Plaza Mayor

“ Perhaps the best example of a square in the whole of the country is the Plaza Mayor. A lofty colonnade runs around the four sides and every evening the beauties and others of Salamanca make it their promenade. The men stroll round in one direction and the women in the opposite. The social life of a Spanish town passed in view before me, with all its fan and language of the eyes, as I sat at one of the small tables of a café and got this cheap and harmless entertainment for one real. ”

“ But this spectre of which I now am telling you—that appeared on the Plaza Mayor at noonday, and was seen by everybody—was altogether out of the ordinary: being not in the least a dead person, but a person who wore his own flesh and bones in the usual manner and was alive in them; yet who certainly was walking and talking here on the Plaza Mayor of this City of Mexico in the very self-same moment that he also was walking and talking in a most remote and wholly different part of the world. ”

“ The two men whom we have seen upon the Plaza Mayor, bearing away the wounded man, walked for a long time, loaded with their strange burthen, stopping at the least noise, and concealing themselves in the depths of a doorway, or in the angle of a street, to allow the serenos to pass, as they would be sure to require a reason for their being in the streets at that unusual hour. ”

“ The fact that all of the tramway cars start from and return to the Plaza Mayor in front of the cathedral makes it easy for a stranger to find his way to any desired point of the city or its environs, and safely to return to the starting point when he desires to do so. The Plaza Mayor in every Mexican city is not only the central park, but also the central idea. There could no more be a full-fledged Spanish city without a plaza than a cathedral without a bishop. ”

“ The carriages of every description disappeared from the streets; not a horse or mule was to be descried; but innumerable crowds of both sexes, and of all classes, rich and poor, were seen intermingling on the same level, and pouring, morning and evening, in one unbroken stream through the thoroughfares, and under the portales. They clustered by hundreds about the doors of the churches; and by thousands—yes, tens of thousands—on the Plaza Mayor. ”

“ As for the famous Plaza Mayor, the great square, it is a very great square indeed, large enough to review an army in, and large enough to damage by its size the effect of the cathedral, and to dwarf the other buildings that surround it into mere insignificance. However, one thing is certain, that we have not come all this way to see Spanish architecture and great squares, but must look for something more characteristic. ”

“ We disbanded about ten o'clock to the sound of more really gorgeous martial music echoing through the big patio, stepping across the plaza to our house in a great flood of moonlight. [147] The "Iron Horse," the bronze equestrian statue of Charles IV., giving the note of other times and other rulers, was shining with a dim radiance. Humboldt found it in the Plaza Mayor in 1803, vis-à-vis the cathedral and the palace of the viceroys, set in a large space paved in squares of porphyry, inclosed by a richly ornamented, bronze-gilt railing and placed on a pedestal of Mexican marble. ”

“ Outside the Indian districts of the eastern and southern outskirts, the streets are paved with asphalt and stone, lighted with electricity and gas, and served with an efficient street railway service. The political and commercial centre of the city is the Plaza Mayor, or Plaza de la Constitución, on which face the cathedral, national palace, and municipal palace. ”

“ Madame Calderon describes the appearance of the Plaza on Good-Friday:
"The most beautiful and original scene was presented towards sunset in the great square, and it is doubtful whether any other city in the world could present a coup d'œil of equal brilliancy. The Plaza itself, even on ordinary days, is a noble square, and but for its one fault, a row of shops called the Parian, which breaks its uniformity, would, be nearly unrivalled. Every object is interesting. ”

“ The Plaza has preserved its old triangular form, two sides straight, and the third curved, with the single broad path that leads to the Alcázar. The shops still run inside the rough arcade that makes the circuit of the place, and loafers and gossips loll upon the stone benches, while water-laden mules amble by, and girls, effective and unimaginably graceful, with well-dressed heads and brilliant eyes, in groups saunter into view, carrying on their hips earthen amphoras, which they have filled at the public fountain. ”

