Part 1

Chapter 13,309 wordsPublic domain

NEW YORK SKETCHES

JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK 1902

Published, November, 1902

Trow Directory Printing & Bookbinding Company New York

Meade Creighton Williams

CONTENTS

PAGE THE WATER-FRONT 1

THE WALK UP-TOWN 27

THE CROSS STREETS 63

RURAL NEW YORK CITY 99

ILLUSTRATIONS

On the Harlem River--University Heights from Fort George _Frontispiece_

PAGE Grant's Tomb and Riverside Drive (from the New Jersey Shore) 3

Down along the Battery sea-wall is the place to watch the ships go by 5

Old New Amsterdam 7

Just as it has been for years. (Between South Ferry and the Bridge.)

New New York 9

Not a stone's throw farther up ... the towering white city of the new century. (Between South Ferry and the Bridge.)

From the point of view of the Jersey commuter ... some uncommon, weird effects 11

(Looking back at Manhattan from a North River ferry-boat.)

Swooping silently, confidently across from one city to the other 13

(East River and Brooklyn Bridge.)

Looking up the East River from the Foot of Fifty-ninth Street 15

Even in sky-line he could find something new almost every week or two 17

The end of the day--looking back at Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge.

For the little scenes ... quaint and lovable, one goes down along the South Street water-front 19

Smacks and oyster-floats near Fulton Market. (At the foot of Beekman Street, East River.)

This is the tired city's playground 21

Washington Bridge and the Speedway--Harlem River looking south.

Here is where the town ends, and the country begins 23

(High Bridge as seen looking south from Washington Bridge.)

The Old and the New, from Lower New York across the Bridge to Brooklyn 24

From the top of the high building at Broadway and Pine Street.

The old town does not change so fast about its edges 25

(Along the upper East River front looking north toward Blackwell's Island.)

... opposite the oval of the ancient Bowling Green 29

... immigrant hotels and homes 30

No. 1 Broadway 30

Lower Broadway during a parade 30

The beautiful spire of Trinity 31

... clattering, crowded, typical Broadway 32

City Hall with its grateful lack of height 33

What's the matter? 34

In the wake of a fire-engine 35

No longer to be thrilled ... will mean to be old 37

Grace Church spire becomes nearer 39

Through Union Square 40

... windows which draw women's heads around 41

Instead of buyers ... mostly shoppers 42

... crossing Fifth Avenue at Twenty-third Street 43

Madison Square with the sparkle of a clear ... October morning 44

In front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel 45

Diana on top glistening in the sun 46

Seeing the Avenue from a stage-top 47

... people go to the right, up Fifth Avenue 48

A seller of pencils 49

It is also better walking up here 50

... those who walk for the sake of walking 51

At the lower corner of the Waldorf-Astoria 52

... with baby-carriages 53

This is the region of Clubs 54

(The Union League.)

... close-ranked boarding-school squads 55

... the coachmen and footmen flock there 56

The Church of the Heavenly Rest 57

Approaching St. Thomas's 59

The University Club ... with college coats-of-arms 60

Olympia Jackies on shore leave 61

Down near the eastern end of the street 65

Across Trinity Church-yard, from the West 67

An Evening View of St. Paul's Church 69

The sights and smells of the water-front are here too 71

An Old Landmark on the Lower West Side 73

(Junction of Canal and Laight Streets.)

Up Beekman Street 75

Each ... has to change in the greatest possible hurry from block to block.

Under the Approach to Brooklyn Bridge 77

Chinatown 79

It still remains whimsically individual and village-like 81

A Fourteenth Street Tree 83

Such as broad Twenty-third Street with its famous shops 85

A Cross Street at Madison Square 87

Across Twenty-fourth Street--Madison Square when the Dewey Arch was there 88

Herald Square 91

As it Looks on a Wet Night--The Circle, Fifty-ninth Street and Eighth Avenue 93

Hideous high buildings 95

Looking east from Central Park at night.

Flushing Volunteer Fire Department Responding to a Fire Alarm 103

A Bit of Farm Land in the Heart of Greater New York 105

Acre after acre, farm after farm, and never a sign of city in sight.

