BIFURCATED BUFFALO
Alighting from the train at Buffalo, I was reminded of my earlier
reflection that railway stations should express their cities. In Buffalo
the thought is painful. If that city were in fact, expressed by its
present railway stations, people would not get off there voluntarily;
they would have to be put off. And yet, from what I have been told, the
curious and particularly ugly relic which is the New York Central
Station there, to-day, does tell a certain story of the city. Buffalo
has long been torn by factional quarrels--among them a protracted fight
as to the location of a modern station for the New York Central Lines.
The East Side wants it; the West Side wants it. Neither has it. The old
station still stands--at least it was standing when I left Buffalo, for
I was very careful not to bump it with my suit case.
This difference of opinion between the East Side and the West with
regard to the placing of a station is, I am informed, quite typical of
Buffalo. Socially, commercially, religiously, politically, the two sides
disagree. The dividing line between them, geographically, is not, as
might be supposed, Division Street. (That, by the way, is a peculiarity
of highways called "Division Street" in most cities--they seldom divide
anything more important than one row of buildings from another.) The
real street of division is called Main.
Main Street! How many American towns and cities have used that name, and
what a stupid name it is! It is as characterless as a number, and it
lacks the number's one excuse for being. If names like Tenth Street or
Eleventh Avenue fail to kindle the imagination they do not fail, at all
events, to help the stranger find his way--although it should be added
that strangers do, somehow, manage to find their way about in London,
Paris, and even Boston, where the modern American system of numbering
streets and avenues is not in vogue. But I am not agitating against the
numbering of streets. Indeed, I fear I rather believe in it, as I
believe in certain other dull but useful things like work and government
reports. What I am crying out about is the stupid naming of such streets
as carry names. Why do we have so many Main Streets? Do you think we
lack imagination? Then look at the names of Western towns and Kansas
girls and Pullman cars! The thing is an enigma.
Main Street is not only a bad name for a thoroughfare; the quality which
it implies is unfortunate. And that quality may be seen in Main Street,
Buffalo. On an exaggerated scale that street _is_ like the Main Street
of a little town, for the business district, the retail shopping
district, all the city's activities string along on either side. It is
bad for a city to grow in that elongated way just as it is bad for a
human being. To either it imparts a kind of gawky awkwardness.
[Illustration: We made believe we wanted to go out and smoke. And as we
left our seats she made believe she didn't know that we were going]
The development of Main Street, Buffalo, has been natural. That is just
the trouble; it has been too natural. Originally it was the Iroquois
trail; later the route followed by the stages coming from the East. So
it has grown up from log-cabin days. It is a fine, broad street; all
that it lacks is "features." It runs along its wide, monotonous way
until it stops in the squalid surroundings of the river; and if the
river did not happen to be there to stop it, it would go on and on
developing, indefinitely, and uninterestingly, in that direction as well
as in the other.
The thing which Buffalo lacks physically is a recognizable center; a
point at which a stranger would stop, as he stops in Piccadilly Circus
or the Place de l'Opera, and say to himself with absolute assurance:
"Now I am at the very heart of the city." Every city ought to have a
center, and every center ought to signify in its spaciousness, its
arrangement and its architecture, a city's dignity. Buffalo is,
unfortunately, far from being alone in her need of such a thing. Where
Buffalo is most at fault is that she does not even seem to be thinking
of municipal distinction. And very many other cities are. Cleveland is
already attaining it in a manner which will be magnificent; Chicago has
long planned and is slowly executing; Denver has work upon a splendid
municipal center well under way; so has San Francisco; St. Louis,
Milwaukee, and Grand Rapids have plans for excellent municipal
improvements. Even St. Paul is waking up and widening an important
business street.
* * * * *
Every one knows that what is called "a wave of reform" has swept across
the country, but not every one seems to know that there is also surging
over the United States a "wave" of improved public taste. I shall write
more of this later. Suffice it now to say that it manifests itself in
countless forms: in municipal improvements of the kind of which the
Cleveland center is, perhaps, the best example in the country; in
architecture of all classes; in household furniture and decoration; in
the tendency of art museums to realize that modern American paintings
are the finest modern paintings obtainable in the world to-day; in the
tendency of private art collectors not to buy quite so much rubbish as
they have bought in the past; in the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which
will be the most beautiful exposition anybody ever saw; and in
innumerable other ways. Indeed, public taste in the United States has,
in the last ten years, taken a leap forward which the mind of to-day
cannot hope to measure. The advance is nothing less than marvelous, and
it is reflected, I think, in every branch of art excepting one: the
literary art, which has in our day, and in our country, reached an
abysmal depth of degradation.
