Peculiarities of American Cities

The bay is dotted with the shipping of every nation. Ocean steamers are setting out on their long journeys, or just returning from foreign shores. The finest steamboats and ferry boats in the world dart hither and thither, like water spiders on the surface of a glassy pool. Tugs, oyster boats, and sailing vessels of every size and description, are all represented. It is a moving panorama of water craft. As the city is approached, gradually, from the distant haze which broods over it, is evolved the forms of towers, spires, and roofs, and all its varied and picturesque outlines. The city presents a beautiful view from the bay. It rises gradually from the water's edge, some portions of it to a considerable elevation. A prominent feature in its outline is the graceful, tapering spire of Trinity Church, while higher still rises the clock-tower of the Tribune building. Other towers, spires and domes, break the monotony of roofs and walls. Approaching the mouth of the East River, the most striking objects are the massive towers of the Suspension Bridge, one on either shore, while between them is the bridge, swung upon what seem at a distance like the merest cobwebs.

At the extreme southern end of Manhattan Island is the Battery, already referred to, a park of several acres, protected by a granite sea wall. It presents a beautiful stretch of green turf, fine trees and wide pathways. On its southwest border is Castle Garden, a circular brick structure, which has a history of its own. It was originally constructed for a fort, and was afterwards converted into a summer garden. A great ball, to Marquis Lafayette, was given in it in 1824; and General Jackson in 1832, and President Tyler in 1843, held public receptions there. Then it was turned into a concert hall, and is chiefly famous, as such, as being the place where Jenny Lind made her first appearance in America. It is now an emigrant depot, and on days of the arrival of emigrant ships, it is very entertaining to watch the troops of emigrants, with their quaint gait, unfamiliar language, and strange, un-American faces, passing out of its portals, and making their first entrance into their new life on the western continent.

Just east of the Battery is Whitehall, the terminus of numerous omnibus and car lines, and the location of the Staten Island, South and Hamilton ferries. There, too, is the depot of the elevated railways, which extend in four lines, two on the eastern side and two on the western, the entire length of the city. The Corn Exchange, an imposing building, is at the upper end of Whitehall. At the junction of Whitehall with Broadway is a pretty, old-fashioned square, shaded with trees, and surrounded by an iron fence, called Bowling Green. This was the aristocratic quarter of the city in its early days. No. 1 Broadway, known as the "old Kennedy House," was built in 1760, and has been, successively, the residence and headquarters of Lords Conwallis and Howe, General Sir Henry Clinton and General Washington, while Talleyrand lived there during his stay in America. Benedict Arnold concocted his treasonable projects at No. 5 Broadway. At No. 11 General Gates had his headquarters. A few of the old buildings still remain, but they have many of them already given way to more modern and more pretentious structures. The posts of the iron fence around Bowling Green were once surmounted by balls, but they were knocked off and used for cannon balls during the Revolution. An equestrian statue of King George III, which once ornamented the Square, was melted up during the same period, and furnished material for forty-two thousand bullets.

The stranger in New York sometimes wonders why its principal business street is called Broadway, since there are many others which are quite as broad, some of them even broader. But if he will visit the extreme southern portion of the city, he will quickly comprehend. The old streets are narrow, being scarcely more than mere alleys, with pavements barely broad enough for two to walk abreast, so that Broadway, when originally laid out, seemed a magnificent thoroughfare.

As already described, Wall street formed the northern boundary of the young colonial city. In that early day, as now, wealth and fashion sought to avoid the more plebeian business streets, and so withdrew to the neighborhood of this northern boundary, and established, first their residences, and then their commercial houses. Wall street then became what it has since remained, the monetary centre of the city, only that now it is more than that; it is the great monetary centre of the entire country. On it and the blocks leading from it, all embraced in comparatively a few acres, are probably stored more gold and silver than in all the rest of the United States put together, while the business interests represented extend to every section, not only of the continent, but of the world.

Nowhere else in America are there such and so many magnificent buildings as in this section of the city. The streets are narrow, and overshadowed as they are by edifices six or more stories in height, seem to be dwarfed into mere alley-ways. Nearly every building is worthy of being called a temple or a palace. White marble and brown stone, with every style of architecture, abound. The United States Sub-Treasury Building, at the corner of Wall and Nassau streets, is a stately white marble structure in the Doric style, occupying the site of the old Federal Hall, in which Washington delivered his first inaugural address. Opposite is the white marble palace, in the style of the Renaissance, known as the Drexel Building. A little further down the street, at the corner of William, is the United States Custom House, formerly the Merchants' Exchange, built of granite. It has a portico supported by twelve massive columns, and its rotunda in the interior is supported by eight columns of Italian marble, the Corinthian capitals of which were carved in Italy. Opposite this building is the handsome structure of the Bank of New York. Banks, and bankers' and brokers' offices fill the street, and are crowded into the side streets.

