A Fourteenth Street Tree.
Nowadays they seem such narrow, crowded little runways, these down-town cross streets; so crowded that men and horses share the middle of them together; so narrow that from the windy tops of the irregular white cliffs which line them you must lean far over in order to see the busy little men at the dry asphalt bottom, far below, rapidly crawling hither and thither like excitable ants whose hill has been disturbed. And in modern times they seem dark and gloomy, near the bottom, even in the clear, smokeless air of Manhattan, so that lights are turned on sometimes at mid-day, for at best the sun gets into these valleys for only a few minutes, so high have the tall buildings grown. But they were not narrow in those old days of the Dutch; seemed quite the right width, no doubt, to gossip across, from one Dutch stoop to another, at close of day, with the after-supper pipe when the chickens and children had gone to sleep and there was nothing to interrupt the peaceful, puffing conversation except the lazy clattering bell of an occasional cow coming home late for milking. Nor were they gloomy in those days, for the sun found its way unobstructed for hours at a time, when they were lined with small low-storied houses which the family occupied upstairs, with business below. Everyone went home for luncheon in those days—a pleasant, simple system adhered to in this city, it is said, until comparatively recent times by more than one family whose present representatives require for their happiness two or three homes in various other parts of the world in addition to their town house. This latter does not contain a shop on the ground floor. It is situated far up the island, at some point beyond the marsh where their forebears went duck-shooting (now Washington Square), or in some cases even beyond the site of the second kissing bridge, over which the Boston Post road crossed the small stream where Seventy-seventh Street now runs.
Such as broad Twenty-third Street with its famous shops.
Now, being such a narrow island, none of its cross streets can be very long, as was pointed out, even at the city's greatest breadth. The highest cross-street number I ever found was 742 East Twelfth. But these down-town cross streets are much shorter, even those that succeed in getting all the way across without stopping; they are so abruptly short that each little street has to change in the greatest possible hurry from block to block, like vaudeville performers, in order to show all the features of a self-respecting cross street in the business section. Hence the sudden contrasts. For instance, down at one end of a certain well-known business street may be seen some low houses of sturdy red brick, beginning to look antique now with their solid walls and visible roofs. They line an open, sunny spot, with the smell of spices and coffee in the air. A market was situated here over a hundred years ago, and this broad, open space still has the atmosphere of a marketplace. The sights and smells of the water-front are here, too, ships and stevedores unloading them, sailors lounging before dingy drinking-places, and across the cobble-stones is a ferry-house, with "truck" wagons on the way back to Long Island waiting for the gates to open, the unmistakable country mud, so different from city mire, still sticking in cakes to the spokes, notwithstanding the night spent in town. Nothing worth remarking, perhaps, in all this, but that the name of the street is Wall Street, and all this seems so different from the Wall Street of a stone's-throw inland, with crowded walks, dapper business men, creased trousers, tall, steel buildings, express elevators, messengers dashing in and out, tickers busy, and all the hum and suppressed excitement of the Wall Street the world knows, as different and as suddenly different as the change that is felt in the very air upon stepping across through the noise and shabby rush of lower Sixth Avenue into the enchanted peace of Greenwich village, with sparrows chirping in the wistaria vines that cover old-fashioned balconies on streets slanting at unexpected angles.
A Cross Street at Madison Square.