend so do 
 ideas. It is mental progress that sky- 
 scrapers engender. From these parturi- 
 tions gods may really proceed — beings, 
 that is, who, could we remain long enough 
 to see them, would regard us as we re- 
 gard the apes. 
 
 Meanwhile, on those toppest floors, the 
 eager sun, aslant, shuttles the mounting 
 roar. In the noise and glare you need 
 but a modicum of imagination to fancy 
 yourself contemplating a volcano in ac- 
 tive operation, one that is erupting gold, 
 coining dollars in its depths, and tossing 
 them in the crystalline air — whence they 
 fall, as rain falls, on those who know 
 enough not to come in, who get in the 
 way, fight for a place, and hold it until 
 they have made their pile. It is not of 
 course from such as these that gods shall 
 come, rather a race similar to the curious 
 dwarfs of whom Pliny told, pygmies that 
 passed their lives fighting with phan- 
 toms for coin. So, too, fight those that 
 you behold from the toppest floors. The 
 struggle is the impetus of their little 
 lives, the substance of their loves and 
 hates; it is the magnet that draws them 
 from regions quasi-polar, wholly tropical, 
 from zones remoter yet, from those 
 nethermost planes where Dante went. 
 
 Above them, indifferently, the Flatiron 
 looms. Semi-animate as the motor is, 
 superhuman, vibrant with a life of its 
 own, from its hundred eyes it stares. 
 Below is Madison Square, circled with 
 hotels, clubs, apartment houses, office- 
 buildings, and a church. The church is 
 that of Dr. Parkhurst. The vast building 
 adjacent is an insurance company's — 
 be Metropolitan Life. On the white 
 
 corner above is the Appellate Division 
 of the State Supreme Court. On the 
 next corner is the Madison Square Gar- 
 den, the home of the horseshow, the 
 circus, and the French ball. To the north 
 and east gasp a few surviving huts. To 
 the left, on Broadway, is the Fifth Ave- 
 nue Hotel. In days gone by it was a 
 great place for honeymoons. Now it is 
 even a greater place for politicians of 
 the Eepublican brand. A bit above is 
 the Hoffman House, which the haunted 
 Stokes made agreeable for everybody in 
 general and for Democrats in particular. 
 Higher up on Broadway are other hos- 
 telries either equally famous or with the 
 future in which to accumulate renown, 
 the old Gilsey for instance, the older Vic- 
 toria, the new Astor, and the Breslin 
 newer still. On Fifth Avenue are more, 
 the Holland, the Waldorf, the St. Regis. 
 There, too, is the Knickerbocker Trust 
 Company, quite Greek in appearance, 
 and Tiffany's, which is quite as French. 
 
 Of the two thoroughfares, Broadway 
 is the older. Originally called the Breede 
 W T eg, it began with the beginning of 
 things, when New York was Nieu Am- 
 sterdam and talked Dutch instead of 
 slang. The incipiency of Fifth Avenue is 
 more modern. It occurred a little prior 
 to the Civil War. A bit later a residence 
 thereon was endearingly regarded as 
 quite equivalent to a title. As far as it 
 went — and, until within relatively recent 
 years, it did not straggle much above 
 Forty-Second Street — it was a wholly 
 residential stretch of brown-stone fronts. 
 
 The first to put a shop on the holy site 
 was Mrs. Paran Stevens. The deed, 
 highly radical, was regarded as sacrilege. 
 The late Mr. Lorillard, a tobacco mer- 
 chant, objected strenuously. Said Mrs. 
 Stevens, who was quick with her tongue : 
 
 " You would not mind, now, would you, 
 if it were a tobacco shop?" 
 
 Then Mr. Lorillard shut up. But that 
 which the lady began others continued, 
 the result being that residentially Fifth 
 Avenue has moved from Washington 
 Square to the Plaza. 
 
 West of it is the river to which 
 Hudson came, viewing from his little 
 boat silent spaces crammed now with 
 tooting craft, where dock liners leviathan 
 as skyscrapers. Further up are the Pali- 
 sades. Further down is Staten Island, 
 between which and Manhattan the orig- 
 inal Vanderbilt pursued, like Sappho's 
 lover, the highly genteel avocation ^ of 
 ferryman, landing his fares where rises 
 the Immigration Bureau to-day and 
 where the primal skyscrapers began. 
 
390 
 
 MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE. 
 
