"Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of the minute."
The New-York of 1851 resembles her of fifty years ago scarcely more than the West End of London resembles Birmingham or Bristol. In 1800, one might easily believe the old story, that the streets were originally laid out by the cows, as they went out to pasture and returned at evening. Streets running in all sorts of curves crossed each other at all conceivable angles, making a maze without a plan, through which strangers needed to drop beans, like the children in the fairy-tale, to avoid being wholly lost. Fortunately, the city is not very wide, so that Broadway, which always ran lengthwise through the centre, has served as a tolerable clue from the beginning. Great sacrifices have been made for the sake of regularity, and there is now a tolerable degree of it, even in the old, or south part of the city, cross streets running from Broadway to either river with an approach to parallelism. In the early time, the town presented no bad resemblance in shape to the phenomenon called a "mackerel sky," Broadway representing the spine, and the streets running to either river the ribs, while northward and southward was a tapering off; on the south, where the Battery juts into the bay, and on the north, where the uppermost houses gradually narrowed till Broadway came to an end, with few buildings on either side of it. But in these later days, when Knickerbocker limits no longer confine the heterogeneous thousands that have pushed the old race from their stools, sixteen great avenues, each a hundred feet wide, run parallel with Broadway and the rivers, cut at right angles by wide streets, lined with costly dwellings, churches, schools, and other edifices. As is usual in great commercial towns, the lowest portion of the population haunt the neighborhood of the wharfs; and, in New-York, the eastern side of the city in particular attracts this class. But, perhaps, no city of the size has fewer streets of squalid poverty, although the encouragement given to immigration is such that there must necessarily be great numbers of wretched immigrants who have neither the will nor the power to live by honest industry. It is in truth for this class of persons that hospitals and penitentiaries are here built, foreigners supplying at least nine-tenths of the inmates of those institutions in New-York.
As to clean and healthy streets, the upper and newer part of the city has, of course, the advantage. It is laid out with special attention to drainage, for which the ridged shape of the ground affords great facility; the island on which New-York is built being highest in the middle, and sloping off, east and west, towards the Hudson and East Rivers.
Manhattan island is about fourteen miles long, with an average breadth of one mile and a half, the greatest width being two and a half miles. At the southerly point of the island, where the Hudson unites with the strait called the East River, lies one of the finest harbors in the world, affording anchorage for ships of the largest size, and surrounded by cultivated land and elegant residences. Several fortified islands diversify this bay, and numerous forts occupy the points and headlands on either side. The general appearance of the bay is that of great beauty, of the milder sort. The shores are rather low, but finely wooded, and the approach to the city from the ocean very striking. The battery, a promenade covered with fine old trees, offers a rural front, but the forests of masts stretching far up either river attract the stranger's attention much more forcibly. The coup d'œil is here magnificent. Brooklyn, on Long Island, a large city, whose white columned streets gleam along the heights, giving a palatial grandeur to the view, is just opposite New-York, on the south-east, and divided from it by so narrow a strait that it appears more truly to be a part of it than the Surrey side of the Thames to belong to London, although the rush of commerce forbids bridges. On the west side, the banks of the Hudson are lined with towns, an outcrop of the central metropolis.
Entering the city from any quarter, we are sure to find ourselves in Broadway, long the pride of the inhabitants, though its glories are rather traditional than actual, as compared with the greatest thoroughfares of commerce in older cities. It extends, eighty feet in width, two miles and a half in a straight line, northward from the Battery; and then, making a slight deflection at Union Park, runs on, ad infinitum, though it is at present but sparely built after another mile or so. Nearly all the best shops in the retail trade are in this street, some of them comparable to the richest of London and Paris, and the whole affording means for every device of elegant decoration and boundless expenditure. Residences here are comparatively few, especially in the lower part, the din of business and the ceaseless thunder of omnibuses having driven far away every family that has the liberty of choice. Many churches still exist in Broadway, which, on Sunday, is as quiet as any other street. Other architectural decorations there are few. The City Hall, a costly building of white marble, too long and low to make a dignified appearance, but standing in a well-wooded park, of some eleven or twelve acres in extent, has a certain beauty, especially when seen gleaming through the spray of a fountain, which sends up a tall jet at some distance in front of the building. Farther on is a hospital, of rather ancient date for this western world—built in 1775, and now surrounded by venerable trees, and clothed in the richest ivy. After this, scarcely a break in the line of dazzling shops, until we reach the vicinity of Union Square, a pretty oval park, with a noble fountain in the midst, and lofty and handsome houses all round, situated on perhaps the highest ground on this part of the island. Half a mile beyond is Madison Square, a green expanse, about which wealthy citizens are now building elegant residences of brown freestone, with some attempt at architectural display. Near this, still northward, is the lower or distributing reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct, standing on high ground, and looking something like a fortress—no great ornament, perhaps, but an object of much interest.
Fifth Avenue, on the west of Broadway, stretching north from Washington Square—an inclosure of about ten acres, well planted with elms and maples—it is the Belgravia of New-York—in the estimation of those who inhabit it; a paradise of marble, upholstery and cabinet work, at least; not much dignified, as yet, by works of high art, though the region boasts a few specimens, ancient and modern; but in luxury and extravagance emulating the repudiated aristocracy of the old world. This is, and is to be, a street of palaces and churches throughout its whole extent, always provided that the changeful current of Fashion do not set in some other direction too soon, carrying with it all the millionaires that are yet to arise within the century. In that event, the costly mansions of Fifth Avenue will inevitably become hotels and boarding-houses,—a reverse which so many grandly intended houses of elder New-York have already experienced.