On Broad street, a short distance below Wall, is the Stock Exchange, a handsome, but not large building, which in point of interest towers over all others in the locality. Here are daily exacted the comedies and tragedies of financial life, and here fortunes are made and fortunes lost by that system of gigantic gambling which has come to be known as "dealing in stocks." The operations of the Stock Exchange and Gold Room concern the whole country, both financially and industrially. Here is the true governmental centre, rather than at Washington. Wall and Broad streets dictate to Congress what the laws of the country concerning finance shall be, and Congress obeys. The Bankers' Association holds the menace over the government that if their interests are not consulted, they will bring ruin upon the country; and it is in their power to execute the threat. This power was illustrated on the twenty-fourth of. September, 1869, a day memorable as Black Friday in the history of Wall street. By a small but strong combination of bears, gold was made to fall in seventeen minutes, from 1.60 to 1.30, after a sale of $50,000,000 had been effected, and thousands of men, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, were ruined. Money was locked up, and could not be obtained even at a premium of one hundred per cent. This was the forerunner of the panic which came four years later, in 1873. Then the Union Trust Company failed, carrying with it Jay Cooke, Fisk and Hatch, Henry Clews, Howe and Macy, and other houses. For the first time during its existence the Stock Exchange was closed. Without its closing, not a merchant or banker could have survived. With its doors shut no contract could be completed nor stocks transferred, and it gave people time, which was absolutely needed, to do what they could; or else universal and overwhelming ruin would have swept over the country. As it was, not less than twenty thousand firms went under, and the stringency of the times was felt throughout the nation, depressing business and checking industry, until Congress took measures for its relief.

The names of Jacob Little, Leonard W. Jerome, Daniel Drew, Jay Cooke, Augustus Schell, Rufus Hatch, James Fisk, Jr., Jay Gould, Commodore Vanderbilt, Wm. H. Vanderbilt, and others, are permanently associated with Wall street. Jacob Little was known as the "Great Bear of Wall street." He originated the daring, dashing style of business in stocks, and was always identified with the bears. Meeting many reverses, he died at last, comparatively poor, the Southern Rebellion having swept away his little remaining fortune.

Leonard W. Jerome was at one time financially the rival of Vanderbilt and Drew, with a fortune estimated at from six to ten millions. He assumed an unequaled style of magnificence in living; but reverses came, and his splendid property on Madison Square, including residence, costly stables and private theatre, passed into the hands of the Union League Club, and was occupied by them until they went to their new quarters in Fifth Avenue. He himself is now forgotten, although a man scarcely past the prime of life; but his name is perpetuated in the Jerome Race Course.

Daniel Drew came to New York a poor boy, and, by persistent industry and business capacity, worked his way up to the highest round of the commercial ladder. In 1838 Drew put an opposition boat upon the Hudson, with fare at one dollar to Albany; and shortly afterward established the People's Line, which has been so successful. The panic of 1873 affected him seriously, but he staved off failure until 1875. He died in 1879, leaving next to nothing of the millions he had made during his lifetime. St. Paul's Church, in Fourth avenue; the Methodist Church at Carmel, Putnam County, New York, his native place; and Drew Theological Seminary, are monuments of his munificence while money was at his command.

Jay Cooke, having been already tolerably successful in business, amassed his millions by negotiating the war loan. He was regarded as one of the most prominent and safe financiers in the country; but in 1873 his failure was complete, and he has not since been heard of in financial circles.

Rufus Hatch is one of the successful stock operators of New York. Beginning life with nothing, and meeting reverses as well as successes, he is now known as one of the boldest and most gigantic of street operators.

The name of James Fisk, Jr., is associated with that of the Erie Railroad. He commenced life as a peddler. In 1868 he was appointed Comptroller of the Erie Road, and immediately set about building up the fortunes of that corporation. He appeared on Wall street as an assistant of Daniel Drew; made himself master of the Narragansett Steamship Company, and changed the condition of its affairs from disaster to success. He was one of the conspirators on Black Friday of 1869. He purchased the Opera House and the Fifth Avenue Theatre, finding them both good investments. He was shot by Edward S. Stokes, both himself and Stokes having become entangled with a woman named Helen Josephine Mansfield. After his death his supposed great private fortune dwindled into a comparatively small amount.

