Washington Square

“ Let me confess at once that we are a bit supercilious in our attitude toward the sister Square far to our West, across the Alps of Broadway. Our Square was an established center of the social respectabilities when the foot of Fifth Avenue was still frequented by the occasional cow whose wanderings are responsible for the street-plan of Greenwich Village. Our Square remains true to the ancient and simple traditions, whereas Washington Square has grown long hair, smeared its fingers with paint and its lips with free verse, and gone into debt for its inconsiderable laundry bills. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At Twenty-third street, Broadway runs diagonally across Fifth avenue, touching the southwestern corner of Madison Square—not so very long since the most genteel locality in New York, but now, like Union Square, becoming occupied by hotels and business houses.
Fifth Avenue, the most splendid avenue in America, makes a beginning at Washington Square, a lovely public park embowered in trees, which was once Potters' Field, the pauper burying ground, and where one hundred thousand bodies lie buried. New York University and Dr. Hutton's Church face the square on the east. ”

“ Washington was steeped in sunset. The White House, as they passed it, glowed amid its quiet trees. Lafayette Square, with its fountains and statues, its white and pink magnolias, its strolling, chatting crowd, the fronts of the houses, the long vistas of tree-lined avenues, the street cars, the houses, the motors, all the openings and distances of the beautiful, leisurely place—they saw them rosily transfigured under a departing sun, which throughout the day had been weaving the quick spells of a southern spring.
"Jolly weather!" said Roger, looking about him. ”

“ In Washington Square the wanderer has much to think of in the literary associations recalled by this green garden that has blossomed from a pauper graveyard, and which has been written of by Howells, Brander Matthews, Bayard Taylor, Bunner, Henry James, F. Hopkinson Smith, and almost every writer who has brought New York into fiction. ”

“ To our simple philosophy a tree is a vegetable, a child is an animal, a building is a mineral and this classification needs no further scrutiny or analysis. But there is one thing in Washington Square that embodies an intellectual problem, a grappling of the soul, a matter for continual anguish and decision.
On the west side of the Square is the Swiss consulate, and, it is this that weighs upon our brooding spirit. ”

“ Into it he turned, swung aboard a car as it shot groaning and clanking around the curve from Fifty-ninth Street, and settled down to brood and ponder and consider until it was time for him to swing off the car into the slimy street once more.
Silvery pools of light inlaid the dim expanse of Washington Square. ”

“ The two dark figures stood an instant, breathless, in the dark mouth of the cavern beneath the marble balustraded stairway that ascended with chaste dignity to Mrs. De Peyster's noble front door. Swiftly they surveyed the scene. Not a policeman was in sight: no one save, across the way on Washington Square benches, a few plebeian lovers enjoying the soft calm of a May eleven o'clock. ”

“ She regarded Washington Square as the birthplace of Society, knew by heart all the cousinships of early New York, hated motor-cars, could not make herself understood on the telephone, and was determined, if she married, never to receive a divorced woman. ”

“ CHAPTER XXIII A LADY IN THE DUSK Halfway between the turbid currents of the lower city and the more swiftly running streams to the northward sits Washington Square, an isle of rest amid the tides of humanity which lap its shores. ”

“ In 1833 society folded its wings and settled down with something resembling permanence upon the corner of the "Snug Harbour" lands, which formed the famous North Side of Washington Square. Of all social and architectural centres of New York, Washington Square North has changed least. Progress may come or go, [Pg 24] social streams may flow upward with as much speed, energy and ambition as they will ”

“ The soft rays of an autumn sun are tinging the western sky, and night is fast drawing her sable mantle over the scene. In Washington Square, near where the tiny fountain jets its stream into a round, grassy-bordered basin, there sits a man of middle stature, apparently in deep study. ”

“ By the time we have gnashed our way through one of those warm and mystic phenomena we don't want to eat again for a month.
The real reason for the cinnamon bun is to fortify us for the contemplation and onslaught upon a tragic problem that Washington Square presents to our pondering soul.
Washington Square is a delightful place. There are trees there, and publishing houses and warm green grass and a fire engine station. There are children playing about on the broad pavements that criss-cross the sward ”

“ Nor was this all: a resolution was adopted, prepared by the association, guaranteeing the ground occupied by the square to be kept "forever" as a park for purposes of public health and recreation.
That Washington Square remains to-day, an oasis of beauty in the desert of brick and stone, and a breathing place in that densely built portion of the great city, is due principally to the watchfulness and energy of Professor Egleston. He it was who saved that park to the people of New York, and a debt of lasting gratitude therefor is owing him from them. ”

