The Project Gutenberg eBook of New York, by Peter Marcus This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title:New York The Nation's Metropolis Author: Peter Marcus Contributor: J. Monroe (James Monroe) Hewlett Release Date: February 16, 2021 [eBook #64572] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Chuck Greif, ellinora and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW YORK *** Contents. (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.) (etext transcriber's note) NEW YORK THE NATION’S METROPOLIS NEW YORK THE NATION’S METROPOLIS BY PETER MARCUS WITH AN APPRECIATION BY J. MONROE HEWLETT PRESIDENT OF THE ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE OF NEW YORK {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} NEW YORK BRENTANO’S PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY BRENTANO’S All rights reserved THE PLIMPTON PRESS NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A {6} {7} CONTENTS I. Times Square. II. Lower Broadway. III. Exchange Place. IV. Looking West on Brooklyn Bridge. V. The City Hall. VI. Wall Street. VII. The Old Bridge. VIII. The Tombs Prison. IX. Looking West Along Peck Slip. X. The East Pier, Brooklyn Bridge. XI. The Municipal Building. XII. New York from Fulton Ferry. XIII. The Metropolitan Tower. XIV. The Cathedral on the Avenue. XV. Queensboro Bridge. XVI. Fifth Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street. XVII. Hell Gate Bridge. XVIII. Soldiers and Sailors Monument. XIX. The Cathedral on the Heights. XX. The Viaduct. XXI. Grant’s Tomb. XXII. The Battleship “Oklahoma” on the Hudson. XXIII. High Bridge. XXIV. Washington Bridge. XXV. Grand Central Station. {8} {9} N NEW YORK THE CITY OF VIOLENT CONTRASTS EW YORK is preëminently the City of Violent Contrasts. Towering shafts of brick and stone and steel, soaring traceries of cables, derricks, girders and electric signs, smooth stretches of gray asphalt, subway and sewer excavations, broad harbors and stately ships, oily canals and garbage dumps, classic columns, gilded domes, palaces and shanties, parks and fountains, factory chimneys and gas tanks; these are a few of the items that occur in this as in other cities, but nowhere else are these and other manifestations of beauty and ugliness, prosperity and squalor brought into such vivid and striking relief, and of no other city can we say with equal truth that it defies the effort to summarize briefly its typical characteristics. Fragments and details suggestive of widely differing phases of its life persistently force themselves into a single picture without regard to orderly classification or proper dramatic sequence. Appreciation of the beauty of nature as undisturbed by man seems inherent in our race, but man in his material progress is constantly defacing nature, constantly destroying, constantly substituting forms and arrangements dictated by utility, not by beauty, and shocking to our finer instincts. Then imagination steps in and gradually invests these new forms with new meanings derived from history, logic, romance, symbolism and pure poetic fancy. Some are condemned and discarded as unnecessary or useless, while others at first glance equally ugly acquire a significance and a soul. Of him who would interpret such a theme as New York our first demand must therefore be prophetic vision. To the artist who seeks to penetrate the outer surfaces of his subject and to suggest and interpret an activity, a creative power, a vastness of scale and a variety of functions beyond human power to portray, charcoal is a most, perhaps the most, inspiring medium. It is surely the medium that most readily lends itself to the simultaneous expression of form, mass, line and tone. Hopkinson Smith once said that Venice is nothing but air and water. There all else has been so softened and moulded and enveloped as to become part and parcel of sea and cloud. The portrayal of this is preëminently a painter’s job. But New York, in addition to being a lot of other things, is a Venice in the making, and all the ugly paraphernalia by means of which this making is slowly going forward, all the unlovely processes, physical and chemical, structural and commercial, must be recognized and expressed and by the light of poetic vision be made a part of its beauty and romance. A painter might perhaps strive to envelope and obscure whatever seemed objectionable in a glory of color. An architect might lay undue stress upon the many examples of distinction in the work of his craft, which are often all but details in a vast scheme. The pictorial expression of New York requires a blending of the view points of the painter and the architect in which both contribute to an image of something not yet realized, perhaps never to be fully realized, and help in dramatizing the struggle towards that thing. Peter Marcus is a painter not an architect, but he is also a designer experienced in the goldsmith’s craft and there is evident in these charcoal studies a pleasure in the delineation of the tracery of bridge cables and trusses, derricks, scaffolding and electric signs, that in contrast with his broad and greatly simplified expressions of architectural form and detail, adds vastly to the eloquence of his work. Furthermore, he is a native of New York as his parents were before him, and the slow development by which New York has climbed upward has been part and