With Cleveland so near at hand as an example, and so many other
American cities thinking about civic beauty, Buffalo ought soon to begin
to rub her eyes, look about, and cast up her accounts. Perhaps her
trouble is that she is a little bit too prosperous with an olden-time
prosperity; a little bit too somnolent and satisfied. There is plenty to
eat; business is not so bad; there are good clubs, and there is a
delightful social life and a more than ordinary degree of cultivation.
Furthermore, there may be a new station for the New York Central some
day, for it is a fact that there are now some street cars which actually
_cross_ Main Street, instead of stopping at the Rubicon and making
passengers get out, cross on foot, and take the other car on the other
side! That, in itself, is a startling state of things. Evidently all
that is needed now is an earthquake.
* * * * *
I have remarked before that cities, like people, have habits. Just as
Detroit has the automobile habit, Pittsburgh the steel habit, Erie, Pa.,
the boiler habit, Grand Rapids the furniture habit, and Louisville the
(if one may say so) whisky habit, Buffalo had in earlier times the
transportation habit. The first fortunes made in Buffalo came originally
from the old Central Wharf, where toll was taken of the passing
commerce. Hand in hand with shipping came that business known by the
unpleasant name of "jobbing." From the opening of the Erie Canal until
the late seventies, jobbing flourished in Buffalo, but of recent years
her jobbing territory has diminished as competition with surrounding
centers has increased.
The early profits from docks and shipping were considerable. The
business was easy; it involved comparatively small investment and but
little risk. So when, with the introduction of through bills of lading,
this business dwindled, it was hard for Buffalo to readjust herself to
more daring ventures, such as manufacturing. "For," as a Buffalo man
remarked to me, "there is only one thing more timid than a million
dollars, and that is two million." It was the same gentleman, I think,
who, in comparing the Buffalo of to-day with the Buffalo of other days,
called my attention to the fact that not one man in the city is a
director of a steam railroad company.
From her geographical position with regard to ore, limestone, and coal
it would seem that Buffalo might well become a great iron and steel city
like Cleveland, but for some reason her ventures in this direction have
been unfortunate. One steel company in which Buffalo money was invested,
failed; another has been struggling along for some years and has not so
far proved profitable. Some Buffalonians made money in a land boom a
dozen or so years since; then came the panic, and the boom burst with a
loud report, right in Buffalo's face.
Back of most of this trouble there seems to have been a streak of real
ill luck.
[Illustration: The gentleman who favored linen mesh was a fat,
prosperous-looking person, whose gold-rimmed spectacles reflected flying
lights from out of doors]
There is a great deal of money in Buffalo, but it is wary
money--financial wariness seems to be another Buffalo habit. And there
are other cities with the same characteristic. You can tell them
because, when you begin to ask about various enterprises, people will
say: "No, we haven't this and we haven't that, but this is a safe town
in times of financial panic." That is what they say in Buffalo; they
also say it in St. Louis and St. Paul. But if they say it in Chicago, or
Minneapolis, or Kansas City, or in those lively cities of the Pacific
slope, I did not hear them. Those cities are not worrying about
financial panics which may come some day, but are busy with the things
which are.
If you ask a Buffalo man what is the matter with his city, he will, very
likely, sit down with great solemnity and try to tell you, and even call
a friend to help him, so as to be sure that nothing is overlooked. He
may tell you that the city lacks one great big dominating man to lead it
into action; or that there has been, until recently, lack of cooperation
between the banks; or that there are ninety or a hundred thousand Poles
in the city and only about the same number of people springing from what
may be called "old American stock." Or he may tell you something else.
If, upon the other hand, you ask a Minneapolis man that question, what
will he do? He will look at you pityingly and think you are demented.
Then he will tell you very positively that there is nothing the matter
with Minneapolis, but that there is something definitely the matter with
any one who thinks there is! Yes, indeed! If you want to find out what
is the matter with Minneapolis, it is still necessary to go for
information to St. Paul. As you proceed westward, such a question
becomes increasingly dangerous.
