Lexington Avenue

“ For a moment I thought I was having a hallucination, hearing voices, that sort of thing. Then I saw that everyone else must have heard it, too.
Lexington Avenue is a pretty busy place at nine o'clock in the morning. There are plenty of people hurrying back and forth, kids going to school, subways roaring beneath you, cars and buses honking. ”

“ Few streets in the world can be as quiet as Lexington Avenue at mid-day. It looks almost like Boston. Russell Vanbrugh loved New York in all its aspects and in all its particulars, singly and wholly, in winter and summer, with the undivided affection which natives of great capitals often feel for their own city. ”

“ Nearly all the houses are built on the same design, which gives to it an air of sameness and tameness that is not pleasing. But it is a magnificent street, nevertheless, and has not its equal in the great and unbroken extent of its splendor in the world. It is a street of palaces. Madison and Park avenues, and portions of Lexington avenue, are nearly as handsome, as are the cross streets connecting them with the Fifth avenue, and many of the streets leading to the Sixth avenue are similarly built. ”

“ For my eldest daughter I built and furnished a beautiful house on ground near Iranistan, and she moved into it immediately after her marriage, though of late years she has resided in New-York in winter and in Bridgeport in summer. For Helen and Pauline, I bought and furnished handsome houses in Lexington Avenue, in New-York, within a short distance of my own city residence in Fifth Avenue. A fine young rising generation of my grandchildren is growing up around them and me. ”

“ Up the streets to the West he wheeled the go-cart, and Annie walked at his side talking quickly. They trudged through a strange slash of the city's life, squalid poverty to Third Avenue, mediocre fringes of middle class to Lexington, middle class respectability to Madison, luxurious wealth to Fifth Avenue, and then one of the loveliest stretches of landscape Park beyond. As they walked block by block west, the street grew quieter, finer, less crowded, more and more palatial, and last they stepped from the avenue-divided social classes of Man into the sweet democracy of Nature. ”

“ In the near-total rebuilding of New York that ran parallel with its development as Interplanetary capital, the city planners had wisely left a charming segment of the old city, extending from the Plaza north, along Central Park East to Ninety-sixth Street and east to Lexington Avenue, intact. ”

“ These differences make the household bracing. Those who want to get out of family life will go into a much narrower world.”
Our home at this time was in the pretty row of flats opposite the Dominican Church on Lexington Avenue. They were light, sunny apartments and had a satisfactory share of what we call, modern conveniences. Every one knows how New York looks now, between Lexington Avenue and the old entrance to Central Park at the Arsenal. Then, it was a clear, open space. I remember just one cottage standing at the southeast corner opposite to the park entrance ”

“ As a family accumulates a little money, plans are made to move out of these sections in lower New York and to settle in different surroundings in the upper part of the city, on Lexington Avenue or in the Bronx. ”

“ They all lived in New York, they all belonged to the same little oddly-shaped piece in the social puzzle map, some of them were rich enough to walk, and one of them at least was tolerably well acquainted with a great [5] many people in a great many other sets. On a certain winter's morning this latter individual was walking slowly down Lexington Avenue in the direction of Gramercy Park. ”

“ They have always a drinking-saloon or a provision-store or an apothecary’s shop at the corners where they intersect; the modistes find lodgment in them almost before the residents are aware. Beyond Sixth Avenue, or Seventh at farthest, on the west, and Fourth Avenue or Lexington, on the east, they lose their genteel character; their dwellings degenerate into apartment-houses, and then into tenement-houses of lower and lower grade till the rude traffic and the offensive industries of the river shores are reached. ”

“ The avenues are all one hundred feet wide, excepting Lexington and Madison, which are seventy-five, and Fourth Avenue, above Thirty-fourth street, which is one hundred and forty feet wide.
The numerical streets are all sixty feet wide, excepting Fourteenth, Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, and eleven others, north of these, which are one hundred feet wide.
There are twelve fine avenues at parallel distances apart of about eight hundred feet. They begin about First or Fourth street, and run to the end of the island. ”

“ From Cambridge Common the ride to Arlington and Lexington is a direct road via Massachusetts Avenue. The condition of the road is good. The surface for most of the distance has been macadamized, while the other portions are gravelled and well rolled. ”

“ At the last, she stands above the Chronicler’s throne and, on either side of her, two youths kneel, who have followed her down from the Choir. When she has come to the bottom of the slope and when the darkness has taken all else but her figure, she turns her back upon the audience and her hands go out as though she evoked one further image out of the past. We see it, as light scatters the darkness above her—the Common of Lexington in the cold dawn of the Glorious Morning and the line of Minute Men drawn up across it. ”

“ It is worst, of course, on the shore, and delicate people who cannot live in it there are sent to Lexington, and thrive. The air is very dry and pure, and that is perhaps the reason why even the east wind is tolerable. Lexington Common, they say, is as high as the top of Bunker Hill Monument in Boston; and the locomotive pants with difficulty up the heavy grade of the road near the village. Perhaps there is something in the grouping of the low hills — in the embrace of which the village lies on an ample plain — that gives it peculiar shelter ”

“ I was very glad that the Lexington people gave the singing and playing family a good house, and I fancy that they do not refuse any fit occasions for amusing themselves. The young men seem not to go away from home so generally as they do from most country towns in New England; it is perhaps because their pleasant village is so near the city; at any rate they remain at home even after being graduated at Harvard. They have sleigh-rides, and dances at the Town Hall during the winter; I was told that the Lexington “germans” are not despised by the undergraduates of Cambridge ”

