NEW YORK CITY GUIDE From the collection of the n m o Prelinger i a LJibrary t P San Francisco, California 2006 NEW YORK CITY GUIDE AMERICAN GUIDE SERIES This volume is sponsored by THE GUILDS' COMMITTEE FOR FEDERAL WRITERS' PUBLICATIONS, INC. FRANKLIN P. ADAMS, President BRUCE BLIVEN, Vice-President MORRIS L. ERNST, Secretary and Treasurer HERSCHEL BRICKELL ROCKWELL KENT VAN WYCK BROOKS ALFRED KREYMBORG HENRY S. CANBY Louis KRONENBERGER MALCOLM COWLEY BURNS MANTLE JOHN ERSKINE BURTON RASCOE CLIFTON FADIMAN RALPH THOMPSON LEWIS GANNETT JOSEPH B. ULLMAN TRAVIS HOKE IRITA VAN DOREN MARK VAN DOREN AMERICAN GUIDE SERIES NEW YORK CITY GUIDE A Comprehensive Guide to the Five Boroughs of the Metropolis Manhat- tan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Richmond Prepared by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Prog- ress Administration in New York City RANDOM HOUSE - NEW YORK - PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT 1939 BY THE GUILDS' COMMITTEE FOR FEDERAL WRITERS' PUBLICATIONS, INC. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION FRANCIS C. HARRINGTON, Administrator FLORENCE S. KERR, Assistant Administrator HENRY G. ALSBERG, Director of Federal Writers' Project HAROLD STRAUSS, Director of Federal Writers' Project in New York City Preface IHIS volume is a detailed description of the communities and points of interest in all the five boroughs of New York City. It attempts, also, to in- dicate the human character of the city, to point out the evidence of achieve- ments and shortcomings, urban glamor as well as urban sordidness. It is intended to give both the permanent resident and the visitor an intimate, accurate knowledge of the metropolis. The New York City Guide is the companion volume to New York Panorama and is sponsored and published under the same auspices. The two are planned to complement one another. New York Panorama draws a large-scale interpretation of the city's life and history; the New York City Guide describes the component portions of the city. The Guide represents a collective effort of employees of the Federal Writers' Project. They have been assisted by the suggestions and criticism of many distinguished authorities. The risk of error and omission always considerable in a work of this nature, despite every precaution is slightly increased by the fact that responsible authorities sometimes disagree. More serious is the problem of keeping pace, in print, with a dynamic metropo- lis that overnight replaces a century-old institution with a new triumph in modernity. Thanks must be given to the hundreds of consultants and experts who generously contributed their advice. We are especially indebted to the Weyhe Gallery and the individual artists for permission to reproduce many prints, and to the Federal Art Project for photographs, prints, and art work. We are grateful, also, for the editorial assistance of the national office of the Federal Writers' Project, and of Harry L. Shaw, Jr., former Director of the Federal Writers' Project in New York City. The opinions expressed in this book are the opinions of the writers and the editors and are not necessarily shared by the consultants, by the spon- sors of the volume, or by the Works Progress Administration. EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE NEW YORK CITY GUIDE Editor-in-Chief: Lou GODY Editors: CHESTER D. HARVEY, JAMES REED Editorial Assistants: JAMES BEN. ALLEN, JOHN CHEEVER, HENRY FAGIN, A. BENJAMIN KAUFMAN The production of this volume would not have been possible with- out the help of many other staff members of the Federal Writers' Project in New York City the writers, research workers, check- ers, cartographers, the clerical and technical assistants. Among them were Frances Adams, Eugene Burdock, Alexis Chern, Flor- ence Comeld, Samuel Cummings, Irving L. Fishman, Robert Friend, William Garber, Bip Hanson, John Harms, Lillian Krut- man, Anthony Netboy, Leba Presner, William S. Rollins, Fred Rothermell, Melvin Shelley, Percy Shostac, Herman Spector, Fred Vigman, Clarence Weinstock, Ruth Widen, Charlotte Wilder, Richard Wright, and Gabriel Zakin. Contents PREFACE V PLAN OF THE GUIDE X1X-XX GENERAL INFORMATION Introduction 3 Free Information Facilities 4 Streets 4 Accommodations 8 Transportation 1 1 Traffic Rules 20 Restaurants 2 1 Shopping 29 Amusements 29 Sightseeing 35 Museums 36 Recreation 38 Out-of-Town and Foreign Newspapers 41 ANNUAL EVENTS 42 Manhattan Introduction 49 Facts About Manhattan 52 LOWER MANHATTAN Introduction 57 Battery and Whitehall District 60 West Street and North (Hudson) River Water Front 68 Lower West Side 73 South Street 80 Wall Street District 84 City Hall District 94 Chinatown 104 viii CONTENTS Lower East Side 108 Greenwich Village 124 MIDDLE WEST SIDE Introduction Chelsea Hell's Kitchen and Vicinity Garment Center and Vicinity Times Square District MIDDLE AND UPPER EAST SIDE Introduction Gashouse District Stuyvesant Square District Gramercy Park District Union Square District Madison Square District Kip's Bay and Turtle Bay Murray Hill Fifth Avenue Shopping District Grand Central District Beekman Place and Sutton Place Central Park South, The Plaza, and Fifty-seventh Street Upper Fifth, Madison, and Park Avenues Yorkville THE HARLEMS Introduction Negro Harlem Spanish Harlem Italian Harlem UPPER WEST SIDE AND NORTHERN MANHATTAN Introduction Central Park West District Riverside Drive Morningside Heights and Manhattanville Washington Heights Inwood Marble Hill CONTENTS IX MAJOR POINTS OF INTEREST New York Aquarium 307 Trinity Church 310 Brooklyn Bridge 313 Bellevue Hospital 316 Empire State Building 319 Metropolitan Opera House 322 The New York Public Library: The Central Building 325 Madison Square Garden 330 Rockefeller Center 333 New York Museum of Science and Industry 342 St. Patrick's Cathedral 344 Museum of Modern Art 347 Central Park 350 Temple Emanu-El 356 The American Museum of Natural History: Hay den Planetarium 358 Metropolitan Museum of Art 368 Museum of the City of New York 377 Cathedral of St. John the Divine 380 Columbia University 383 The Riverside Church 387 Triborough Bridge 390 Harlem River Houses 392 Washington Heights Museum Group: Museum of the American Indian American Geographical Society Hispanic Society of America American Numismatic Society American Academy of Arts and Letters 395 George Washington Bridge 399 Subways and Els 4.01 IT The Harbor, The Rivers, and Their Islands THE HARBOR AND ITS ISLANDS Introduction 409 Staten Island Ferry Trip 410 X CONTENTS Statue of Liberty and Bedloe Island Governors Island Ellis Island THE RIVERS AND THE RIVER ISLANDS Introduction Welfare Island Randall's Island Ward's Island Riker's Island, North Brother Island, and South Brother Island Brooklyn Introduction Downtown Brooklyn North Brooklyn West Brooklyn Middle Brooklyn East Brooklyn The Bronx Introduction West Bronx Middle Bronx East Bronx Queens Introduction North Queens Middle Queens South Queens Richmond Introduction East and South Richmond North and West Richmond NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR 1939 Books About New York Index Supplementary Index to New York World's Fair 1939 Illustrations and Maps ILLUSTRATIONS All photographs and prints not otherwise credited were executed by the Federal Art Project in New York City; photographs whose titles are followed by asterisks (*) were taken by the Federal Writers' Project. PHOTOGRAPHS between 76 and 77 Lower Manhattan Seen Beneath Brooklyn Bridge The Battery, 1679 Courtesy New York Public Library The Battery, 1939 Courtesy New York City Department of Parks Liner Nleuw Amsterdam in the Hudson Courtesy Acme News Pictures, Inc. East River Docks Below Brooklyn Bridge South Street Pier and Wall Street Towers * Front Street * Oldest House in Manhattan, 1 1 Peck Slip New York Stock Exchange, Broad and Wall Streets Number One Wall Street and Statue of John Watts Wall Street Canyon PRINTS between 124 and 125 Lower Manhattan Louis Lozowick Courtesy Louis Lozowick Brooklyn Bridge Louis Lozowick Courtesy Weyhe Gallery xif ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS Hanover Square Louis Lozowick Courtesy Louis Lozowick Derelicts (East River Water Front) Mabel Dwight Courtesy Weyhe Gallery Cherries 5$ Eli Jacobi Chatham Square El Eli Jacobi Salvation (A Bowery Mission) . Eli Jacobi Rain (The Bowery) Eli Jacobi St. Paul's Chapel Minetta Good PHOTOGRAPHS between 172 and 173 South Street * Municipal Building from Chatham Square El Station City Hall * Holland Tunnel Courtesy Port of New York Authority Manhattan Bridge Entrance West Washington Poultry Market Radio Row, Cortlandt Street Patchin Place, Greenwich Village St. Mark's In-The-Bouwerie * Backyards, Lower East Side Police Headquarters * PHOTOGRAPHS between 252 and 253 Times Square Midtown Manhattan Courtesy New York City Tunnel Authority and Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc. May Day, Union Square Courtesy Acme News Pictures, Inc. Rutherford Place, Stuyvesant Square ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS xiii Little Church Around the Corner * Fifth Avenue Shops Fifth Avenue Homes * East Forty-first Street and the Park Avenue Ramp * Grand Central Terminal McGraw-Hill Building * PHOTOGRAPHS between 316 and 317 St. Bartholomew's Church and General Electric Building Courtesy General Electric Company and Wurts Brothers St. Patrick's Cathedral Hotel Savoy-Plaza * Dead End Near Sutton Place Park Avenue and the Waldorf-Astoria Towers Courtesy Waldorf-Astoria Temple Emanu-El RCA Building, Rockefeller Center * New York Hospital Cornell University Medical College PHOTOGRAPHS between 364 and 365 Cathedral of St. John the Divine Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart Courtesy the College Gorilla Group, American Museum of Natural History Courtesy the Museum Roosevelt Memorial, American Museum of Natural History Courtesy the Museum Fort Tryon Park Courtesy Chester D. Harvey Riverside Drive North of George Washington Bridge * The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park xiv ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS Sugar Hill, Harlem Harlem Slum Lenox Avenue, Harlem Jumel Mansion, Washington Heights * PRINTS George Washington, Union Square Courtesy Weyhe Gallery Columbus Circle Metropolis (Union Square) Courtesy Weyhe Gallery Chelsea Shape-Up Ninth Avenue El Feeding the Ducks (Central Park) Central Park at Night Courtesy Weyhe Gallery Clubhouse, Colonial Dames of America (Smith's Gas Plant (Fourteenth Street near East River) Courtesy Louis Lozowick Harlem River Hell Gate Bridge Courtesy Weyhe Gallery The Social Graces Courtesy Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries Museum Guard Warming Up Abstract Thinking Courtesy Mabel Dwight Fashionable Auction Courtesy Mabel Dwight Sardi's Courtesy Weyhe Gallery Burlycue between 396 and 397 Reginald Marsh Hugh Botts Emil Ganso Eli Jacobi Mabel Dwight Mabel Dwight Adolf Dehn Folly) Mabel Dwight Louis Lozowick Harold Faye Louis Lozowick Peggy Bacon Mabel Dwight Albert Webb Mabel Dwight Mabel Dwight Don Freeman Kyra Markham ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS XV June Bugs Albert Webb Outdoor Library (Bryant Park) Carlos Anderson Stampede Carlos Anderson A Nickel a Shine Raphael Soyer PHOTOGRAPHS between 492 and 493 Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn Brooklyn Botanic Garden * Brooklyn College * Lefferts Homestead, Prospect Park, Brooklyn * Plymouth Church, Brooklyn * Flatbush Reformed Protestant Church, Brooklyn * Wallabout Market, Brooklyn Borough Hall, Brooklyn Brooklyn Navy Yard * Erie Basin, Brooklyn Courtesy Todd Shipyards Corporation and Pairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc. Coney Island, Brooklyn PRINTS between 540 and 541 