Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE NOVELTY IRON WORKS, NEW YORK, ( As seen from the East River. )
Perhaps no one of those vast movements which are now going forward among mankind, and which mark so strikingly the industrial power and genius of the present age, is watched with more earnest interest by thinking men, than the successive steps of the progress by which the mechanical power of steam and machinery is gradually advancing, in its contest for the dominion of the seas. There is a double interest in this conflict. In fact, the conflict itself is a double one. There is first a struggle between the mechanical power and ingenuity of man, on the one hand, and the uncontrollable and remorseless violence of ocean storms on the other; and, secondly, there is the rivalry, not unfriendly, though extremely ardent and keen, between the two most powerful commercial nations on the globe, each eager to be the first to conquer the common foe.
The armories in which the ordnance and ammunition for this warfare are prepared, consist, so far as this country is concerned, of certain establishments, vast in their extent and capacity, though unpretending in external appearance, which are situated in the upper part of the city of New York, on the shores of the East River. As the city of New York is sustained almost entirely by its commerce, and as this commerce is becoming every year more and more dependent for its prosperity and progress upon the power of the enormous engines by which its most important functions are now performed, the establishments where these engines are invented and made, and fitted into the ships which they are destined to propel, constitute really the heart of the metropolis; though, the visitor, who comes down for the first time by the East River, from the Sound, in the morning boat from Norwich or Fall River, is very prone to pass them carelessly by—his thoughts intent upon what he considers the superior glory and brilliancy which emanate from the hotels and theatres of Broadway.