Part 147

No. 1 Broadway, to the left, is the Washington Building, which is adjoined by the Bowling Green Building (sixteen stories), designed by English architects. Other conspicuous business buildings in the lower part of Broadway are the large Welles and Standard Oil Co. Buildings, Nos. 18, 26, the 42 Broadway Building, twenty stories, and Aldrich Court, on the site of the first habitation of white men on Manhattan Island. At Nos. 64-68 is the Manhattan Life Insurance Co., the tower of which is three hundred and sixty feet high. To the left, at the corner of Rector Street, is the imposing Empire Building, twenty stories, the hall of which forms a busy thoroughfare between Broadway and the Rector Street “L” station.

Wall Street diverging from Broadway to the right, at this point, is the great financial street of New York, the financial barometer of the country. On this street stands the United States Sub-Treasury, a marble structure with a Doric portico, occupying the site of the old Federal Hall, in which the first United States Congress assembled, and Washington was inaugurated as President; the Drexel Building, a white marble structure in the Renaissance style, occupied by J. Pierpont Morgan & Co.; the National City Bank, largest in the country, occupying the old Custom House.

Trinity Church, on the west side of Broadway, is a handsome Gothic edifice of brown stone, with a spire two hundred and eighty-five feet high. The present building dates from 1839-1846, but occupies the site of a church of 1696. The church owns property to the value of at least twenty million dollars used in the support of several subsidiary churches and numerous charities.

Just above Trinity Church are the enormous Trinity and United States Realty buildings, two dignified structures, the former with an admirable facade in a modified Gothic style, and nearly opposite are the Union Trust Co. and the twenty-three story building of the American Surety Co., the latter containing the United States Weather Bureau (“Old Probabilities”). On the same side, between Pine Street and Cedar Street, is the office of the Equitable Life Insurance Co.

The block to the left, between Liberty Street and Cortland Street, is occupied by the buildings of the Singer Manufacturing Co., the City Realty Co., and the City Investing Co. The tower of the Singer Building, with its forty-one stories, rises to a height of six hundred and twelve feet. Between Broadway and Park Row is the Post Office, a large Renaissance building.

City Hall, containing the headquarters of the Mayor of Greater New York and other municipal authorities, is a well-proportioned building of marble in the Italian style, with a central portico, two projecting wings, and a cupola clock tower.

To the north of the City Hall is the Court House, a large building of white marble, with its principal entrance, garnished with lofty Corinthian columns, facing Chambers Street. The interior, which contains the State Courts and several municipal offices, is well fitted up. This building, one of the “Tweed ring” structures, is said to have cost twelve million dollars. Opposite the Court House, in Chambers Street, are various City Offices. These include the new Register Office or Hall of Records, a handsome building in the French Renaissance style, erected at a cost of six million dollars and faced with granite. The facade is adorned with sculptures, and the interior is also elaborately decorated. To the southwest of the City Hall, facing Broadway, is a statue of Nathan Hale.

Park Row, bounding the southeast side of the City Hall Park, contains the offices of many of the principal New York newspapers, the Pulitzer Building, with the World office, Tribune Building, New York Press, and Park Row Building with its lofty towers. Opposite the newspaper offices, in Printing House Square, is a bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin, and in front of the Tribune Building is a seated bronze figure of its famous founder, Horace Greeley.

Beyond Astor Place, Broadway passes the large building occupied by John Wanamaker, but originally erected for A. T. Stewart & Co. With its new annexes, it is heralded as the largest department store in the world.

Broadway now inclines to the left. At the bend rises Grace Church, which, with the adjoining rectory, chantry, and church-house, forms one of the most attractive ecclesiastical groups in New York. The church is of white limestone and has a lofty marble spire. The interior is well-proportioned, and all the windows contain stained glass.