Below Columbia Heights, Brooklyn Minetta Good Coney Island Louis Lozowick Courtesy Louis Lozowick Snow on Eastern Parkway (Brooklyn) Ann Nooney Coney Island Mabel Dwight Courtesy Mabel Dwight Clam Shacks (Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn) David Burke At the Bronx Zoo Mildred E. Williams Houses on Stilts (Westchester Creek, the Bronx) Harry Leroy Taskey Astoria (Queens) Ann Nooney Xvi ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS Jamaica Bay Ann Nooney Staten Island Shore Mabel Dwight Courtesy Mabel Dwight Survivor (Staten Island) Mabel Dwight Courtesy Mabel Dwight Toyshop, Staten Island Mabel Dwight PHOTOGRAPHS between 588 and High Bridge Over the Harlem and Bronx Apartment Houses * Bronx County Building, Grand Concourse Fordham University, the Bronx * Museum Building, New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx * Hall of Fame, New York University, the Bronx Bronx Park * Hillside Homes, the Bronx City Island Boatyard, the Bronx King Mansion, Jamaica, Queens Bowne House, Flushing, Queens Homes in Queens Boulevard Gardens Apartments, Woodside, Queens Forest Hills, Queens Courtesy Samuel Epstein Cemetery, Queens Courtesy Samuel Epstein Broad Channel, Jamaica Bay, Queens Rockaway Beach, Queens Courtesy Rockaway Chamber of Commerce Newtown Creek, Queens-Brooklyn Old Dutch Reformed Church, Port Richmond, Staten Island * Stillwell-Perine House, Dongan Hills, Staten Island * Britton Cottage, New Dorp, Staten Island * ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS Xvii Church of St. Andrew, Richmond, Staten Island * Conference (Billopp) House, Tottenville, Staten Island Bayonne Bridge, Port Richmond, Staten Island Courtesy Port of New York Authority Garibaldi Memorial, Stapleton, Staten Island Vanderbilt Mausoleum, Dongan Hills, Staten Island * Staten Island Zoo, West New Brighton Clove Lakes Park, West New Brighton MAPS Street Map of Manhattan Back Pocket Subway and Elevated Lines Back Pocket Outline Map of the City of New York 6-7 General Vicinity of the City of New York 17 Shopping Sections of Manhattan 30 Outline Map of Manhattan Sections and Localities 5 4" 5 5 Battery and Whitehall District 63 Lower West Side and West Street 75 South Street, Wall Street District, City Hall District, and Chinatown 91 Lower East Side in Greenwich Village 127 Middle West Side 149 Times Square Theater District 169 Middle East Side 193 Upper East Side 237 The Harlems 255 Upper Fifth Avenue, Central Park South, Central Park West Dis- trict, and Riverside Drive 277 Northern Manhattan 293 xviii ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS Rockefeller Center Outline Map of Brooklyn Downtown Brooklyn North Brooklyn West Brooklyn Middle Brooklyn Prospect Park and Brooklyn Botanic Garden East Brooklyn Outline Map of the Bronx West Bronx Middle Bronx Bronx Park East Bronx Outline Map of Queens North Queens Middle Queens South Queens Outline Map of Richmond East and South Richmond North and West Richmond New York World's Fair 1939 Plan of the Guide U NDER General Information is given practical information about the city and its services : transportation lines to and from New York ; motor routes ; traffic rules ; street arrangement ; transit lines ; hotel and rooming house ac- commodations ; restaurants; amusements; sightseeing; boat trips, etc. A map showing the principal shopping centers in Manhattan is included. A calendar of Annual Events follows. The subway and elevated systems are shown on a pocket map inside the back cover, and an outline map of the City of New York will be found on pages 6-7. Each of the five boroughs is treated individually. Manhattan has been divided into five Sections, starting at the Battery and working generally north : Lower Manhattan, Middle and Upper East Side, Middle West Side, The Harlems, Upper West Side and Northern Manhattan. Preceding the description of each Section are given the area of the Section and the sta- tions of transit lines that serve it. The Section introduction sketches the historical background and gives the contemporary description. The Sections are divided into Localities, which are described, under commonly used names, in a general south to north order. A map showing the outlines of Sections and Localities appears on pages 54-55. Transit facilities within each Locality may be readily found by reference to the directions preceding the Section introduction. In general, transit lines follow principal streets, and the names of the lines indicate their routes. Where contiguous Locali- ties merge so subtly that precise definition of them is impracticable, arbi- trary boundaries have been established. Points of special interest in each Locality are dealt with in order again south to north with the condi- tions under which they may be visited. A number of Major Points of Interest have been singled out for separate treatment. This list is not exhaustive; rather it is representative of the many widely known institutions and buildings in Manhattan. Cross refer- ence to these points is made in the stories of the Localities in which they are situated. Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Richmond (Staten Island) boroughs are taken up in that order. An introductory essay considers each borough XX PLAN OF THE GUIDE as a whole and traces its history ; a map indicating all the communities and main highways within the borough is included. The borough is then split into large Sections for point-by-point description. Transportation direc- tions, boundaries, and a detailed map accompany each Sectional descrip- tion. Neighborhoods and points of interest follow an order generally away from Manhattan. Hours, fees, and other terms of admission are given for points of interest that are open to visitors. Many old houses in the out- lying neighborhoods are privately owned and occupied, but if such a home, or a factory, or an institution, is regularly open for inspection, that fact is noted. The harbor, the rivers, and their islands have been grouped in one Sec- tion. The islands at the western end of Long Island Sound, however, are described with the East Bronx. This book is completely indexed. NEW YORK CITY GUIDE AMERICAN GUIDE SERIES General Information (All addresses in the General Information section are in Manhattan, unless otherwise indicated. See map on pages 6-7 for location of boroughs, water- ways, harbor, main thoroughfares, bridges, tunnels, and parks; also see map on page 17 for general vicinity of New York.) The city of New York is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and the second largest in the world, with a population in 1938 of 7,505,068 and an area of 322.83 square miles. It is exceeded in area and population only by London. The metropolis is situated on the Atlantic seaboard in the southeastern corner of New York State, at the mouth of the Hudson River. Its extreme length, north and south, is 36 miles; extreme breadth, i6l/ 2 miles. New York City, chartered in 1898, consists of five boroughs, each also a county: Manhattan (New York County), the Bronx (Bronx County), Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens (Queens County), and Richmond, or Staten Island (Richmond County). Manhattan, the original New York City, founded 1626, is an island; population 1,684,543, area 22.20 square miles. Brooklyn (settled 1636), on Long Island, was formerly an inde- pendent city; population 2,798,093, area 80.95 square miles. The Bronx (settled 1641) is on the mainland north of Manhattan; population 1,499,- 090, area 41.41 square miles. Queens (settled about 1635) is on Long 3 4 GENERAL INFORMATION Island; population 1,346,659, area 121.12 square miles. Richmond (set- tled about 1638) is in the southwest corner of New York Bay; population 176,683, area 57.15 square miles. The metropolitan area of New York City is the district within a radius of approximately 40 miles of City Hall and includes parts of New Jersey, Westchester County (N.Y.), Connecticut, and Long Island (see map on page 17). The population of the area in 1930 was nearly 11,000,000. The city is governed by a mayor and a city council, the latter elected by a system of proportional representation. A president, with certain local duties and powers, heads each of the five boroughs. The county affairs of the various boroughs are conducted independently of the municipal gov- ernment. FREE INFORMATION FACILITIES NEW YORK CITY INFORMATION CENTER, Park Ave. and 42d St., op- posite Grand Central Terminal; POLICE DEPARTMENT INFORMATION BOOTH, Broadway and 43d St. (Times Square) ; DAILY NEWS INFORMA- TION BUREAU, 220 E. 42d St.; Esso AND SOCONY- VACUUM TRAVEL IN- FORMATION SERVICES, RCA Building, Rockefeller Center; AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION, Hotel Pennsylvania, 7th Ave. and 33d St.; HOTEL ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK CITY, 221 W. 57th St.; NEW YORK CONVENTION AND VISITORS BUREAU, 233 Broadway; U.S. TRAVEL BUREAU, 45 Broadway ; Y.M.C. A. HEADQUARTERS, 420 Lexington Ave. ; Y.W.C.A. CENTRAL BRANCH INFORMATION DESK, 610 Lexington Ave. ; TRAVELERS AID SOCIETY, Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Ter- minal. STREETS Manhattan streets are laid out on the gridiron plan, with avenues run- ning north and south, and cross-town streets running east and west, from river to river. (See pocket map of Manhattan.) All cross-town streets are numbered, except those south of Houston Street and some in Greenwich Village, where the gridiron system was not applied. The avenues are also numbered, but include a few with names: Lexington, Park, and Madison Avenues, and Broadway. Fifth Avenue, which begins at Washington Square, divides the cross-town streets into east and west sections and is the starting point of house numbers on those streets. The designation "downtown" refers to a direction south of a given point; "uptown," north. These terms, together with "midtown," apply also to approximate sections of Manhattan: downtown, from the Battery to Fourteenth Street ; midtown, from Fourteenth to Fifty-ninth Street ; up- town, north of Fifty-ninth Street. HOUSE NUMBER KEY TO MANHATTAN. To find the numbered cross-town street nearest a given house number on a north-south avenue, cancel the last figure of the given number, divide the remainder by 2, and then add the key number given below. (Example: For 500 Fifth Avenue, GENERAL INFORMATION 5 drop the last figure, leaving 50. Divide this by 2. To 25 add the key num- ber, 17. The result is 42 [Forty-second Street], the cross street at 500 Fifth Avenue. ) Key numbers : Amsterdam Ave add 60 Ave. A add 3 Ave. B add 3 Ave. C add 3 Ave. D add 3 Broadway subtract 31 Central Park W divide the house number by 10 and add 60 Columbus Ave add 60 Eighth Ave add 9 Eleventh Ave add 15 Fifth Ave add 17: from Broadway to 57th Street; opposite Central Park: divide the house number by 10 and subtract 18 add 45: from 110th Street to Mt. Mor- ris Park add 24: from Mt. Morris Park to 140th Street First Ave add 3 Fourth Ave add 8 Lenox Ave add 111 Lexington Ave add 22 Madison Ave add 26 Manhattan Ave add 99 Ninth Ave add 13 Park Ave add 34 Riverside Drive divide the house number by 10 and add 72 Second Ave add 3 Seventh Ave add 1 2 : from Greenwich Ave. to Cen- tral Park add 20: north of Central Park Sixth Ave add 4: from 3d Street to Central Park (old numbers) subtract 13: from 3d Street to Central Park (new numbers) St. Nicholas Ave add 110 Tenth Ave add 13 Third Ave add 9 West End Ave add 59 The street systems in the other boroughs follow no over-all plan. In the Bronx, Jerome Avenue is the dividing line between east and west sections of numbered cross-town streets, which are approximate continuations of those in Manhattan. In Brooklyn, to avoid confusion note the exact