Ask a Kansas City man what is wrong with his town and he will probably
attack you; and as for Los Angeles--! Such a question in Los Angeles
would mean the calling out of the National Guard, the Chamber of
Commerce, the Rotary Club, and all the "boosters" (which is to say the
entire population of the city); the declaring of martial law, a trial by
summary court-martial, and your immediate execution. The manner of your
execution would depend upon the phrasing of your question. If you had
asked: "Is there anything wrong with Los Angeles?" they'd probably be
content with selling you a city lot and then hanging you; but if you
said: "What _is_ wrong with Los Angeles?" they would burn you at the
stake and pickle your remains in vitriol.
* * * * *
At this juncture I find myself oppressed with the idea that I haven't
done Buffalo justice. Also, I am annoyed to discover that I have written
a great deal about business. When I write about business I am almost
certain to be wrong. I dislike business very much--almost as much as I
dislike politics--and the idea of infringing upon the field of friends
of mine like Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Miss Tarbell, Samuel
Hopkins Adams, Will Irwin, and others, is extremely distasteful to me.
But here is the trouble: so many writers have run a-muckraking that,
now-a-days, when a writer appears in any American city, every one assumes
that he is scouting around in search of "shame." The result is that you
don't have to hunt for shame. People bring it to you by the cartload.
They don't give you time to explain that you aren't a shame
collector--that you don't even know a good piece of shame when you see
it--they just drive up, dump it at your door, and go back to get another
load.
My companion and I were new at the game in Buffalo. As the loads of
shame began to arrive, we had a feeling that something was going wrong
with our trip. We had come in search of cheerful adventure, yet here we
were barricaded in by great bulwarks of shame. In a few hours there was
enough shame around us to have lasted all the reformers and muckrakers I
know a whole month. We couldn't see over the top of it. It hypnotized
us. We began to think that probably shame _was_ what we wanted, after
all. Every one we met assumed it was what we wanted, and when enough
people assume a certain thing about you it is very difficult to buck
against them. By the second day we had ceased to be human and had begun
to act like muckrakers. We became solemn, silent, mysterious. We would
pick up a piece of shame, examine it, say "_Ha!_" and stick it in our
pockets. When some white-faced Buffalonian would drive up with another
load of shame I would go up to him, wave my finger under his nose and,
trying to look as much like Steffens as I could, say in a sepulchral
voice: "Come! Out with it! What are you holding back? Tell me all! Who
tore up the missing will?" Then that poor, honest, terrified Buffalonian
would gasp and try to tell me all, between his chattering teeth. And
when he had told me all I would continue to glare at him horribly, and
ask for more. Then he would begin making up stories, inventing the most
frightful and shocking lies so as not to disappoint me. I would print
some of them here, but I have forgotten them. That is the trouble with
the amateur muckraker or reformer. His mind isn't trained to his work.
He is constantly allowing it to be diverted by some pleasant thing.
For instance, some one pointed out to me that the water front of the
city, along the Niagara River, is so taken up by the railroads that the
public does not get the benefit of that water life which adds so much to
the charm of Cleveland and Detroit. That situation struck me as
affording an excellent piece of muck to rake. For isn't it always the
open season so far as railroads are concerned?
I ought to have kept my mind on that, but in my childlike way I let
myself go ambling off through the parks. I found the parks delightful,
and in one of them I came upon a beautiful Greek temple, built of marble
and containing a collection of paintings of which any city should be
proud. Now that is a disconcerting sort of thing to find when you have
just abandoned yourself to the idea of becoming a muckraker! How can
you muckrake a gallery like that? It can't be done.
* * * * *
With the possible exception of the Chicago Art Institute my companion
and I did not see, upon our entire journey, any gallery of art in which
such good judgment had been shown in the selection of paintings as in
the Albright Gallery in Buffalo. Though the Chicago Art Institute is
much the larger and richer museum, and though its collection is more
comprehensive, its modern art is far more heterogeneous than that of
Buffalo. One admires that Albright Gallery not only for the paintings
which hang upon its walls, but also for those which do not hang there.
Judgment has been shown not only in selecting paintings, but (one
concludes) in rejecting gifts. I do not know that the Albright Gallery
has rejected gifts, but I do know that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York and the Chicago Art Institute have, at times, failed to reject
gifts which should have been rejected. Almost all museums fail in that
respect in their early days. When a rich man offers a bad painting, or a
roomful of bad paintings, the museum is afraid to say "No," because rich
men must be propitiated. That has been the curse of art museums; they
have to depend on rich men for support. And rich men, however generous
they may be, and however much they may be interested in art, are, for
the most part, lacking in any true and deep understanding of it. That
is one trouble with being rich--it doesn't give you time to be much of
anything else. If rich men really did _know_ art, there would not be so
many art dealers, and so many art dealers would not be going to
expensive tailors and riding in expensive limousines.
