Montgomery Street

“ There were dangerous and unknown depths in Montgomery Street and on the Plaza, and the wheels of a passing carriage hopelessly mired had to be lifted by the volunteer hands of a half dozen high-booted wayfarers, whose wearers were sufficiently content to believe that a woman, a child, or an invalid was behind its closed windows, without troubling themselves or the occupant by looking through the glass. ”

“ Aouda, Phileas Fogg, and Fix sauntered through the streets. They soon found themselves in Montgomery street, where the crowd of people was enormous. On the sidewalks, in the middle of the street, on the horse-car rails, notwithstanding the incessant passage of the coaches and omnibuses, on the steps of the stores, in the windows of all the houses, and even up to the roofs, there was an innumerable crowd. Men with placards circulated among the groups. ”

“ We must chance it, anyhow.” So we dodged along in the shadow till we came to Montgomery Street, and after a brief walk, turned into a gloomy doorway and mounted a worn pair of stairs.
The house was three stories in height. It stood on the corner of an alley, and the lower floor was intended for a store or saloon; but a renting agent's sign and a collection of old show-bills ornamenting the dirty windows testified that it was vacant. The liquor business appeared to be overdone in that quarter, for across the alley, hardly twenty feet away, was a saloon; across Montgomery Street was another ”

“ Sombreros and red shirts and plumed Indians were rarely to be seen; but there were silk hats and black coats everywhere worn by a multitude of nervously active, gentlemanly-looking men. Some of the streets—especially Montgomery Street, which is to San Francisco what Regent Street is to London, the Boulevard des Italiens to Paris, and Broadway to New York—were lined with splendid and spacious stores, which exposed in their windows the products of the entire world. ”

“ At that day Montgomery Street was, as now, the business street, extending from Jackson to Sacramento, the water of the bay leaving barely room for a few houses on its east side, and the public warehouses were on a sandy beach about where the Bank of California now stands, viz., near the intersection of Sansome and California, Streets. Along Montgomery Street were the stores of Howard & Mellus, Frank Ward, Sherman & Ruckel, Ross & Co., and it may be one or two others. ”

“ It is quite conceivable and not at all discreditable that the wild work of Broadway and of Fifth Avenue should have led architects of sensibility to cast many longing, lingering looks behind at the decorum of the Bowling Green and Washington Square, and to sigh for a return of the times when the common street architecture of New York was sober and respectable, even if it was conventional and stupid. ”

“ SAN FRANCISCO—CONTINUED.
We will now look into Clay street, which intersects Montgomery, and runs parallel with Commercial. Next to Montgomery, this is the most fashionable street in the city; the large establishments where retailers deal in ladies’ and gentlemen’s dress goods being situated upon it. The side-walks are narrow, and generally crowded to such an excess as to render it really difficult and tiresome to travel them. To the ladies, shopping on this street is especially annoying and tedious ”

“ That the streets called and known by the names of Lovely and Wapping, and all that part of Montgomery street, south from Bridge streets to Causeway street, not embraced in lines parallel with Washington street, lying between Washington street and Rock creek, in the said town, upon the opening and establishment of the said streets, between Washington street and Rock creek, be, and the same are hereby vacated ”

“ Cleaner-cut, more wide-awake, and energetic faces are nowhere to be seen. Few aged men appear, but most average from twenty-five to forty years. Resolute, alert, jaunty, bankrupt perhaps to-day, but to-morrow picking their flints and trying it again, such men mean business in all they undertake, and carry enterprise and empire in the palms of their hands. The proportion of ladies on Montgomery street, however, usually seemed [Pg 286] small, and the quality inferior to that of the sterner sex. ”

“ CHAPTER XL Valancy paused a moment on the porch of the brick house in Elm Street. She felt that she ought to knock like a stranger. Her rosebush, she idly noticed, was loaded with buds. The rubber-plant stood beside the prim door. A momentary horror overcame her—a horror of the existence to which she was returning. Then she opened the door and walked in.
“I wonder if the Prodigal Son ever felt really at home again,” she thought.
Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles were in the sitting-room. Uncle Benjamin was there, too. ”

