there is more room upon them. A man could stand still in the middle of
the broad, smooth walk and look up in the air without collecting a crowd
instantaneously. You can talk to your companion and hear the reply since
the welcome relief of asphalt.
Here can be seen hundreds of those who walk for the sake of
walking, not only at this hour but all day long. In the morning,
large, prosperous-looking New Yorkers with side-whiskers and
well-fed bodies--and, unintentionally, such amusing expressions,
sometimes--walking part way, at least, down to business, with partly
read newspapers under their arms; while in the opposite direction go
young girls, slender, erect, with hair in a braid and school-books under
their arms and well-prepared lessons.
[Illustration: It is also better walking up here.]
Then come those that walk at the convenience of dogs, attractive or
kickable, and a little later the close-ranked boarding-school squads and
the cohorts of nurse-maids with baby-carriages four abreast, charging
everyone off the sidewalk. Next come the mothers of the babies and their
aunts, setting out for shopping, unless they have gone to ride in the
Park, and for Guild Meetings and Reading Clubs and Political Economy
Classes and Heaven knows what other important morning engagements,
ending, perhaps, with a visit to the nerve-specialist.
And so on throughout the morning and afternoon and evening hours, each
with its characteristic phase, until the last late theatre-party
has gone home, laughing and talking, from supper at Sherry's or the
Waldorf-Astoria; the last late bachelor has left the now quiet club; the
rapping of his cane along the silent avenue dies away down an echoing
side-street; and a lonely policeman nods in the shadow of the church
gate-post. Suddenly the earliest milk-wagon comes jangling up from the
ferry; then dawn comes up over the gas-houses along East River and it
all begins over again.
[Illustration: ... those who walk for the sake of walking.]
But the most popular and populous time of all is the regular
walking-home hour, not only for those who have spent the day down
toward the end of the island at work, but for those who have no more
serious business to look after than wandering from club to club drinking
cocktails, or from house to house drinking tea.
All who take the walk regularly meet many of the same ones every day,
not only acquaintances, but others whom we somehow never see in any
other place, but learn to know quite well, and we wonder who they
are--and they wonder who we are, I suppose. Pairs of pink-faced old
gentlemen, walking arm-in-arm and talking vigorously. Contented young
couples who look at the old furniture in the antique-shop windows and
who are evidently married, and other younger couples who evidently soon
will be, and see nothing, not even their friends. Intent-browed young
business men with newspapers under their arms; governesses out with
their charges; bevies of fluffy girls with woodcock eyes, especially on
matinée day with programmes in their hands, talking gushingly.
[Illustration: At the lower corner of the Waldorf-Astoria.]
It is a sort of a club, this walking-up-the-avenue crowd; and each
member grows to expect certain other members at particular points in the
walk, and is rather disappointed when, for instance, the old gentleman
with the large nose is not with his daughter this evening. "What can be
the matter?" the rest of us ask each other, seeing her alone.
There is one man, the disagreeable member of the club, a
bull-frog-looking man of middle age with a Germanic face and beard, a
long stride, and a tightly buttoned walking-coat (I'm sure he's proud
of his chest), who comes down when we are on the way up and gets very
indignant every time we happen to be late. His scowl says, as plainly as
this type, "What are you doing way down here by the Reform Club? You
know you ought to be passing the Cathedral by this time!" And the worst
of it is, we always do feel ashamed, and I'm afraid he sees it.
[Illustration: ... with baby-carriages.]
* * * * *
This mile and a half from where Flora McFlimsey lived to the beginning
of the driving in the Park is not the staid, sombre, provincial old
Fifth Avenue which Flora McFlimsey knew. Up Fifth Avenue to the Park New
York is a world-city.
Not merely have so many of the brownstone dwellings, with their high
stoops and unattractive impressiveness, been turned over to business or
pulled down altogether to make room for huge, hyphenated hotels, but the
old spirit of the place itself has been turned out; the atmosphere is
different.
The imported smartness of the shops, breeches makers to His Royal
Highness So-and-So, and millinery establishments with the same Madame
Luciles and Mademoiselle Lusettes and high prices, that have previously
risen to fame in Paris and London, together with the numerous clubs
and picture-galleries, all furnish local color; but it is the people
themselves that you see along the streets, the various languages they
speak, their expression of countenance, the way they hold themselves,
the manner of their servants--in a word, it is the atmosphere of the
spot that makes you feel that it is not a mere metropolis, but along
this one strip at least our New York is a cosmopolis.
[Illustration: This is the region of clubs. (The Union League.)]
And the Walk-Up-town hour is the best time to observe it, when all the
world is driving or walking home from various duties and pleasures.
There, on that four-in-hand down from Westchester County comes a group
of those New Yorkers who, unwillingly or otherwise, get their names so
often in the papers. The lackey stands up and blows the horn and they
manage very well to endure the staring of those on the sidewalks.
