THE WALK UP-TOWN
THE walk up-town reaches from the bottom of the buzzing region where money is made to the bright zone where it is spent and displayed; and the walk is a delight all the way. It is full of variety, color, charm, exhilaration—almost intoxication, on its best days.
Indeed, there are connoisseurs in cities who say that of all walks of this sort in the world New York's is the best. The walk in London from the city to the West End by way of Fleet Street, the Strand, and Piccadilly, is teeming with interest to the tourist—Temple Bar, St. Clement's, Trafalgar Square and all—but, for a walk up-town, a walk home to be taken daily, it is apt to be oppressive and saddening, even without the fog; so say many of those who know it best. Paris, with her boulevards, undoubtedly has unapproachable opportunities for the flaneur, but like Rome and Vienna and most of the other European capitals, she has no one main artery for a homeward stream of working humanity at close of day; and that is what "the walk up-town" means.
... immigrant hotels and homes.
No. 1 Broadway.
Lower Broadway during a parade.
And yet so few, comparatively, of those whose physique and office hours permit, take this appetizing, worry-dispelling walk of ours; this is made obvious every afternoon, from three o'clock on, by the surface and elevated cars, into which the bulk of scowling New York seems to prefer to push itself, after a day spent mostly indoors; here to get bumped and ill-tempered, snatching an occasional glimpse of the afternoon paper held in the hand which does not clutch the strap overhead. It seems a great pity. The walk is just the right length to take before dressing for dinner. A line drawn eastward from the park plaza at Fifty-eighth Street will almost strike an old mile-stone still standing in Third Avenue, which says, "4 miles from City Hall, New York." The City Hall was in Wall Street when those old-fashioned letters were cut, and Third Avenue was the Post Road.
The beautiful spire of Trinity