By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
New York City, which is the soul and center of a series of cities which may be called the Metropolitan District, has not far from a million and a half of people, nearly all of whom reside upon an island of rocky formation, surrounded by deep water. Within recent years a district to the north of the island has been annexed to the city, and city protection and privileges partly extended to it, and new parks have just been legalized there, but little that has yet been done in the outlying districts and cities has been effectual to thin out the population of the great central city, whose inhabitants are gathered from all races.
The island of New York extends over thirteen miles along the North River, and it is densely built up as far as 70th Street, on that river, and on the East River it is almost solidly built up to Harlem, which is six or seven miles from the point of the city at the Battery. The middle of the island, to the extent of nine hundred acres, is occupied by the Central Park and other parks, and broad driveways or boulevards take up considerable of the unoccupied or partially occupied portion, so that the time is admitted to be near at hand when all this island will be covered with houses. The character of these houses is already indicated by the tall flats, apartment houses, or tenement houses which are rising, apparently in the country parts, out of the green fields, and some of these are six, seven and eight stories high. Extensive apartment houses, in which the floors are rented or sold, are also being constructed in the vicinity of the park, sometimes to the height of nine, ten and even twelve stories.
It would therefore appear that the future residence of the New Yorker is to be some kind of a tenement structure after the fashion prevailing on the continent of Europe. For some of these costly tenements the rent is as high as six thousand to eight thousand dollars per annum. The cheapest tenements on New York island probably cost twenty dollars a month. Although a bridge has been built at enormous expense to connect New York and Brooklyn, it is a mere convenience, and has exercised no influence on the general character of New York island. While Brooklyn is growing, Harlem relatively is growing faster, at the northern end of New York island. The elevated railroads, of which there are four parallel to each other up and down the length of the island as far as the park, and three the whole length of the island, or to Harlem River, have rather exercised a recalling influence to the city from the suburbs, and the tendency is to extend New York across the Harlem River rather than across the Hudson or the East rivers and the bay, which are often embarrassed by fog, ice, and storm.
The New York manufactures have so expanded that the operatives do not go from the city to the country parts to do a day’s labor, but come from the country parts into New York to earn a living. The protective tariff has transferred the foreign commerce of New York to foreign nations, while it has made New York City our largest manufacturing city. These manufactories compressed on that small island necessarily partake of the tenement house character, and it has been necessary for the legislature to pass laws prohibiting the making of cigars in the tenement houses where the people live. A few years ago I was requested to visit some of these cigar tenements in the vicinity of Tompkins Square, and further uptown, and I found an extraordinary condition of things which has not yet been checked by legislation, because after the prohibitory law was passed it was found to be defective in phraseology, and has to be reënacted. In these tenements could be seen a whole family, men, women and children, living and working their tobacco, and at the same time cooking, sleeping, eating and entertaining, with the tobacco spread over the floor to be dried at night, the children walking on it, and the vapors of the tobacco filling the lungs of the sleepers. In the morning the man got up and began to cut, trim and fill cigars, and put them on the bench before him, and there he sat all day, for at least six days in the week, seldom going out to let the rooms be aired, and some of these buildings, from four to six stories high, were nothing but pigeon cases of such tobacco tenements.
It is to be doubted whether the law can reach such cases, because detection would always involve an intrusion into the living apartments of families, and would make in time such hostility that the law itself would have to be repealed. As in Lyons, France, and in Belgium, where the silk weavers, the lace makers, etc., take their work home, there is no doubt a tendency in New York City to live and toil on the same premises. The population of New York is made up from most of the laboring nations, and each of these brings its own habits, and expects to exercise them freely in this free country. The vices of European laboring society have been imported with the virtues. The city electing its officials by suffrage modifies its usages and government in the direction of these new elements, and the foreigner soon picks up from his demagogues and the small newspapers published in his own language aggressive ideas, which some think are rapidly becoming a great defensive system, some day to plague the metropolis.
Whatever we native Americans think about the foreign methods of living in New York, those methods are as natural to the immigrants as it is for us to occupy a whole house. Indeed, the American in such cities as New York is becoming of necessity the imitator of the foreigner, because the rent of a whole establishment on that cramped island is out of the reach of any but the well employed and independently prosperous.
As this article may come to eyes which have never seen the great city, I will convey to you some slight notion of the structure of New York island. This island is made of gneiss rock, or hard granite, which apparently extended in ribs or ridges, sometimes depressed, sometimes high, and in places like islands, and between these ridges and islands sand and gravel have been deposited, so that when you come to lay out a street, to lay pipes under the street, or to excavate for a house, you may strike solid rock, or you may find quicksand, and therefore the cost of building on the island is greater than almost anywhere on the globe. Probably the steam drills employed to blast on New York island exceed in number all the steam drills in the entire United States. Most of our cities are built on clay or sandy soil, and a cellar can be excavated in two or three days, whereas I have seen building lots in New York, only a hundred feet by twenty to twenty-five feet wide, which took months, or indeed a whole building season, to get the rock out, and when the cellar is excavated it is like a great trough or hole made in solid stone. Naturally, a man who has been at such expense to start his house looks into the air for his recompense. With that solid foundation in the stone he has procured from the cellar he begins to build a tower instead of a house, and to let it out in floors, and for each of these floors he expects to receive higher rent than is elsewhere paid for a large and complete house.
A friend of mine who recently failed disastrously, showed me one of these new flat houses he had put up. It was three lots broad, each lot one hundred feet deep, making a front of seventy-five feet. Each of these lots he held to be worth $30,000, making $90,000 for the situation, though it was not on a fashionable street, but rather up a side street. He then raised one upon another seven apartments on each side of the entrance, and over the entrance were six bachelor apartments, each consisting of only one room, a bed alcove, and a bath closet. Consequently, there would be in such a building twenty tenants, of whom fourteen would be families. These fourteen paid from $1,800 to $1,300 apiece. Each had the same number of rooms, in the same space, the rents only being modified by the position of the floor. The lower floors of course rented higher than the upper floors. Generally speaking, each living place consisted of a parlor and a side room, either library or sitting room, a bath room, and a servant’s bath also, about three bed rooms, beside a servant’s bed room, a dining room, a kitchen, pantries and wardrobes. The only economy in such living lies in the reduction of the number of servants, and in the less expense of furnishing. The proprietor has to keep an engineer, an assistant engineer, a porter and assistant, and perhaps a housekeeper, and of course a watchman. Elevators front and rear accommodate the landlords and the servants. Such a building, exclusive of the ground, probably cost $150,000, and therefore it would be hard work to make ten per cent. upon it after paying salaries, taxes, etc. The bachelor apartments rented from $50 to $30 per month.