“ When the paint is not too freshly renewed, they have a suggestion of antiquity which is pleasing and satisfactory in so new a world as ours. There is no attempt at ornamentation in these unassuming houses at Lexington; that is left to the later carpentry which has produced on the intersecting streets various examples, in one story and a half, of the mansard architecture so popular in our wood-built suburbs. ”

“ House rent is certainly less, but the railroad fares and the expressman's charges go far to equalize that with the city rate; about Boston the suburban taxes are sometimes greater than the city taxes; provisions and service are a little costlier, and unless one conforms quite strictly to the local standard of simplicity, one is apt to live quite as expensively as in town. It would cost as much to live with the same ease in Lexington as in Boston ”

“ Holmes has remarked, American cities and villages all like to think of themselves as the “good old” this and that; but at Lexington more than anywhere else out of Italy I felt that the village was to its people the patria. With us the great Republic is repeated and multiplied in several smaller and diminishing republican governments, each subordinate to the larger, all over the land; and ever since its separation from Cambridge, Lexington has, like other New England towns, had its little autonomy. Twice a year the citizens convene and legislate in town meetings ”

“ A branch of the James River is called North River and this stream waters the county, flowing diagonally across it. Some of the richest soil in all the Valley is found in Rockbridge. Lexington, which is the county-seat, takes its name from the town of Lexington in Massachusetts and was founded in 1778. The first buildings of the old town were mostly destroyed by fire in 1794 and were replaced with substantial brick buildings. An Englishman who was visiting America long ago described the little town in these words:
"The town as a settlement, has many attractions. ”

“ It is traversed by the Boston & Maine railroad and by the Lowell & Boston electric railway. Its area is about 17 sq. m., and it contains three villages—Lexington, East Lexington and North Lexington. Agriculture is virtually the only industry. ”

“ Lexington is really nothing more than a great big country town, but we love it. I reached the suburbs in half an hour, then took the pike, and walked briskly. The day had been like one huge bloom of some tropical orchid. Contrasted with the biting winter only a few weeks back, it was something to exult the heart and uplift the soul. Rain had fallen the night before. Day came with a world-wide flare of yellow sunshine; her dress a tempered breeze. By noon a coat was uncomfortable, and the air was full of music; the droning, charming, ceaseless litany of the bees. ”

“ THE citizens of Lexington, the Birthplace of American Liberty, realizing they are custodians of America’s greatest shrine, extend a welcome to EVERYONE, not only on the 19th of April and Pageant Week, June 15th to 20th, 1925, BUT EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR, to visit our battlefield, the historic buildings, and at all times to feel at home. This historic spot belongs to the Nation, and we want all Americans to feel they are part owners so that on leaving the town they may have a better realization of the struggles made by our forefathers and become better and more patriotic citizens. ”

“ The ladies used to bring out their sewing or knitting, and chat round the fire; the men had their newspapers and cigars; as the evening wore on there was whist or euchre at the tables; sometimes people from the outside world dropped in; and if you went down late (as hours go with us in the country) , you were likely to find the landlord and his brother smoking before the fire and telling stories of Lexington as they remembered it when boys. ”

“ The Michler Bros., two very enterprising young men, whom I met at a later day, are likewise successful in both their nursery and florist business.
Lexington, unlike many other Southern cities of its size, shows a remarkable growth and commercial development since my first visit in the Autumn of 1889. Among other things, Lexington is famous for its swift horses and beautiful women; and any traveling man who, like myself, has visited Lexington time and again, can well attest to the deservedness of its fame. ”

“ Gradually during this change—notwithstanding the talents, ability, and fame of our Brown, Dudley, Caldwell, Cooke, Short, Yandell, Bartlett, Mitchell, Smith, and others, and the generous support of the city—the school declined; more especially because of the establishment of rival colleges at more eligible points, in growing and populous cities. Lexington lost its pre-eminence as the "Metropolis of the Western Country," and Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and other places which had been villages supplied with her manufactures, rapidly became great cities ”

“ The city is the centre of a hemp-growing region; and coal is mined in the vicinity and extensively shipped. The government is administered under a charter of 1848, subsequently amended, by a mayor, elected biennially, and a unicameral council. Lexington was settled in 1825, and incorporated about five years later. Population, in 1890, 4537; in 1900, 4190. There is a hill to the northeast of the city, where in September, 1861, 3000 Union soldiers, under Col. James Mulligan, sustained a siege against 18,000 Confederates under Gen. ”

“ In that event, I will halt on the road, and arrive there on Saturday, lie over Sunday, and reach Lexington on Monday. I am very anxious to get to Lexington, and think nothing on the route will benefit me, as I feel much concerned about the resumption of the college exercises. Mr. John Stewart, Misses Mary and Marian, Mr. Price, and his daughters came over from the Hot yesterday to see me. The Stewarts are there on Miss Belle’s account. Give much love to everybody. I hope you reached Lexington safely and comfortably and that all are well. I hope to see you Monday. ”

“ MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON
"Whoever has the good fortune to follow its trails and shimmering waters is already half a poet," wrote Professor Harris of the road that leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies over picturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valley and brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, to the Virginia Military Institute, I entered at once two charming regions—Lexington with its romantic environment, and the heart of Margaret Junkin Preston. ”

“ It has no manufactures of any sort, neither shoes nor cotton, nor boxes, nor barrels, nor watches, nor furniture; it is still a farming-town, such as you find in the Massachusetts or New Hampshire hills, and is not yet a market-gardening town like those which lie nearer the city. ”