Broadway

“ If you don't believe it, just walk the length of Broadway on a sunny day, when it is mad with life and motion,—and then walk it, at night, and see the kind of life which creeps over its flag-stones under the light of the stars. ”

“ Imagine an entire side of Broadway piled up solidly, one, two, three hundred feet in height, often more, and exposed to the charge of the great Atlantic rollers, rushing into the churches, halls, and spacious buildings, thundering through the doorways, dashing in at the windows, sweeping up the lofty fronts, twisting the very cornices with snowy spray, falling back in bright green scrolls and cascades of silvery foam. ”

“ In spite of the cold and the piercing wind, Broadway was not empty—Is Broadway ever empty, I wonder?—and business-men, buttoned up to the chin in overcoats, and with caps drawn over their frosty noses, tore along like comets, to home and dinner; ladies in silks, and velvets, and furs, swarm down the pave to meet them, and young and old, rich and poor, jostled and elbowed, and pushed and trod on one another's heels and toes, as usual in that thronged thoroughfare. ”

“ Turning the corner into Broadway, we found ourselves caught in the jam of the theatre traffic, and our car was brought to a halt in front of the “Empire Varieties.” If you have been on any Broadway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, you can imagine the sight; the flaring electric signs, the pictures of the head line artists, the people waiting to buy tickets, and the crowds on the sidewalk pushing past. There was one additional feature, a crowd of “rah-rah boys,” with yellow and purple flags in their hands, and the glory of battle in their eyes. ”

“ Night has come down since she left Delancey street, carrying the heavy bundle of new-made shirts. The streets are lighted up, and are alive with bustle. Heedless what course she takes, unnoticed, uncared-for by any in the great ocean of humanity whose waves surge about her, she wanders on, and by-and-by turns into Broadway. Broadway, ever brilliant—with shop windows where wealth gleams in a thousand rare and beautiful shapes; Broadway, with its crowding omnibuses and on-pouring current of life, its Niagara roar, its dazzle—is utter loneliness to her. ”

“ The pleasing, distant roar of Broadway is transformed in the imagination of the happy guests to the noise of a waterfall filling the woods with its restful sound. At every strange footstep the guests turn an anxious ear, fearful lest their retreat be discovered and invaded by the restless pleasure-seekers who are forever hounding nature to her deepest lairs. ”

“ The glitter, the jitters, the excitement of a first night are the same everywhere—for the big new Broadway show, with its stars, its lavish sets and costumes, its important audience in formal dress, as well as for the smallest theater in the smallest town in America. In high school and college auditoriums, in summer tents and barns, in tiny converted carriage-house theaters in the back streets of Greenwich Village, the glamour comes as always, and with it, the feverish excitement. ”

“ If there be any place and time in the world where and when it seems easy to "go into something" it is in Broadway on a spring morning, when one is walking city-ward, and has before him the long lines of palace-shops with an occasional spire seen through the soft haze that lies over the lower town, and hears the roar and hum of its multitudinous traffic. ”

“ Broadway, the unrivalled Broadway, is not without its loungers; yet the young and the gay are not discontented ones. They move in the strength of their own beauty, like the patriot statesman, neither shunning, nor yet courting admiration; and tripping along the brilliant street, half coveting half refusing attention,
"They feel that they are happier than they know." ”

“ Where Broadway leaves off its roof-follies and its water-dancing, its eighty-odd theaters and its very odd Hawaiian cabarets, upper Broadway, widening slightly, takes up its macadamized rush through the city in block-square apartment-houses, which rise off plate-glass foundations of the de-luxe greengrocer shops, the not-so-green beauty-parlors, and the dyeing-and-cleaning, automobile-supplies, and confectionery establishments of middle New York. ”

“ Philip, impatient of the atmosphere of the theatre, wandered out into the streets with the note in his pocket. Broadway was thronged with people, a heterogeneous, slowly-moving throng, the hardest crowd to apprehend, to understand, of any in the world. ”

“ You may stand in the open space at the intersection of Park and Worth streets, the true Five Points, in the midst of a wide sea of sin and suffering, and gaze right into Broadway with its marble palaces of trade, its busy, well-dressed throng, and its roar and bustle so indicative of wealth and prosperity. ”