At Fourteenth Street Broadway reaches Union Square, which is beautified with pleasure grounds, statues, and an ornamental fountain. At the corner of East Sixteenth Street is the massive office building of the Bank of Metropolis. Near the southeast corner is a good equestrian statue of Washington, in the center of the south side is a bronze statue of Lafayette, in the southwest corner is a statue of Abraham Lincoln, and on the west side is the James Fountain.

Broadway, between Union Square and Madison Square, is one of the chief shopping-resorts of New York, containing many fine stores for the sale of furniture, dry goods, etc. At Twenty-third Street it intersects Fifth Avenue and at the point of intersection stands the daring Fuller Building, generally known as the “Flat-iron Building” on account of its strange triangular shape. It is two hundred and ninety feet high, has twenty stories, and cost four million dollars.

Broadway now skirts the west side of Madison Square, a prettily laid out public garden, containing a bronze statue of Admiral Farragut, an obelisk to the memory of General Worth, a statue of Roscoe Conkling, a statue of President Arthur, and a statue of William H. Seward. The statue of Farragut is among the finest in New York, and the imaginative treatment of the pedestal is very beautiful. On the west side of the square is the new Fifth Avenue Building.

On the east side is the new Appellate Court House, a handsome building, perhaps somewhat overloaded with ornamentation.

On the east side of the square, between Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Streets, is the enormous building of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., the tower of which has fifty stories and reaches a height of six hundred and ninety-three feet. Two elevators run to a height of five hundred and forty-four feet. Adjacent is the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, with its massive dome. At the southeast corner of Twenty-sixth Street stands the Manhattan Club, and at the northeast corner is the huge Madison Square Garden, with its Moorish tower capped by a fine statue of Diana.

The Herald Office, a Venetian palace, stands at Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street, in Herald Square.

West of Herald Square, at Seventh Avenue and Thirty-third Street, is the magnificent station of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, covering an area four hundred and fifty by one thousand eight hundred feet, the largest structure of the kind in the world, connected by tunnels under the Hudson River with New Jersey, and under the East River with Long Island. The tracks are forty feet below the level of the city streets.

The Metropolitan Opera House, opened in 1883 and rebuilt ten years later, after a fire, stands between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets.

At Forty-second Street and Broadway is the Times Building, an ornamental structure sixteen stories high, upon a triangle of ground.

To the east of Madison Avenue is the Grand Central Station, the terminus of the New York Central, the New York, New Haven and Hartford, and the Harlem Railways. Opposite the station is the Belmont Hotel, twenty-two stories high.

The corner at Broadway and Forty-second Street is the recent heart of the theatrical and hotel district, for clustered there are a dozen hotels, the immense Astor and Knickerbocker among them, and there are twenty theaters within half a mile, six of them almost side by side on Forty-second Street.

Beyond Times Square, Broadway is rather uninteresting, but there are some lofty specimens of apartment houses or French flats farther up. From Forty-fifth Street on, Broadway is largely occupied by automobile stores and garages. At the corner of Fifty-sixth Street is the new Broadway Tabernacle and at Fifty-ninth Street Broadway reaches the southwest corner of Central Park and intersects Eighth Avenue.

At the intersection, the so-called Circle, stands the Columbus Monument by Gaetano Russo, erected in 1892, and consisting of a tall shaft surmounted by a marble statue, in all seventy-seven feet high. Beyond Seventy-eighth Street, Broadway, now a wide street with rows of trees, is usually known as the Boulevard. From One Hundred and Eighth Street to One Hundred and Sixty-second Street it coincides with Eleventh Avenue, at One Hundred and Sixteenth Street it passes Columbia University, and from One Hundred and Sixty-second Street it, as Kingsbridge Road, runs on to Yonkers.

Fifth Avenue, the chief street in New York from the standpoint of wealth and fashion, begins at Washington Square to the north of West Fourth Street and a little to the west of Broadway, and runs north to the Harlem River, a distance of six miles. Below Forty-seventh Street the Avenue has now been largely invaded by shops, tall office buildings, and hotels. The avenue has been kept sacred from the marring touch of the street railway or the elevated railroad, and is traversed by a line of motor omnibuses. The avenue is wide and well-paved, and many of the buildings are of brown sandstone. On a fine afternoon Fifth Avenue is alive with carriages and horsemen on their way to and from Central Park and it is, perhaps, seen at its best on a fine Sunday.