“ Beyond this wall is the real city, mostly of natives, with its own peculiar spirit and fascination. They always come back, it is said, when people go away. Here in the narrow 30streets, plazas, churches, even stores, and on the old sea wall, a spell is woven over those who linger, which has alluring power. The Plaza Independencia, three blocks from the wall, is the heart of the city, a charming place, with the Cathedral on the west, the Central Hotel east, the Bishop’s Palace north, and the Municipal Building and the French Administration Building on the south. ”

“ Whether or not Saint Gaudens was right in his contention that the proper place for his equestrian statue of General Sherman was on the Riverside Drive by Grant's Tomb, without that gilded bronze figure of heroic size and the Winged Victory leading before, the Plaza would not be quite the Plaza. Obscured as it is in these days by the vast scaffolding, there is no true son of Manhattan who passes the corner on his way up the Avenue, or enters Central Park, who does not turn to look at the chief ornament of the broad square. ”

“ Almost above us rise the powerful towers against the clear firmament, and on our left is the palace, filling one whole side of the square with its numberless balconies and windows, while in front spreads the great plaza, glittering with innumerable lights against the shadowy arcades that fill the opposite side. ”

“ Only one public building, the old Town Hall in the chief plaza, dates from colonial times and has, or seems by its quaintness to have, a sort of artistic quality which is absent from the work, all French rather than Spanish in character, of the last sixty years. The plazas are handsome, well laid out and planted, and the street architecture creditable, with fewer contrasts of meanness and magnificence than one usually sees in the growing cities of North America. ”

“ On the dry barren square of the Plaza wagons were scattered, and to the wagons were tied mules and oxen, that fed and stamped about in the dust. The Plaza was swarmed with men, with groups talking excitedly of real estate, diggings, of the shortage of flour, the rise in pork, the fall in lumber, of Hubert Lee's death—some said 'murder,' others, 'duel.' Men discussed freighting, the heavy play at this or that gambling table, the sale of the Magnolia, the Spanish-looking man who for an hour had bought Washington Hall the night before. ”

“ The houses built nowadays are mere shells in comparison with the edifices constructed by the Spanish conquerors and their successors, when a wall had to be made several feet thick to be satisfactory, and a door must be large 317enough to admit a mounted horseman, and massive enough to resist a battering-ram. From the principal public square, called here, as elsewhere in Spanish-America, the Plaza de Armas, the most important public buildings may be seen, the Prefecture, municipal buildings and other government offices overlooking this central paseo. ”

“ Friday, October 20th.—We went out for a short stroll round the Plaza before breakfast, which meal was scarcely over when Mr. Mackay arrived in a carriage, and took us off to see what there was to see in the town. The Plaza was full of bright-looking flower-beds, in which were superb roses, and many English flowers, shaded by oranges, pomegranates, and deutzias. Each plot belongs to one of the principal families in the town, and great emulation is displayed as to whose little garden shall be in the best order and contain the finest collection of plants and flowers. ”

“ The Plaza remained through the turbulence of San Francisco's growth and many disasters, and, under the name of Portsmouth Square, is still the Plaza.
Here in '49 mingled the miners and merchants. Horses, mules, oxen, wagons, heaps of goods, were crowded on the Plaza. Venders hawked their wares, candy, peanuts, medicine. Native Californians in bright trappings with little bells jingling, rode by. Richly dressed women, proud of themselves though all knew them for what they were, swept along among men who respectfully made way. ”

“ Hastings’s hotels, and keep along King Street eastward on the town plan, you are almost at once in the Plaza, which is the heart of every Spanish town, and which begins here with the fountained and palmettoed oblong inclosing what was once the Spanish governor’s palace, or so said to be. It is now the American post-office and custom-house, but is inalienably dignified and venerable, with some galleried façades of the same period on one side, and a compendious reach of cheerful shops on the other. ”

