York, there is plenty of local historical association along these same
straight, unromantic-looking cross streets--for those who know how to
find it. For that matter one might go still further and hold that there
would not be so much antiquarian delight in New York if these streets
were not new and straight and non-committal looking. If, for instance,
the old Union Road, which was the roundabout, wet-weather route to
Greenwich village, had not been cut up and mangled by a merciless city
plan there wouldn't be the fun of tracing it by projecting corners
and odd angles of houses along West Twelfth Street between Fifth and
Sixth Avenues. It would be merely an open, ordinary street, concealing
nothing, and no more exciting to follow than Pearl Street down-town--and
not half so crooked or historical as Pearl Street. There would not be
that odd, pocket-like courtway called Mulligan "Place," with a dimly
lighted entrance leading off Sixth Avenue between Tenth and Eleventh
Streets. Nor would there be that still more interesting triangular
remnant of an old Jewish burying-ground over the way, behind the old
Grapevine Tavern. For either the whole cemetery would have been allowed
to remain on Union Road (or Street), which is not likely, or else they
would have removed all the graves and covered the entire site with
buildings, as was the case with a dozen other burying-grounds here and
there. If the commissioners had not had their way we could not have all
those inner rows of houses to explore, like the "Weaver's Row," once
near the Great Kiln Road, but now buried behind a Sixth Avenue store
between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets, and entered, if entered at
all, by way of a dark, ill-smelling alley. Nor would the negro quarter,
a little farther up-town, have its inner rows which seem so appropriate
for negro quarters, especially the whitewashed courts opening off
Thirtieth Street, where may be found, in these secluded spots, trees and
seats under them, with old, turbanned mammies smoking pipes and looking
much more like Richmond darkies than those one expects to see two blocks
from Daly's Theatre. Colonel Carter of Cartersville could not have
found such an interesting New York residence if the commissioners had
not had their way, nor could he have entered it by a tunnel-like passage
under the house opposite the Tenth Street studios. Even Greenwich would
not be quite so entertaining without those permanent marks of the
conflict between village and city which resulted in separating West
Eleventh Street so far from Tenth, and in twisting Fourth Street around
farther and farther until it finally ends in despair in Thirteenth
Street. If the commissioners had not had their way we should have had no
"Down Love Lane" written by Mr. Janvier.
* * * * *
Looked at from the point of view of use and knowledge, every street,
like every person, gains a distinct personality, some being merely more
strongly distinguished than others. And just as every human being,
whatever his name or his looks may be, continues to win more or less
sympathy the more you know of him and his history and his ambitions, so
with these streets, and their checkered careers, their sudden changes
from decade to decade--or in still less time, in our American cities,
their transformation from farm land to suburban road, and then to
fashionable city street, and then to small business and then to great
business. Such, after all, is the stuff of which abiding city charm is
made, not of plans and architecture.
RURAL NEW YORK CITY
[Illustration]
RURAL NEW YORK CITY
There is pretty good snipe shooting within the city limits of New York,
and I have heard that an occasional trout still rises to the fly in one
or two spots along a certain stream--which need not be made better known
than it is already, though it can hardly be worth whipping much longer
at any rate.
A great many ducks, however, are still shot every season in the city,
by those who know where to go for them; and as for inferior sport,
like rabbits--if you include them as game--on certain days of the year
probably more gunners and dogs are out after rabbits within the limits
of Greater New York than in any region of equal extent in the world,
though to be sure the bags brought in hardly compare with those of
certain parts of Australia or some of our Western States. Down toward
Far Rockaway, a little this side of the salt marshes of Jamaica Bay, in
the hedges and cabbage-patches of the "truck" farms, there is plenty of
good cover for rabbits, as well as in the brush-piles and pastures of
the rolling Borough of Richmond on Staten Island, and the forests and
stone fences of the hilly Bronx, up around Pelham Bay Park for instance.
But the gunners must keep out of the parks, of course, though many
ubiquitous little boys with snares do not.
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. To
be sure, the former do not get as many shots as the latter, but they get
the outdoors and the exercise and the return to nature, which is the
main thing. And the advantage of going shooting in Greater New York is
that you can tramp until too dark to see, and yet get back in time to
dine at home, thus satisfying an appetite acquired in the open with a
dinner cooked in the city.