desig- nations of numbered streets, of which there are several groups (for exam- OUTLINE MAP OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK WER NEW YORK BAY 8 GENERAL INFORMATION pie, there is a Thirty-seventh Street, an East Thirty-seventh Street, a West Thirty-seventh Street, a Bay Thirty-seventh Street, and a Beach Thirty- seventh Street). In Queens, most of the streets are numbered. House num- bers are based on the block system, in which the numbers on a block are preceded by the number of the intersecting street at the start of the block (for example, house numbers on Fifty-eighth Street between Thirty-first and Thirty-second Avenues run 3101, 3103, 3105, etc.). ACCOMMODATIONS HOTELS Prices below (subject to change) are minimum daily rates for a single room with private bath. Asterisk (*) indicates rooms without private bath are available at lower rates. DOWNTOWN (below 29th Street). $2.00: * ARLINGTON, 18 W. 25th St.; *LEDONIA, 42 E. 28th St.; *MARLTON, 3 W. 8th St. $2.50: * ALBERT, 65 University PL; *BREVOORT, 5th Ave. and 8th St.; *HEL- SEA, 222 W. 23d St.; GEORGE WASHINGTON, Lexington Ave. and 23d St.; HOLLEY, 36 Washington Sq.; *MADISON SQUARE, Madison Ave. and 25th St.; PRINCE GEORGE, 14 E. 28th St. $3.00: CORNISH ARMS, 311 W. 23d St.; *!RVING, 26 Gramercy Park S.; GRAMERCY PARK, 52 Gramercy Park N. ; *PARKSIDE, 18 Gramercy Park S. $3.50: BRIT- TANY, Broadway and loth St.; * BROAD WAY CENTRAL, 673 Broadway; *ARLE, 103 Waverly PL; * LAFAYETTE, University PL and 9th St.; *SEVILLE, Madison Ave. and 29th St. $3.75: FIFTH AVENUE, 5th Ave. and 9th St. $4.00: GROSVENOR, 5th Ave. and loth St. PENNSYLVANIA STATION ZONE. $2.00: ^IMPERIAL, Broadway and 32d St.; *YoRK, yth Ave. and 36th St. $2.25: *BRESLIN, Broadway and 29th St. $2.50: *GRAND, Broadway and 3ist St. ; *HERALD SQUARE, 116 W. 34th St.; * MARTINIQUE, Broadway and 32d St.; *WOLCOTT, 4 W. 3ist St. $3.00: *McALPiN, Broadway and 34th St. $3.50: GOVER- NOR CLINTON, yth Ave. and 3ist St.; NEW YORKER, 8th Ave. and 34th St. ; PENNSYLVANIA, yth Ave. and 330! St. TIMES SQUARE ZONE. $2.00: *CADILLAC, Broadway and 43d St.; CENTURY, in W. 46th St.; *FLANDERS, 135 W. 4yth St.; FORTY- FOURTH STREET, 120 W. 44th St.; *REX, 106 W. 4yth St.; *ST. EDWARD, yo W. 46th St.; *ST. JAMES, 109 W. 45th St. $2 .50: ABBEY, 149 W. 5ist St.; BELVEDERE, 319 W. 48th St.; * BRISTOL, 129 W. 48th St.; ^CHESTERFIELD, 130 W. 49th St.; DIXIE, 241 W. 42d St.; GREAT NORTHERN, 118 W. 5yth St.; * KNICKERBOCKER, 120 W. 45th St.; LAURELTON, i4y W. 55th St.; PARAMOUNT, 235 W. 46th St.; PICCA- DILLY, 22y W. 45th St.; PRESIDENT, 234 W. 48th St.; *REMINGTON, 129 W. 46th St. ; *TAFT, yth Ave. and 5oth St. ; *TIMES SQUARE, 8th Ave. and 43d St.; VICTORIA, yth Ave. and 5ist St.; WELLINGTON, yth Ave. GENERAL INFORMATION 9 and 55th St.; *WENTWORTH, 59 W. 46th St.; *WOODSTOCK, 127 W. 43d St.; WOODWARD, Broadway and 55th St. $3.00: ASTOR, Broad- way and 44th St. ; EDISON, 228 W. 47th St. ; LINCOLN, 8th Ave. and 44th St.; *MARYLAND, 104 W. 49th St.; SEVILLIA, 117 W. 58th St.; THIRTY- THREE WEST FIFTY-FIRST STREET, 33 W. 5ist St.; WEBSTER, 40 W. 45th St. $330: *CAPITOL, 8th Ave. and jist St.; GORHAM, 136 W. 55th St.; PARK CENTRAL, 7th Ave. and 55th St.; PARK CHAMBERS, 68 W. 58th St. ; PLYMOUTH, 143 W. 49th St. ; SALISBURY, 123 W. 57th St. ; SEYMOUR, 50 W. 45th St.; WINDSOR, 6th Ave. and 58th St. $4.00: WYNDHAM, 42 W. 58th St. $430: ALGONQUIN, 59 W. 44th St.; SHOREHAM, 33 W. 55th St. $5.00: BUCKINGHAM, 6th Ave. and 57th St. GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL ZONE. $230: TUDOR, 304 E. 42d St.; *MURRAY HILL, Park Ave. and 4ist St. $3.00; BEDFORD, 118 E. 40th St.; BELMONT PLAZA, Lexington Ave. and 49th St. ; WINTHROP, Lexington Ave. and 47th St. $330: DUANE, 237 Madison Ave.; SAN CARLOS, 150 E. 50th St.; WHITE, Lexington Ave. and 37th St. $4.00: BEVERLY, Lexington Ave. and 5oth St. ; COMMODORE, Lexington Ave. and 42d St. ; LEXINGTON, Lexington Ave. and 48th St. ; TUSCANY, 120 E. 39th St. $5.00: NEW WESTON, Madison Ave. and 5oth St.; VANDERBILT, Park Ave. and 34th St. $6.00: BARCLAY, Lexington Ave. and 48th St.; *BILTMORE, Madison Ave. and 43d St. ; CHATHAM, Vanderbilt Ave. and 48th St. ; PARK LANE, Park Ave. and 48th St. ; ROOSEVELT, Madison Ave. and 45th St.; WALDORF-ASTORIA, Park Ave. and 5oth St. $7.00; RITZ- CARLTON, Madison Ave. and 46th St. CENTRAL PARK SOUTH. $3.00: BARBIZON-PLAZA, 6th Ave. and 58th St. $330: ST. MORITZ, Central Park S. and 6th Ave. $4.00: NAVARRO, 112 Central Park S. $6.00: ESSEX HOUSE, 160 Central Park S. $7.00: PLAZA, Central Park S. and 5th Ave. $8.00: HAMPSHIRE HOUSE, 150 Central Park S. MIDDLE EAST SIDE. $3 JO: ADAMS, 2 E. 86th St.; *BEEKMAN TOWER, ist Ave. and 49th St.; FOURTEEN EAST SIXTIETH STREET, 14 E. 6oth St. $4.00: ALRAE, 37 E. 64th St.; BLACKSTONE, 50 E. 58th St.; GLADSTONE, 114 E. 52d St. ; LANGDON, 5th Ave. and 56th St. ; SULGRAVE, 60 E. 67th St. $430: WEYLIN, 40 E. 54th St. $.5.00: BERKSHIRE, 21 E. 52d St.; CROYDON, 12 E. 86th St.; ELYSEE, 60 E. 54th St.; LOWELL, 28 E. 63d St.; WESTBURY, Madison Ave. and 69th St. $6.00: GOTHAM, 5th Ave. and 55th St.; MAYFAIR HOUSE, 610 Park Ave.; RITZ TOWER, Park Ave. and 57th St. ; ST. REGIS, 5th Ave. and 55th St. $7.00: AMBAS- SADOR, Park Ave. and 5ist St.; PIERRE, 5th Ave. and 6ist St.; SAVOY- PLAZA, 5th Ave. and 59th St.; SHERRY-NETHERLAND, 5th Ave. and 59th St. UPPER WEST SIDE. $2.00; EMBASSY, Broadway and 7Oth St.; *NDICOTT, Columbus Ave. and 8ist St.; *MIDTOWN, Broadway and 6ist St. $2JO: ALAMAC, Broadway and 7ist St.; BRETTON HALL, "2350 Broadway; CLIFTON, 127 W. 79th St.; *MERSON, 166 W. 75th St.; FRANKLIN TOWERS, 333 W. 86th St.; GREYSTONE, Broadway and 9ist St. ; KIMBERLEY, Broadway and 74th St. ; *MANHATTAN TOWERS, Broad- 10 GENERAL INFORMATION way and y6th St. ; * MARIE ANTOINETTE, Broadway and 66th St. ; *NAR- RAGANSETT, 2510 Broadway; OLIVER CROMWELL, 12 W. y2d St.; OR- LEANS, Columbus Ave. and 8oth St.; PARK CRESCENT, 150 Riverside Dr.; *PARK PLAZA, 50 W. yyth St.; ROBERT FULTON, 228 W. yist St.; RUXTON, 50 W. y2d St.; *SHERMAN SQUARE, Broadway and yist St.; WESTOVER, 253 W. y2d St.; WHITEHALL, Broadway and looth St. $3.00: ALEXANDRIA, 250 W. iO3d St.; BEACON, Broadway and 75th St.; *MPIRE, Broadway and 63d St.; MILBURN, 242 W. y6th St.; RALEIGH, 121 W. y2d St.; REGENT, Broadway and i04th St.; THERESA, yth Ave. and 12 5th St. $3 .50: BANCROFT, 40 W. y2d St. ; CAMERON, 41 W. 86th St.; CHALFONTE, 200 W. yoth St.; *COLONIAL, Columbus Ave. and 8ist St. ; HAMILTON, 143 W. 73d St. $4.00: BROADMOOR, Broadway and io2d St.; ESPLANADE, West End Ave. and 74th St.; WINDERMERE, West End Ave. and 92d St. $5.00: MAYFLOWER, Central Park West and 6ist St. THE BRONX. $3.00: CONCOURSE PLAZA, Grand Concourse and i6ist St. BROOKLYN. $2.00; MONTAGUE, 103 Montague St. $2 JO: Bos- SERT, Montague and Hicks Sts.; *ST. GEORGE, Clark and Hicks Sts.; STANDISH ARMS, 169 Columbia Heights. $3.00; *PIERREPONT, 55 Pierrepont St.; TOWERS, 25 Clark St. $4.00: *HALF MOON, Boardwalk and W. 29th St., Coney Island; *MARGARET, 97 Columbia Heights; TOURAINE, 23 Clinton St. QUEENS. In addition to the following there are numerous summer ho- tels in the Rockaways (see summer resort sections of newspapers). $2.50: HOMESTEAD, 82-45 Grenfell Ave., Kew Gardens; *KEW GARDENS INN, 80-02 Kew Gardens Road, Kew Gardens; SANFORD, 140-40 Sanford Ave., Flushing ; WHITMAN, 160-11 89th Ave., Jamaica. $4.00: *FOREST HILLS INN, i Station Square, Forest Hills. CLUB HOTELS These offer planned social activities and, in most cases, athletic facilities. ALLERTON HOUSE, 143 E. 39th St., $10.00 weekly and up; KENMORE HALL, 145 E. 23d St., $7.50 weekly and up; MIDSTON HOUSE, 22 E. 38th St., $10.50 weekly and up; PICKWICK ARMS, 230 E. 5ist St., $9.00 weekly and up. WOMEN'S HOTELS ALLERTON HOUSE FOR WOMEN (club hotel), 130 E. 57th St., $3.25 daily and up with private bath, $2.25 and up without private bath; AMERICAN WOMAN'S CLUB (club hotel), 353 W. 57th St., $3.00 daily and up with private bath; BARBIZON (club hotel), Lexington Ave. and 63d St., $3.00 daily and up with private bath, $2.50 and up without pri- vate bath; IRVIN, 308 W. 3Oth St., $2.00 daily and up without private bath; MARTHA WASHINGTON, 29 E. 29th St., $3.00 daily and up with private bath, $2.00 and up without private bath. GENERAL INFORMATION II Y's Y.M.G.A. : Executive headquarters and information center, 420 Lexing- ton Ave. Various dormitories throughout New York. Y.W.C.A.: Execu- tive headquarters and information center, 129 E. 52d St. Various dormi- tories throughout New York. Y.M.H. A. : Dormitory, Lexington Ave. and 9 2d St. Y.W.H.A.: Dormitory, 31 W. noth St. FURNISHED ROOMS AND APARTMENTS For furnished rooms and apartments consult the classified sections of newspapers, especially the Herald Tribune, Journal and American, Times, and World-Telegram. The Y.M.C.A.,Y.W.CA.,Y.M.H.A.,andY.W.H.A. also have room listings. Types of service include rooms with and without board, or with kitchen privileges. Furnished apartments are available with and without maid service, some with hotel service. These accommodations are found chiefly in the following areas: GREENWICH VILLAGE, Houston to W. i4th St., west of Broadway; CHELSEA, i4th to 34th St., west of 6th Ave. ; MURRAY HILL, 301)1 to 40th St., east of Madison Ave. ; TIMES SQUARE, 42d to 5yth St., 5th Ave. to 8th Ave. ; MIDDLE WEST SIDE, 30th to 40th St., 8th to loth Ave. ; UPPER WEST SIDE, y2d to noth St., west of Central Park; MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, noth to 12 5th St., west of Morn- ingside Drive; BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, west of Fulton St., near Brooklyn Bridge. TRANSPORTATION There are four types of urban transit in New York City: subways, ele- vated railways (els), busses, and surface cars. The fare is 50 on all lines, except the Fifth Avenue Coach Co. (io0) and certain routes in outlying parts of the city. Subways link all the boroughs except Staten Island, which is accessible only by the municipal ferry (5$). Three el lines serve Man- hattan and the Bronx, and five serve Brooklyn and parts of Queens; all points in Queens are also reached by the Long Island Railroad. In Man- hattan, surface lines, mostly bus, are the chief means of cross-town travel. Staten Island has a bus system and a railway, the Staten Island Rapid Transit Co. (see map on page 599), both with terminals at the St. George Ferry. The Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (Hudson Tubes) is a rapid transit service between New York and Newark, N. J. SUBWAYS See pocket map of subway and el lines. The three subway systems the Interborough Rapid Transit Corp. (IRT), the 8th Ave. (Independent) Subway System (municipally owned and operated), and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corp. (BMT) operate in Manhattan and have branches running into the Bronx, Brook- lyn, and Queens. Both the IRT and 8th Ave. subways run the full length 12 GENERAL INFORMATION of Manhattan ; the BMT, which is primarily a Brooklyn system, runs only to 6oth St. The IRT has two main divisions, the West Side line (Broad- way-yth Ave.) and the East Side line (Lexington Ave.