At Twenty-third Street the Avenue intersects Broadway and skirts Madison Square. To the right is the Flat-iron Building. At Twenty-sixth Street is the Café Martin.

The whole block between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets, to the left, is occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, a huge double building of red brick and sandstone in a German Renaissance style. The restaurants and other large halls in the interior are freely adorned with mural paintings by American artists.

The Union League Club, the chief Republican club of New York, is a handsome and substantial building at the corner of Thirty-ninth Street.

Between Fortieth Street and Forty-second Street, to the left, on the site of the old reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct, stands the New York Public Library, a very dignified and imposing structure of white marble, built at a cost of ten million dollars.

A little to the east of this point, in Forty-second Street, is the Grand Central Station already referred to. At the southeast corner of Forty-second Street rises the tasteful Columbia Bank. The Temple Emanu-El, or chief synagogue of New York, at the corner of Forty-third Street, is a fine specimen of Moorish architecture with a richly decorated interior.

At the northeast corner of Forty-fourth Street is Delmonico’s Restaurant, a substantial building with elaborate ornamentation; and at the southwest corner is Sherry’s, a rival establishment, equally patronized by the fashionable world.

The Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas (Dutch Reformed), at the corner of Forty-eighth Street, is one of the handsomest and most elaborately adorned ecclesiastical edifices in the city. It is in decorated Gothic style and has a spire two hundred and seventy feet high. Just below Fiftieth Street, on the right, is the Democratic Club, the stronghold of Tammany and popularly known as “Tamany Hall” or the “Wigwam.”

Between Fiftieth and Fifty-first Streets, to the right, stands St. Patrick’s Cathedral, an extensive building of white marble in the decorated Gothic style, and the most important ecclesiastical edifice in the United States. It is four hundred feet long, one hundred and twenty-five feet wide and one hundred and twelve feet high, and the two beautiful spires are three hundred and thirty-two feet high. The building, which was designed by James Renwick, was erected in 1850-1879, at a cost of three million five hundred thousand dollars.

Adjoining the cathedral, to the right, is the handsome Union Club, and at the corner of Fifty-fourth Street is the University Club, adorned with carvings of the seals of eighteen American colleges. The library contains admirable mural paintings, adapted from Pinturicchio’s work in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican. At the corner of Fifty-fifth Street are the St. Regis Hotel and the Gotham Hotel. The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church has one of the loftiest spires in the city.

Between Fifty-ninth and One Hundred and Tenth Streets Fifth Avenue skirts the east side of Central Park, having buildings on one side only. Among these, many of which are very handsome, is the Metropolitan Club.

At Fifty-ninth Street, where Fifth Avenue reaches Central Park, are three huge hotels: the New Plaza, the Savoy, and the Netherland. In the middle of the Plaza rises a bronze-gilt equestrian statue of General Sherman, of fine artistic merit.

Mt. Sinai Hospital is between One Hundredth and One Hundred and First Streets.

In Central Park, close to Fifth Avenue at Eighty-second Street, is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At One Hundred and Twentieth Street Fifth Avenue reaches Mount Morris Square, the mound in the center of which commands good views. Beyond Mt. Morris Square the Avenue is lined with handsome villas, some of them surrounded by gardens. It ends in a district of tenements and small shops at the Harlem River.

New York has many public parks, the finest of which is the Central Park. The district in which it is located was once a wilderness of rocks and swamps. Plans by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were so admirably carried out as to make the Central Park in ten years one of the most beautiful pleasure-grounds in the world.

Of its eight hundred and forty acres, four hundred are wooded. There are nine miles of drives, with thirty miles of paths, several lakes used for boats in summer and for skating in winter, immense lawns for baseball, tennis, etc., a zoological garden, and conservatories.

