New York Sketches

by Jesse Lynch Williams

Across Twenty-fourth Street—Madison Square when the Dewey Arch was there.

The typical part of these down-town cross streets is, of course, that latter part, the section more or less near Broadway, and crowded to suffocation with great businesses in great buildings, commonly known as hideous American sky-scrapers. This is the real down-town to most of the men who are down there, and who are too busy thinking about what these streets mean to each of them to-day to bother much with what the streets were in the past, or even to notice how the modern tangle of spars and rigging looks as seen down at the end of the street from the office window.

Of course, all these men in the tall buildings, whether possessed of creative genius or of intelligence enough only to run one of the elevators, are alike Philistines to those persons who find nothing romantic or interesting in our modern, much-maligned sky-scrapers, which have also been called "monuments of modern materialism," and even worse names, no doubt, because they are unprecedented and unacademic, probably, as much as because ugly and unrestrained. To many of us, however, shameless as it may be to confess it, these down-town streets are fascinating enough for what they are to-day, even if they had no past to make them all the more charming; and these erect, jubilant young buildings, whether beautiful or not, seem quite interesting—from their bright tops, where, far above the turmoil and confusion, Mrs. Janitor sits sewing in the sun while the children play hide-and-seek behind water-butts and air-shafts (there is no danger of falling off, it is a relief to know, because the roof is walled in like a garden), down to the dark bottom where are the safe-deposit vaults, and the trusty old watchmen, and the oblong boxes with great fortunes in them, along-side of wills that may cause family fights a few years later, and add to the affluence of certain lawyers in the offices overhead. Deep down, thirty or forty feet under the crowded sidewalk, the stokers shovel coal under big boilers all day, and electricians do interesting tricks with switchboards, somewhat as in the hold of a modern battle-ship. In the many tiers of floors overhead are the men with the minds that make these high buildings necessary and make down-town what it is, with their dreams and schemes, their courage and imagination, their trust and distrust in the knowledge and ignorance of other human beings which are the means by which they bring about great successes and great failures, and have all the fun of playing a game, with the peace of conscience and self-satisfaction which come from hard work and manly sweat.

Here during daylight, or part of it, they are moving about, far up on high or down near the teeming surface, in and out of the numerous subdivisions termed offices, until finally they call the game off for the day, go down in the express elevator, out upon the narrow little streets, and turn north toward the upper part of the island. And each, like a homing pigeon, finds his own division or subdivision in a long, solid block of divisions called homes, in the part of town where run the many rows of even, similar streets.

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.