One of the Farmhouses that have Come to Town 107

The old Duryea House, Flushing, once used as a head-quarters for Hessian officers.

East End of Duryea House, where the Cow is Stabled 108

The Old Water-power Mill from the Rear of the Old Country Cross-roads Store 109

The Old Country Cross-roads Store, Established 1828 110

In the background is the old water-power mill.

Interior of the Old Country Cross-roads Store 111

The Colony of Chinese Farmers, Near the Geographical Centre of New York City 112

Working as industrially as the peasants of Europe, blue skirts, red handkerchiefs about their heads 113

Remains of a Windmill in New York City, Between Astoria and Steinway 114

The Dreary Edge of Long Island City 115

The Procession of Market-wagons at College Point Ferry 116

Past dirty backyards and sad vacant lots 117

New York City Up in the Beginnings of the Bronx Regions--Skating at Bronxdale 119

Another Kind of City Life--Along the Marshes of Jamaica Bay 121

There is profitable oyster-dredging in several sections of the city 123

Cemetery Ridge, Near Richmond, Staten Island 126

A Peaceful Scene in New York 127

In the distance is St. Andrew's Church, Borough of Richmond, Staten Island.

A Relic of the Early Nineteenth Century, Borough of Richmond 128

An Old-fashioned, Stone-arched Bridge. (Richmond, Staten Island) 129

An Old House in Flatbush 131

THE WATER-FRONT

Down along the Battery sea-wall is the place to watch the ships go by.

Coastwise schooners, lumber-laden, which can get far up the river under their own sail; big, full-rigged clipper ships that have to be towed from the lower bay, their topmasts down in order to scrape under the Brooklyn Bridge; barques, brigs, brigantines--all sorts of sailing craft, with cargoes from all seas, and flying the flags of all nations.

White-painted river steamers that seem all the more flimsy and riverish if they happen to churn out past the dark, compactly built ocean liners, who come so deliberately and arrogantly up past the Statue of Liberty, to dock after the long, hard job of crossing, the home-comers on the decks already waving handkerchiefs. Plucky little tugs (that whistle on the slightest provocation), pushing queer, bulky floats, which bear with ease whole trains of freight-cars, dirty cars looking frightened and out of place, which the choppy seas try to reach up and wash. And still queerer old sloop scows, with soiled, awkward canvas and no shape to speak of, bound for no one seems to know where and carrying you seldom see what. And always, everywhere, all day and night, whistling and pushing in and out between everybody, the ubiquitous, faithful, narrow-minded old ferry-boats, with their wonderful helmsmen in the pilot-house, turning the wheel and looking unexcitable....

That is the way it is down around Pier A, where the New York Dock Commission meets and the Police Patrol boat lies, and by Castle Garden, where the river craft pass so close you can almost reach out and touch them with your hand.

The "water-front" means something different when you think of Riverside and its greenness, a few miles to the north, with Grant's tomb, white and glaring in the sun, and Columbia Library back on Cathedral Heights.

Here the "lordly" Hudson is not yet obliged to become busy North River, and there is plenty of water between a white-sailed schooner yacht and a dirty tug slowly towing in silence--for there is no excuse here for whistling--a cargo of brick for a new country house up at Garrisons; while on the shore itself instead of wharves and warehouses and ferry-slips there are yacht and rowing club houses and an occasional bathing pavilion; and above the water edge, in place of the broken ridge of stone buildings with countless windows, there is the real bluff of good green earth with the well-kept drive on top and the sun glinting on harness-chains and automobiles.

* * * * *

Now, between these two contrasts you will find--you _may_ find, I mean, for most of you prefer to exhaust Europe and the Orient before you begin to look at New York--as many different sorts of interests and kinds of picturesqueness as there are miles, as there are blocks almost.