[Illustration: Flushing Volunteer Fire Department Responding to a Fire
Alarm.]
Once a certain young family went off to a far corner of Greater New York
to attack the perennial summer problem. By walking through a hideously
suburban village with a beautifully rural name they found, just over the
brow of a hill, quite as a friend had told them they would, tucked
away all alone in a green glade beside an ancient forest, a charming
little diamond-paned, lattice-windowed cottage, covered thick with vines
outside, and yet supplied with modern plumbing within. It seemed too
good to be true. There was no distinctly front yard or back yard, not
even a public road in sight, and no neighbors to bother them except the
landlord, who lived in the one house near by and was very agreeable. All
through the close season they enjoyed the whistling of quail at their
breakfast; in their afternoon walks, squirrels and rabbits and uncommon
song-birds were too common to be remarked; and once, within forty yards
of the house, great consternation was caused by a black snake, though it
was not black snakes but mosquitoes that made them look elsewhere next
year, and taught them a life-lesson in regard to English lattice-windows
and American mosquito-screens.
But until the mosquitoes became so persistent it seemed--this
country-place within a city, or _rus in urbe_, as they probably enjoyed
calling it--an almost perfect solution of the problem for a small family
whose head had to be within commuting distance of down-town. For though
so remote, it was not inaccessible; two railroads and a trolley line
were just over the dip of the hill that hid them, so that there was time
for the young man of the house to linger with his family at breakfast,
which was served out-of-doors, with no more objectionable witnesses
than the thrushes in the hedges. And then, too, there was time to get
exercise in the afternoon before dinner. "It seemed an ideal spot," to
quote their account of it, "except that on our walks, just as we thought
that we had found some sequestered dell where nobody had come since the
Indians left, we would be pretty sure to hear a slight rustle behind us,
and there--not an Indian but a Tammany policeman would break through the
thicket, with startling white gloves and gleaming brass buttons, looking
exactly like the policemen in the Park. Of course he would continue on
his beat and disappear in a moment, but by that time we had forgotten to
listen to the birds and things, and the distant hum of the trolley would
break in and remind us of all things we have wanted to forget."
[Illustration: A Bit of Farm Land in the Heart of Greater New York.
"Acre after acre, farm after farm, and never a sign of city in sight."]
I
In a way, that is rather typical of most of the rurality found within
the boundaries of these modern aggregations or trusts of large and
small towns, and intervening country, held together (more or less)
by one name, under one municipal government, and called a "city" by
legislature. There is plenty that is not at all city-like within the
city walls--called limits--there is plenty of nature, but in most cases
those wanting to commune with it are reminded that it is no longer
within the domain of nature. The city has stretched out its hand, and
the mark of the beast can usually be seen.
You can find not only rural seclusion and bucolic simplicity, but the
rudeness and crudeness of the wilderness and primeval forest; indeed,
even forest fires have been known in Greater New York. But the trouble
is that so often the bucolic simplicity has cleverly advertised lots
staked out across it; the rural seclusion shows a couple of factory
chimneys on the near horizon. The forest fire was put out by the fire
department.
There are numerous peaceful duck-ponds in the Borough of Queens, for
instance, as muddy and peaceful as ever you saw, but so many of them are
lighted by gas every evening. Besides the fisheries, there is profitable
oyster-dredging in several sections of this city; and in at least one
place it can be seen by electric light. There are many potato-patches
patrolled by the police.
[Illustration: One of the Farmhouses that Have Come to Town.
The old Duryea House, Flushing, once used as a head-quarters for Hessian
officers.]
Not far from the geographical centre of the city there are fields where,
as all who have ever commuted to and from the north shore of Long Island
must remember, German women may be seen every day in the tilling season,
working away as industriously as the peasants of Europe, blue skirts,
red handkerchiefs about their heads, and all: while not far away, at
frequent intervals, passes a whining, thumping trolley-car, marked
Brooklyn Bridge.
[Illustration: East End of Duryea House, where the Cow is Stabled.]