-4th Ave.). All sub- way systems operate 24 hours a day, with express service between 6 a.m. and i a.m. Subway travel is facilitated by maps which appear in all stations and cars; by car signs showing name of line and destination; and by numerous directional signs at entrances, in passageways, and on platforms of stations. In the following list of subway lines, the terminals of each are shown in parentheses after the name of the line. IRT SUBWAY. West Side: BROADWAY- T TH AVE. EXPRESS (New Lots Ave. 2427935o- Transportation within Manhattan is furnished by rapid transit systems of subways and elevated lines (owned by the city but operated both municipally and privately), which in the year ending June 30, 1938, carried 1,038,499,269 passengers; by street surface railways, which in the same year carried 70,936,650 passengers; by busses carrying 312,426,522 and by the 6,893 taxicabs licensed to operate in the borough in 1938. Two districts, the first lying between the Battery and City Hall, the second bounded by Twenty-third and Fiftieth Streets and lying approxi- mately between Ninth and Park Avenues, contain a high percentage of blocks in which a population of more than 5,000 work during the day. It was estimated in 1936 that 62.6 per cent of Manhattan's land was used for residential purposes and 22.9 per cent for nonresidential. Nearly all the remainder, 14.25 per cent, is given over to parks, of which there are 93 with a combined area of 2,303.897 acres. In 1937, 24,550 Manhattanites were born, 29,441 couples were mar- ried, and 25,228 died. The number of church members was estimated as 853,972. The foreign-born white population was set at 641,618 in 1930. In 1927 there were 465,000 Jewish residents, or 25.71 per cent of the total population. Negroes in 1930 numbered 224,670; Italians, 117,740; Free State Irish, 86,548; Russians, 69,685; Germans, 69,111; Poles, FACTS ABOUT MANHATTAN 53 59,120. These were the principal race and language groups in Manhattan. The borough lost 170,821 of its residents between 1930 and 1938, and this shifting of population represents a trend that is likely to con- tinue as a result of the development of cheap transportation to the suburbs. Though realtors have been shaking their heads, Manhattan land was assessed at $3,962,738,145 in 1938. The largest rental group of ten- ants, 36.5 per cent, paid from $30 to $59 a month in 1936, while 20.7 per cent paid $19 a month or less and 18.6 per cent, $60 or more. In 1937, 297 new buildings were erected at an estimated total cost of $60,775,^50. 297,446,059 shares of stock, worth $1,859,525,825, changed hands at the New York Stock Exchange in the year 1938. Retail trade amounting to $1,462,499,000 was carried on in 41,233 stores in 1935. 18,694 manu- facturing establishments in 1935, employing throughout the year an average of 288,036 workers and paying them $359,893,432 in wages, added $1,322,533,066 to the worth of materials which had already cost them $1,110,223,156. Manhattan docks received a large percentage of the 3,547 vessels of a net tonnage of 20,291,204 which entered the port of New York in the year ending June 30, 19^8, while a proportionate share of the $650,252,600 in gold and silver and $1,160,726,960 in merchandise imported, and of the exports amounting to $50,780,694 in gold and silver and the $1,238,331,380 in merchandise was handled here. In 1937 there were 231 homicides in the borough. In 1936, 78 were convicted of homicide; 274, felonious assault; 485, burglary; 422, rob- bery; 493, grand larceny; 94, forgery; 8, arson, and 76, rape. Fire De- partment engines and trucks in 1937 went shrieking to 9,042 fires and kept the losses down to $2,647,970. Seventy-three hospitals looked after the islands' sick and incapacitated. The home relief case load as of October 22, 1938, was 68,121. 243,899 students were enrolled in various public institutions of learning, of whom 126,375 attended elementary school; 39,284, junior high school; 55,231, high school; and 23,009, vocational schools. Of the city's water supply gushing down from 22 reservoirs, Man- hattan and the Bronx consumed in 1937 545,400,000 gallons a day. 2,794,445,326 kilowatt hours of electricity and 20,530,875,700 cubic feet of gas were used in Manhattan in 1937, and in 1938, 897,579 te ^ e ' phones were in active operation. The 40 to 50 legitimate theaters in Manhattan are patronized yearly by about 8,500,000. It is reported that 218 motion-picture houses were doing business as of April, 1937, and 1938 saw something like 300 night clubs OUTLINE MAP MANHATTAN LOCALITIES AND SECTIONS SECTION BOUNDARIES LOCALITY BOUNDARIES LOWER MANHATTAN Battery and Whitehall District West St. and North (Hudson) River Water Front Chinatown Lower East Side Greenwich Village Lower West Side South Street Wall Street District City Hall District MIDDLE WEST SIDE Chelsea Hell's Kitchen and Vicinity Garment Center and Vicinity Times Square District MIDDLE AND UPPER EAST SIDE Gashouse District Stuyvesant Square District Gramercy Park District Union Square District Madison Square District Kip's Bay and Turtle Bay Murray Hill Fifth Avenue Shopping District Grand Central District Beekman Place and Sutton Place Central Park South, the Plaza, and Fifty- seventh Street Upper Fifth, Madison, and Park Avenues Yorkville THE HARLEMS Negro Harlem Spanish Harlem Italian Harlem UPPER WEST SIDE AND NORTHERN MANHATTAN Central Park West District Riverside Drive Morningside Heights and Manhattanville Washington Heights Inwood Marble Hill 56 MANHATTAN in more or less continuous operation. Twenty-nine museums and a zoo- logical garden furnish educational recreation for the more serious-minded, and 73 art galleries were listed in December, 1938. "It is as beautiful a land as one can hope to tread upon," said Henry Hudson. Lower Manhattan BATTERY AND WHITEHALL DISTRICT WEST STREET AND NORTH (HUDSON) RIVER WATER FRONT LOWER WEST SIDE SOUTH STREET WALL STREET DISTRICT CITY HALL DISTRICT CHINATOWN LOWER EAST SIDE GREENWICH VILLAGE Area: Battery on the south to i4th St. on the north; Hudson River to East River. Map on pages 54-55- Principal north-south streets: Broadway, West St., Hudson St., Varick St. (and 7th Ave.), 6th Ave., Chrystie St. (and 2d Ave.), Allen St. (and ist Ave.). Principal cross streets: Fulton St., Chambers St. (and New Chambers St.), Canal St., Broome St. (and Delancey St.), Houston St., and i4th St. Transportation: IRT Broadway-yth Ave. subway (local), South Ferry to i4th St. stations; IRT Lexington Ave. subway (local), Bowling Green to i4th St. stations; BMT subway (local), Whitehall St. to Union Square stations; 8th Ave. (Inde- pendent) Grand Concourse or Washington Heights subway, Broadway-Nassau St. to 1 4th St. stations; 8th Ave. (Independent) Queens-Church Ave. subway, East Broadway to i4th St. stations; 2d, 3d, or 9th Ave. el, South Ferry to i4th St. stations; busses on all principal north-south and cross streets except West St., Fulton St., and Broome St. IHE FLAT lower end of Manhattan, between the Battery and Fourteenth Street, is the oldest section of the city and the richest in historical associa- tions. Today it has become a commercial, financial, and industrial center 57 58 LOWER MANHATTAN where steamship docks crowd one another, and ferries, subways, elevated lines, bridges, and traffic arteries converge and spread fanwise, distribut- ing people and merchandise to every section of the Nation. In the extreme south is the Battery and Whitehall district, in whose skyscrapers, overlooking the Goddess of Liberty and the ships that pass out to sea, are concentrated the executive offices of transatlantic lines, of exporters and importers, and of consular representatives of foreign na- tions. West Street, fronting the Hudson River, and edged with busy docks, is the main highway for the city's incoming and outgoing supplies. On the Lower West Side are the produce markets, the dark streets of Manhattan's Syrian colony, and numerous warehouses interspersed with tenements. Broadway, the nation's foremost thoroughfare, starts at the Battery and bisects lower Manhattan. Below Chambers Street it reflects the varied character of the downtown neighborhood ; then it becomes a street of bare lofts and garment factories, whose aspect has changed little in half a cen- tury. East of Broadway, above the Battery, the tall buildings of the finan- cial district surround Wall Street ; skirting them to the east is South Street, the city's maritime center in the days of sailing ships where now railroad and freight barges are warped into dock by puffing tugs, and the smell from anchored fishing boats drifts inland. City Hall Park and Foley Square, with their municipal, State, and Fed- eral buildings, lie to the north of Wall Street; and beyond is little, crowded Chinatown. The Bowery, sinister street of lurid fiction and drama, starts below the eastern edge of Chinatown and runs northward beneath the rumbling elevated. Stretching approximately from Broadway to the East River and north to Fourteenth Street is the Lower East Side, crowded slum area of many nationalities, but noted chiefly for its concen- trated Jewish population. Greenwich Village, with meandering streets, tenements, and charming old houses, marks the northwest terminus of lower Manhattan. Prior to the completion of the Erie Canal, the story of Lower Manhattan was largely that of the whole city. In contrast to Boston, Philadelphia, and other Colonial settlements, New Amsterdam, belonging to the Dutch West India Company, was founded in 1626 mainly for commercial rea- sons. As time passed, the little trading post became the market place and financial capital of the rapidly expanding colony. Almost from the first, commercial establishments began a ceaseless march northward, encroach- ing upon steadily retreating residential districts. The Wall Street stockade, built in 1653 by the Dutch at the town's northern limit, was removed by the British in 1699; by I 77 I tne c ity> w * tn 22,000 population, extended INTRODUCTION 59 to Grand Street; and after the Revolution the movement northward reached Greenwich Village, accelerated by the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the century. Under English rule, following New Amsterdam's surrender in 1664, two great steps toward freedom were taken here. A free press was assured in 1735 as a result of the trial of John Peter Zenger, editor of the New- York Weekly Journal, and liberty of worship was firmly established early in the eighteenth century. The history of New York during the Revolution is less notable than that of Boston and other large towns, since the British occupied Man- hattan for almost the entire duration of the war. Early in the conflict, however, liberty poles had been erected on the Common (now City Hall Park), and the lead statue of George III in Bowling Green had been melted into bullets for the Colonists' cause. After the Revolution, New York (the city still consisted of the lower part of the island) boasted of being the first capital of the United States of America. Though suffering temporary setbacks, New York, like several other major American cities, grew rapidly in the next fifty years. In 1792 an embryonic stock exchange was modestly inaugurated under a Wall Street tree. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the expansion of the West began the process which soon made New York the market place and banker of half a con- tinent, and the primary gateway to Europe. By 1830 the population was 202,589; by 1860 the rising tide of immigration, which was to sweep the city in successive waves for another half-century, had helped to raise the total to 813,669. After the Civil War the Erie Canal lost much of its im- portance, but by this time New York, with its superb harbor formation, had already attracted a tremendous foreign commerce, and it now became also a railroad center, with many of its freight terminals located across the Hudson. The more spectacular side of nineteenth-century New York history is associated with lower Manhattan. As early as the i83o's Tammany Hall had discovered the advantages to be derived for itself from the vote of the unassimilated immigrant, and City Hall became the pawn of a group of men whose main object was to deplete the public treasury. The in- famous operations of the Tweed Ring in the i86o's and early 1 870*5, and of other early Tammany politicians, belongs to the past of this older part of the city. Following the Civil War, Wall Street, only a few short blocks south of City Hall, began its more ambitious career as financial controller of the nation. The history of Lower Manhattan has, however, another side. In the late 60 LOWER MANHATTAN nineteenth and early twentieth centuries "Newspaper Row" was situated on Park Row. Here James Gordon Bennett, Joseph Pulitzer, and William Randolph Hearst fought their sensational battles. Lincoln Steffens dis- coursed on political corruption, and Richard Harding Davis and O. Henry spun their tales O. Henry finding in this exciting, chaotic, sordid section of the city much material for the stories of "Baghdad on the Subway." With increasing rapidity, the residential areas receded northward. About the 1850*5 aristocratic St. John's Park began to yield to commerce, and the well-to-do were to be found only in the purlieus of Lower Man- hattan, around Greenwich Village. By the time the World War was de- clared, only a small number of the city's more prosperous residents re- mained below Fourteenth Street, chiefly in mansions around Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue. Beginning in the i88o's Greenwich Village was occupied by the Irish and Negroes, and later by Italians. At approximately the same time, the Germans and Irish of the Lower East Side were supplanted by Italians, Russians, Poles, and to an even greater extent by East European Jews, who, despite poverty, filth, and overcrowding retained their native gaiety and hope. Today, a change is appearing in the Lower East Side; though it is still a slum area, the old "lung" blocks are slowly giving way before widened avenues and new apartment houses. The settlement there of an increasing number of artists and painters in the 1910*5 gave Greenwich Village national prominence as an artistic and literary center. Except for the East Side and Greenwich Village, lower Manhattan is now almost entirely devoted to commerce and finance. In the Wall Street district skyscrapers multiplied rapidly after the turn of the century until building was halted by the stock market crash of 1929. Park Row is no longer Newspaper Row, but an adjunct to the commercial district. Old landmarks were erased by the postwar building boom ; and a solid wall of giant structures, almost unbroken from the Battery to Fourteenth Street, hides the busy traffic of the Hudson River. BATTERY AND WHITEHALL DISTRICT Area: South of Battery Place, Beaver St., and Old Slip. Map on page 63. The Battery, threshold of Manhattan, spreads in a decided arc along the North River shore at the southernmost extremity of the island, where BATTERY AND WHITEHALL DISTRICT 6l East and North rivers empty their sediment into the Upper Bay. West Street (see page 68), rumbling with the trucks that serve almost a hun- dred North River docks, extends northward from the Battery. Massive blocks of office buildings and the structure that carries the final stretch of the Ninth Avenue el fill the rest of the northward view until, at the northeast corner of the park, Bowling Green opens out in an irregular plaza; from here Broadway cuts a clean northbound way through the towering stonework of the lower island. Squared ponderously against Bowling Green, south, is the U.S. Custom House. North, nearest the river, is the Whitehall Building. The name "Battery" derives from a British fort built along the river in 1693. The curve of the present el on the park's east border and Pearl Street, extending east, mark the original shore line. The rest of the area is filled-in land. Beyond the el structure are State Street and the conglomerate skyscraper contours that mount toward Broad and Wall Streets. At the southeast corner of the park opens the great plaza of South Ferry, where all forms of Manhattan's transportation subway, el, ferry, bus, and taxi have a compact major terminus, and where the heavy traffic artery, South Street (see page 80), opens out opposite, bordering the docks to the east. The BATTERY is as attractive to water gazers now as when Herman Melville wrote of "Men fixed in ocean reveries. . . . Landsmen: of week days pent up in lathe and plaster tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can with- out falling in. And there they stand. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite." But the park is more than a Sunday and holiday attraction ; it is a wel- come breathing space in an area dominated by marine commerce. From the sea wall that bounds its twenty-one acres can be viewed the busy traffic of the North River liners, tugs with tows of barges and scows, low- riding Diesel cargo boats from the Barge Canal, passenger steamers of the Hudson lines, and ferries plying cross-river and cross-harbor from the row of terminal rail and marine docks on the Jersey shore. Only one rail- road has entry for its freight into Manhattan by land; the bulk of the railroad freight must be transshipped by tug and barge. Southwest appears the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe Island (see page 411), and beyond it is Ellis Island and the great immigrant station (see page 415). Five miles down the bay rise the abrupt hills of Staten Island. South by southeast lies Governors Island (see page 413), military reserva- 62 LOWER MANHATTAN tion, with Castle Williams, twin fort to Castle Clinton the present Aquarium standing grimed and grim on its highest headland. Between Staten Island and Brooklyn is the Narrows, the strait connecting the Upper Bay with the Lower Bay and the sea. Plans for a suspension bridge, between the Battery and Hamilton Avenue, Brooklyn, were ap- proved by the City Council early in 1939. The estimate of the cost was $41,200,000. Central in popular attraction as well as in prominence among the build- ings of Battery Park is the Aquarium (see page 307), set close beside the river. At one time it served as an immigration station. Some immigrants are still landed at the Battery after examination at Ellis Island. A Government (Department of Labor) ferry disembarks them at the BARGE OFFICE, at the southeast extremity of the park. A sec- ond ferry, operated by the Army, plies between the Barge Office and Governors Island. From Colonial times to the Civil War a barge served as transport between the office and the island, and it was this circumstance that gave the office its name. The original Barge Office was a charming Colonial structure surmounted by a tall cupola from which a beacon shone at night. The present building is an exceptionally interesting work in the style of the Venetian Renaissance, and it is one of the few build- ings in Manhattan with a street arcade. The Barge Office building contains branch offices of the Customs Service, Coast Guard, and Immigration Serv- ice. Here, too, ship-news reporters gather to meet incoming liners, for it is from the Barge Office that Customs cutters leave to meet those ships that heave to at Quarantine for sanitary inspection on entering the port. A TABLET at the western end of the building bears the names of radio operators lost at sea. Southeast of the Barge Office is the bow-roofed, painted building of the SOUTH FERRY TERMINAL, its upper deck invaded by the el structure. From here, powerful steam ferries carry trucks, pleasure cars, and passen- gers to St. George, Staten Island, in about twenty minutes (see page 410). At the north end of the park is PIER A, second oldest structure on the water front, occupied by the Department of Docks and the Police Depart- ment's Harbor Precinct. A clock tower at the edge of the pier is a memo- rial to soldiers and sailors killed in the World War. The clock sounds the signals for the watches kept on shipboard, and also shows the time by dial. Adjacent is a boat basin where police boats are tied beside pleasure craft. At the end of the sea wall is the two-story city FIREBOAT STATION, its tower overlooking the harbor. This is the headquarters for a fleet of ten fireboats protecting about 771 miles of New York and New Jersey water BATTERY AND WHITEHALL DISTRICT 63 front. The i3O-foot Fire Fighter, powerful enough to throw a stream over George Washington Bridge, is berthed beside the building. Midway along the sea wall is a squat building used as a TICKET OFFICE for excursion boats. Craft bound for the Jersey side of the Lower Bay and steamboats fo/ Coney Island leave from this point. The Battery boatmaster, Peter (Buck) McNeill, who has his office here, keeps a sharp watch for would-be suicides to whom this is a favorite spot. wiyiuu \ \ \ \ \ \ * -*_?) 4<.\ *^ BATTERY AND WHITEHALL DISTRICT KEY TO BATTERY AND WHITEHALL DISTRICT MAP 1. Whitehall Building U.S. Weather Bureau 2. Department of Docks Police Harbor Precinct 3. Fireboat Station 4. Aquarium 5. Statue of Giovanni da Verrazano 6. Statue of John Ericsson 7. Flagpole (Evacuation Day) 8. Oyster Pasty Battery Cannon 9. Barge Office 10. South Ferry Terminal Staten Island Ferry Slip 11. South Ferry Building 12. Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary 13. U.S. Army Building 14. U.S. Custom House 15. Statue of Abraham de Peyster 16. Cunard Building 17. Standard Oil Building 18. New York Produce Exchange 19. Fraunces Tavern 20. Site of First Tavern and City Hall in New York 21. Site of the First Printing Press 64 LOWER MANHATTAN It was on the original rocky finger of land that the first Dutch colonists built their huts and a simple breastwork later called Fort Amsterdam. In 1626 Peter Minuit, governor of the new settlement, "bought" the island from the Manhattoes for cloth and fripperies worth about twenty- four (gold standard) dollars. Administered by the Dutch West India Company, New Amsterdam was the scene of frequent disputes between its inhabitants and its governors. Englishmen, Jews, and other colonists, traders, and adventurers from many lands, had, however, settled there among the Dutch by 1664, when a British war fleet appeared to demand the surrender of the town to the Duke of York, who had received from his brother, Charles II, a grant embracing the present state of New York, the islands off the New England coast, and part of the present state of Maine. Despite the efforts of Director Peter Stuyvesant, the burghers re- fused to defend New Amsterdam, and the English flag was run up with- out opposition. It remained there until the Revolution, except for one year, during which the armed naval forces of the Dutch Republic retook it and undertook to carry on under Dutch rule; the settlement was returned to England under a treaty made in the Old World. Names, plaques, and statues in the park recall the early history of the Battery. A bronze STATUE OF GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO, Florentine navigator who is said to have entered the harbor in 1524, stands in the park. On a granite FLAGSTAFF base, Minuit is shown making his deal with the natives. A CANNON believed to have been part of the armament of the Oyster Pasty Battery (1695-1783) has been preserved. A FLAG- POLE commemorates the one greased on Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783, to prevent the hauling down of the British flag by the American troops. And a bronze FIGURE OF JOHN ERICCSON honors the memory of the designer of the Monitor, first turreted battleship, and the screw propeller. The street bordering the park on the north is Battery Place. From the Battery, streets wind their way in erratic angles. Colonial brick, nineteenth-century sandstone, and modern steel- skeletoned office buildings stand side by side. Clerks, maritime employees, Custom House officials, stenographers, sailors on shore leave, Army and Navy men, South Street lodging house indigents, commuters to Staten Island and Brooklyn, and tourists move along together. The