parcel of his life. These are the days of a premature development or forcing of the artistic personality, usually expressed at some sacrifice of the prevailing characters and sentiment of his subject. To my mind the most distinctive quality of these drawings is found in the complete subjection of the artist to the spirit of the thing represented. Lower Manhattan from the harbor, from Brooklyn, from across the Hudson and from the air has been exploited to such an extent as to destroy for the native New Yorker much of the impressiveness of this majestic panorama, but lower Manhattan as seen from within by the man in the street has a different kind of impressiveness and pictorially has hitherto been somewhat neglected. Five drawings are devoted to this theme —“Lower Broadway,” “Wall Street,” “The City Hall,” “The Tombs,” and “Exchange Place.” These five drawings as a group seem to me to represent the culmination of the artist’s achievement. They show a simplicity and ease of method, a definite conception and an admirable sureness of values and textures. In imaginative power and sinister suggestion, “Exchange Place” brings to mind Bochlin’s “Isle of the Dead” and it is not like that, a creation of the imagination but a truthful characterization of locality. A second group of five are “The Metropolitan Tower,” “Times Square,” “Grand Central Station,” “The Municipal Building,” and “The Cathedral on the Avenue.” As these take us further up town into wider streets and more extended surfaces of sky, distance and silhouette become increasingly important in their composition, and what we lose in concentration we gain in tonal interest. “The Old Bridge,” “Washington Bridge,” “Queensboro Bridge,” and “The Viaduct,” fall naturally into a third group. Here we have a different manifestation of energy, the architecture of the engineer, crisp and {10} {11} {12} nervous in rendering, beautifully expressive of structure unadorned. If in the drawings thus far mentioned certain qualities of Piranesi, Méryon and Brangwyn are brought to mind; in “High Bridge,” “The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument,” “Hell Gate Bridge,” “Grant’s Tomb,” and “The Cathedral on the Heights,” there is equally a suggestion of Whistler. Less vigorous than the others in draughtsmanship, they are full of the suggestion of subdued color. By reason of the more subtle quality of their rendering, they lend themselves less readily to reproduction but even the reproductions convey beautiful impressions of shadowy foliage and quiet waters, bare, wind-swept branches and lonely spaces. It is safe to predict that if he continues his interest in charcoal as a medium, Peter Marcus will gradually and naturally acquire a more characteristic personal manner, but it will come from ease of mastery not from assumed eccentricity, and whatever he may achieve in future this series of drawings will stand as the most comprehensive and broadly discerning study of New York in its entirety that has yet been made. J. Monroe Hewlett President of the Architectural League of New York NEW YORK THE NATION’S METROPOLIS {13} {14} {15} {16} T I TIMES SQUARE IMES SQUARE is at the juncture of Broadway, Seventh Avenue and Forty-second Street. It is the very heart of uptown Broadway. Not the downtown Broadway of finance and of towering buildings, but the Broadway of theatres, restaurants, gay crowds and bright lights. It is bustling, congested, whirling. It is in a constant state of being rebuilt and repaired. Its sidewalks are littered with timbers, pipes, derricks and showy women. One hears jazz music and Klaxtons. It is the playground of the pleasure seeker, the battleground of the taxis, the dream of the chorus girl on the road, and the nightmare of the traffic cop. It is white lights, green lights, red lights,—flashing, spinning and winking. It is noise, crowds, motion. Sun and storm, day and night it roars along, churning,—a whirlpool in a mighty river. Incongruous, incessant, enormous. {17} {18} T II LOWER BROADWAY HE changes in New York in the last hundred years have been almost fabulous and yet the greatest of all perhaps has been lower Broadway. The proud steeple of Trinity Church once dominated a scene of fashion. It is now surrounded, dwarfed, overshadowed. Once Beaux and Belles, in Brummel-like hats and directoire skirts, came grandly here to worship,—and meant it. To-day, one picnics in the church yard and eats luncheon bananas on the graves. The enormous buildings of commerce, finance and trade are filled to overflowing. Here is progress, wealth and unlimited resource. It is a tremendous hive full of golden honey. And it is doubtless very good. But it is also good that this small church of a bygone time, still stands undaunted,—respected among these colossal towers; and that it still brings from the past some of that calm strength that is of even more lasting stuff than the masonry of the church itself, and that through it, the spirit of Old New York still “carries on” in Lower Broadway. {19} {20} R III EXCHANGE PLACE UNNING east from Broadway, just below Wall Street, is Exchange Place. It is a narrow street and a short, but it is not a little street. Huge buildings are its walls, which seem almost to meet overhead. Straight up they tower, face to face, staring at each other with countless eyes. Daily into these few buildings come thousands and thousands of people: old