Here, in the victoria behind them, is a woman who worships them. She
would give many of her husband's new dollars to be up there too, though
pretending not to see the drag. See how she leans back in the cushions
and tries to prop her eyebrows up, after the manner of the Duchess she
once saw in the Row. She succeeds fairly well, too, if only her husband
wouldn't spoil it by crossing his legs and exposing his socks.
Here are other women with sweet, artless faces who do not seem to be
strenuous or spoiled (as yet) by the world they move in, and these are
the most beautiful women in all the world; some in broughams (as one
popular story-writer invariably puts his heroines), or else walking
independently with an interesting gait.
[Illustration: ... close-ranked boarding-school squads.]
Here, in that landau, comes the latest foreign-titled visitor, urbane
and thoughtfully attentive to all that his friends are saying and
pointing out to him. And here is a bit of color, some world-examining,
tired-eyed Maharajah, with silk clothes--or was it only one of the
foreign consuls who drive along here every day.
There goes a fashionable city doctor, who has a high gig, and
correspondingly high prices, hurrying home for his office hours. Surely,
it would be more comfortable to get in and out of a low phaëton; this
vehicle is as high as that loud, conspicuous, advertising florist's
wagon--can it be for the same reason?
Here in that grinding automobile come a man and two women on their way
to an East Side _table d'hôte_, to see Bohemia, as they think; see how
reckless and devilish they look by anticipation! Up there on that 'bus
are some people from the country, real people from the real country,
and their mouths are open and they don't care. They are having much
more pleasure out of their trip than the self-conscious family group
entering that big gilded hotel, whose windows are constructed for seeing
in as well as out (and that is another way of advertising).
[Illustration: ... the coachmen and footmen flock there.]
Here comes a prominent citizen outlining his speech on his way home
to dress for the great banquet to-night, for he is a well-known
after-dinner orator, and during certain months of the year never has a
chance to dine at home with his family. Suppose, after all, he fails of
being nominated!
Here come a man and his wife walking down to a well-known
restaurant--early, so that he will have plenty of time to smoke at
the table and she to get comfortably settled at the theatre with the
programme folded before the curtain rises; such a sensible way. He is
not prominent at all, but they have a great deal of quiet happiness out
of living, these two.
And there goes the very English comedian these two are to see in
Pinero's new piece after dinner, though they did not observe him, to his
disappointment. It is rather late for an actor to be walking down to
his club to dine, but he is the star and doesn't come on until the end
of the first act, and his costume is merely that same broad-shouldered
English-cut frock coat he now has on. We, however, must hurry on.
[Illustration: The Church of the Heavenly Rest.]
* * * * *
Because it keeps the eyes so busy, seeing all the people that pass, one
block of buildings seems very much like another the first few times
the new-comer takes this walk, except, of course, for conspicuous
landmarks like that of the new library on the site of the late reservoir
or the Arcade on the site of the old Windsor Hotel, with its ghastly
memories; but after awhile all the blocks begin to seem very different;
not only the one where you saw a boy on a bicycle run down and killed,
or where certain well-known people live, but the blocks formerly
considered monotonous. There are volumes of stories along the way.
Down Twenty-ninth Street can be seen, so near the avenue and yet so
sequestered, the Church of the Transfiguration, as quaint and low and
toy-like as a stage-setting, ever blessed by stage-people for the act
which made the Little Church Around the Corner known to everyone, and by
which certain pharisees were taught the lesson they should have learned
from the parable in their New Testament.
Farther up is a church of another sort, where Europeans of more or
less noble blood marry American daughters of acknowledged solvency,
while the crowd covers the sidewalks and neighboring house-steps.
Here, consequently, other people's children come to be married, though
neither, perhaps, attended this church before the rehearsal, and get
quite a good deal about it in the society column too, though, to tell
the truth, they had hoped that the solemn union of these two souls
would appropriately call forth more publicity. Shed a tear for them
in passing. There are many similar disappointments in life along this
thoroughfare.
Farther back we passed what a famous old rich man intended for the
finest house in New York, and it has thus far served chiefly as a marble
moral. Its brilliance is dingy now, its impressiveness is gone, and
its grandeur is something like that of a Swiss _chalet_ at the base of
a mountain since the erection across the street of an overpowering,
glittering hotel.
This is the region of clubs; they are more numerous than drug-stores,
as thick as florists' shops. But it seems only yesterday that a certain
club, in moving up beyond Fortieth Street, was said to be going
ruinously far up-town. Now nearly all the well-known clubs are creeping
farther and farther along, even the old Union Club, which for long
pretended to enjoy its cheerless exclusiveness down at the corner of
Twenty-first Street, stranded among piano-makers and publishers, and
then with a leap and a bound went up to Fiftieth Street to build its
bright new home.