“ Furthermore, there are already two golf clubs—one for Jews and one for Gentiles—and the links are reputed to be good.
Unlike many southern cities of moderate size, Montgomery has well-paved streets, and the better residence streets, being wide, and lined with trees and pleasant houses, each in its own lawn, give a suggestion of an agreeable home and social life—a suggestion which, by implication at least, report substantiates: for it has been said that the chief industry of Montgomery is that of raising beautiful young women to make wives for the rich men of Birmingham. ”

“ The famous Highland Regiment, the Black Watch, camped here one year, and, when the men shook out the straw of their beds in the spring, some seeds of heather took root.”
“Oh, how delightful!” said enchanted Anne.
“Let’s go home around by Spofford Avenue,” suggested Gilbert. “We can see all ‘the handsome houses where the wealthy nobles dwell.’ Spofford Avenue is the finest residential street in Kingsport. Nobody can build on it unless he’s a millionaire.”
“Oh, do,” said Phil. “There’s a perfectly killing little place I want to show you, Anne. it wasn’t built by a millionaire. ”

“ It’s a big, old-fashioned, gray stone house on St. John Street, just a nice little constitutional from Redmond. It used to be the ‘residence’ of great folk, but fashion has deserted St. John Street and its houses only dream now of better days. They’re so big that people living in them have to take boarders just to fill up. At least, that is the reason our landladies are very anxious to impress on us. They’re delicious, Anne—our landladies, I mean.”
“How many are there?”
“Two. Miss Hannah Harvey and Miss Ada Harvey. They were born twins about fifty years ago.” ”

“ It has free factory sites, the cheapest electric power rates in the United States, and is the best-lighted city in the country."
"We have some pretty fair street lighting in New York," interjected my companion, who takes much pride in his home town.
"I said 'one of the best lighted,'" replied the secretary.
"What is the population?"
"Montgomery," the other returned, "is typical of both the Old and the New South. Though it may be called a modern model city, its wealth of history and [Pg 607] tradition are preserved with loving care by its myriad inhabitants." ”

“ Make him believe she had not meant to trick him—she must make him believe that. She must say good-bye to her Blue Castle and return to the brick house on Elm Street. Back to everything she had thought left behind forever. The old bondage—the old fears. But that did not matter. All that mattered now was that Barney must somehow be made to believe she had not consciously tricked him.
When Valancy reached the pines by the lake she was brought out of her daze of pain by a startling sight. There, parked by the side of old, battered ragged Lady Jane, was another car. A wonderful car. A purple car. ”

“ It is questionable whether this massiveness is not carried too far, but everybody will admit that an excessive weight of wall is a “good fault” in the street architecture of New York, and that of the two, a dwelling is more dignified which approaches the solidity proper to a prison than one that emulates the precarious lightness proper to a greenhouse. The depth of the porch and of the recessed balcony over it in the central division of the avenue front assists this expression of solidity, and helps the building to wear its burden of decoration “lightly, like a flower.” ”

“ The couples on the platform were "ragging," their shoulders working like the walking-beams of side-wheelers
Unable to understand why this pageant of supposed western mining-camp life should confront us in the streets of Alabama's capital, I made inquiry of an amiable policeman who was on duty in the tent, and learned that this was not a regular Montgomery institution, but [Pg 605] one of the attractions of a street fair which had invaded the city—the main body of the fair being a block or two distant. ”

“ Astor in Fifth Avenue, a simply and quietly treated street front in brick and sandstone, can certainly not be called Queen Anne, in spite of the three rows of egg-and-dart moulding, already remarked, which crown its rock-faced basement. The highest praise to which these typical Queen Anne houses can aspire, in spite of some thoroughly studied detail, such as the treatment of the oriel in that one designed by Mr. Haight, is that they look like eligible mansions for highly respectable families content with dwelling in the decencies ”