Those who control the Albright Gallery have been wise enough to
specialize in modern American painting. They have not been impressed, as
so many Americans still are impressed, by the sound of the word
"Europe." Nor have they attempted to secure old masters.
Does it not seem a mistake for any museum not possessed of enormous
wealth to attempt a collection of old masters? A really fine example of
the work of an old master ties up a vast amount of money, and, however
splendid it may be, it is only one canvas, after all; and one or two or
three old masters do not make a representative collection. Rather, it
seems to me, they tend to disturb balance in a small museum.
To many American ears "Europe" is still a magic word. It makes little
difference that Europe remains the happy hunting ground of the advanced
social climber; but it makes a good deal of difference that so many
American students of the arts continue to believe that there is some
mystic thing to be gotten over there which is unobtainable at home.
Europe has done much for us and can still do much for us, but we must
learn not to accept blindly as we have in the past. Until quite
recently, American art museums did, for the most part, buy European
art which was in many instances absolutely inferior to the art produced
at home. And unless I am very much mistaken a third-rate portrait
painter, with a European name (and a clever dealer to push him) can
still come over here and reap a harvest of thousands while Americans
with more ability are making hundreds.
[Illustration: In a few hours there was enough shame around us to have
lasted all the reformers and muckrakers I know a whole month]
One of the brightest signs for American painting to-day is the fact that
it is now found profitable to make and sell forgeries of the works of
our most distinguished modern artists--even living ones. This is a new
and encouraging situation. A few years ago it was hardly worth a
forger's time to make, say, a false Hassam, when he might just as well
be making a Corot--which reminds me of an amusing thing a painter said
to me the other day.
We were passing through an art gallery, when I happened to see at the
end of one room three canvases in the familiar manner of Corot.
"What a lot of Corots there are in this country," I remarked.
"Yes," he replied. "Of the ten thousand canvases painted by Corot, there
are thirty thousand in the United States."
* * * * *
There are two interesting hotels in Buffalo. One, the Iroquois, is
characterized by a kind of solid dignity and has for years enjoyed a
high reputation. It is patronized to-day at luncheon time by many of
Buffalo's leading business men. Another, the Statler, is more
"commercial" in character. My companion and I happened to stop at the
latter, and we became very much interested in certain things about it.
For one thing, every room in the hotel has running ice water and a
bath--either a tub or a shower. Everywhere in that hotel we saw signs.
At the desk, when we entered, hung a sign which read: _Clerk on duty,
Mr. Pratt_.
There were signs in our bedrooms, too. I don't remember all of them, but
there was one bearing the genial invitation: _Criticize and suggest for
the improvement of our service. Complaint and suggestion box in lobby._
While I was in that hotel I had nothing to "criticize and suggest," but
I have been in other hotels where, if such an invitation had been
extended to me, I should have stuffed the box.
Besides the signs, we found in each of our rooms the following: a
clothes brush; a card bearing on one side a calendar and on the other
side a list of all trains leaving Buffalo, and their times of departure;
a memorandum pad and pencil by the telephone; a Bible ("Placed in this
hotel by the Gideons"), and a pincushion, containing not only a variety
of pins (including a large safety pin), but also needles threaded with
black thread and white, and buttons of different kinds, even to a
suspender button.
[Illustration: My companion and I made excuses to go downstairs and wash
our hands in the public washroom, just for the pleasure of doing so
without fear of being attacked by a swarthy brigand with a brush]
But aside from the prompt service we received, I think the thing which
pleased us most about that hotel was a large sign in the public wash
room, downstairs. Had I come from the West I am not sure that sign would
have startled me so much, but coming from New York--! Well, this is what
it said:
_Believing that voluntary service in washrooms is distasteful to
guests, attendants are instructed to give no service which the
guest does not ask for._
Time and again, while we were in Buffalo, my companion and I made
excuses to go downstairs and wash our hands in the public washroom, just
for the pleasure of doing so without fear of being attacked by a swarthy
brigand with a brush. We became positively fond of the melancholy
washroom boy in that hotel. There was something pathetic in the way he
stood around waiting for some one to say: "Brush me!" Day after day he
pursued his policy of watchful waiting, hoping against hope that
something would happen--that some one would fall down in the mud and
really need to be brushed; that some one would take pity on him and let
himself be brushed anyhow. The pathos of that boy's predicament began to
affect us deeply. Finally we decided, just before leaving Buffalo, to go
downstairs and let him brush us. We did so. When we asked him to do it
he went very white at first. Then, with a glad cry, he leaped at us and
did his work. It was a real brushing we got that day--not a mere slap on
the back with a whisk broom, meaning "Stand and deliver!" but the kind
of brushing that takes the dust out of your clothes. The wash room was
full of dust before he got through. Great clouds of it went floating up
the stairs, filling the hotel lobby and making everybody sneeze. When he
finished we were renovated. "How much do you think we ought to give him
for all this?" I asked of my companion.