sea dominates this virile neighborhood. Sou'westers, sea boots, pea jackets, and dungarees are displayed in the shop windows along the side streets. Model ocean liners and colorful posters advertise offices of the great STEAMSHIP AGENCIES along Broadway, while sandwich men mutely call attention to passport photo studios. BATTERY AND WHITEHALL DISTRICT 65 State Street, bordering Battery Park on the east, was the town's most fashionable thoroughfare until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the wealthy residents began moving uptown. Here were the homes of the merchant princes, known as the "Peep-o'-Day Boys," because they arose at dawn to peer across the harbor at Staten Island where signal staffs flashed news of ships sighted beyond the Narrows. One residence, No. 7, between Pearl and Whitehall Streets, survives, almost merged with the contemporary drabness of neighboring buildings under the winding el. Its tall white columns and delicate ironwork balcony still suggest the opulence of another day. The interior, with its fine old hand-carved mantelpieces, may be seen by permission of the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary, which for many years has maintained the dwelling as a HOME FOR IMMIGRANT GIRLS. The house, it is believed, was built according to plans drawn by John McComb, one of the architects of the present City Hall. On the site of the South Ferry Building near by, at i State Street, once stood the homes of Peter Stuyvesant and Robert Fulton, the inventor. Opposite the main entrance of the South Ferry Building, is the U.S. ARMY BUILDING, 39 Whitehall Street. This red-brick structure with a two-story granite foundation, conservatively built in 1886 in the style of a generation earlier, houses many Army departments of the New York district, such as the recruiting, information, and pictorial services, and an engineers' unit. Facing Bowling Green, between State and Whitehall Streets, is the CUSTOM HOUSE, in which are the offices of the Collector of Customs of the Port of New York, and the headquarters of Custom Collection District No. 10 (which embraces the sub-ports of Albany, Newark, and Perth Amboy). Other offices in the building are those of the Comptroller of Customs, the Surveyor of Customs, the Collector of Internal Revenue for the Second New York District, the Coast Guard, the Tariff Commission, the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office, the Bureau of Statistics of the Depart- ment of Commerce, and Station P of the New York Post Office. The building, somewhat ponderous in its neoclassic treatment, was designed by Cass Gilbert. It was completed in 1907 at a cost of more than seven million dollars, including the price of the land. Seven stories high, the masonry is Maine granite, heavily embellished with dolphins, tridents, and other nautical symbols. On pedestals advancing from the front of the building are four heroic sculptured groups by Daniel Chester French, representing Asia, America, Africa, and Europe. Across the sixth story are twelve statues dedicated to commercial centers of the world: Greece and Rome, by F. E. Elwell; Phoenicia, by F. W. Ruckstull; 66 LOWER MANHATTAN Genoa, by Augustus Lukeman; Venice and Spain, by F. M. L. Tonetti; Holland and Portugal, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens ; Denmark, by Johan- nes Gellert ; Germany, by Albert Jaegers ; England and France, by Charles Grafly. A cartouche by Karl Bitter, on the seventh floor, depicts two winged figures bearing the shield of the United States. Ten paintings by Elmer E. Garnsey, representing world ports as they appeared in 1674 when the Dutch flag last floated over Fort Amsterdam, are on the walls of the reception room in the main corridor. The Custom House occupies the site of Fort Amsterdam, whose four bastions, corresponding to the points of the compass, commanded both the North and East rivers. The fort, including a governor's house built for Peter Stuyvesant, was demolished in 1790. On its site a mansion, known as the Government House, was erected. At the time, ambitious New Yorkers, hoping their city would become the nation's capital, intended the mansion for the President's home. It was used by Governors Clinton and Jay, and later did service as a customhouse until destroyed by fire in 1815. In Colonial days Battery Place, which bounds Battery Park on the north, was a much wider street and was known by its Dutch name, Marcktveldt; later this was anglicized to Marketfield. This thoroughfare was the site of New Amsterdam's first cattle market. The WHITEHALL BUILDING at No. 17, which occupies the entire block between West and Washington Streets, comprises two buildings. The original twenty-story edifice, facing the park, was built in 1900; a thirty-two-story addition was completed in 1910. Many leading shipping companies and a number of consulates have their offices in this building. Above these is the office of the U.S. WEATHER BUREAU, with an instrument shed on the roof. Standing at the foot of the deep sunless canyon of lower Broadway is BOWLING GREEN, probably the city's oldest public park. Here, according to the legend, astute Peter Minuit made the bargain that gave Manhattan to the white man. In 1638-47 this oval spot was part of the hog and cattle market of Marcktveldt. Later, it served as a parade ground for the Dutch militia. The English fenced off the plot and in 1732 leased it to three citizens for use as a private bowling ground. The rent was set at one peppercorn a year. During the Revolution, the royal crowns orna- menting the fence pickets disappeared. A bronze STATUE OF ABRAHAM DE PEYSTER, merchant and one-time mayor of the city (1691-5), by George Bissell, has stood here since 1896. East of Bowling Green is the dark red-brick and terra-cotta building of the NEW YORK PRODUCE EXCHANGE erected in 1881-2 from plans by George B. Post. The design of the exterior bearing walls is derived from BATTERY AND WHITEHALL DISTRICT 67 that of a Roman aqueduct: the arched openings, arranged in long or- derly lines, double in number as they rise. Inside, the produce brokers busy themselves trading and watching the quotation boards from the floor. The boards display Chicago, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, Duluth, St. Louis, and Kansas City grain prices, and New York and New Orleans cotton prices as well as those of foreign markets. The Produce Exchange is the oldest incorporated exchange in the country, having been chartered in 1862 by special act of the State Legislature. Its trading floor is the largest in the world, measuring 220 feet long, 144 feet wide, and 60 feet to the skylight. The STANDARD OIL BUILDING, 26 Broadway, incorporates two struc- tures of different age and height. It is surmounted by a massive pyramidal tower, once one of the most imposing of the New York sky line. A bust of the first John D. Rockefeller by Jo Davidson is on the left side of the corridor. Crowds swarming through the building and along the street in the daytime are in the main unaware of its existence, but at night the lighting of the marble gives the bust a strange appearance, and people passing through the now deserted region often stop before the entrance and gaze curiously inside. The CUNARD BUILDING, at 25 Broadway, is still one of the city's most luxurious structures. Its interior, with its vast domed hall, is decorated with murals by Ezra Winter, depicting the voyages of Leif Ericson, Sebastian Cabot, Christopher Columbus, and Sir Francis Drake. Beaver Street, east of Bowling Green, is lined with commercial and maritime houses, and restaurants. The original Delmonico's, which even- tually moved to Madison Square, is part of the neighborhood's tradition. At the end of Beaver Street is Pearl Street, so named because of the sea shells found there in the days when the East River almost reached this street. The inlet, filled in more than a hundred years ago, was known as Coenties Slip, a corruption of the Dutch nickname Coentje, a combina- tion of the given names of Conraet and Antje Ten Eyck, whose home was near by. At the head of the slip, on what is now the northwest corner of Pearl Street and Coenties Alley, Governer Kieft, tired of play- ing host to traders in his own home, built in 1641 the Stadt-Herberg, or City Tavern, a five-story stone structure with an unobstructed view of the East River. Twelve years later, when the community rose to the dignity of a municipality, New York's first hostelry was converted into the Stadt Huys, or City Hall. A TABLET high on the wall of 73 Pearl Street marks the site of the building, demolished in 1790. Near by at No. 81 another TABLET marks the site where William Bradford established in 68 LOWER MANHATTAN 1693 the first printing press in New York, "At the sign of the Bible." A quaintly carved female figure is set above the street in the building at No. 88 over a TABLET commemorating the great fire of 1835 which destroyed most of the buildings of Coenties Slip. The blaze, which raged for nineteen hours, destroyed 650 buildings with a loss of twenty million dollars. Ten years later a fire in the same neighborhood destroyed 345 buildings and caused property damage amounting to six million dollars. ' At the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets is FRAUNCES TAVERN, one of Manhattan's most cherished landmarks and a notable restoration of early Georgian Colonial work. The relatively square proportions, regular window spacing, brickwork, white portico, hipped roof with its light balustrade, and the interior paneling, are all characteristic of the style, but Dutch influence is echoed in the shape of the dormers, which differ from the gabled English type. It was erected in 1719 as a residence by Etienne de Lancey, a wealthy Huguenot. The merchant firm of his grandson Oliver (De Lancey, Robinson, and Company) turned it into a store and ware- house in 1757. The building was bought in 1762 by Samuel Fraunces, a West Indian of French and Negro blood, who opened it as the Queen's Head Tavern. Washington bade farewell to his officers in 1783, in the tavern's Long Room, faithfully restored in 1907 by the Sons of the Revo- lution (not to be confused with the Sons of the American Revolution). A museum, exhibiting Revolutionary relics, is 01 the third floor, and on the fourth is a small historical library with paintings by John Ward Duns- more. (Open daily except Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; admission free.) Head- quarters of the Sons of the Revolution occupy much of the building; a restaurant patronized by Wall Street bankers and shipping and business men is on the ground floor. WEST STREET AND NORTH (HUDSON) RIVER WATER FRONT Area: Battery Place to y2d St. along North River. Maps on pages 75, 127, and 149. Although the western rim of Manhattan is but a small segment of New York's far-flung port, along it is concentrated the largest aggregate of marine enterprises in the world. Glaciers of freight and cargo move across this strip of North (Hudson) River water front. It is the domain of the super-liner, but it is shared also by the freighter, the river boat, the ferry, WEST STREET AND NORTH RIVER WATER FRONT 69 and the soot-faced tug. Great trunk line railroads from the hinterland, barred from the city by the Hudson, transship their passengers to ferries at the Jersey railheads and their freight cars to scows. In consequence, the railroads use nearly as many North River piers as the steamship lines. The broad highway, West Street and its continuations, which skirts the North River from Battery Place to Fifty-ninth Street, is, during the day, a surging mass of back-firing, horn-blowing, gear-grinding trucks and taxis. All other water-front sounds are submerged in