Commodore Vanderbilt also started in life a penniless boy, and became, eventually, the great King of Wall street. He built up the Harlem River Railroad, originated gigantic enterprises; sent a line of steamships across the ocean; gained control of the Hudson River Railroad and other roads; and died in 1877, worth not far from $100,000,000, the bulk of which he left to his eldest son, William H. Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt name has lost none of its lustre in the hands of the second generation. In less than ten years, after a career of unequaled brilliancy in the financial world, William H. Vanderbilt retired, with a fortune probably double that of his father.

Jay Gould also achieved success from small beginnings. He was in company with Fisk in the control of the Erie Railroad, and an associate in bringing about the disasters of Black Friday. Soon after the death of Greeley he secured a controlling interest in the New York Tribune. He is still a power in Wall street, and a great railroad magnate.

Broad street still has historical associations clinging about it. At the corner of Broad and Pearl streets is the famous De Lancy House, built early in the last century by Stephen De Lancy, a Huguenot refugee from Normandy. In this house, on the evening of November twenty-fifth, 1783, Washington and his staff, with Governor Clinton, celebrated the evacuation of the city by the British troops, and a few days later Washington bade his officers farewell, before departing for Annapolis to resign his commission. The house, having passed through successive stages of degeneration, had at one time sunk so low as to have become a German tenement house, with a lager beer saloon on the third floor. It has recently been renovated, and has again put on an air of respectability. It still bears upon it the words: "Washington's Headquarters." All about it are, here and there, the relics of the past, in the shape of houses which once were homes of the gentility, in colonial times.

Pearl street is said to have been originally a cow-path, and it is certainly crooked enough to justify such an origin. It is the locality of the Cotton Exchange and the cotton brokers.

On Broadway, at the head of Wall street, is Trinity Church, whose spire was, until a recent period, the highest in the city, being two hundred and eighty-four feet in height. In the early days, when the aristocracy were seeking the select neighborhood of Wall street, this church corporation established itself upon the utmost northern confines of the city. Its original edifice was destroyed by fire, and the present one was erected in 1846. It is of brown stone, in pure gothic architecture, and one of the most beautiful in New York. In the rich carving of the exterior numerous birds have built their nests. It has stained glass windows, and the finest chime of bells in America. Within the church is a costly reredos in memory of John Jacob Astor. A venerable graveyard lies to its north, where repose the remains of Alexander Hamilton, Captain Lawrence, of the Chesapeake, Robert Fulton, and the unfortunate Charlotte Temple. Some of the headstones, brown and crumbling with age, and bearing grotesque carved effigies of angels, date back for more than a century. In the northeast corner is a stately monument erected to the memory of the patriots who died in British prisons in New York during the Revolution. Trinity Parish is the oldest in the city, and fabulously wealthy, the corporation having been granted, by Queen Anne, in 1705, a large tract of land west of Broadway, extending as far north as Christopher street, known as the "Queen's Farm." The land, at that time remote from the city, now embraces some of its most valuable business portions. It is all leased of Trinity Church by the occupants, and the church, when the leases expire, becomes possessed of the buildings and improvements upon the ground, and is thus constantly augmenting its wealth. The claims of the Jans Anneke heirs involve this vast estate. It has three chapels, one of which, St. Paul's, is a few blocks above, on the corner of Broadway and Vesey streets, and is surrounded by a graveyard almost as ancient as that of Trinity.

At the northwest corner of Vesey street and Broadway is the Astor House, which, when it was built, something more than a generation ago, was a marvel of size and splendor, though it is now thrown in the shade by more modern structures. John Jacob Astor, its builder, was born near Heidelberg, in Germany, in 1765, and came penniless to the new world, to seek his fortune. After serving as a clerk, he then engaged in a small way in the fur business, which eventually grew to the proportions of the American Fur Company, and brought to its founder a large fortune, though no one outside his family ever knew its exact amount. He settled most of his affairs before his death, selling the Astor House to his son William, for the consideration of one dollar. Much of his property was in real estate, which constantly increased in value. He died in 1848, and his senior son being an imbecile, William B. Astor, the younger brother, inherited most of his father's fortune. The son became vastly richer than his father, dying in 1875, leaving behind him a fortune of $50,000,000, which was mostly bequeathed to his eldest son, John Jacob, who is now the head of the house.