"If the conventional dime which we give the washroom boys in New York
hotels," he replied, "is proper payment for the services they render, I
should say we ought to give this boy about twenty-seven dollars."
* * * * *
There are many other things about Buffalo which should be mentioned.
There is the Buffalo Club--the dignified, solid old club of the city;
and there is the Saturn Club, "where women cease from troubling and the
wicked are at rest." And there is Delaware Avenue, on which stand both
these clubs, and many of the city's finest homes.
Unlike certain famous old residence streets in other cities, Delaware
Avenue still holds out against the encroachments of trade. It is a wide,
fine street of trees and lawns and residences. Despite the fact that
many of its older houses are of the ugly though substantial architecture
of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and many of its newer ones lack
architectural distinction, the general effect of Delaware Avenue is
still fine and American.
My impression of this celebrated street was necessarily hurried, having
been acquired in the course of sundry dashes down its length in motor
cars. I recall a number of its buildings only vaguely now, but there is
one which I admired every time I saw it, and which still clings in my
memory both as a building and as a sermon on the enduring beauty of
simplicity and good, old-fashioned lines--the office of Spencer Kellogg
& Sons, at the corner of Niagara Square.
* * * * *
It happened that just before we left New York there was a newspaper talk
about some rich women who had organized a movement of protest against
the ever-increasing American tendency toward show and extravagance. We
were, therefore, doubly interested when we heard of a similar activity
on the part of certain fashionable women of Buffalo.
Our hostess at a dinner party there was the first to mention it, but
several other ladies added details. They had formed a few days before a
society called the "Simplicity League," the members of which bound
themselves to give each other moral support in their efforts to return
to a more primitive mode of life. I cannot recall now whether the topic
came up before or after the butler and the footman came around with
caviar and cocktails, but I know that I had learned a lot about it from
charming and enthusiastic ladies at either side of me before the sherry
had come on; that, by the time the sauterne was served, I was deeply
impressed, and that, with the roast and the Burgundy, I was prepared to
take the field against all comers, not only in favor of simplicity, but
in favor of anything and everything which was favored by my hostess.
Throughout the salad, the ices, the Turkish coffee, and the
Corona-coronas I remained her champion, while with the port--ah!
nothing, it seems to me, recommends the old order of things quite so
thoroughly as old port, which has in it a sermon and a song. After
dinner the ladies told us more about their league.
"We don't intend to go to any foolish extremes," said one who looked
like the apotheosis of the Rue de la Paix. "We are only going to scale
things down and eliminate waste. There is a lot of useless show in this
country which only makes it hard for people who can't afford things. And
even for those who can, it is wrong. Take the matter of dress--a dress
can be simple without looking cheap. And it is the same with a dinner. A
dinner can be delicious without being elaborate. Take this little dinner
we had to-night--"
"_What?_" I cried.
"Yes," she nodded. "In future we are all going to give plain little
dinners like this."
"_Plain?_" I gasped.
Our hostess overheard my choking cry.
"Yes," she put in. "You see, the league is going to practise what it
preaches."
"But I didn't think it had begun yet! I thought this dinner was a kind
of farewell feast--that it was--"
[Illustration: I was prepared to take the field against all comers, not
only in favor of simplicity, but in favor of anything and everything
which was favored by my hostess]
Our hostess looked grieved. The other ladies of the league gazed at me
reproachfully.
"Why!" I heard one exclaim to another, "I don't believe he noticed!"
"Didn't you notice?" asked my hostess.
I was cornered.
"Notice?" I asked. "Notice _what_?"
"That we didn't have champagne!" she said.