[Illustration: Approaching St. Thomas's.]
Soon the new, beautiful University Club at Fifty-fourth Street, with the
various college coats of arms on its walls, which never fail to draw
attention from the out-of-town visitors on 'bus-tops, will not seem to
be very far up-town, and by and by even the great, white Metropolitan
will not be so much like a lonely iceberg opposite the Park entrance. I
wonder if anyone knows the names of them all; there always seem to be
others to learn about. Also one learns in time that two or three houses
which for a long time were thought to be clubs are really the homes
of former mayors, receiving from the city, according to the old Dutch
custom, the two lighted lamps for their doorways. This section of the
avenue where, in former years, were well-known rural road-houses along
the drive, is once more becoming, since the residence _régime_ is over,
the region of famous hostelries of another sort.
[Illustration: The University Club ... with college coats of arms.]
There is just one of the old variety left, and it, strangely enough,
is within a few feet of two of the most famous restaurants in
America--the somewhat quaint and quite dirty old Willow Tree Cottage;
named presumably for the tough old willow-tree which still persistently
stands out in front, not seeming to mind the glare and stare of the
tall electric lights any more than the complacent old tumble-down
frame tavern itself resents the proximity of Delmonico's and Sherry's,
with whom it seems to fancy itself to be in bitter but successful
rivalry--for do not all the coachmen and footmen flock there during the
long, wet waits of winter nights, while the dances are going on across
at Sherry's and Delmonico's? Business is better than it has been for
years.
In time, even the inconspicuous houses that formerly seemed so much
alike become differentiated and, like the separate blocks, gain
individualities of their own, though you may never know who are the
owners. They mean something to you, just as do so many of the regular
up-town walkers whose names you do not know; fine old comfortable
places many of them are, even though the architects of their day
did try hard to make them uncomfortable with high, steep steps and
other absurdities. When a "For Sale" sign comes to one of these you
feel sorry, and finally when one day in your walk up-town you see it
irrevocably going the way of all brick, with a contractor's sign out in
front, blatantly boasting of his wickedness, you resent it as a personal
loss.
[Illustration: Olympia Jackies on shore leave.]
It seems all wrong to be pulling down those thick walls; exposing
the privacy of the inside of the house, its arrangement of rooms and
fireplaces, and the occupant's taste in color and wall decorations. Two
young women who take the walk up-town always look the other way when
they pass this sad display; they say it's unfair to take advantage of
the house. Soon there will be a deep pit there with puffing derricks,
the sidewalk closed, and show-bills boldly screaming. And by the time
we have returned from the next sojourn out of town there will be an
office-building of ever-so-many stories or another great hotel. Already
the sign there will tell about it.
You quicken your pace as you draw near the Park; some of the up-town
walkers who live along here have already reached the end of their
journey and are running up the steps taking out door-keys. The little
boy in knickerbockers who seems responsible for lighting Fifth Avenue
has already begun his zigzag trip along the street; soon the long double
rows of lights will seem to meet in perspective. A few belated children
are being hurried home by their maids from dancing-school; their white
frocks sticking out beneath their coats gleam in the half light. Cabs
and carriages with diners in them go spinning by, the coachmen whip up
to pass ahead of you at the street-crossing; you catch a gleam of men's
shirt-bosoms within and the light fluffiness of women, with the perfume
of gloves. Fewer people are left on the sidewalks now--those that are
look at their watches. The sun is well set by the time you reach the
Plaza, but down Fifty-ninth Street you can see long bars of after-glow
across the Hudson.
In the half-dark, under the Park trees, comes a group of Italian
laborers; their hob-nailed shoes clatter on the cement-walk, their blue
blouses and red neckerchiefs stand out against the almost black of the
trees; they, too, are walking home for the night. The Walk Up-town is
finished and the show is over for to-day.
THE CROSS STREETS
[Illustration: Down near the eastern end of the street.]
THE CROSS STREETS
A city should be laid out like a golf links; except for an occasional
compromise in the interest of art or expediency it should be allowed to
follow the natural topography of the country.
But this is not the way the matter was regarded by the commission
appointed in 1807 to lay out the rural regions beyond New York, which
by that time had grown up to the street now called Houston, and then
called North Street, probably because it seemed so far north--though, to
be sure, there were scattered hamlets and villages, with remembered and
forgotten names, here and there, all the way up to the historic town
of Haarlem. The commissioners saw fit to mark off straight street after
shameless straight street with the uncompromising regularity of a huge
foot-ball field, and gave them numbers like the white five-yard lines,
instead of names. They paid little heed to the original arrangements
of nature, which had done very well by the island, and still less to
man's previous provisions, spontaneously made along the lines of least
resistance--except, notably, in the case of Greenwich, which still
remains whimsically individual and village-like despite the attempt to
swallow it whole by the "new" city system.
