III
These two views across two parts of New York, the two most typical parts, deal chiefly with what a stranger might see and feel, who came and looked and departed. Very little has been said to show what the cross-streets mean to those who are in the town and of it, who know the town and like it—either because their "father's father's father" did, or else because their work or fate has cast them upon this island and kept them there until it no longer seems a desert island. The latter class, indeed, when once they have learned to love the town of their adoption, frequently become its warmest enthusiasts, even though they may have held at one time that city contentedness could not be had without the symmetry, softness, and repose of older civilizations, or even that true happiness was impossible when walled in by stone and steel from the sight and smell of green fields and running brooks.
Herald Square.
He who loves New York loves its streets for what they have been and are to him, not for what they may seem to those who do not use them. They who know the town best become as homesick when away from it for the straightness of the well-kept streets up-town as for the crookedness and quaintness of the noisy thoroughfares below. The straightness, they point out complacently, is very convenient for getting about, just as the numbering system makes it easy for strangers. On the walk up-town they enjoy looking down upon the expected unexpectedness of the odd little cross streets, which twist and turn or end suddenly in blank walls, or are crossed by passageways in mid-air, like the Bridge of Sighs, down Franklin Street, from the Criminal Court-house to the Tombs. But farther along in their walk they are just as fond of looking down the perspective of the straight side streets from the central spine of Fifth Avenue past block after block of New York homes, away down beyond the almost-converging rows of even lamp-posts to the Hudson and the purple Palisades of Jersey, with the glorious gleam and glow of the sunset; while the energetic "L" trains scurry past, one after another, trailing beautiful swirls of steam and carrying other New Yorkers to other homes. None of this could be enjoyed if the cross streets tied knots in themselves like those in London and some American cities. Even outsiders appreciate these characteristic New York vistas; and nearly every poet who comes to town discovers its symbolic incongruity afresh and sings it to those who have enjoyed it before he was born, just as most young writers of prose feel called upon to turn their attention the other way and unearth the great East Side of New York.
As it Looks on a Wet Night—The Circle, Fifty-ninth Street and Eighth Avenue.
There is no such thing as a typical cross street to New Yorkers. Individually, each thoroughfare departs as widely from the type as the men who walk along them differ from the figure known in certain parts of this country as the typical New Yorker. In New York there is no typical New Yorker. These so-called similar streets, which look so much alike to a visitor driving up Fifth Avenue, end so very differently. Some of them, for instance, after beginning their decline toward the river and oblivion, are redeemed to respectability, not to say exclusiveness, again, like some of the streets in the small Twentieths running out into what was formerly the village of Chelsea; and those who know New York—even when standing where the Twentieth Streets are tainted with Sixth Avenue—are cognizant of this fact, just as they are of the peace and green campus and academic architecture of the Episcopal Theological Seminary away over there, and of the thirty-foot lawns of London Terrace, far down along West Twenty-third Street.
There are other residence streets which do not decline at all, but are solidly impressive and expensive all the way over to the river, like those from Central Park to Riverside Drive. And your old New Yorker does not feel depressed by their conventional similarity, their lack of individuality; he likes to think that these streets and houses no longer seem so unbearably new as they were only a short time ago, but in some cases are at last acquiring the atmosphere of home and getting rid of the odor of a real-estate project. Then, of course, so many cross streets would refuse to be classed as typical because they run through squares or parks, or into reservoirs or other streets, or jump over railroad tracks by means of viaducts, burrow under avenues by means of tunnels, or end abruptly at the top of a hill on a high embankment of interesting masonry, as at the eastern terminus of Forty-first Street—a spot which never feels like New York at all to me.
Hideous high buildings.
Looking east from Central Park at night.
Some notice should be taken also of those all-important up-town cross streets where business has eaten out residence in streaks, as moths devour clothes, such as broad Twenty-third Street with its famous shops, and narrow Twenty-eighth Street, with its numerous cheap table d'hôtes, each of which is the best in town; and 125th Street, which is a Harlem combination of both. These are the streets by which surface-car passengers are transferred all over the city. These are the streets upon which those who have grown up with New York, if they have paid attention to its growth as well as their own, delight to meditate. Even comparatively young old New Yorkers can say "I remember when" of memorable evenings in the old Academy of Music in Fourteenth Street off Union Square, and of the days when Delmonico's had got as far up-town as Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue.
Furthermore, it could easily be shown that, for those who love old New 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]