the cacophony of the daily avalanche of freight and passengers in transit. Ships and shipping are not visible along much of West Street. South of Twenty-third Street, the river is walled by an almost unbroken line of bulkhead sheds and dock structures. North of Twenty-third, an occasional open spot in the bulkhead permits a glimpse of the Hudson and the Jersey shore beyond. Opposite the piers, along the entire length of the highway, nearly every block houses its quota of cheap lunchrooms, tawdry saloons and water- front haberdasheries catering to the thousands of polyglot seamen who haunt the "front." Men "on the beach" (out of employment) usually make their headquarters in barrooms, which are frequented mainly by employees of lines leasing piers in their vicinity. In Revolutionary days what is now West Street was under water. About 1811 the bank was extended and raised to allow the building of docks. A number of water grants, or permanent leases, were given at nominal rentals to individuals and corporations who later profited greatly when the city reclaimed the property. Not until 1870, however, did this western water front come into considerable use, and it was 1890 before West Street displaced South Street as the main gateway for water-borne traffic. Today it is worth $470,000 an acre, with a pier value of $1,500 per linear foot, and is the most lucrative water-front property in the world. Passenger lines use many North River terminals. Transatlantic, South American, West Indian, and intercoastal ships dock north of Fourteenth Street, while the terminals of the coastwise and Long Island Sound lines are scattered between this point and the Battery. The most notable excep- tion is the "Great White Fleet" of the United Fruit Company, whose steamers, engaged in the West Indian fruit and passenger trade, are berthed at the famous "banana docks," Piers 2, 3, 7, and 9, near the foot of West Street. In this section, water-front shipping operates literally in the shadow of Manhattan's downtown sky line. Opposite the United Fruit terminal, two red-brick structures, the thirty-seven-story DOWNTOWN ATHLETIC CLUB at 1 8 West Street and the thirty-one-story OFFICE BUILDING ad- 70 LOWER MANHATTAN joining it at No. 21, both designed by Starrett and Van Vleck, contribute peaks to the architectural sierra. Their modern appearance is accentuated by the more conventional aspect of the near-by Whitehall Building (see page 66). Not far to the north, somewhat more modest heights are reached by the NEW YORK POST and WEST STREET BUILDINGS. The former, a seventeen-story structure of buff -colored brick at 75 West Street, houses the daily paper which was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1 80 1. The twenty-three-story West Street Building, at No. 90, was de- signed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1905. Its elaborate pinnacles, decorative chimneys and gables disclose the late French Gothic influence. Just north of the West Street Building, a pedestrian footbridge pro- vides safe passage from the foot of Liberty Street to the ferry terminal of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Between this point and Forty- second Street, the railroads maintain eleven ferry services to Jersey City, Hoboken, and Weehawken. These are used by more than sixty million passengers, and between ten and eleven million vehicles, annually. In the block between Liberty and Cortlandt Streets, at 107 West Street, is the WATCH MUSEUM of Fred W. Jensen and Son, managed by three generations of the Jensen family. Its collection contains timepieces of every known variety, the most intricate being a mechanism that splits seconds and records the passing minutes, hours, days of the week and month, and phases of the moon. In 1807, Robert Fulton's Clermont cast off from a pier at Cortlandt Street and steamed up the Hudson to Albany, demonstrating the prac- ticability of steamship transportation. The NEW YORK TELEPHONE COMPANY SKYSCRAPER at No. 140 is an unusually successful attempt to obtain the maximum spatial benefits under the restrictions of the zoning law. Designed in 1926 by Ralph Walker of the office of McKenzie, Voorhees, and Gmelin, it is the largest telephone building in the world, thirty-two stories high and covering an area of 52,000 square feet. Despite difficulties raised by its irregular- shaped site, the building masses are exceptionally well related, endowing the structure with a silhouette of great strength. The exterior, of buff brick and limestone with a granite base, is enriched by ornamental flowers and elephant heads. This building is the headquarters for the largest of the component companies of the Bell Telephone System, serving New York State and part of Connecticut. From the World-Telegram Building, between Barclay Street and Park Place, to the great Pennsylvania Railroad pier for perishable freight, between Hubert and Watts Streets, West Street bounds the Washington WEST STREET AND NORTH RIVER WATER FRONT JI Market (see page 74). At 260 West Street stood the Phoenix Foundry where Captain John Ericsson in the late 1830*5 constructed America's first iron sailing boats and steamships with screw propellers. Opposite Duane Street, the ramps of the newest extension of the WEST SIDE (Ele- vated) HIGHWAY slope into West Street. A 35O-foot parabolic bridge over the wide intersection at Canal Street links this segment with the four- and-one-half-mile elevated roadway that follows the water front to the Henry Hudson Parkway (see page 284) at Seventy-second Street. This magnificent express drive, which provides the motorist with an unexcelled view of the Jersey water front, the mid-town sky line, and the liners berthed along the North River, leads by means of Canal Street ramps directly to the Holland Tunnel (see page 19). Eventually the highway will be ex- tended south, curving around the Battery and South Street to the East River Drive. ST. JOHN'S PARK FREIGHT TERMINAL, a three-story structure covering three city blocks between Charlton and Clarkson Streets, marks the south- ern terminus of the New York Central's West Side line. The terminal, which was opened in 1934, is the principal delivery station for dairy freight in the city. In a group of buildings which occupy the block around 463 West Street and a portion of the adjoining block are consolidated the RESEARCH LABORATORIES OF THE BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM. Here scientists have made many contributions to the telephone and to allied means of com- munication, such as sound films, picture transmitters, and public address systems. To visit these laboratories special permission must be obtained. GANSEVOORT MARKET, or "Farmers' Market," as it is generally known, occupies the block between Gansevoort and Little West Twelfth Streets. Farmers from Long Island, Staten Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut bring their produce here at night for sale under supervision of the De- partment of Public Markets. Activities begin at 4 A.M. Farmers in overalls and mud-caked shoes stand in trucks, shouting their wares. Commission merchants, pushcart vendors, and restaurant buyers trudge warily from one stand to another, digging arms into baskets of fruits or vegetables to ascertain quality. Trucks move continually in and out among the piled crates of tomatoes, beans, cabbages, lettuce, and other greens in the street. Hungry derelicts wander about in the hope of picking up a stray vegetable dropped from some truck, while patient nuns wait to receive leftover, un- salable goods for distribution among the destitute. The market closes at 10 A.M. and is not open Sundays or holidays. In a wharf at the foot of Gansevoort Street, Herman Melville, the 72 LOWER MANHATTAN author of Moby Dick, once served as customs inspector. Across West Street is the WEST WASHINGTON MARKET, comprising ten quaint red-brick buildings which house a live poultry market patronized mostly by kosher butchers. Since poultry requires ample heat in winter, every stall is equipped with a furnace, so that each roof adds more than a dozen chimneys to its picturesque architecture. From this point to Twenty-second Street, Eleventh Avenue (as the water-front street is here called) skirts the weather-beaten CHELSEA PIERS designed by Warren and Wetmore. These nine great docks, built by the city between 1902 arid 1907 for the transatlantic ships of that period, serve such lines as the United States, Grace, Cunard White Star, Panama Pacific, and American Merchant, and are among the busiest on the river. SEAMEN'S HOUSE, an eight-story Y.M.C.A. building at the corner of Twentieth Street and Eleventh Avenue, furnishes up-to-date living and recreational facilities for more than 250 sailors. Because of the heavy concentration of shipping at the Chelsea Piers, this area has been a strategic sector in the industrial conflicts that break out periodically between maritime labor and shipowners. During the 1936-7 strike, when rank and file seamen tied up the ships in their struggle for a better agreement, Eleventh Avenue was the scene of fre- quent clashes between pickets and scabs, "goon squads" (thugs) and de- fense squads, strikers and police. The NATIONAL MARITIME UNION OF AMERICA, established after the termination of the strike, has its head- quarters at 126 Eleventh Avenue. Unlike their sea-going brothers, the port's "dock-wallopers" (long- shoremen), thousands of whom live in slum areas adjoining West Street, have been quiet in recent years, although they steadily oppose the hiring system, called the "shape-up," whereby the boss stevedore selects his working force several times daily from crowds of longshoremen massed before the dock gates. At Twenty-second Street the North River shore line bends sharply westward. The highway is called Thirteenth Avenue from this point to Thirtieth Street, whence it extends northward to Fifty-ninth Street as Twelfth Avenue. Not far beyond the great Twenty-third Street ferry ter- minal, in the block between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Streets, the STARRETT LEHIGH BUILDING dominates the water front. The building, erected in 1931, represents an effort to solve the problem of freight dis- tribution in a congested metropolis. It comprises a huge railroad yard, loading platforms for trucks and trailers, and facilities for the storage, repacking, redistribution, manufacturing, and display of goods. Although LOWER WEST SIDE 73 the first three floors and central portion are steel- frame in construction, the rest of the building follows a cantilevered concrete design. The great horizontal bands of concrete floor, brkk parapet, and continuous windows sweep majestically to meet the service portion, which rises, framed in steel, near the center of the block. The building has unusual power and constitutes an important step in the development of contemporary archi- tecture. The architects were Russell G. and Walter M. Cory. The railroads have burrowed deeply into the water front between Twenty-fifth and Seventy- second Streets, pre-empting most of the piers and nearly all the property opposite. The New York Central's THIRTIETH STREET YARD straddles ten city blocks, and its SIXTIETH STREET YARD, thirteen blocks, constituting two of the largest privately owned areas in the city. The latter is the main receiving, classification, and departure yard for the only all-rail freight line on Manhattan Island. Both yards were being arranged in 1939 to provide for building construction over the tracks (see page 157 ). Sandwiched among this welter of railroad sidings are the piers of the Hudson River lines and the terminals of many of the world's greatest liners. The new TRANSATLANTIC DOCKS of the Cunard White Star, French, Hapag