“ Broadway, with its hundreds of sights and sounds, was before me in the hour of its transformation, the street lamps breaking into incandescence, and the huge electric signs beginning to glare above the theatre entrances. By the time I reached the Waldorf, that high abode of Yankee royalty, the kinks and curlicues were so far ironed from my nerves and brain that I had little doubt of my ability to take a fall out of Fate in whatever sort of collar-and-elbow tussle she might designate. ”

“ I was in the right mood to-night for the enjoyment of the place, and I ambled through the dinner in a fashion so leisurely and trifled so long over coffee and cigarette that it was far past ten o'clock when I came out again into Forty-second Street. After an instant's hesitation, I decided to walk home, and turned back toward Broadway, already filling with the after-theatre crowd.
Often as I have seen it, Broadway at night is still a fascinating place to me, with its blazing signs, its changing crowds, its clanging street traffic, its bright shop-windows. ”

“ YOU may have met them drifting along Broadway—men whose names were once in the lights, women who were the toast of the town. Something, they tell you, is gone from their theater; something they find it hard to define. But they who have followed it from Union Square to Madison, thence north to Herald and finally to Long Acre, feel that in each of the neighborhoods it deserted it left a little of its glamour, a little of its romance. They shake their heads and travel on, seeking one more engagement, one more opportunity to wrest a living from their profession before the final curtain falls. ”

“ At that hour, when Broadway is wont to assume its most interesting aspect, a peculiar individual invariably took his stand at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street and Broadway—a spot which is also intersected by Fifth Avenue. This was the hour when the theatres were just beginning to receive their patrons. Fire signs announcing the night's amusements blazed on every hand. Cabs and carriages, their lamps gleaming like yellow eyes, pattered by. Couples and parties of three and four freely mingled in the common crowd, which poured by in a thick stream, laughing and jesting. ”

“ If you will only "loaf" up and down Broadway on a fine afternoon, you will see some of the neatest feet, some of the prettiest hands, some of the brightest eyes, and some of the sweetest smiles the wildest beauty-dreamer ever beheld in his most rapturous visions; had they but good figures, they would excite envy on the Alamedas of Andalusia; in short, they are the veriest little ducks in the world, and dress with Parisian perfection. No wonder, then, reader, when I tell you that "loafing" up and down Broadway is a favourite occupation with the young men who have leisure hours to spare. ”

“ Broadway has often been compared to a kaleidoscope,—an appellation suggested by the variety of shifting tints, from those of female dress to those of innumerable commodities, from dazzling effects of sunshine to the radiance of equipage, vivid paint, gilded signs, and dazzling wares. ”

“ At night, Broadway with its exaggerated Earl’s Court effects, its great drawings in electric light high up against the sky of giant motor cars, pyjama-clad men and women, appearing and disappearing, is so fantastic and absurd, and withall so thrilling, that for a few hours round about midnight it displaces the other thoroughfare, not only for the careless multitude, but for the serious person, too, if such there be when he or she has once trodden its stones. ”

“ Still, however decorously Broadway subdues its hilarity before the ladies, like a fast young man at a tea party, we all know it is not in the least like Saturday night on Main Street. Let us saunter along, like two men of the world, perfectly competent to recognize vice, but infinitely preferring to smile at honest gayety, and find out what this crowd really is that is again packing the pavement as the theaters turn out their audiences. ”

“ You will pass the Broadway Theatre before you reach the next corner, with its surroundings of fashionable "saloons," into any of which you may go without fear of losing caste among genteel brandy-smashers and wine-bibbers. Perhaps you will be amused with a small play, such as burning, kicking, or vomiting a little beggar girl; for nice young men are fond of theatrical amusements. ”

“ Broadway, the much crowded and much praised Broadway, the Corso, the Toledo, the Regent Street, of New York, pours its tide of population past the western side of the verdant triangle, and, just at the park, its crowd and its bustle are thickest. Broadway is a noble street, and on its broad side-walks may be seen every thing that walks the world in the shape of a foreigner, or a fashion—beauties by the score, and men of business by the thousand ”