For instance, down there by the starting-point. If you go up toward the bridge from South Ferry a block or so and pull down your hat-brim far enough to hide the tower of the Produce Exchange, you have a bit of old New Amsterdam, just as it has been for years, so old and so Amsterdamish, with its long, sloping roofs, gable windows, and even wooden-shoe-like canal-boats, that you may easily feel that you are in Holland, if you like. As a matter of fact, it is more like Hamburg, I am told, but either will do if you get an added enjoyment out of things by noting their similarity to something else and appreciate mountains and sunsets more by quoting some other person's sensations about other sunsets and mountains.

But if you believe that there is also an inherent, characteristic beauty in the material manifestations of the spirit of our own new, vigorous, fearless republic--and whether you do or not, if you care to look at one of these sudden contrasts referred to--not a stone's throw farther up the water-front there is a notable sight of newest New York. This, too, is good to look at. Behind a foreground of tall masts with their square rigging and mystery (symbols of the world's commerce, if you wish), looms up a wondrous bit of the towering white city of the new century, a cluster of modern high buildings which, notwithstanding the perspective of a dozen blocks, are still high, enormously, alarmingly high--symbols of modern capital, perhaps, and its far-reaching possibilities, or they may remind you, in their massive grouping, of a cluster of mountains, with their bright peaks glistening in the sun far above the dark shadows of the valleys in which the streams of business flow, down to the wharves and so out over the world.

Now, separately they may be impossible, these high buildings of ours--these vulgar, impertinent "sky-scrapers;" but, as a group, and in perspective, they are fine, with a strong, manly beauty all their own. It is the same as with the young nation; we have grown up so fast and so far that some of our traits, when considered alone, may seem displeasing, but they appear less so when we are viewed as a whole and from the right point of view.

Or, on the other hand, for scenes not representatively commercial, nor residential either in the sense that Riverside is, but more of the sort that the word "picturesque" suggests to most people: There are all those odd nooks and corners, here and there up one river and down the other, popping out upon you with unexpected vistas full of life and color. Somehow the old town does not change so fast about its edges as back from the water. It seems to take a longer time to slough off the old landmarks.

The comfortable country houses along the shore, half-way up the island, first become uncomfortable city houses; then tenements, warehouses, sometimes hospitals, even police stations, before they are finally hustled out of existence to make room for a foul-smelling gas-house or another big brewery. Many of them are still standing, or tumbling down; pathetic old things they are, with incongruous cupolas and dusty fanlights and, on the river side, an occasional bit of old-fashioned garden, with a bunker which was formerly a terrace, and the dirty remains of a summer-house where children once had a good time--and still do have, different-looking children, who love the nearby water just as much and are drowned in it more numerously. It is not only by way of the recreation piers that these children and their parents enjoy the water. It is a deep-rooted instinct in human nature to walk out to the end of a dock and sit down and gaze; and hundreds of them do so every day in summer, up along here. Now and then through these vistas you get a good view of beautiful Blackwell's Island with its prison and hospital and poorhouse buildings. Those who see it oftenest do not consider it beautiful. They always speak of it as "The Island."

For those who do not care to prowl about for the scattered bits of interest or who prefer what Baedeker would call "a magnificent panorama," there are plenty of good points of vantage from which to see whole sections at once, such as the Statue of Liberty or the tops of high buildings, or, obviously, Brooklyn Bridge, which is so very obvious that many Manhattanese would never make use of this opportunity were it not for an occasional out-of-town visitor on their hands. No one ought to be allowed to live in New York City--he ought to be made to live in Brooklyn--who does not go out there and look back at his town once a year. He could look at it every day and get new effects of light and color. Even in sky-line he could find something new almost every week or two. In a few years there will be a more or less even line--at least a gentle undulation--instead of these raw, jagged breaks that give a disquieting sense of incompletion, or else look as if a great conflagration had eaten out the rest of the buildings.

The sky-line and its constant change can be watched to best advantage from the point of view of the Jersey commuter on the ferry; he also has some wonderful coloring to look at and some uncommon, weird effects, such as that of a late autumn afternoon (when he has missed the 5.15 and has to go out on the 6.26) and it is already quite dark, but the city is still at work and the towering office-buildings are lighted--are brilliant indeed with many perfectly even rows of light dots. The dark plays tricks with the distance, and the water is black and snaky and smells of the night. All sorts of strange flares of light and puffs of shadow come from somewhere, and altogether the commuter, if he were not so accustomed to the scene, ought not to mind being late for dinner. However, the commuter is used to this, too.