The chief promenade is the Mall, near the Fifth Avenue entrance, which is lined with fine elms and contains several statues and groups of sculpture, including Shakespeare, Scott, Burns, Halleck, Columbus, and the Indian Hunter. From the Terrace, at the north end of the Mall, flights of steps descend to the Bethesda Fountain and to the Lake, used for boating in summer and skating in winter. The most extensive view in the park is afforded by the Belvedere, which occupies the highest point of the Ramble, to the north of the Lake.

The North Park, beyond the Croton Reservoir, has fewer artificial features than the South Park, but its natural beauties are greater, and the Harlem Mere, of twelve acres, is very picturesque. Near the southeast corner of the park (nearest entrance in Sixty-fourth Street) are the Old State Arsenal and a small Zoological Garden. On the west side of the park is the American Museum of Natural History, and on the east side is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To the west of the latter museum rises Cleopatra’s Needle, an Egyptian obelisk from Alexandria, presented by Khedive Ismail Pasha to the City of New York in 1877. The obelisk is of red syenite, is sixty-nine feet high and weighs two hundred tons. Among the other monuments in the park are statues of Webster, Bolivar, Hamilton and Morse, allegorical figures of Commerce and the Pilgrim, and several busts and animal groups. Just outside the park, beside the Sixth Avenue entrance, is a statue of Thorwaldsen.

In Manhattan Square, on the west side of Central Park, between Seventy-seventh and Eighty-first Streets, stands the American Museum of Natural History, which contains collections of natural history, paleontology and ethnology.

The Metropolitan Museum contains paintings, statuary, ivories, tapestries, porcelains, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities. Beginning with one structure erected by the city at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars in 1880, it now comprises a series of buildings which cost several million dollars. The collections of paintings, sculpture, antiquities, porcelains, jades, armor, etc., are valued at ten million dollars, most of which has been contributed by art lovers of the city. In 1903 the institution received a bequest of six million dollars from the well-known locomotive builder John T. Rogers, which has enabled it to compete with other great museums.

At the corner of Morningside Avenue and One Hundred and Twelfth Street is the new Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, designed by Heins and La Farge, the corner-stone of which was laid in 1892, but the building of which has not progressed very far. The Crypt, including the curious Tiffany Chapel of mosaic glass, and the Belmont or St. Saviour’s Chapel are the only portions completed. To the north of this, in the block bounded by Morningside Avenue, Tenth Avenue, One Hundred and Thirteenth Street, and One Hundred and Fourteenth Street, is the large building of St. Luke’s Hospital, constructed of white marble and white pressed brick, with a tower and clock over the main entrance.

To the northwest of this point, on a magnificent site extending from One Hundred and Fourteenth Street to One Hundred and Twenty-first Street, one hundred and ten to one hundred and fifty feet above the Hudson River, are the new buildings of Columbia University, the oldest, largest, and most important educational institution in New York. The finest building in the center of the group is the Low Memorial Library, built at a cost of one million dollars.

On a commanding site bounded by One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street, Amsterdam Avenue, One Hundred and Fortieth Street, and St. Nicholas Terrace, are the imposing new buildings of the College of the City of New York, erected in 1903-1908 by Mr. George B. Post, in the low-arch Gothic style, at a cost of nearly five million dollars, and notable for their uniformity of design and symmetry of grouping.

Among other educational institutions are the Normal College, at Sixty-ninth Street and Park Avenue; the College of Physicians and Surgeons; the New York University; Cooper Union, in which nearly all the courses are free; St. John’s (Fordham), Manhattan, and St. Francis Xavier, Roman Catholic colleges; the National Academy of Design; Society of American Artists; the Art Students’ League; Chase Art School; New York Institute of Music, and various theological schools.