In another quarter, on a dreary, desolate waste, neither farm land,
nor city, nor village, there stands an old weather-beaten hut, long,
low, patched up and tumbled down, with an old soap-box for a front
doorstep--all beautifully toned by time, the kind amateurs like to
sketch, when found far away from home in their travels. The thing that
recalls the city in this case, rather startlingly, is a rudely lettered
sign, with the S's turned the wrong way, offering lots for sale in
Greater New York.
It is not necessary to go far away from the beaten paths of travel in
Greater New York to witness any of these scenes of the comedy, sometimes
tragedy, brought about by the contending forces of city and country.
Most of what has been cited can be observed from car-windows. For
that matter, somewhat similar incongruity can be found in all of our
modern, legally enlarged cities, London, with the hedges and gardens
of Hampstead Heath, and certain parts of the Surrey Side, or Chicago,
with its broad stretches of prairie and farms--the subject of so many
American newspaper jokes a few years ago.
[Illustration: The Old Water-power Mill from the Rear of the Old Country
Cross-roads Store.]
[Illustration: The Old Country Cross-roads Store, Established 1828.
In the background is the old water-power mill.]
[Illustration: Interior of the Old Country Cross-roads Store.]
But New York--and this is another respect in which it is different from
other cities--our great Greater New York, which is better known as
having the most densely populated tenement districts in the world, can
show places that are more truly rural than any other city of modern
times, places where the town does not succeed in obtruding itself at
all. From Hampstead Heath, green and delightful as it is, every now
and then the gilded cross of St. Paul's may be seen gleaming far below
through the trees. And in Chicago, bucolic as certain sections of it
may be, one can spy the towers of the city for miles away, across the
prairie; even when down in certain wild, murderous-looking ravines there
is ever on high the appalling cloud of soft-coal smoke. But out in the
broad, rolling farm lands of Long Island you can walk on for hours and
not find any sign of the city you are in, except the enormous tax-rate,
which, by the way, has the effect of discouraging the farmers (many of
whom did not want to become city people at all) from spending money for
paint and improvements, and this only results in making the country
look more primitive, and less like what is absurdly called a city.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The Colony of Chinese Farmers, Near the Geographical
Centre of New York City.]
But the best of these rural parts of town cannot be spied from
car-windows, or the beaten paths of travel.
II
Make a journey out through the open country to the southeast of
Flushing, past the Oakland Golf Club, and over toward the Creedmoor
Rifle Range, after a while turn north and follow a twisting road that
leads down into the ravine at the head of Little Neck Bay, where a few
of the many Little Neck clams come from. All of these places are well
within the eastern boundary of the city, and this little journey will
furnish a very good example of a certain kind of rural New York, but
only one kind, for it is only one small corner of a very big place.
[Illustration: Working as industrially as the peasants of Europe, blue
skirts, red handkerchiefs about their heads....]
As soon as you have ridden, or walked--it is better to walk if there is
plenty of time--beyond the fine elms of the ancient Flushing streets,
you will be in as peaceful looking farming country as can be found
anywhere. But the interesting thing about it is that here are seen not
merely a few incongruous green patches that happen to be left between
rapidly devouring suburban towns--like the fields near Woodside where
the German women work--out here one rides through acre after acre of
it, farm after farm, mile after mile, up hill, down hill, corn-fields,
wheat-fields, stone fences, rail fences, no fences, and never a town in
sight, much less anything to suggest the city, except the procession of
market-wagons at certain hours, to or from College Point Ferry, and they
aren't so conspicuously urban after all.
[Illustration: Remains of a windmill in New York City, Between Astoria
and Steinway.]
Even the huge advertising sign-boards which usually shout to passers-by
along the approaches to cities are rather scarce in this country,
for it is about midway between two branches of the only railroad on
Long Island, and there is no need for a trolley. There is nothing
but country roads, with more or less comfortable farm-houses and
large, squatty barns; not only old farm-houses, but what is much more
striking, farm-houses that are new. Now, it does seem odd to build a new
farm-house in a city.
[Illustration: The Dreary Edge of Long Island City.]
