York City

“ And I took this front-page view of New York. I saw it as a city where big exceptional people were endlessly doing sensational things, both in the making and spending of money. I saw it not only as a cluster of tall buildings far downtown, but uptown as well a towering pile of rich hotels and apartments, a region that sparkled gaily at night, lights flashing from tens of thousands of rooms, in and out of which, I felt delightedly, millions of people had passed through the years. ”

“ What a city of enchantment and wonder New York must seem to the traveller from some dreary Russian or Siberian town, if seen aright. It is a thrilling spectacle. Now that I have looked at it I say to myself, "Fancy any man having lived and died in this era without having seen it!" ”

“ A dull city of straight-front unvaried streets is New York. But she aspires in her sky-scrapers; she dreams a garden dream of Georgian days in Gramercy Park; and on Riverside Drive she bares her exquisite breast and wantons in beauty. Here she is sophisticated, yet eager, comparable to Paris and Vienna; and here Una exulted.
Down a polished roadway that reflected every light rolled smart motors, with gay people in the sort of clothes she had studied in advertisements. ”

“ New York in numbers is a mighty city, and all day and all night it cries its loud, fierce, aspiring cry, a noise of men beating upon barrels, a noise of men beating upon tin, a terrific racket that assails the abject skies. ”

“ You know, also, that often the typical New-Yorker is not proud of the city of his choice, and not so loyal to it as we could wish. He has no abiding concern for this maligned and misunderstood town of ours; he does not thrill with pride at the sight of its powerful and irregular profile as he comes back to it across the broad river; nor is his heart lifted up with joy at the sound of its increasing roar, so suggestive and so stimulating. But we have a firm affection for New York, you and I, and a few besides; we like it for what it is; and we love it for what we hope to see it. ”

“ Today more than ninety-nine per cent. of the population of the immensely populated island of Manhattan lives north of the City Hall. That cheap north wall, hidden under countless coats of white paint, is the one acute reminder of the days that were when the Hall was new—when the gentle square in which it stood was surrounded by the suburban residences of prosperous New Yorkers and when the waters of the Collect Pond—where the New York boys use to skate in the bitterness of old-fashioned winters—lapped its northerly edge. ”

“ New York has more remarkable men to the acre than any other city in the world. Genius has made its abode in Manhattan. 'Westward the course of Empire'—you know the rest. Paris and London must go down—they are old. New York will rule the world. ”

“ It was the centre of the most varied life in New York. To the north lay fashion and wealth, to the east and west, respectability and moderate means; to the south, poverty and squalor, vice and crime. All could be seen and heard from the windows of his sitting room. In the evenings toward spring he looked out upon a panorama of the human race such as is presented by no other city in the world and by no other part of that city. ”

“ Fifty years ago, New York was little more than a village; now, it is a fine city with three hundred thousand inhabitants. I have never seen any city so admirably adapted for commerce. It is built upon a narrow island, between Long Island Sound and the Hudson River, Broadway running up it like the vertebrae of some huge animal, and the other streets diverging from it at right angles, like the ribs; each street running to the river, and presenting to the view a forest of masts. ”

“ Now let your vision drop into the near foreground—into the tracery of trees about the jewel-box of a City Hall. Let it pause for a moment in the broad-paved [30] street at your feet with the queer little openings through which humans are sweeping like a black stream into a funnel; others from which the human streams come crawling upward like black molasses and you are again reminded that some of the greatest highways of New York are those that are subterranean and unseen. The sidewalks grow a little blacker than before. ”

“ New York City—the length and breadth of Manhattan—and Boston, from the Fenway in three directions to the water-front, are as unfit for a child to grow up in as the basement floor of a china store for a calf. There might be hay enough on such a floor [Pg 240] for a calf, as there is doubtless air enough on a New York City street for a child. It is not the lack of things—not even of air—in a city that renders life next to impossible there; it is rather the multitude of things. ”

“ New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments—constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; ”

“ New York, with its novel, varied, and ever-changing features, is calculated to leave a very marked impression on a stranger's mind. In one part one can suppose it to be a negro town; in another, a German city; while a strange dreamy resemblance to Liverpool pervades the whole. In it there is little repose for the mind, and less for the eye, except on the Sabbath-day, which is very well observed, considering the widely-differing creeds and nationalities of the inhabitants. The streets are alive with business, retail and wholesale, and present an aspect of universal bustle. ”

“ In them also picturesque squalor obtrudes itself upon an ugly splendour. But New York, above all other cities, is the city of contrasts. As America is less a country than a collection of countries, so New York is not a city—it is a collection of cities. Here, on the narrow rock which sustains the real metropolis of the United States, is room or men and women of every faith and every race. The advertisements which glitter in the windows or are plastered upon the hoardings suggest that all nationalities meet with an equal and a flattering acceptance. ”

“ New York, more than any city in the world, unless it be Paris, loves to be amused, thrilled and surprised all at the same time; and will accept with outstretched hand any one who can perform this astounding feat. ”

“ Washington Heights is a crowning wilderness looking down upon the city from Fort George, while the Sound and a glimpse of the village beyond seen through the faint blue haze of distance lend a touch of fairylike enchantment. The Jersey shore and the Palisades are one long drawn out joy, so that, turn where you will, you find New York beautiful. ”

