For the little scenes that are not inspiring or awful, but simply quaint
and lovable, one goes down along the South Street water-front. Fulton
Market with its memorable smells and the marketeers and 'longshoremen;
and behind it the slip where clean-cut American-model smacks put in,
and sway excitedly to the wash from the Brooklyn ferry-boats, which is
not noticed by the sturdy New Haven line steamers nearby. On the edge
of the street and the water are the oyster-floats, half house and half
boat, which look like solid shops, with front doors, from the street
side until the seas hitting them they, too, begin to sway awkwardly and
startle the unaccustomed passer-by.
It is down around here that you find slouching idly in front of
ship-stores, loafing on cables and anchors, the jolly jack tar of modern
days. From all parts of the world he comes, any number of him if you
can tell him when you see him, for he is seldom tarry and less often
jolly, unless drunk on the very poor stuff he gets in the variously
evil-looking dives thickly strewn along the water-fronts. Some of these
are modern plate-glass saloons, but here and there is a cosy old-time
tavern (with a step-down at the entrance instead of a step-up), low
ceiling, dark interior, and in the window a thickly painted ship's model
with flies on the rigging.
Farther down, near Wall Street ferry, where the smells of the world
are gathered, you may see the stevedores unloading liqueurs and spices
from tropical ports, and coffees and teas; nearby are the places where
certain men make their livings tasting these teas all day long, while
the horse-cars jangle by.
Old Slip and other odd-named streets are along here, where once the
water came before the city outgrew its clothes, before Water Street,
now two or three blocks back, had lost all right to its name. Here the
big slanting bowsprits hunch away in over South Street as if trying to
be quits with the land for its encroachment, and the plain old brick
buildings huddled together across the way have no cornices for fear of
their being poked off. Queer old buildings they are, sail lofts with
their peculiar roofs, and sailors' lodging-houses, and the shops where
the seaman can buy everything he needs from suspenders to anchor cables,
so that after a ten-thousand mile cruise he can spend all his several
months' pay within two blocks of where he first puts foot on shore and
within one night from when he does so. Very often he has not energy
enough to go farther or money to buy anything, thanks to the slavery
system which conducts the sailors' lodging-houses across the way. There
is nothing very picturesque about our modern merchant marine and its
ill-used and over-worked sailors; it is only pathetic.
Those are some of the reasons, I think, why East River is more
interesting to most of us than North River. Another reason, perhaps, is
that East River is not a river at all, but an arm of the ocean which
makes Long Island, and true to its nature in spite of man's error it
holds the charm of the sea. The North River side of the town in the old
days had less to do with the business of those who go down to the sea
in ships; was more rural and residential and now its water-front is so
jammed with railway ferry-houses and ocean steamship docks that there
is little room for anything else.
However, these long, roofed docks of famous Cunarders and American and
White Star Liners, and of the French steamers (which have a round roof
dock of a sort all their own) are interesting in their way, too, and the
names of the foreign ports at the open entrance cause a strange fret to
be up and going; especially on certain days of the week when thick smoke
begins to pour from the great funnels which stick out so enormously
above the top story of the now noisy piers. Cabs and carriages with
coachmen almost hidden by trunks and steamer-rugs crowd in through the
dock-gates, while, within, the hold baggage-derricks are rattling and
there is an excited chatter of good-by talk....
[Illustration: Here is where the town ends, and the country
begins.—Page 399.
(High Bridge as seen Looking South from Washington Bridge.)]
By the time you get up to Gansevoort Market, with its broad expanse of
cobblestones, the steamship lines begin to thin out and the ferries
are now sprinkled more sparsely. Where the avenues grow out into
their teens, there are coal-yards and lumber-yards. On the warehouses
and factories are great twenty-foot letters advertising soap and
cereals, all of which are the best.... Farther up is the region of
slaughter-houses and smells, gas-houses and their smells.... And so on
up to Riverside, and beyond that the unknown wildness of Manhattan's
farthest north, and Fort Washington with its breastworks, which it is
pleasing to see, are being visited and picnicked upon more often than
formerly.
But over on the east edge of the town there is more to look at and more
of a variety. All the way from the Bridge and the big white battle-ships
squatting in the Navy Yard across the river; up past Kip's Bay with its
dapper steam-yachts waiting to take their owners home from business;
past Bellevue Hospital and its Morgue, and the antediluvian-looking
United States Frigate New Hampshire moored nearby, (now used by the
Naval Reserve), past Thirty-fourth Street ferry with its streams of
funerals and fishing-parties; Blackwell's Island with its green grass
and the young doctors and officials upon it, playing tennis obliviously;
Hell Gate with its boiling tide, where so many are drowned every year;
East River Park with its bit of green turf (it is too bad there are not
more of these parks on our water-fronts); past Ward's Island with its
public institutions; Randall's Island with more public institutions—and
so up into the Harlem where soon around the bend the occasional tall
mast looks very incongruous as seen across a stretch of real estate.
And now you have a totally different feel in the air and a totally
different sort of "scenery." It is as different as the use it is put
to. Below McComb's Dam Bridge, clear to the Battery, it was nearly all
work; up here it is nearly all play.
On the banks of the river, rowing clubs, yacht clubs, bathing
pavilions—they bump into each other they are so thick; on the water
itself their members and their contents bump into each other on
holidays—launches, barges, racing-shells and all sorts of small pleasure
craft.
Near the Manhattan end of McComb's Dam Bridge are the famous fields of
famous football victories, baseball championships, track games, open-air
horse shows; across the bridge go the bicyclers, hordes of them, brazen
braided bicyclists who use chewing gum and lean far over, and all the
other varieties.
Up the river are college and school ovals and athletic fields; on the
ridges upon either side are walks and paths for lovers. For the lonely
pedestrian and antiquarians, two old revolutionary forts and some good
colonial architecture. Whirly go-rounds and big wheels for children,
groves and beer-gardens for picnickers; while down on one bank of the
stream upon the broad speedway go the full-blooded trotters with their
red-faced masters behind in light-colored driving coats, eyes goggled,
arms extended.
On the opposite banks are the two railroads taking people to Ardsley
Casino, St. Andrew's Golf Club, and the other country clubs and the
pretty links at Van Cortlandt Park, and taking picnickers and family
parties to Mosholu Park, and regiments and squadrons to drill and play
battle in the inspection grounds nearby, and botanists and naturalists
and sportsmen for their fun farther up in the good green country.
No wonder there is a different feeling in the air up along this best
known end of the city's water-front. The small, unimportant looking
winding river, long distance views, wooded hills, green terraces, and
even the great solid masonry of High Bridge, and the asphalt and stone
resting-places on Washington Bridge somehow help to make you feel the
spirit of freedom and outdoors and relaxation. This is the tired city's
playground.
Here is where the town ends, and the country begins.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Visions will come at times.
_Drawn by Orson Lowell._]