“ Twice, however, she got up while Matilda guarded her door, stood at her high, cell-like window, and peered through the slats of the closed shutter, past the purple-and-lavender plumes of the wistaria that climbed on up to the roof, [pg 185] and out upon the soft, green, sunny spaces of Washington Square. The Square, which she had been proud to live upon but rarely walked in,—only children and nursemaids and the commoner people actually walked in it,—the Square looked so expansive, so free, so inviting. ”

“ There are descendants of the Knickerbockers who cling arrogantly to the corner facing the Washington Arch. Profound is the belief of the pleasure seeker in the lights, signs, theatres, and lobster palaces of Longacre Square. To others nothing counts as the trees and fountains of Madison Square and graceful Diana and the great clock in the Metropolitan Tower count. But in these stirring days of the spring and early summer of 1918, for the throb of the universe climb Murray Hill to a point on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk opposite the stone lions that guard the entrance to the Public Library. ”

“ GEORGE WASHINGTON, with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square, forever signalling the Broadway cars to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But the cars buzz on, heedless, as they do at the beck of a private citizen, and the great General must feel, unless his nerves are iron, that rapid transit gloria mundi. ”

“ Of the buildings that defied time fifty years ago, not many remain. On the East especially, where Waverley Place—once more picturesquely called Rag Carpet Lane—links the Square to Broadway, the traditional brick structures have all been replaced by modern loft-buildings, almost as sober but far less austere. Elsewhere around the Square the old-time residences only here and there survive, encroached upon more and more by the inroads of modernity. Only along Washington Square North, east and west of Fifth Avenue, has there been consistent and effective resistance to the tidal march of progress ”

“ It seemed most casual, the saunter of this pleasant idler; the keenest observer would never have guessed purpose in his stroll. But never for longer than an instant were the frank gray eyes of this young gentleman away from the splendid stone steps, with their carved balustrade, and the fine old doorway of Mrs. De Peyster's house at No. 13 Washington Square. ”

“ They don't know where they're at, none of 'em. And even the upper side of your Square here is not only Washington Square North, but also Sixth Street, and at the same time also Waverley Place again. And the east side of your same old Square is University Place down as far as Fourth Street, and then without rhyme or reason it calls itself Wooster Street. And your south side is really Fourth Street, but on Fourth Street proper the numbers increase from east to west, but on what is really the same street called Washington Square South your numbers increase from west to east. ”

“ Such afternoons the buses are crowded into line like elephants in a circusparade. Morningside Heights to Washington Square, Penn Station to Grant’s Tomb. Parlorsnakes and flappers joggle hugging downtown uptown, hug joggling gray square after gray square, until they see the new moon giggling over Weehawken and feel the gusty wind of a dead Sunday blowing dust in their faces, dust of a typsy twilight. ”

“ In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called “places.” ”

“ It's at the foot of Fifth Avenue, he says, which sounds very fashionable to me, but he explains it is too far 'down town.'”
“Yes, Fifth Avenue is the great street, I understand,” said Stefan, “and my dealer's address is on Fourth, so he's in a very good neighborhood. I don't know that I should like Washington Square—it sounds so patriotic.”
“Fanatic!” laughed Mary. “Well, whether we go there or not, it's evident we must get back before October the first, and it's now September the twenty-fourth.” ”

“ In the region of South Washington Square there are many ancient dwellings which have fallen into uses which would make their original owners, who were the solid men of old New York, turn over in their narrow vaults in Trinity churchyard if they could know of them. Alien peoples, swarthy of skin and picturesque of dress, occupy and surround them, and strange industries are carried on under the roofs which once sheltered the families of the dignified old Knickerbockers who formed the aristocracy of the city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ People of sensibility do not wish even to board in a house so haunted with tragic memories of human lives. The house is now used for Government purposes. Its site is so superlative; central to the most interesting objects of Washington, and facing the waving sea of summer-green in Lafayette square. In the march of change its place will soon be filled by some soaring Mansard mansion of the future. But when every brick has vanished, the memories of the old club-house and Seward mansion will survive while any chronicle of Washington endures. ”

“ Who that knew old Washington can forget it? This is another Washington. But here they come! Safe from cold and wind, thanks to—I look up. From this window, on Fifteenth street, you can see Pennsylvania avenue past the Treasury building, (whose marble steps are boarded in from the advancing people,) to the Executive Mansion, glittering white through the leafless trees just beyond. Opposite is Lafayette square, the prettiest little park of its size in the United States. ”

“ By the plans the public buildings of the future will be arranged around Capitol Square (which has now two sides occupied by private residences) , and will then extend on both sides the mall, or flat, low-lying district 1,600 feet in width, extending from the Capitol building to the Potomac, a distance of one and a half miles, and inclosing the Washington monument. The buildings are all to be of white marble, harmonious in design, and with a standard sky-line. The latter feature is not pleasing in effect in the model. ”