Crown Point, New York

“ In front of them was the Square, containing a considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and round the corner was the more august precinct of the Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. ”

“ Beginning with New York, as that is the point we started from, New York was built, is building, will ever be building in huge blocks of steel and stone, and the ambitious of every city and country in the world will keep pouring into it and crowding its floor space and shoving it up higher and higher into towering cubes. New York dominates the whole of the Western Hemisphere and weights securely the Eastern coast of the map, and because of all this weight and importance, New Yorkers fancy they are the Americans of America, but New York is not half as typically American as Chicago ”

“ The charms of Nature’s hand”
West Point, the seat of the United States Military Academy, is the property of the United States and situated in the State of New York in the Highlands on the west bank of the Hudson River, about fifty miles north of New York City. The grounds comprise 2,550 acres, of which about 200 acres are a plain, some one hundred and sixty feet above the river, the balance being mountainous. ”

“ The road leads up over a sort of plateau; a wide expanse of country can be viewed in all directions, but there are only more fields to see, more farm-houses and squatty barns, perhaps a village church steeple in the distance, a village that has its oldest inhabitant and a church with a church-yard. Away off to the north, across a gleaming strip of water, which the map shows to be Long Island Sound, lie the blue hills of the Bronx. They, too, are well within Greater New York. So is all that country to the southwest, far beyond the range of the eye, Jamaica, and Jamaica Bay and Coney Island. ”

“ The Point is a low formation on the Hudson and was primarily divided from the main land by a marsh. It was literally "a concave, hollowing site." The marsh was later crossed by a corduroyed turnpike connecting with the old Strand Road, now Union Avenue. A ferry was established here in 1752 and is still operated under its original charter. The Point is now traversed by rail and trolley roads.
[FN-2] Perhaps an Indian Football Court, resembling a Tennis Court. A writer in 1609 says of the Virginia natives: "They use, beside, football play, which women and boys do much play at. ”

“ Three fine squares alone break the monotony of all these parallelograms of streets: Washington Square, Union Square, and Madison Square.
On the north, Central Park, with its fine avenues, its hillocks, its valleys, its lakes, and its magnificent terrace over the Hudson, is a very lovely pleasure ground. It is the only place where one can see trees, turf, and flowers. New York does not possess a single garden, public or private, if one excepts the three squares I named just now.
That which strikes the visitor to New York is not the city itself, but the feverish activity that reigns there. ”

“ It is amusing to hear elderly people speak of the "outskirts of the city" lying close to the City Hall, and of the drives in the country above Canal Street. In the Documentary History of New York, a map of a section of New York appears as it was in 1793, when the Gail, Work House, and Bridewell occupied the site of the City Hall, with two ponds to the north—East Collect Pond and Little Collect Pond,—sixty feet deep and about a quarter of a mile in diameter, the outlet of which crossed Broadway at Canal Street and found its way to the Hudson. ”

“ I have on several occasions been made the confidant of these romantic but delusive vagaries, of which the stronghold appears to be the Empire City,—a slang name for New York. I was assured in many quarters that that locality, at least, is ripe for a monarchy, and if one of the Queen’s sons would come and talk it over, he would meet with the highest encouragement. ”

“ There are miles on miles of roofs in many a town, stretching away beyond the reach of sight; there is, especially in the great cities of the old world, an immensity of movement which is at once alien and akin to the great movements of earth and sea; there are cities which seem great because of the multiplicity of things—men and ships and creeds and costumes which jostle one another in every market place. New York has all these things—yet they do not explain New York—they are almost inconsiderable elements in the greater thing that is the city itself. ”

“ Fifth Avenue runs lengthwise through the middle of the borough, dividing it into the East and West sides. On the East Side you will find the crowded homes of the poorer classes, where many of the working people of Manhattan live. On the West Side are many [15] manufacturing plants, lumber yards, and warehouses. On the upper stretch of Fifth Avenue, and on the streets leading off, are the homes of many of New York's wealthiest residents. Opposite Central Park are some of the most costly and beautiful mansions in the city. ”

“ Madison Square may be regarded as the social centre of modern New York. Far to the northward Fifth Avenue stretches, with its rows of palatial brownstone residences, and towards the north-northwest Broadway extends for two miles to Central Park, passing many hotels, theatres, and the tall "French flats" that have been devised for residences in the crowded city where the land surface is so scarce. ”

“ A broad bay opens behind Crown Point to the westward, and under the shadow of Mount Bulwagga, the end of one of the long Adirondack ranges, 297 is the village of Port Henry, a producer of iron-ores, there being furnaces here as well as on the shore south of Crown Point. Upon the southern promontory, thus thrust out between the lake and Bulwagga Bay, are the ruins of the famous fortress of Crown Point, which so well guarded the narrow crooked channel and its approaches, and closed the "door of the country" leading from Canada. ”

“ With a fountain at one end, like a French town, and a chime of bells at the other, like a German city, the intermediate space is as representative a rendezvous as can be found in the world.
The first thing that strikes an experienced eye in New York's great thoroughfare is the paucity of loiterers: he sees, at a glance, that the flâneur is an exotic here. There is that in the gait and look of every one that shows a settled and an eager purpose,—a goal sought under pressure. ”