“ There is always something to hear and see in New York City at all hours of the day and night.
New York surely is quite a sizeable village, and to judge from the way it has been growing, ten years from now it will extend a hundred miles or more up the Hudson, to Albany, maybe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I never return to this wonderful city without being entertained and impressed afresh. New York is full of types and figures and curious social idiosyncrasies, and I only wish we had some one here, to hold up the mirror, with a 15th part of your talent. It is altogether an extraordinary growing, swarming, glittering, pushing, chattering, good-natured, cosmopolitan place, and perhaps in some ways the best imitation of Paris that can be found (yet with a great originality of its own.) ”

“ NEW YORK THE increase of the towns of Manhattan, as, for the sake of convenience, we shall term New York and her adjuncts, in all that contributes to the importance of a great commercial mart, renders them one of the most remarkable places of the present age. Within the distinct recollections of living men, they have grown from a city of the fifth or sixth class to be near the head of all the purely trading places of the known world. ”

“ The little settlement of another race, speaking another tongue, that centuries later sprang up in the shadow of the tower, quickly grew into a busy and prosperous city, which, like New York, its rival, was captured and held by the English. To walk now through some of its quaint, narrow streets is to step back into Revolutionary days. Hardly a house has changed since the time when the red coats of the British officers brightened the prim perspectives, and turned loyal young heads as they passed. ”

“ But the eagle would not say that about New York. It is not spires, nor is it factory chimneys which stick up highest there and catch the attention of a spectator from a height. Office buildings are the dominant things. Churches are kept in what many people regard as their proper place. You can see them if you look for them, but they are subordinate. The same thing is true of another view of New York, that marvelous spectacle of the city's profile which you get in the evening from any of the Hudson River ferry boats. ”

“ In this sphere of activity there is certainly a wide field open to the philanthropic labours of a ‘social purity alliance.’ New York, like all other great commercial centres, possesses a certain “shoddy aristocracy”—to use a popular term—the mushroom outcome of successful speculation, and this aristocracy, knowing nothing better than fine houses, well-appointed carriages, and blazing jewels—the goal of its efforts—naturally delights in magnificent display. ”

“ The great enterprise of New York at present upon which succeeding ages will bestow all gratitude is the building of a grand Park where the thousands of this city—the rich, the poor, the highly born and lowly may pass moments of pleasure and rest from the noise and turmoil of the city and acquire strength and cheerfulness for the hard tasks of every day life. ”

“ To this fortunate disposition of land and water, with a temperate climate, a central position, and an immense interior, that is now penetrated, in every direction, either by artificial or by natural streams, the city of New-York is indebted for its extraordinary prosperity. ”

“ It needs some reflection to appreciate the great fact called New York; some previous acquaintance to recognise the prodigious increase, within the last ten or fifteen years, in all that makes a great city. The Fifth Avenue has extended its well-ordered rows of stately mansions and handsome houses almost to the gates of the favourite recreation ground of fast trotters and well-appointed carriages. The Central Park is now a beautiful resort, of which any metropolis might be proud. ”

“ And perhaps the author of the Potiphar Papers is in his way quite as characteristic of New York as any of the more self-seeking notorieties who din into our ears the catalogue of their merits. In a great city there is room for all, for the boss and the heeler and the tough, as well as for the Tatler, the Spectator, the Idler, the Rambler, and the Citizen of the World. ”

“ The city is prosperous and evil as well. The freshness and health and vigour of the rank and file of New York were amazing to one familiar with the drab and dreary procession of workers filing into the city of London at eight in the morning and away from it at the same hour in the evening. ”

“ It stands at the extreme point of Manhattan, or York island, which is thirteen miles long, and from one to two miles wide; and the houses are built from shore to shore. Vessels of any burden can come close up to the town, and lie there in perfect safety, in a natural harbour formed by the East and Hudson's rivers. New York contains 120,000 inhabitants, and is, indisputably, the most important commercial city in America. ”

“ In such parts of the city, except when No Trespassing signs prevent, on any day of the open season scores of men and youths may be seen whose work and homes are generally in the densest parts of the city, respectable citizens from the extreme east and west sides of Manhattan, artisans and clerks, salesmen and small shopkeepers, who, quite unexpectedly in some cases, share the ancient fret and longing of the primitive man in common with those other New Yorkers who can go farther out on Long Island or farther up into New York State to satisfy it. ”

“ Father Knickerbocker, coming to smoke his pipe here, will be in good company, you perceive!
The recollections of many living persons who recall the old Square and other parts of early New York, bring forcibly to us the realisation of the speed with which this country of ours has evolved itself. In one man's lifetime, New York has grown from a small town just out of its [Pg 28] Colonial swaddling clothes to the greatest city in the world. ”

“ The City of New-York is universally known as one of the most magnificent and the dirtiest — [laughter] — one of the busiest and one of the most ill-governed on the face of the globe. It is frequently taken as a proof that the people of a large city are not capable of governing themselves? ”

“ You know the old saying sir ... opportunity knocks but once on a young man’s door. In six months I can virtually guarantee that these lots will have doubled in value. Now that we are a part of New York, the second city in the world, sir, dont forget that.... Why the time will come, and I firmly believe that you and I will see it, when bridge after bridge spanning the East River have made Long Island and Manhattan one, when the Borough of Queens will be as much the heart and throbbing center of the great metropolis as is Astor Place today. ”