This plan, calling for endless grading and levelling, remains to this
day the official city chart as now lived down to in the perpendicular
gorges cut through the hills of solid rock seen on approaching Manhattan
Field; but the commissioners' marks have not invariably been followed,
or New York would have still fewer of its restful green spots to gladden
the eye, nor even Central Park, indeed, for that space also is checkered
in their chart with streets and avenues as thickly as in the crowded
regions above and below it.
[Illustration: Across Trinity Church-yard, from the West.]
However, anyone can criticise creative work, whether it be the plan
of a play or a city, but it is difficult to create. Not many of us
to-day who complacently patronize the honorable commissioners would
have made a better job of it if we had lived at that time--and had been
consulted. For at that time, we must bear in mind, even more important
foreign luxuries than golf were not highly regarded in America, and
America had quite recently thrown off a foreign power. That in itself
explains the matter. Our country was at the extreme of its reaction
from monarchical ideals, and democratic simplicity was running into
the ground. In our straining to be rid of all artificiality we were
ousting art and beauty too. It was so in most parts of our awkward young
nation; but especially did the materialistic tendency of this dreary
disagreeable period manifest itself here in commercial New York, where
Knickerbocker families were lopping the "Vans" off their names--to the
amusement of contemporaneous aristocracy in older, more conservative
sections of the country, and in some cases to the sincere regret of
their present-day descendants.
[Illustration: An Evening View of St. Paul's Church.]
Now, the present-day descendants have, in some instances, restored the
original spelling on their visiting cards; in other cases they have
consoled themselves with hyphens, and most of them, it is safe to say,
are bravely recovering from the tendency to over-simplicity. But the
present-day city corporation of Greater New York could not, if it so
desired, put a Richmond Hill back where it formerly stood, southwest of
Washington Square and skirted by Minetta River--any more than it can
bring to life Aaron Burr and the other historical personages who at
various times occupied the hospitable villa which stood on the top of it
and which is also gone to dust. They cannot restore the Collect Pond,
which was filled up at such great expense, and covered by the Tombs
prison and which, it is held by those who ought to know, would have
made an admirable centre of a fine park much needed in that section, as
the city has since learned. They cannot re-establish Love Lane, which
used to lead from the popular Bloomingdale road (Broadway), nearly
through the site of the building where this book is published, and so
westward to Chelsea village.
They wanted to be very practical, those commissioners of 1807. They
prided themselves upon it. Naturally they did not fancy eccentricities
of landscape and could not tolerate sentimental names. "Love Lane? What
nonsense," said these extremely dignified and quite humorless officials;
"this is to be Twenty-first Street." They wanted to be very practical,
and so it seems the greater pity that with several years of dignified
deliberation they were so unpractical as to make that notorious mistake
of providing posterity with such a paucity of thoroughfares in the
directions in which most of the traffic was bound to flow--that is, up
and down, as practical men might have foreseen, and of running thick
ranks of straight streets, as numerously as possible, across the narrow
island from river to river, where but few were needed; thus causing
the north and south thoroughfares, which they have dubbed avenues, to
be swamped with heterogeneous traffic, complicating the problem for
later-day rapid transit, giving future generations another cause for
criticism, and furnishing a set of cross streets the like of which
cannot be found in any other city of the world.
[Illustration: The sights and smells of the water-front are here too.]
I
These are the streets which visitors to New York always remark; the
characteristic cross streets of the typical up-town region of long
regular rows of rectangular residences that look so much alike, with
steep similar steps leading up to sombre similar doors and a doctor's
sign in every other window. Bleak, barren, echoing streets where
during the long, monotonous mornings "rags-an-bot'l" are called for,
and bananas and strawberries are sold from wagons by aid of resonant
voices, and nothing else is heard except at long intervals the welcome
postman's whistle or the occasional slamming of a carriage door.
Meantime the sun gets around to the north side of the street, and the
airing of babies and fox-terriers goes on, while down at the corner
one elevated train after another approaches, roars, and rumbles away
in the distance all day long until at last the men begin coming home
from business. These are the ordinary unromantic streets on which live
so few New Yorkers in fiction (it is so easy to put them on the Avenue
or Gramercy Park or Washington Square), but on which most of them seem
to live in real life. A slice of all New York with all its layers of
society and all its mixed interests may be seen in a walk along one of
these typical streets which stretch across the island as straight and
stiff as iron grooves and waste not an inch in their progress from one
river, out into which they have gradually encroached, to the other river
into which also they extend. It is a short walk, the island is so narrow.
[Illustration: An Old Landmark on the Lower West Side.
(Junction of Canal and Laight Streets.)]