Out in the fields the men are ploughing. A rooster crows in the
barn-yard. A woman comes out to take in the clothes. Children climb
the fence to gaze when people pass by. And one can ride for a matter
of miles and see no other kind of life, except the birds in the hedge
and an occasional country dog, not suburban dogs, but distinctly farm
dogs, the kind that have deep, ominous barks, as heard at night from
a distance. By and by, down the dusty, sunny, lane-like road plods a
fat old family Dobbin, pulling an old-fashioned phaëton in which are
seated a couple of prim old maiden ladies, dressed in black, who try to
make him move faster in the presence of strangers, and so push and jerk
animatedly on the reins, which he enjoys catching with his tail, and
holds serenely until beyond the bend in the road.
[Illustration: The Procession of Market-wagons at College Point Ferry.]
Of course, this is part of the city. The road map proves it. But there
are very few places along this route where you can find it out in any
other way. The road leads up over a sort of plateau; a wide expanse of
country can be viewed in all directions, but there are only more fields
to see, more farm-houses and squatty barns, perhaps a village church
steeple in the distance, a village that has its oldest inhabitant and
a church with a church-yard. Away off to the north, across a gleaming
strip of water, which the map shows to be Long Island Sound, lie the
blue hills of the Bronx. They, too, are well within Greater New York.
So is all that country to the southwest, far beyond the range of the
eye, Jamaica, and Jamaica Bay and Coney Island. And over there, more to
the west, is dreary East New York and endless Brooklyn, and dirty Long
Island City, and, still farther, crowded Manhattan Island itself. Then
one realizes something of the extent of this strange manner of city. It
is very ridiculous.
[Illustration: Past dirty backyards and sad vacant lots.]
When at last the head of Little Neck Bay is reached, here is another
variety of primitive country scene. The upland road skirting the hill,
beyond which the rifles of Creedmoor are crashing, takes a sudden turn
down a steep grade, a guileless-looking grade, but very dangerous for
bicyclists, especially in the fall when the ruts and rocks are covered
thick with leaves for days at a time. Then, after passing a nearer view
(through a vista of big trees) of the blue Sound, with the darker blue
of the hills beyond, the road drops down into a peaceful old valley,
tucked away as serene and unmolested as it was early in the nineteenth
century, when the country cross-roads store down there was first built,
along-side of the water-power mill, which is somewhat older. In front
is an old dam and mill-pond, called "The Alley," recently improved,
but still containing black bass; in the rear Little Neck Bay opens out
to the Sound beyond, one of the sniping and ducking places of Greater
New York. The old store, presumably the polling-place of that election
district of the city, is where prominent personages of the neighborhood
congregate and tell fishing and shooting stories, and gossip, and talk
politics, seated on boxes and barrels around the white-bodied stove, for
the sake of which they chew tobacco.
It is one of those stores that contain everything--from anchor-chains to
chewing-gum. There are bicycle sundries in the show-case and boneless
bacon suspended from the old rafters, but the best thing in the place
is a stream of running water. This is led down by a pipe from the side
of the hill, acts as a refrigerator for a sort of bar in one corner of
the store--for this establishment sells a greater variety of commodities
than most department stores--and passes out into Long Island Sound in
the rear.
The fact that they are in Greater New York does not seem to bother them
much down in this happy valley, at least it hasn't changed their mode of
life apparently. The last time we were there a well-tanned Long Islander
was buying some duck loads; he said he was merely going out after a few
snipe, but he ordered No. 5's.
[Illustration: New York City Up in the Beginnings of the Bronx
Regions--Skating at Bronxdale.]
"Have you a policeman out here?" we asked him.
"Oh, yes, but he doesn't come around very often."
"How often?"
"Oh, I generally catch a glimpse of him once a month or so," said the
gunner. "But then, you see, these here city policemen have to be pretty
careful, they're likely to get lost."
"Down near Bay Ridge," a man on the cracker-barrel put in as he
stroked the store-cat, "one night a policeman got off his beat and
floundered into the swamp, and if it hadn't been that some folks of the
neighborhood rescued him, he'd have perished--of mosquitoes."
"We don't have any mosquitoes here on the north shore," put in the
other, addressing us without blinking. He is probably the humorist of
the neighborhood.