“ Wall Street and the business quarter of Boston, and every commercial palace in every city, violate, in differing degrees, this plain dictate of good sense and good taste, even in the very rare instances in which the misplacement of the ornateness is the worst thing that can be alleged against it. ”

“ Within the past three or four years Wall Street has been converted from the hum-drum respectability of an old-fashioned business thoroughfare to a{134} street of commercial palaces, the aspect of which must contain an element of grievousness to the judicious, who see that the builders have lavished their repertory of ornament and variety on buildings to which nobody resorts for pleasure, but everybody for business alone, and that they have left themselves nothing further to do in the way of enrichment when they come to do temples and palaces, properly so called. ”

“ The guests were not of a very high character, the landlady not being particular as long as her rent was paid regularly. Mr. Montgomery ascended the steps in a jaunty way, and, opening the door with a passkey, ascended the front staircase. He paused before a room on the third floor, and knocked in a peculiar manner.
The door was opened by a tall woman, in rather neglected attire.
“So you're back,” she said.
“Yes, my dear, home again. As the poet says, 'There is no place like home.'”
“I should hope there wasn't,” said Mrs. Montgomery, looking about her disdainfully. ”

“ There are several reasons why Montgomery would be a good place for a large winter-resort hotel, and if I were a Montgomery "booster" I should give less thought to free factory sites than to building up the town as a winter stopping place for tourists. The town itself is picturesque and attractive; as to railroads it is well situated (albeit the claim that Montgomery is the "Gateway to Florida" strikes me as a little bit exaggerated) ; the climate is delightful, and the surrounding country is not only beautiful but fertile. ”

“ Boudinot's, an Evening School is intended to be open'd for teaching of Writing, Arithmetick, Navigation, Surveying, Algebra, and other parts of the Mathematicks, and to continue until the middle of March next. Those who incline to be instructed, are desir'd to give in their names immediately to either of the Subscribers, living in Arch Street." This was repeated in substance the year following, and the effort was a success. Night Schools were now rendered safer by the lighted streets. ”

“ Somehow, in thinking of the old days, I find it hard to reconcile those men and women who lived under the Knickerbocker sway with their newspapers. It is pleasanter to dwell upon the old customs, to picture Mr. Manhattan leaving the scurrilous sheet behind him when he departed from his store or counting house, and repairing with clean hands to the wife of his bosom and his family, somewhere in Greenwich Village, or Richmond Hill, or Bond Street, or the beginnings of Fifth Avenue. ”

“ To those who really understand them, every one of the great, vital streets of the world has a soul as well as a body. The social invader from the West, the merchant whose establishment still found profit in Grand Street, the banker from Broad Street, or the ship's chandler from South, the club awakening to the fact that its quarters on Broadway or in one of the side streets near Irving Place was too far downtown, or in size inadequate to its growing membership—those were the agencies that wrought the Avenue's material development. ”

“ The inhabitants of Monmouth-street are a distinct class; a peaceable and retiring race, who immure themselves for the most part in deep cellars, or small back parlours, and who seldom come forth into the world, except in the dusk and coolness of the evening, when they may be seen seated, in chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes, or watching the gambols of their engaging children as they revel in the gutter, a happy troop of infantine scavengers. ”

“ The streets are fluttering with beautiful women; light summer frocks are twinkling in the busy frolic air. Oh, to be turned loose at the corner of Broadway and Thirty-second Street at 6:15 o'clock of a June evening, with nothing to do but follow the smile of adventure to the utmost! Thirty-second, we might add, is our favourite street in New York. It saddens us to think that the old boarding house on the corner of Madison Avenue is vanished now and all those quaint and humorous persons dispersed. ”

“ AN UPPER WEST SIDE STREET
"Business and pleasure occupy the people as usual!" When I reached my office I stood for a few minutes looking out at the crowded junction of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, where they cross Twenty-third Street. Here were the same hurrying crowds that I had seen there of old. Below me I saw the same policeman guarding the pedestrians across the crowded streets, and the same sleepy cab horses drowsing in the sun along the edge of Madison Square. ”