The distinction of East and West is marked in New-York as in London, though for different reasons. In London, the prevalence of westerly winds drives the surge waves of coal-smoke eastward, blackening every thing; in New-York the western part of the town is cleaner, because newer and built on a better plan. Broadway is the dividing line; and it is a violent strain upon one's standing in fashionable life to live eastward of it, below Union Square, even in the most expensive style. But the eastward world has its own great thoroughfare, wider than Broadway, though not as long, running nearly parallel with the main artery of the grander world. The Bowery—so called when it was the high road leading through the public farms or Boweries—is a sort of exaggerated Bishopsgate-street and Shoreditch united; more trades and callings, more articles offered for sale in the open air, more noise, more people, and at least as much natural, undisguised, vulgar life. A railway for horse-carriages passes through it, and hundreds of omnibuses and stage coaches, not to speak of carts and country wagons without number. A "rowdy" theatre or two, a hay-market, great clothing-shops, and livery-stables, a riding-school, an anatomical museum—such are its ornaments. Not a church countenances its entire length, nor any other public building aiming at elegance or dignity. The goods displayed in the windows are of a secondary quality, at best; and the people who throng the pavements are people who want second-rate articles. Yet the Bowery is worth walking through by a stranger, little as it is known or valued by the native citizen, whose lot has been cast in choicer neighborhood. The common pulse of humanity beats audibly and visibly there, wrapped in no cloak of convention or pseudo-refinement. The fundamental business of life is carried on there as being confessedly the main business; not, as in Broadway, as if it were a thing to be huddled into a corner to make way for the carved-work and gilding, the drapery and color of the great panorama. There is another reason why the Bowery has a claim on our attention. Strange as it may seem, it is from the people who haunt the Bowery that the United States take their character abroad. Foreigners insist upon considering the "Bowery b'hoys,"—a class at once an enigma and a terror to the greater portion of their fellow-citizens,—as distinctive specimens of Americanism, much to the horror of their more fastidious countrymen. This we think a great mistake, though truly there are worse people in the world than the "Bowery b'hoys," who are noted for a sort of bonhomie, in the midst of all their coarseness.
As to parks and public promenades, New-York is lamentably deficient—the whole space thus appropriated being hardly more than eighty acres, for the refreshment of a population which will soon cease to be counted by hundreds of thousands. "Eight million dollars worth of land," say the city fathers, "is as much as we can afford!" The penurious estimate which has resulted in this miserable deficiency has been long and ably combated by patriotic and clear-headed citizens, but their influence has as yet proved wholly unavailing. Public meetings have been now and then held, with a view of exciting a general interest in this important matter, but they invariably end in fruitless resolutions. The island still affords good sites for public gardens, but there is scarce a gleam of hope that any of them will be reserved. The few breathing spaces that now exist, are thronged, and by the very people who most need them—children and laboring people. The vicinity of the fountains is full of loiterers, quietly watching the play of the bright water, and growing, we may hope, milder and better by the gentle influence. At certain hours of the day whole troops of merry children, with their attendants, make the walks alive and resounding. The hoop, the ball, the velocipede, the skipping-rope, rejoice the grass and sunshine, and the eyes of the thoughtful spectator, who sees health in every bounding motion, and hears joy in every tiny shout. It is strange that the citizens do not, one and all, cry aloud for the easy and happy open-air extension of their too often crowded homes. London is the world's example in this thing.
A park suited to riding and driving is especially needed because of the wretched pavement which still disgraces the greater portion of New-York. The first thing that strikes an American returning from Europe is the inferiority of the pavements of the Atlantic cities; and New-York, in particular, is, in this respect, hardly a whit before the far-famed corduroy roads of the wild West. In 1846 a great improvement was begun, called, after the inventor, the Russ pavement, and thus far seeming to meet all the difficulties of the case, including the severe frosts and sudden changes of the climate. The plan is, however, so expensive that it will probably be long before it is fully adopted. It requires square blocks of stone, about ten inches in depth, laid diagonally with the wheel-track, and resting on a substructure of concrete, which again rests upon a foundation of granite chips, the whole forming a consolidated mass, eighteen inches thick, so arranged as to be lifted in sections to afford access to the gas and water pipes. This has been largely tried in Broadway, and has stood the test for six years.
Foreigners are apt to complain, not only, as they justly may, of the bad pavements of New-York, but, somewhat unreasonably, of the obstructions in the street, caused by incessant building, laying pipes, &c. They say, "Will the city never be finished?" Not very soon, we think. It is difficult to do in fifty years the work of five hundred, without a good deal of bustle and inconvenience. Rapid growth in population and wealth necessitates continual improvement in accommodation. We may, indeed, be allowed to fret a little, when the street is for weeks or months encumbered by the building materials of a merchant, who sees fit to pull down a very good house in order to erect one that shall cost a quarter of a million, merely because his neighbor has contrived to outshine him in that particular. But when sewers and gas, and Croton water, are in question, we must not grumble. These great public blessings are spreading into every quarter, carrying health and decency with them. The great sewers are arched canals of hard brick, from three to nine feet in diameter, and laid in mortar in the most durable manner. Above them are the gas-pipes, an immense net-work; and nearly on a level with these last are the huge veins and arteries, by means of which the Croton supplies life and health to the inhabitants, once half-poisoned by water which shared every salt that enters into the subsoil of a great city. Analysis shows the Croton water to be of great purity—holding in solution the salts of lime and magnesia in proportions hardly appreciable, only about two and eight-tenths of a grain to the gallon. The river springs from granitic hills, and flows through a clear upland region, free from marsh, and covered with grazing farms.