Alley

“ At every ten paces there is the black mouth of an alley with just space enough for the passage of one person. Within the jaws of each alley is a lounging figure—man, woman, or child, Londoner or foreigner, you cannot discern. ”

“ You may note that the faces that peer at you are faces such as one only sees elsewhere in the picture of Felicien Rops. Sometimes it is a curl-sweet little girl who greets you with a smile strangely cold. Sometimes the mouth of the alley will appear to open and will spit at you, apparently by chance. If it hits you, the alley swears at you: a deep, frightfully foreign oath. ”

“ I was hesitating under a street light close to a dark alley, trying to decide which would be the quickest way out, and meditating what I should do to find a policeman, when suddenly there loomed up beside me in the dark out of the depths of the alley a great tall brute of a fellow with the strangest looking yellow hair and a body that looked as if he could play football with the universe if he liked, and charged me with having come down there to visit his girl. ”

“ To the casual observer, the quaint, narrow, little alley that lies in the heart of the city is no more than any other of the numerous divisions of streets in which New Orleans delights. But to the idle wanderer, or he whose mission down its four squares of much trodden stones, is an aimless one,—whose eyes unforced to bend to the ground in thought of sordid ways and means, can peer at will into its quaint corners. ”

“ They rose over the tree-tops, a massive alley of interlacing iron and timber, and an enormous web of ropes and tackle, extending the best part of two miles. From the Leatherhead branch this alley was foreshortened and in part hidden by a hill with villas; but from the main line one had it in profile, a complex tangle of girders and curving bars, very impressive to the excursionists from Portsmouth and Southampton and the West. ”

“ Then the railing is reached, and the alley instead of ending has merely given itself an angular twist to the right, and extends three squares further, to a great, pale green dome, and stately entrance.
The calmly-thinking, quietly-laboring, cool and conservative world is for the nonce left behind. With the first stepping across Customhouse street, the place widens architecturally, and the atmosphere, too, seems impregnated with a sort of mental freedom, conducive to dangerous theorizing and broody reflections on the inequality of the classes. ”

“ On the busiest thoroughfares in the city, just in the busiest part, between two of the most crowded and conservative of cross-streets, lies this alley of Latinism. One might almost pass it hurriedly, avoiding the crowds that cluster at this section of the streets, but upon turning into a narrow section, stone-paved, the place is entered, appearing to end one square distant, seeming to bar itself from the larger buildings by an aimless sort of iron affair, part railing, part posts. ”

“ A narrow alley, inclosed by high brick buildings cut into innumerable small tenements, and swarming with Chinese men and women of the lower class, runs through the centre of a square or block, from one street to another. This alley is a study for the student of humanity. ”

“ the one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn, the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the midst, by which you may go in front upon a stately hedge, which is to enclose the garden: but because the alley will be long, and, in great heat of the year, or day, you ought not to buy the shade in the garden by going in the sun through the green; ”

“ The man came out of the yard, looked around, saw the boys, turned in the opposite direction, and then turned up an alley that passed one side of the school-house.
He could not have done worse; for no one lived on the alley, so any mischievous boy could tease him without fear of detection. ”

“ The whole property on which the buildings stand forms nearly a square, the west side of which is on Union Street, the north on King Street, the south on a public alley, called Fitzgerald's Alley, and on the east was an open space running along the front of the buildings from King Street to, and passing beyond, this alley. ”

“ Apparently the exact location of it was known by the entire population by this time, for, as we descended, willing natives pointed the way by gesticulations, indicating a narrow and not entirely prepossessing alley leading down from the central thoroughfare by some rather slimy steps, to a sort of second street, and thence to another alley, if anything less prepossessing than the first, where a formidable wooden gateway gave entrance to a court. Here the merry villagers bade adieu and retired to their coffee again. ”

“ The title to the ground occupied by the town, including the streets and alleys, was in the United States until the entry of the town-site in 1869. The original occupants of the lots recognized the existence of the alley, as did their grantees and successors in interest, until such entry, and received their deeds bounded thereon. The principal use of the alley was to take in wood and hay for the adjoining occupants, and for the ingress and egress of their cows. ”

“ Now on the north of Lime street ward in the high street are divers fair houses for merchants, and proper tenements for artificers, with an alley also called Shaft alley, of the shaft or May-pole sometime resting over the gate thereof, as I have declared in Aldgate ward. ”

“ Mr. Fowler. It would make it very difficult to get down into the basement from the alley.
Mr. Alexander. All right, if Jack knows we’re talking about “alley,” as long as you distinguish between the alley and the ramp, so he can answer your question.
Mr. Tonahill. He has always referred to it as a ramp.
Mr. Ruby. That’s a ramp.
Mr. Specter. By “alley,” we do not mean the ramp. We mean the entrance into the building.
Mr. Tonahill. Now, you’ve got him squared away.
Mr. Specter. Fine. We want you to understand the question exactly.
Mr. Herndon. The question will stand as is. ”

“ However, if there is no eruv, or if there is an eruv but the opening of the yard to the alley is on the yard's side, or even if it is in the middle but is opposite to the opening of the yard on the other side, or even if it is not opposite bu the yard is private, it is forbidden [to carry in the alley] . If it is open to an area that is smaller than two seot or it is bigger than two seot but enclosed for dwelling, it is treated as if it is open to a yard. ”

“ A street, court, lane, alley, or other place, where the number of houses or poverty of the inhabitants will not afford a watchman on the terms before mentioned, should be gated in, and the inhabitants let in and out by the watchman of the street. ”