“ Just under Crow Nest, buried in the heavy leaves of a ravine, springs a waterfall like a Naiad from the depths of the forest, and plunges down into the river. The rambles in and about its neighbourhood are cool and retired; and it is a favourite place for lovers from New York, who run up in the steamer in three hours, and find the honeymoon goes swimmingly off there,—the excellent hotel within half a mile supplying the real, without which the ideal is found to be very trumpery. ”

“ Lined on either side [Pg 277] of the street with the marble palaces of its multi-millionaires, its roadway jammed with carriages and automobiles kept in order by picturesque mounted police, its sidewalks thronged with pretty, stylish girls, and men and women famous in art, music, politics, science and literature—New York's most exclusive thoroughfare is perhaps the one place where the American plutocracy is on exhibition in all its aggressive opulence. The show street of New York, it is not laid with rails for electric cars like other thoroughfares of the metropolis. ”

“ New York is very proud of its great pleasure-ground, the Central Park, upon which has been lavished all that art and money could accomplish. This Park is a parallelogram in the centre of Manhattan Island, a half-mile wide and two and a half miles long, covering eight hundred and forty-three acres, though nearly one-fourth of this space is occupied by the Croton water reservoirs. ”

“ Manhattan Island has something over 2,500,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by a belt of population, several miles wide, of 12,000,000 more, of which it is the focus, so that the entire city contains more than 14,500,000 souls. The several hundred square miles of land and water forming greater New York are perfectly united by numerous bridges, tunnels, and electric ferries, while the city's great natural advantages have been enhanced and beautified by every ingenious device. ”

“ He regrets that he is unable to show a photographic presentment of many buildings that have disappeared in the last fifty years, or even during the life of the present generation. Some buildings that had a certain historical interest have been razed in the last twenty-five years, as, e. g., the Kennedy house,1 No. 1 Broadway, taken down to make way for the Washington Building, overlooking the Battery Park, or the old Walton house2 in Pearl Street near Franklin Square, removed in 1881, or the Tombs prison, removed in 1899. ”

“ Some one has described New York as a chaotic city, where huge masses of masonry and iron rise mountain high with no relationship existing between any of the structures. One views their stupendous forms as he does the mountains along the Hudson. "They are serrated, presenting ragged, irregular outlines, which are lost in the accidental sky-line, giving one at once the impression of power, wealth, and aggressiveness." The vast, impenetrable wall of solid masonry along the river is almost as wonderful as the Palisades. ”

“ In 1862 Union troops camped on the site of the latter building, and the ground became known in 1871 as Reservoir Park, which name was changed to Bryant Park in 1884.
Like other world-great cities, New York has many hearts. The spot that means the very centre of things varies according to mood, occupation, and manner of life. To high finance and those who play feverishly with it, the heart of the town is where Wall Street, running from Trinity Church down to the East River, is crossed by Nassau zigzagging into Broad. ”

“ Our shops are there and our mansions are elsewhere, far away, in what we call residential quarters—such as Park Lane, Queen's Gate, Mayfair, the Bayswater Road, and Grosvenor Square. To turn out of Fifth Avenue into the quiet streets where people live is to receive a distinct impression of sedateness such as New York is never supposed to convey. One has the same feeling in the other great American cities. ”

“ Their farthest uptown terminal was at Fourteenth Street, so they were not much help to suburbanites!
No single article, or chapter, can even attempt to encompass the complete story of Washington Square. Covering the entire period of the city's history, passing through startling changes and transformations, the scene of great happenings, the background of illustrious or curious lives,—it is probably more typical of the vertiginous development of New York than any single section. ”

“ There is scarcely a plot of ground below Fourteenth Street without its story and its associations, its motley company of memories and spectres both good and bad, its imperishably adventurous savour of the past, imprisoned in the dry prose of registries and records. Let us just take a glance, a bird's-eye view as it were, of that region which we now know as Washington Square, as it was when the city of New York bought it for a Potter's Field. ”

“ Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes’ walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. ”

“ The Borough of Manhattan, on the long narrow island of that name, lies between the Hudson and the East River. North and east of Manhattan, on the mainland, lies the Borough of The Bronx. Just across the narrow East River, on Long Island, are the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn; while Staten Island is known as the Borough of Richmond.
NEW YORK SKYSCRAPERS
HOW A SKYSCRAPER IS MADE
As more and more people came to the city the business area on Manhattan proved too small, and with water to the east, to the west, and to the south, there was no possibility of spreading out in these directions. ”

“ What is to be probably the finest “shanty” ever erected in the United States is being put up by Frederick L. Cranford, Inc., subway contractor, at the southwest corner of City Hall Park, close to Broadway, New York City. It is to have a height of three stories, the first to form a sort of arcade to allow free passage for pedestrians along the Mail Street sidewalk. ”

“ But however that may be, its wonderful development as a summer resort has only come since the Civil War. It has a hard and gently-sloping beach facing the Atlantic, and can be so easily and cheaply reached, by so many routes on land and water, that it is no wonder, on hot afternoons and holidays, the people of New York and Brooklyn go down there by the hundreds of thousands. Coney Island is about five miles long, and from a quarter-mile to a mile in width, being separated from the adjacent low-lying mainland only by a little crooked creek and some lagoons. ”

“ A whirling maelstrom of human activity and dynamic energy—the city which above all others is characteristic of the genius and virility of the American people—New York, with its congested polyglot population and teeming millions, is assuredly one of the busiest, as it is one of the most strenuous and most noisy places on earth. ”