Peculiarities of American Cities

by Willard W. Glazier

Broadway, almost from the Battery, is bordered by magnificent structures. The lower end of this thoroughfare is devoted principally to insurance, bankers' and brokers', railway and other offices, and to the wholesale trade. Above Canal street the retail stores begin to appear at intervals, and as one approaches Ninth street ladies multiply on the western pavement. From Ninth street up, the retail trade monopolizes the street, and on pleasant afternoons the pavement is filled with elegantly dressed ladies who are out shopping. At Tenth street Broadway makes a bend to the westward, and on the eastern side of the way, facing obliquely down the thoroughfare, is Grace Church and parsonage, both elegant structures. Grace Church is a fashionable place of worship, and the scene of the most exclusive weddings and funerals of the city.

Union Square is reached at Fourteenth street. It is oval in form, with beautiful green turf, trees and walks, and contains a fine fountain in the centre, a colossal bronze statue of Washington on a granite pedestal, and statues of Hamilton and Lafayette. Along its northern end is a wide plaza for military parades and popular assemblies. Union Square was once a fashionable residence quarter, but it is now occupied almost wholly by business. At Twenty-third street, Broadway runs diagonally across Fifth avenue, touching the southwestern corner of Madison Square—not so very long since the most genteel locality in New York, but now, like Union Square, becoming occupied by hotels and business houses.

Fifth Avenue, the most splendid avenue in America, makes a beginning at Washington Square, a lovely public park embowered in trees, which was once Potters' Field, the pauper burying ground, and where one hundred thousand bodies lie buried. New York University and Dr. Hutton's Church face the square on the east. The southern side is given up to business, but the north and west are still occupied by handsome private residences. Fifth Avenue is a continuous line of palatial hotels, gorgeous club-houses, brownstone mansions and magnificent churches. No plebeian horse cars are permitted to disturb its well-bred quiet, and the rumble of elegant equipages is alone heard upon its Belgian pavement.

Business is already invading the lower portion of the avenue, piano warehouses being especially prominent. On Madison Square are the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Hoffman House. Opposite the latter house is a monument erected to General Worth, a hero of the Mexican war. Delmonico's and the Café Brunswick, rival restaurants, occupy opposite corners of Twenty-sixth street. The Stevens House is an elegant family hotel on Fifth Avenue and Twenty-seventh street, running to Broadway. At Twenty-ninth street is the Congregational Church, a stately granite edifice; and on the same street, just east of the Avenue, is the Church of the Transfiguration, popularly known as "the little church around the corner," a name bestowed on it by a neighboring clergyman, who, refusing to bury an actor from his own church, referred the applicant to this. At the corner of Thirty-fourth street is the Stewart marble palace already referred to. From Forty-first to Forty-second streets is the distributing reservoir of the Croton Water-works, with walls of massive masonry in the Egyptian style. The Crystal Palace of 1853 occupied this square. The Avenue has at this place ascended to a considerable elevation, and the locality, embracing several streets and avenues, is known as Murray Hill, the most wealthy and exclusive quarter of the city. At Forty-third street is the Jewish Temple Emanuel, the finest specimen of Moorish architecture in the country.

Occupying the block between Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets is the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Patrick, commenced in 1858, and with the towers still incomplete. It is of white marble, in decorated Gothic style; and the largest and handsomest church in the country. It is elaborately carved, the numerous rose windows seeming almost like lace work. When completed it will have two spires, ornamented with buttresses, niches with statues, and pinnacles, and three hundred and twenty-eight feet in height. The interior is as beautiful as a dream. It is entirely of white marble. Massive pillars with elaborately carved capitals support the arched roof, while the light is softened and subdued by beautiful stained-glass windows. The building is in such perfect proportion that one does not realize its immense size until he descries the priest at the altar, so far away as to seem a mere child.

But eight squares away is Central Park, the great breathing-place of the city. Looking back, down the Avenue, from the entrance to the Park, there is seen a forest of spires rising from magnificent churches which we have had no space to mention, and blocks upon blocks of palatial residences, the homes of the millionaires of the city. The eastern side of Fifth Avenue, facing the Park for a number of blocks, is occupied by elegant private residences.

Madison Avenue starts from Madison Square, running through to Forty-second street. It, with parallel avenues and places, shares the prestige of Fifth Avenue, as being the aristocratic quarter of the city.

Fourteenth street, once a fashionable thoroughfare, is now fast being occupied by large retail stores.

The avenues, commencing at First, and numbering as high as Eleventh, run north and south, parallel to Fifth Avenue, already described. They are supplemented on the eastern side, at the widest part of the island, by avenues A, B, C, and D. Most of these avenues commence on the eastern side at Houston street, the northern boundary of the city in the early part of the present century. On the western side, with the exception of Fifth and Sixth, they commence but little below Fourteenth street. They are mostly devoted to retail trade, and, on seeing their miles of stores, one wonders where, even in a great city like New York, all the people come from who support them.

Second Avenue is almost the only exception among the avenues. Early in the century it was what Fifth Avenue has become to-day, the fashionable residence avenue; and even yet some of the old Knickerbocker families cling to it, living in their roomy, old-fashioned houses, and maintaining an exclusive society, while they look down with disdain upon the parvenues of Fifth avenue. Stuyvesant Square, intersected by Second avenue, and bounded on the east by Livingston Place, and on the west by Rutherford Place, is one of the quarters of the ancient régime. Here still live the Rutherfords and the Stuyvesants. Here is the residence of Hamilton Fish and William M. Evarts. St. George Church, with the largest seating capacity of any church in the city, faces this square.