The Post Office stands opposite the Astor House, on the east side of Broadway, at the southern extremity of City Hall Park. It is a massive structure, of Doric and Renaissance architecture, four stories in height, beside a Mansard roof, costing $7,000,000.

Half a century ago the City Hall Park was the chief park of New York, and the elegance and aristocracy of the city gathered around it. The City Hall stands in the park, and back of it is the new Court House, still unfinished, a massive edifice in Corinthian style, which, when completed, will have a dome two hundred and ten feet above the sidewalk.

On the western side of Broadway, opposite St. Paul's, is the splendid building of the New York Herald. The Herald is the representative newspaper of New York, and is probably the most enterprising sheet in the world. James Gordon Bennett, its founder, was born in Scotland in 1795, and came to America in 1819. After various literary ventures, he decided to establish a paper which should embody his ideal of a metropolitan journal. On the sixth of May, 1855, the first number of the New York Herald was issued, being then a small penny sheet. Mr. Bennett was editor, reporter and correspondent. He was his own compositor and errand boy, mailed his papers and kept his accounts. His rule, from the very first, was never to run a dollar in debt. He succeeded in establishing a paper which has no parallel in history, while, since his death, his son's enterprise has still further increased its scope and popularity. Young Bennett, the present proprietor of the Herald, named after his father, was trained especially for the duties which were to devolve upon him. He is thoroughly at home in French, German, Italian and Scotch. He is a skilled engineer, and can run either the engines or presses of his establishment. He is a practical printer, and can also telegraph with skill and accuracy. He gives strict personal supervision to the affairs of his immense establishment, which yields him a yearly income equaling that of a merchant prince.

Extending from the Herald Building northward, on the eastern side of City Hall Park, is what is known as Printing House Square, including the offices of the principal daily and weekly papers. The magnificent granite structure of the Staats Zeitung faces this square on the north. The immense Tribune Building, nine stories high, with its tall clock tower, flanks it on the east, on Nassau street. The Sun modestly nestles in the shadow of the Tribune. The Times Building is found on Park Row, where also is the World office. Truth lurks in a basement on Nassau street. But a square or two below is the Evening Post Building, where the venerable poet Bryant labored at his editorial duties for so many years. A statue of Franklin occupies a small open triangular space in the midst of the square.

Horace Greeley's name is inseparably associated with that of the Tribune, which he founded. Honest and single-minded, he wielded a mighty influence, and his paper was a great political power in the country. He often made enemies by his honesty and straight-forwardness; but both enemies and friends respected him. In 1872 the Liberal Republican and Democratic parties nominated him as their choice for President. Believing that he could rally around him men of all parties who desired to see reform in political methods, he accepted the nomination; and was attacked so bitterly by those whom he had supposed to be his friends, and met such overwhelming defeat in the contest, that, taken with the death of his wife within a week of the election, he was crushed completely, his reason left him, and before the end of a month he died a broken-hearted man.

North of the City Hall Park, on the corner of Chambers street, is the old wholesale house of A. T. Stewart, now devoted to other purposes, and having two stories added to its top. Here, a generation ago, the belles of New York City came to do their shopping, it having been originally built for the retail trade, as a few years later they flocked to the new retail store on Broadway, between Ninth and Tenth. The name of A. T. Stewart is no longer heard in New York, save in connection with the past. It was a power in its day and generation. Few men had more to do with Wall street than Stewart, and his mercantile business was carried on in the Wall street style. He "cornered" goods, "sold short," "loaded the market," and "bought long." Having emigrated from the north of Ireland, he first opened business in a small way, himself and wife living in one room over their store. Beginning at the very lowest round of the ladder, he worked with the fixed resolution of becoming the first merchant in the land. He always lived within his income, and never bought a dollar's worth of merchandise that he could not pay cash for. In the days of his prosperity he built for himself and wife a marble palace, at the corner of Fifth avenue and Thirty-fourth street, the most finely-finished and elegantly-furnished residence in the country. He died in 1876, worth, probably, $50,000,000. The theft of his remains from the graveyard of St. Mark's Church, at Ninth street and Second avenue, was the nine days' wonder of the time; and the vault prepared for their reception, in the fine Cathedral at Garden City, Long Island, remains empty.

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.