“ But even here, to lure the walker on, far ahead, almost exactly in the centre of the cañon of commercial Broadway, can be seen the pure white spire of Grace Church, planted there at the bend of the thoroughfare, as if purposely to stand out like a beacon and signal to those below that Broadway changes at last and that up there are some Christians.
But there are always plenty of people to look at, nor are they all black-mustached, black-cigared merchants talking dollars; at six o'clock women and girls pour down the stairs and elevators, and out upon the street with a look of relief ”

“ And all this was once the great Broadway where not many years ago the promenaders strutted up and down in the afternoon, women in low neck and India shawls; dandies, as they were then called, in tremendous trousers with huge checks. Occasionally even now you see a few strollers here by mistake, elderly people from a distance revisiting New York after many years and bringing their families with them. "Now, children, you are on Broadway!" the fatherly smile seems to say. "Look at everything." ”

“ Broadway is miles upon miles long, a rush of life such as I have never seen; not so full as the Strand, but so rapid. The houses are always being torn down and built up again, the railroad cars drive slap into the midst of the city. ”

“ Broadway is a market street, with continuous lines of stalls and uninviting shops, where only the bakers’ shops and the corn-chandlers are pleasing to look upon and to smell. The new and fragrant loaves, and the white-scrubbed counters and brightly polished brass-rails of the bakers look cleanly and smell appetising, and the interesting window-display of the corn-chandlers compels a halt. ”

“ It is still Broadway in name, but now it is like any other street. You do not now take your life in your hand when you attempt to cross it; the Broadway policeman who supported the elbow of timorous beauty in the hollow of his cotton-gloved palm and guided its little fearful boots over the crossing, while he arrested the billowy omnibuses on either side with an imperious glance, is gone, and all that certain processional, barbaric gayety of the place is gone.
"Palmyra, Baalbec, Timour of the Desert," said March, voicing their common feeling of the change. ”

“ And most in the theatre
Draw fatter returns than he.
Yet is he called upon to make the show,
To save the show,
But never is he given credit
Comparable to that which falls
Upon the slightest jester or singer or dancer
Who mugs, mimes, or hoofs in a hit.
Yet is the press agent happy;
He loves his work;
It has excitement and intrigue;
And to further the cause of beautiful women,
To discover the wonderful girls of the theatre,
And lead them in progress triumphal
Till their names outface the jealous night,
On Broadway, in incandescents,
Is in itself a privilege. ”

“ Besides Fulton ferry, off and on for years, I knew and frequented Broadway—that noted avenue of New York's crowded and mixed humanity, and of so many notables. Here I saw, during those times, Andrew Jackson, Webster, Clay, Seward, Martin Van Buren, filibuster Walker, Kossuth, Fitz Greene Halleck, Bryant, the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, the first Japanese ambassadors, and lots of other celebrities of the time. Always something novel or inspiriting; yet mostly to me the hurrying and vast amplitude of those never-ending human currents. ”

“ But in the morning, when he stared along Forty-second Street; when he breakfasted at a Childs' restaurant, like a gigantic tiled bath-room, and realized that the buckwheat cakes were New York buckwheats; when he sighted the noble Times Building and struck out for Broadway (the magic name that promised marble palaces, even if it provided two-story shacks) ; when he bustled into a carburetor agency and demanded a job—then he found the gateway of wonder. ”

“ They must be a very aged or very stupid sort of revenants if their palingenetic substance does not thrill at the first nightly vision of Broadway, of that fairy flare of electric lights, advertising whiskeys and actresses and beers, and luring the beholder into a hundred hotels and theatres and restaurants. ”

“ I slipped down Broadway, running close to the stores and keeping the people between me and the gutter. One seldom meets a policeman near shop windows. It was a lovely evening, with a warm spring-like feeling in the air, and this nice, wide, clean Broadway fascinated me more than ever, and everybody looked so happy and pleasant and well-dressed that I concluded all the people with troubles had stayed at home. Nearly every person had on new spring shoes. I really think that nowhere in the world, except in Paris, does one see such pretty, well-shod feet as in New York. ”