That scene is spectacular. There is another from the water that is dramatic. Possibly the pilots on the Fall River steamers become hardened, but to most of us there is an exciting delight in creeping up under that great bridge of ours and daringly slipping through without having it fall down this time; and then looking rather boastfully back at it, swooping silently, confidently across from one city to the other, as graceful and lean and characteristically American in its line as our cup defenders, and as overwhelmingly powerful and fearless as Niagara Falls. However much like the Thames Embankment is the bit of East Fifty-ninth Street in a yellow fog, and however skilful you may be in making an occasional acre of the Bronx resemble the Seine, our big bridges cannot very well remind anyone of anything abroad, because there aren't any others.

For the little scenes that are not inspiring or awful, but simply quaint and lovable, one goes down along the South Street water-front. Fulton Market with its memorable smells and the marketeers and 'longshoremen; and behind it the slip where clean-cut American-model smacks put in, and sway excitedly to the wash from the Brooklyn ferry-boats, which is not noticed by the sturdy New Haven Line steamers nearby. On the edge of the street and the water are the oyster floats, half house and half boat, which look like solid shops, with front doors, from the street side until, the seas hitting them, they, too, begin to sway awkwardly and startle the unaccustomed passer-by.

It is down around here that you find slouching idly in front of ship-stores, loafing on cables and anchors, the jolly jack tar of modern days. From all parts of the world he comes, any number of him, if you can tell him when you see him, for he is seldom tarry and less often jolly, unless drunk on the very poor grog he gets in the various evil-looking dives thickly strewn along the water-fronts. Some of these are modern plate-glass saloons, but here and there is a cosey old-time tavern (with a step-down at the entrance instead of a step-up), low ceiling, dark interior, and in the window a thickly painted ship's model with flies on the rigging.

Farther down, near Wall Street ferry, where the smells of the world are gathered, you may see the stevedores unloading liqueurs and spices from tropical ports, and coffees and teas; nearby are the places where certain men make their livings tasting these teas all day long, while the horse-cars jangle by.

Old Slip and other odd-named streets are along here, where once the water came before the city outgrew its clothes; before Water Street, now two or three blocks back, had lost all right to its name. Here the big slanting bowsprits hunch away in over South Street as if trying to be quits with the land for its encroachment, and the plain old brick buildings huddled together across the way have no cornices for fear of their being poked off. Queer old buildings they are, sail lofts with their peculiar roofs, and sailors' lodging-houses, and the shops where the seaman can buy everything he needs from suspenders to anchor cables, so that after a ten-thousand mile cruise he can spend all his several months' pay within two blocks of where he first puts foot on shore and within one night from when he does so. Very often he has not energy to go farther or money to buy anything, thanks to the slavery system which conducts the sailors' lodging-houses across the way. There is nothing very picturesque about our modern merchant marine and its ill-used and over-worked sailors; it is only pathetic.

Those are some of the reasons, I think, why East River is more interesting to most of us than North River. Another reason, perhaps, is that East River is not a river at all, but an arm of the ocean which makes Long Island, and true to its nature in spite of man's error it holds the charm of the sea. The North River side of the town in the old days had less to do with the business of those who go down to the sea in ships, was more rural and residential; and now its water-front is so jammed with railway ferry-houses and ocean-steamship docks that there is little room for anything else.

However, these long, roofed docks of famous Cunarders and American and White Star Liners, and of the French steamers (which have a round-roof dock of a sort all their own) are interesting in their way, too, and the names of the foreign ports at the open entrance cause a strange fret to be up and going; especially on certain days of the week when thick smoke begins to pour from the great funnels which stick out so enormously above the top story of the now noisy piers. Cabs and carriages with coachmen almost hidden by trunks and steamer-rugs crowd in through the dock-gates, while, within, the hold baggage-derricks are rattling and there is an excited chatter of good-by talk....