and young, gay and sad, financiers and office boys,—to work. It is a good-sized town in one street. It is a veritable cañon of the city. {21} {22} O IV LOOKING WEST ON BROOKLYN BRIDGE NE of the “Views of New York” most often pictured and most often snapped by amateur photographers is that of lower Manhattan as seen from a distance. And yet from a painting, photograph or drawing, who can feel what it is? As with pictures of the Grand Cañon, it seems impossible to realize the scale or to give the sense of its enormous size. To know what it is, one must have seen it. A picture, in this case, can only serve to refresh the memory of the man who knows. {23} {24} N V THE CITY HALL OTHING better exemplifies the growth of New York than does the City Hall, standing as it does almost in the shadow of the Municipal Building. In the old days when it was the principal structure on City Hall Park, its three stories afforded ample room in which to carry on the city’s affairs. It now houses only four offices, including that of the Mayor and that of the Art Commission. The other city offices, and their number is astounding, are elsewhere. But although the city has grown beyond recognition, the City Hall has proudly kept its place, and is honored as is a venerable old man, a bit less active than he was perhaps, but still the dignified head of a noble house. {25} {26} H VI WALL STREET ERE is the force of the sea and the romance of a fairy tale. Here immense fortunes are won in a day and lost in less, and the hopes and savings of years vanish in an hour. Here are bank messengers who become millionnaires overnight and capitalists who awake penniless. It is the market of the whole country and of others. Here are corn and wheat heaped in huge confusion, millions of bales of cotton and barrels of oil, high- piled above the sky-scrapers. Railroads, steamers, banks and bullion; raw gold and ore, coal, silver and copper, mounting to the clouds in glimmering pinnacles and smoking hills. And through it all and around it all, pulses the restless swing and change, the tireless tide of “the street.” And the traders! Giants and pygmies. Tumbling over each other, swarming, pushing, struggling. Here holding up a million head of cattle to the highest bidder, there beating down the price of a small nation. Here is a man beaten by a crowd for buying oil and there is another lying dead because he sold it. And away over there runs a little man who has succeeded in stealing a pig and is now scurrying off with it to safety. This mountainous market of hopes and of nations, of success and failure, of tragedy and comedy, of ships, steam, mines, and the lives of men, towering phantom-like and vast,—is Wall Street. {27} {28} B VII THE OLD BRIDGE ROOKLYN BRIDGE the first bridge between Manhattan and Long Island. The day of its opening was one of great public enthusiasm. Parties were given for walking or driving across the bridge, and that night half New York and Brooklyn were on the house-tops to watch it illuminated by fire-works. In those days it was called “The Bridge.” But now since the Manhattan, the Williamsburg and the Queensboro bridges have been added to the East River giants, it has become “The Old Bridge,” a name meaning many things to those who have known it from its beginning. Its erection was a long step towards close relationship between New York and the whole of Long Island. {29} {30} W VIII THE TOMBS PRISON HO can look at a prison without being glad that he is not in it? At the corner of Lafayette and Franklin streets is the great gray pile that is the Tombs. Its turrets, towers and narrow windows suggest dungeon keeps and feudal castles; its heavy gateways,—medieval strongholds. Its high exterior wall and “Bridge of Sighs” make one remember the lugubrious histories of the Doge’s Palace and of the Tour de Nesle. Those inside bear the double burden of being imprisoned and of knowing that close about them is all the life of the great city: its lights, its restaurants, its countless activities and its friends. Yes, looking at the Tombs, grim as it is, makes one feel strangely fortunate. {31} {32} I IX LOOKING WEST ALONG PECK SLIP F Father Knickerbocker should come over to New York on the Fulton Ferry, as in times gone by he used to do, when he had been visiting his respected neighbors on Brooklyn Heights; and if he should stand on South Street and look up Peck Slip and see it as it is to-day—how he would stare through his horn-rimmed spectacles and how his dear old heart would thump under his brass-buttoned coat! How he would pinch himself and wonder what it all could mean! What was that enormous shaft all white and glowing in the afternoon, rising eight hundred feet or eight thousand to the very sky? What were those towers, spires and turrets, soaring above the clouds, the brilliant sunlight gilding their countless feathers of steam and decking their phantom minarets with myriad candles? What could it mean? Had he landed on Manhattan or was this some island built by fairies or by elves? Nay, this place was far too fair for that, and must be then the work of witchcraft and the devil. Or was it, after all, the same old place that he had known, but grown and glorified beyond belief? And when he finally realized this to be the case, Father Knickerbocker without doubt would be wondrous proud of his great- grandsons and of the New York of to-day. {33} {34}