Did you ever hear of Finn Square? No? Very well, then, we shall have
to inflict upon you some paragraphs from our unpublished work: "A
Scenic Guidebook to the Sixth Avenue L." The itinerary is a frugal
one: you do not have to take the L, but walk along under it.
Streets where an L runs have a fascination of their own. They have a
shadowy gloom, speckled and striped with the sunlight that slips
through the trestles. West Broadway, which along most of its length
is straddled by the L, is a channel of odd humours. Its real name,
you know, is South Fifth Avenue; but the Avenue got so snobbish it
insisted on its humbler brother changing its name. Let us take it
from Spring Street southward.
Ribbons, purple, red, and green, were the first thing to catch our
eye. Not the ribbons of the milliner, however, but the carbon tapes
of the typewriter, big cans of them being loaded on a junk wagon.
"Purple Ribbons" we have often thought, would be a neat title for a
volume of verses written on a typewriter. What happens to the used
ribbons of modern poets? Mr. Hilaire Belloc, or Mr. Chesterton, for
instance. Give me but what these ribbons type and all the rest is
merely tripe, as Edmund Waller might have said. Near the ribbons we
saw a paper-box factory, where a number of high-spirited young women
were busy at their machines. A broad strip of thick green paint was
laid across the lower half of the windows so that these immured
damsels might not waste their employers' time in watching goings on
along the pavement.
Broome and Watts streets diverge from West Broadway in a V. At the
corner of Watts is one of West Broadway's many saloons, which by
courageous readjustments still manage to play their useful part.
What used to be called the "Business Men's Lunch" now has a tendency
to name itself "Luncheonette" or "Milk Bar." But the old decorations
remain. In this one you will see the electric fixtures wrapped in
heavy lead foil, the kind of sheeting that is used in packages of
tea. At the corner of Grand Street is the Sapphire Café, and what
could be a more appealing name than that? "Delicious Chocolate with
Whipped Cream," says a sign outside the Sapphire. And some way
farther down (at the corner of White Street) is a jolly old tavern
which looked so antique and inviting that we went inside. Little
tables piled high with hunks of bread betokened the approaching
lunch hour. A shimmering black cat winked a drowsy topaz eye from
her lounge in the corner. We asked for cider. There was none, but
our gaze fell upon a bottle marked "Irish Moss." We asked for some,
and the barkeep pushed the bottle forward with a tiny glass. Irish
Moss, it seems, is the kind of drink which the customer pours out
for himself, so we decanted a generous slug. It proved to be a kind
of essence of horehound, of notable tartness and pungency, very like
a powerful cough syrup. We wrote it off on our ledger as experience.
Beside us stood a sturdy citizen with a freight hook round his neck,
deducing a foaming crock of the legitimate percentage.
The chief landmark of that stretch of West Broadway is the tall
spire of St. Alphonsus' Church, near Canal Street. Up the steps and
through plain brown doors we went into the church, which was cool,
quiet, and empty, save for a busy charwoman with humorous Irish
face. Under the altar canopy wavered a small candle spark, and high
overhead, in the dimness, were orange and scarlet gleams from a
stained window. A crystal chandelier hanging in the aisle caught
pale yellow tinctures of light. No Catholic church, wherever you
find it, is long empty; a man and a girl entered just as we went
out. At each side of the front steps the words _Copiosa apud eum
redemtio_ are carved in the stone. The mason must have forgotten the
_p_ in the last word. A silver plate on the brick house next door
says _Redemptorist Fathers_.
York Street, running off to the west, gives a glimpse of the old
Hudson River Railroad freight depot. St. John's Lane, running across
York Street, skirts the ruins of old St. John's Church, demolished
when the Seventh Avenue subway was built. On the old brown house at
the corner some urchin has chalked the word CRAZY. Perhaps this is
an indictment of adult civilization as a whole. If one strolls
thoughtfully about some of these streets--say Thompson Street--on a
hot day, and sees the children struggling to grow up, he feels like
going back to that word CRAZY and italicizing it. The tiny
triangle of park at Beach Street is carefully locked up, you will
notice--the only plot of grass in that neighbourhood--so that bare
feet cannot get at it. Superb irony of circumstance: on the near
corner stands the Castoria factory, Castoria being (if we remember
the ads) what Mr. Fletcher gave baby when she was sick.
Where Varick Street runs in there is a wide triangular spread, and
this, gentle friends, is Finn Park, named for a New York boy who was
killed in France. The name reminded us also of Elfin Finn, the
somewhat complacent stage child who poses for chic costumes in
_Vogue_. We were wondering which was a more hazardous bringing up
for a small girl, living on Thompson Street or posing for a fashion
magazine. From Finn Square there is a stirring view of the Woolworth
Tower. Also of Claflin's packing cases on their way off to Selma,
Ala., and Kalamazoo, Mich., and to Nathan Povich, Bath, Me. That
conjunction of Finn and Bath, Me., suggested to us that the empty
space there would be a good place to put in a municipal swimming
pool for the urchins of the district.
_Drawn from the wood_, which legend still stands on the pub at the
corner of Duane Street, sounds a bit ominous these wood alcohol
days. John Barleycorn may be down, but he's never out, as someone
has remarked. For near Murray Street you will find one of those
malt-and-hops places which are getting numerous. They contain all
the necessary equipment for--well, as the signs suggest, for making
malt bread and coffee cake--bottle-capping apparatus and rubber
tubing and densimeters, and all such things used in breadmaking. As
the signs say: "Malt syrup for making malt bread, coffee, cake, and
medicinal purposes."
To conclude the scenic pleasures of the Sixth Avenue L route, we
walk through the cool, dark, low-roofed tunnel of Church Street in
those interesting blocks just north of Vesey. We hark to the merry
crowing of the roosters in the Barclay Street poultry stores; and we
look past the tall gray pillars of St. Peter's Church at the flicker
of scarlet and gold lights near the altar. The black-robed nuns one
often sees along Church Street, with their pale, austere, hooded
faces, bring a curious touch of medievalism into the roaring tide
that flows under the Hudson Terminal Building. They always walk in
twos, which seems to indicate an even greater apprehension of the
World. And we always notice, as we go by the pipe shop at the corner
of Barclay Street, that this worthy merchant has painted some
inducements on one side of his shop; which reminds us of the same
device used by the famous tobacconist Bacon, in Cambridge, England.
Why, we wonder, doesn't our friend fill the remaining blank panel on
his side wall by painting there some stanzas from Calverley's "Ode
to Tobacco?" We will gladly give him the text to copy if he wants
it.
[Illustration]