“ Along the three main streets are numerous arches, down every one of which runs an alley, intersected by other alleys, and swarming with people. A stream or gutter runs commonly down these alleys, in which the pigs and children are seen paddling about. ”

“ At every fourth or fifth house, alleys, seldom above a yard wide, and streaming with filth, opened out of the street. These were crowded with dwellings of various size, while from the principal court often branched out a number of smaller alleys, or rather narrow passages, than which nothing can be conceived more close and squalid and obscure. ”

“ Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other. The suffering eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees With here a fountain, never to be played; And there a summer-house, that knows no shade; ”

“ One fares little better from the other approach, for the narrow alley with its tall buildings facing each other so closely as to be almost touched with outstretched arms, makes it necessary to search for the entrance doorway. ”

“ Davey by a footpath, on both sides of which there were neatly-trimmed hedges, and as butterflies abound in floricultural gardens, this passage was called “Butterfly Alley.” Some houses have since been built on this site, and, although the road is narrow, it now assumes the name of Keppel Street, connecting the King’s Road with the Fulham Road. Opposite the above-named alley there was a bar placed across the road, to prevent waggons, &c., from passing unless the driver produced proof that he was going to some resident in it. ”

“ MARKET SQUARE, NEWARK. gabled house on the left hand there is an alley that is hardly like any I remember to have seen in England before. The houses on each side have projecting storeys, and a projecting eaves to the roof, and so narrow is it that at one part it is quite closed overhead, and the rain-water from the higher house discharges itself, if the gutter is full, upon the tiles of its opposite neighbour. ”

“ Out of one of the smaller thoroughfares lying between Holborn and the Strand, there opens a narrow alley, not more than six or seven feet across, with high buildings on each side. In the most part the ground floors consist of small shops; for the alley is not a blind one, but leads from the thoroughfare to another street, and forms, indeed, a short cut to it, pretty often used. ”

“ From the cinder path beside a railroad that crosses the level part of Homestead, you enter an alley, bordered on one side by stables and on the other by shabby two-story frame houses. The doors of the houses are closed, but dishpans and old clothes decorating their exterior, mark them as inhabited. You turn from the alley through a narrow passageway, and find yourself in a small court, on three sides of which are smoke-grimed houses, on the fourth, low stables. The open space teems with life and movement. Children, dogs and hens make it lively under foot ”

“ There is the central High Street, a jumble of old half-timbered houses and staring modern red-brick buildings, and sprouted from it a series of lateral roads, lanes and alleys, dwindling in importance to the High Street tip, and each petering out into the sweet country vagueness of hedges and fields. ”

“ The first cross street—little more than an alleyway between the houses—is barricaded at its farther extremity by a steep, grass-grown embankment that towers almost to the same altitude as the chimney pots of the house tops below. ”

“ Especially in the immediate vicinity of the business quarter, between Bridge and Quay Streets, Princess and Peter Streets, the crowded construction exceeds in places the narrowest courts of the Old Town. Here are long, narrow lanes between which run contracted, crooked courts and passages, the entrances to which are so irregular that the explorer is caught in a blind alley at every few steps, or comes out where he least expects to, unless he knows every court and every alley exactly and separately. ”

“ From each wicket all the way down the alley a female head may be seen protruding, and there is a constant fire of jokes and repartee going on between the occupants of the dens on each side of the alley, while every passer comes in for his share of personal notice. ”

“ The first covered alleys were made of hardened clay or of slate, but those in vogue at present are built up of alternate strips of pine and maple wood, about 1 × 3 in. in size, set on edge, and fastened together and to the bed of the alley with the nicest art of the cabinet-maker. ”

“ At right angles to the main street or streets, run narrow alleys, upon which open the yards or courts in which the houses are situated. Even the buildings which happen to stand contiguous to the main street offer nothing to the gaze but an expanse of dead wall. ”

“ A horde of dirty children play about the dripping hydrant, the only thing in the alley that thinks enough of its chance to make the most of it: it is the best it can do. These are the children of the tenements, the growing generation of the slums; this their home. From the great highway overhead, along which throbs the life-tide of two great cities, one might drop a pebble into half a dozen such alleys.
At the Cradle of the Tenement.—Doorway of an Old-Fashioned Dwelling on Cherry Hill. One yawns just across the street ”

“ I spec she not a bad gal, sir."
"Go ahead then;" and he shouldered his load, and went a few steps farther, and then turned into a dark alley, where I should have hesitated about following the burglars, but now [287] followed the honest, good-hearted wood-sawyer, and his protégé with delightful pleasure, up the long, dark alley into the centre of the block, and there was a tenant house, inhabited by the better class of blacks. Compared with some of those full of foreigners, it was a little paradise. Up, up to the sixth story, that is where the poor live ”

“ The garden, which was slightly arched, had in its centre, on the summit of a hillock, a fine pointed and conical fir-tree, whence ran, as from the peaked boss of a shield, four grand alleys, and, ranged by twos in between the branchings of these, eight small ones, so that, if the enclosure had been circular, the geometrical plan of the alleys would have resembled a cross superposed on a wheel. ”

“ Sweeting’s alley, generally called Swithin’s alley, the passage by the east end of the Royal Exchange, from Cornhill into Threadneedle street. Before the fire of London this whole alley contained but one house, a very spacious building which belonged to Mr. ”

“ Closely allied to the streets are courts and alleys. These cul-de-sacs leading to, and adjoining the close and unventilated homes of the poor, are almost universally in a more filthy condition than the adjacent street. ”

“ The alleys seem to narrow more and more every minute until the rich brown profusely-carven woodwork of the jutting gables on either side of the roadway almost threatens to meet and blot out the strip of burning blue above your head. ”