* * * * *
This is only one of the many pilgrimages that may be made in Greater New
York, and shows only one sort of rurality. It is the great variety of
unurban scenes that is the most impressive thing about this city. Here
is another sort, seen along certain parts of Jamaica Bay:
Long, level sweeps of flat land, covered with tall, wild grass that
the sea-breezes like to race across. The plain is intersected here and
there with streams of tide-water. At rare intervals there are lonely
little clumps of scrub-oaks, huddled close together for comfort. Away
off in the distance the yellow sand-dunes loom up as big as mountains,
and beyond is the deep, thrilling blue of the open sea, with sharp-cut
horizon.
The sun comes up, the wonderful color tricks of the early morning are
exhibited, and the morning flight of birds begins. The tide comes
hurrying in, soon hiding the mud flats where the snipe were feeding.
The breeze freshens up, and whitecaps, like specks, can be seen on the
distant blue band of the ocean.... The sun gets hot. The tide turns.
The estuaries begin to show their mud-banks again. The sun sinks lower;
and distant inlets reflect it brilliantly. The birds come back, the
breeze dies down, and the sun sets splendidly across the long, flat
plain; another day has passed over this part of a so-called city and no
man has been within a mile of the spot. The nearest sign of habitation
is the lonely life-saving station away over there on the dunes, and,
perhaps, a fisherman's shanty. Far out on the sky-line is the smoke of a
home-coming steamer, whose approach has already been announced from Fire
Island, forty miles down the coast.
[Illustration: Another Kind of City Life--Along the Marshes of Jamaica
Bay.]
Then, here is another sort: A rambling, stony road, occasionally passing
comfortable old houses--historic houses in some cases--with trees and
lawns in front, leading down to stone walls that abut the road. The
double-porticoed house where Aaron Burr died is not far from here. An
old-fashioned, stone-arched bridge, a church steeple around the bend, a
cluster of trees, and under them, a blacksmith shop. Trudging up the
hill is a little boy, who stares and sniffles, carrying a slate and
geography in one hand, and leading a little sister by the other, who
also sniffles and stares. This, too, is Greater New York, Borough of
Richmond, better known as Staten Island. This borough has nearly all
kinds of wild and tame rurality and suburbanity. Its farms need not be
described.
III
Pointing out mere farms in the city becomes rather monotonous; they are
too common. But there is one kind of farm in New York that is not at
all common, that has never existed in any other city, so far as I know,
in ancient or modern times. It is situated, oddly enough, in about the
centre of the 317 square miles of New York--so well as the centre of a
boot-shaped area can be located.
[Illustration: There is profitable oyster-dredging in several sections
of the city.]
Cross Thirty-fourth Street Ferry to Long Island City, which really
does not smell so bad as certain of our poets would have us believe;
take the car marked "Steinway," and ride for fifteen or twenty minutes
out through dreary city edge, past small, unpainted manufactories,
squalid tenements, dirty backyards, and sad vacant lots that serve as
the last resting-place for decayed trucks and overworked wagons. Soon
after passing a tumble-down windmill, which looks like an historic old
relic, on a hill-top, but which was built in 1867 and tumbled down
only recently, the Steinway Silk Mills will be reached (they can be
distinguished by the long, low wings of the building covered with
windows like a hothouse). Leave the car here and strike off to the left,
down the lane which will soon be an alley, and then a hundred yards or
so from the highway will be seen the first of the odd, paper-covered
houses of a colony of Chinese farmers who earn their living by tilling
the soil of Greater New York.
At short distances are the other huts crouching at the foot of big
trees, with queer gourds hanging out in front to dry, and large unusual
crocks lying about, and huge baskets, and mattings--all clearly
from China; they are as different from what could be bought on the
neighboring avenue as the farm and farmers themselves are different
from most Long Island farms and farmers. Out in the fields, which are
tilled in the Oriental way, utilizing every inch of ground clean up to
the fence, and laid out with even divisions at regular intervals, like
rice-fields, the farmers themselves may be seen, working with Chinese
implements, their pigtails tucked up under their straw hats, while the
western world wags on in its own way all around them. This is less than
five miles from the glass-covered parade-ground of the Waldorf-Astoria.
They have only three houses among them, that is, there are only three
of these groups of rooms, made of old boards and boxes and covered with
tar paper; but no one in the neighborhood seems to know just how many
Chinamen live there. The same sleeping space would hold a score or more
over in Pell Street.