Riverside Drive or Park, skirting the hills fronting on the Hudson from Seventy-second Street to One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street, affords beautiful views of the river and is one of the most striking roads of which any city can boast. It has become, perhaps, the most attractive residential quarter of New York, though a great architectural opportunity has been lost in the buildings that border it, these consisting largely of apartment hotels, remarkable mainly for their size.

Near the north end of the drive, on Claremont Heights (West One Hundred and Twenty-second Street), is the Tomb of General Ulysses S. Grant, a huge and solid mausoleum of white granite, erected in 1891-1897 at a cost of six hundred thousand dollars, from a design by J. H. Duncan. The monument consists of a lower story in the Doric style, ninety feet square, surmounted by a cupola borne by Ionic columns. The total height is one hundred and fifty feet.

John Verrazani, a Florentine navigator, was the first European who entered New York Bay (1525). In 1614 the Dutch built a fort on Manhattan Island, and in 1623 a permanent settlement was made, named Nieuw Amsterdam. In 1674 Manhattan Island came into the possession of Great Britain. At the Revolution the population was less than that of Philadelphia or Boston. It was evacuated by the forces of Great Britain in 1783, and from 1785 to 1789 was the seat of government of the United States. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 gave a vast impetus to New York City’s growth. The city by 1874 had extended beyond the Harlem River and a part of Westchester County was incorporated in it. In 1896 a law was passed consolidating with New York City, Brooklyn (Kings County), Long Island City, Staten Island, Westchester, Flushing, Newtown, Jamaica, and parts of Eastchester, Pelham, and Hempstead. By the charter adopted in 1897 this territory was divided into the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Richmond, and Queens. A new charter was secured in 1907 under which the mayor presides over the entire city, with absolute power of appointment and removal of the heads of all city departments. In 1911 a new charter was drawn up which evoked considerable opposition, as it seemed to place still greater powers in the hands of the mayor.

=Philadelphia= (_fĭl-ȧ-del´fĭ-ȧ_), =Pa.= [The “Quaker City”; named from two Greek words meaning “loved or friendly,” and “brother,” applied as “brotherly love.” The Indian name of the locality was _Coaquannok_, “grove of tall pine trees.”]

The chief city of Pennsylvania and the third city in population and importance of the United States, it is situated on the Delaware River, about one hundred miles by ship-channel (via Delaware Bay) from the Atlantic Ocean, ninety miles by railroad southwest of New York City, and one hundred and thirty-six miles northeast of Washington.

The city occupies mainly a broad plain between the Delaware and the Schuylkill Rivers. It is twenty-two miles long from north to south and five to ten miles wide, covering one hundred and thirty square miles, and is laid out with chessboard regularity. The characteristic Philadelphia house is a two-storied or three-storied structure of red pressed brick, with white marble steps. The two rivers give it about thirty miles of water-front for docks and wharfage, and it is the headquarters of two of the greatest American railways--the Pennsylvania and the Reading.

The great wholesale business thoroughfare is Market Street, running east and west between the two rivers, while Chestnut Street, parallel with it on the south, contains the finest shops, many of the newspaper offices, etc. Broad Street is the chief street running north and south. Among the most fashionable residence quarters are Rittenhouse Square and the west parts of Walnut, Locust, Spruce, and Pine Streets. Eighth Street is the great district for shops and amusements.

The City Hall (or Public Buildings) is in the center of the city at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets. The structure is the largest exclusively municipal building in the world. It is built of white marble upon a granite base, in French Renaissance style, and covers an area of four hundred and eighty-six by four hundred and seventy feet. The height of the tower and dome is five hundred and thirty-seven feet four and one-half inches; or five hundred and seventy-three feet four and one-half inches with the colossal figure of Penn (thirty-six feet), to surmount the whole. The entire cost, when completely furnished for occupancy, was estimated at twenty-five million dollars.

The broad pavement round the City Hall is adorned with statues of General Reynolds, General McClellan, Stephen Girard, John C. Bullitt, President McKinley, and Joseph Leidy, the naturalist, and with the “Pilgrim” by Saint-Gaudens.