“ Now this last lap of the walk—from green Madison Square and the new Martin's up the sparkling avenue to the broad, bright Plaza at the Park entrance, where the brightly polished hotels look down at the driving, with their awnings flapping and flags out straight—makes the most popular part of all the walk.
This is the land of liveried servants and jangling harness, far away, or pretending to be, from work and worry; this is where enjoyment is sought and vanity let loose—and that, with the accompanying glitter and glamour, is always more interesting to the great bulk of humanity. ”

“ Around the Plaza one sees the American style of architecture and hears the hum of American civilization; but beyond, and outside this pretty park, the streets are narrow, crooked, and have an ancient appearance. ”

“ Elevated at this height above the plaza, of nearly one hundred and eighty feet, the din of the city reaches our ears,—the hum of myriad voices, the patter of thousands of feet, and the rattle of coach-wheels over the pavements. Yet it is a rather silent crowd that fills the square, composed in great part of idle vagabonds who have no employment, and hence are in no hurry, and create no bustle. Directly beneath us is the great square, with the smaller one, the zocalo, or pleasure garden, in its centre. ”

“ They listened, then descended to the big open engine-room doors and listened again. From the direction of Market Street came the dull sounds of turmoil, shouting, the growl and roar of many people excited by something. Across the Plaza a man appeared, running. ”

“ Reaching the Plaza Publica, which was so bare of even a blade of grass or a solitary tree, and its ground so scored and beaten and covered with rubbish to suggest that it suffered the last stages of some earthly mange, they came to the real business section of the town, where nearly every shop was owned by foreigners. Around this public plaza stood the architectural triumphs of the city. There was the palacio of the governor, with its mud walls and its extended roof supported on rough pine columns to form a great porch ”

“ The plaza is too sure of its essential virtue to expend energy in architectural display. Here it scores another point over the modern theater whose plush and murals and tapestries and candelabras so often overbear the paleness of the play. The plaza has tiers of backless seats terracing up to balcony and boxes. The seats are of stone: the upper reaches are a series of plain arcades. The plaza is grim and silent. It is stripped for action. It is prepared to receive intensity. The human mass that fills it takes from the sand of the arena, glowing in the sun, a color of rapt anticipation. ”

“ Here, of course, the street broadens and skirts the plaza where the band plays of an evening, and where the town promenades round and round the little square of palms and fountains, under the stars. You may remember that a little farther on, on one side of the plaza, there is the immense church which has been building for a century, more or less, and which is still incomplete.
There were a few miserable-looking soldiers, with shapeless, colorless uniforms, loitering 50 in front of the cuartel as Harboro and Sylvia passed. ”

“ The general effect of this large business square, [Pg 88] with the deep greenery of the plaza in the centre, is extremely attractive. Strolling about it in the intense sunshine are many beggars and grandees; women in bright-colored rebosas; others in rags which do not half cover their nakedness; fair señoritas with tall, red-heeled boots pointed at the toes, and poor girls with bare limbs and feet; cripples and athletes; beauty and deformity; plethoric priests and cadaverous peons. ”

“ There was no room for reclining, and we were cramped in unnatural positions throughout the long twenty leagues. It was one o'clock in the morning, by the dim light of a waning moon, that we entered the suburbs of the capital, and waked the echoes of the silent streets by driving furiously to the Plaza. ”

“ Revolution has so rapidly followed revolution that history has ceased to count them; and it may be said of them what Milton wrote of the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy, "that they are not more worthy of being recorded than the skirmishes of crows and kites." The Grand Plaza, the heart where all the great arteries of circulation meet and diverge, is where the high tides of Quito affairs ebb and flow. ”

“ The main square, Plaza de la Victoria, the heart of cir- culation, the business part where men in fine weather seem to live, and where you meet all your acquaintances half a dozen times a day, is small and mean, fitted for a country town, utterly unworthy of a metropolis, the Pro- vincial and Confederative capital, the seat of the local and general legislature, a New York and Washington in one. ”