 Thence upward with the stream of 
 life the city flows, halting occasionally, 
 occasionally too circumscribed, as in the 
 lower East Side, which is a caldron, or 
 in the Chinese quarter, which is a sewer. 
 Over the way there is a glimpse of the 
 nameless shames of architectural Long 
 Island, the infinite horrors of Williams- 
 burg. Yet with the glimpse comes the 
 saving savor of the salt of the sea. There 
 are compensating vistas also, the pillars 
 of the Brooklyn Bridge, the statue of 
 Liberty, the high Byzantine dome on 
 Park Row, more distantly the roof of 
 the Pennsylvania Railway station, a roof 
 presently to be duplicated not far from 
 the Grand Central, in front of which 
 already rises the unfinished Belmont 
 House, the tallest of tall hotels. 
 
 Intermediately, a half dozen streets to 
 the rear of the Flatiron, lies Union 
 Square, a bedlam of business and traffic, 
 but which within the memory of the 
 present writer was a sedate residential 
 quarter, girdled with balconied houses 
 that were festooned with honeysuckle 
 bursting in the eager spring. The peace 
 that was there survives still in New York, 
 but only in Gramercy Park and lower 
 Fifth Avenue, which latter, fusing at 
 Fourteenth Street with the general pan- 
 demonium, knows no respite until it 
 reaches the auriferous precincts above 
 the St. Regis and the Plaza, where the 
 newer plutocracy resides. 
 
 Indifferently on these things the Flat- 
 iron stares. Its front is lifted to the 
 future. On the past its back is turned. 
 Of what has gone before it is American 
 in its unconcern. Monstrous yet infantile, 
 it is a recent issue of the gigantic up- 
 heaval that is transforming the whole 
 city, and which will end by making it a 
 curiosity to which people will come and 
 stare as they do at cataracts and big caves 
 and great trees and fat women and what- 
 ever else is abnormal. Yet the changes, 
 however disconcerting, are but tokens 
 of others to be. In certain aspects New 
 York still preserves its old colonial 
 squalor. In others it presents the hasty 
 hideousness of boom towns. In the lin- 
 gering streets of brown-stone fronts it is 
 embryonic still. Near the rivers it has 
 thoroughfares and avenues which, in 
 ruthless atrocity and shuddersome ugli- 
 ness, are nightmares in stone. But these 
 are as measles and mumps to a child. 
 They are not definite conditions. Nor is 
 there, nor will there be, anything definite 
 here until, from the Battery to the Plaza, 
 the buildings one and all are so huge that 
 nothing huger is possible. 
 
 Existing department stores are, one 
 might think, sufficient in dimensions. 
 Not a bit of it. A new one is planned 
 that is to cover an entire square from 
 Fifth Avenue to Madison, and to ap- 
 proach the Flatiron's height. The mas- 
 siveness of that will be duplicated, trip- 
 licated, multiplied over the town. Sooner 
 or later there, where now are, say, eighty 
 or a hundred buildings to a square there 
 will be but one. After the fashion of 
 a Broadway department store which, 
 outgrowing the square it occupies, has 
 reached out and subterraneously an- 
 nexed a building across the way — after 
 this suggestive fashion it is indicated 
 that emporiums of the future will cover 
 two squares — three, perhaps; that no 
 hotel, no apartment house or office- 
 building will be really content with less 
 than one, and that however it may be 
 elsewhere, on the thirty-five streets be- 
 tween Twenty-Third Street and the 
 Plaza, Fifth Avenue will contain not 
 many more than seventy structures, 
 about one to each square, structures ex- 
 tending back on the west to Broadway or 
 Sixth Avenue, on the east to Madison, 
 with, on these arteries, similar struc- 
 tures, similarly extending, repeating 
 themselves to the river fronts. 
 
 That is what people will come to see. 
 It will be horrible; but analyze the hor- 
 rible, and sometimes you find the sub- 
 lime, again the unique, occasionally the 
 commercial. The three derivatives pres- 
 ent here will provide a spectacle shame- 
 ful and superb, a congerie of temples for 
 the deification of gold, a city of basilicas 
 for the glory of greed. In somnolent 
 Nieu Amsterdam, Nicholas was patron 
 saint. These shall be the gods of Man- 
 hattan. Y r et are not its deities now these 
 divinities, whose worship is haste, whose 
 incense is noise, and whose swarming 
 suppliants you mistake, from those upper 
 floors, for insects? 
 
 Tennyson compared humanity to so 
 many gnats in the glare of a million 
 million of suns. Insects they are. But 
 they shall pass as Nieu Amsterdam 
 passed, as passed the race unknown that 
 left the Sphinx. 
 
 In their stead will be beings more 
 august. In the mounting wonders of 
 the city to be, humanity will mount also. 
 It will deny its false gods, reverse their 
 altars, and, on the pile it has made, re- 
 construct Olympus. From the toppest 
 floors you get a vision of that in the 
 significant sunsets and prophetic dawns. 
 You see strange things from the 
 Flatiron.