Lloyd, Italian, Swedish American, and Furness Bermuda lines extend from Forty-fourth to Fifty-seventh Street, and were espe- cially designed to handle luxurious ships like the Queen Mary, Normandie, Europa, Rex, and other greyhounds of the Atlantic. Piers 88, 90, and 92, each of which is 1,100 feet long, make this terminal the largest in the world. LOWER WEST SIDE Area: Battery Place on the south to Spring St. on the north; from West St. east to Trinity Place, Church St., and Broadway (Franklin to Spring St.). Maps on pages 75 and 127. Though this district has a few modern skyscrapers with impressive mar- ble fagades, the character of the neighborhood is derived from produce sheds, crates, smells of fruit and fish of Washington Market, and the amazing variety of retail shops selling radios, pets, garden seeds, fire- works, sporting goods, shoes, textiles, and church supplies. There is an endless flow of traffic through the streets, whose buildings, grimy with age, reveal their pre-Civil War glory in carved lintels, arched doorways, and ornate cornices. Five streets Washington, Greenwich, Hudson, West Broadway, and 74 LOWER MANHATTAN Church form the main north and south thoroughfares, but the narrow, transverse streets leading to the Hudson River carry the burden of the traffic, much of which heads for New Jersey through the ferries at the end of Chambers, Barclay, Cortlandt, and Liberty Streets, or via the Holland Tunnel. Beneath the streets roar the subways and above them hurtles the Ninth Avenue el, which creates an atmosphere like Milton's "darkness made visible." Tunnels, railroads, ferryboats, subways, and road traffic have made this section one of the most important transit centers. Close to the river and harbor, it is also easily accessible to all parts of the city, making it a natural site for the largest fruit and produce market in the world. Loca- tion, too, accounts for the flourishing retail trade: New Jersey commuters returning home after a day's work in the city often find it practicable to buy their necessities here. The markets inject a rude vitality into the district. While most of the city sleeps, WASHINGTON MARKET, north of Fulton Street and spreading to many side streets between West and Greenwich Streets, reaches the peak of its activity. Perishable products must be distributed quickly; in this concentrated market they pass from jobbers to wholesalers and re- tailers. Streets free of daytime traffic are taken over by trucks of dealers and farmers. Freight cars discharge their burdens; produce is moved, stored, stacked, boxed, and crated. A weird spatter of lights provides illumination, and in the glow truck drivers, farmers, tally-keepers, and inspectors work at a swift pace. In winter the streets are lined with bon- fires around which the men warm themselves. The name Washington Market is used to designate the entire whole- sale produce section and the city-owned RETAIL MARKET, a block-square building between Washington, West, Fulton, and Vesey Streets. The Bear Market, established in 1812, was the predecessor of the original Washing- ton Market. The latter, built in 1833, was also known as Country Market, Fish Market, and Exterior Market. The present Retail Market building was reconstructed in 1914. Its interior is split into stalls that are leased. An entrancing array of food is offered including caviar from Siberia, Gorgonzola cheese from Italy, hams from Flanders, sardines from Nor- way, English partridge, native quail, squabs, wild ducks, and pheasants; also fresh swordfish, frogs' legs, brook trout, pompanos, red snappers, codfish tongues and cheeks, bluefish cheeks, and venison and bear steaks. In the vicinity of Cortlandt and Greenwich Streets, two blocks east and south of Washington Market, is the retail radio district. Seed and pet shops, largely patronized by suburban commuters, are south of Barclay LISPENARD LOWER WEST SIDE WEST STREET KEY (Also see maps on pages 127 and 149) 1. United Fruit Company Piers 2. Syrian Quarter 3. Downtown Athletic Club 4. 21 West Street Office Building 5. New York Post Building 6. Recreation Training School 7. Planters 8. West Street Building 9. Church of St. Nicholas 10. Watch Museum 11. Retail Radio District 12. Hudson Terminal 13. Washington Retail Market 14. Washington Wholesale Produce Market 15. New York Telephone Company Building 16. Ecclesiastical Supply Stores 17. Federal Office Building 18. St. Peter's Church 19. Fireworks Stores 20. Sporting Goods Shops 21. Seed and Pet Shops 22. World-Telegram Building 23. West Side Highway 24. Cosmopolitan Hotel 25. Western Union Telegraph Building 26. New York Mercantile Exchange 27. Long Distance Building 28. Site of the Phoenix Foundry j6 LOWER MANHATTAN Street, on West Broadway and Greenwich Street. Barclay Street has a number of ecclesiastical supply stores, originally attracted there because of the presence in the neighborhood of old St. Peter's Church. Dealers in fireworks who also stage the pyrotechnic spectacles Niagara Falls, Flying Eagles, Pyramids of Fire, and the like for carnivals and celebrations throughout the country and in South America, have stores near Church Street and Park Place. Their factories are in New Jersey, and the proximity to the ferries has been a factor in the location of the busi- ness here since the i88o's. On the south side of Chambers Street between Broadway and West Broadway, are many sporting goods shops. Wholesale grocery houses line Greenwich Street near Beach Street. The trading center for the 7,500,000 cases of eggs and 3,500,000 tubs of butter which New Yorkers consume each year is the NEW YORK MER- CANTILE EXCHANGE at Hudson and Harrison Streets. Prices are based upon daily receipts and open market conditions. The dairy and poultry commission houses are near Reade Street and a little farther north are huge warehouses from which emanate a pungent aroma of coffee, tea, and spices. Not far away from the Exchange, in the vicinity of Church, Reade, and Duane Streets, is the shoe jobbing center, and east of West Broadway from Thomas to Franklin Streets, the wholesale textile market. In the market section, comprising a world of its own, is the SYRIAN QUARTER, established in the late i88o's at the foot of Washington Street from Battery Place to Rector Street. A sprinkling of Turks, Armenians, Arabs, and Greeks also live here. Although the fez has given way to the snap-brim, and the narghile has been abandoned for cigarettes, the coffee houses and the tobacco and confectionery shops of the Levantines still remain. Using the same methods and types of implements as native Syrian bakers, the confectioners make delicious sweets such as baclawa (chopped walnuts or pistachios, wrapped in forty layers of baked dough of gauze- like thinness flavored with goat's milk butter and drenched in honey), knafie (twisted hank of fried dough with a core of chopped pistachios flavored as baclawa), sweet-sour apricot paste sprinkled with pistachios, strings of walnuts dipped in grape syrup, and "Syrian delight" scented with attar of roses. Restaurants feature shish kebab (spit-broiled lamb) and rice cooked in salted vine leaves, and furnish narghiles upon request. Other neighborhood stores sell graceful earthen water jars; brass, silver, and pewter trays; tables inlaid with mother of pearl; brass lamp shades fringed with variegated beads, and Syrian silks of rainbow hues. LOWER MANHATTAN SEEN BENEATH BROOKLYN BRIDGE THE BATTERY, 1679 THE BATTERY, 1939 LINER NIEUW AMSTERDAM IN THE HUDSON EAST RIVER DOCKS BELOW BROOKLYN BRIDGE I m SOUTH STREET PIER AND WALL STREET TOWERS FRONT STREET OLDEST HOUSE IN MANHATTAN, II PECK SLIP NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE, BROAD AND WALL STREETS m! n , II II llil II ,m c NUMBER ONE WALL STREET AND STATUE OF JOHN WATTS WALL STREET CANYON LOWER WEST SIDE 77 The tiny CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS (Greek Orthodox), at 155 Cedar Street, between Washington and West Streets, was built in 1820. Each January 6, on the Day of Epiphany, the chapel observes the colorful cere- mony of the Rescue of the Cross but not as in the old days, when a small wooden crucifix was thrown into the harbor from the Battery landing to be rescued by the most agile Greek youth. The waters proving too cold, the custom was changed in 1937, and now the cross may be drawn ashore by a white ribbon attached to it. Near the Syrian Quarter stands the RECREATION TRAINING SCHOOL at 107 Washington Street. Organized in 1936 under the direction of the WPA, it gives instruction in more than one hundred courses, and has an enrollment of about twelve hundred. Greenwich Street, as Greenwich Road, skirted the shore of the Hud- son until about the nineteenth century when the river was pushed back by dumping fill. Now heavily walled with merchandising warehouses, it is cast into shadow by the Ninth Avenue el, New York's first elevated rapid transit system. A relic of the old days, the PLANTERS, at Albany and Greenwich Streets, was established as a hotel in 1833. It closed when the Civil War broke out, but after being remodeled in 1922 was opened as a restaurant. In its heyday the hotel was patronized by Southern planters, its location I being convenient to the Perth Amboy ferry, and thus to the Washington Post Road and the railroads connecting with the South. Near by, at 113 Greenwich Street, is the rear entrance to the New York Curb Exchange Building (see page 86). The twin twenty-two-story structures connected by a bridge at 30 and 50 Church Street, were among the first skyscrapers. Designed by Clinton and Russell, these red tapestry-brick buildings were erected in 1908 at a cost of $12,000,000. Their name, the HUDSON TERMINAL, derives from the downtown station of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (the Hud- son Tubes) underneath the buildings. The station is connected by way of tunnels with BMT and IRT subways. A block north, on the east side of Church Street, is the graveyard of St. Paul's Chapel (see page 98), a sub- sidiary of Trinity Parish. The imposing FEDERAL OFFICE BUILDING, a $7,697,000 structure of limestone, occupies the block from Church Street to West Broadway, and from Vesey to Barclay Street. Cross and Cross, and Pennington, Lewis, and Mills, associate architects, designed the heavy fifteen-story structure, a pretentious example of the "classic-without-columns" style of some re- cent public buildings. It houses branches of the New York Post Office, 78 LOWER MANHATTAN the Foreign and Domestic Commerce Bureau of the Department of Com- merce, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Treasury Department. Hemmed in by modern business structures, ST. PETER'S, on the south- east corner of Barclay and Church Streets, is the oldest Roman Catholic church building in Manhattan. The edifice was erected in 1786, three years after the congregation was organized, and was rebuilt in 1838. Steps lead to the six massive columns supporting a pediment in whose center stands a figure of St. Peter holding the keys of heaven and hell. Old Columbia College, founded in 1754 as King's College (see page 383), stood until 1857 between Barclay and Murray Streets, and West Broadway and Church Street. West Broadway, then Chapel Place, was a wandering lane which led from Canal Street to the college chapel. During the early eighteenth century, the vicinity of Greenwich and Warren Streets was the site of Vauxhall Garden. A reproduction of a contemporary London resort, it flourished about forty years, and was the rendezvous of most fashionable Colonials. The COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL, at Chambers Street and West Broadway, the oldest hotel in the city, was opened in 1850 as the Gerard House, drawing steady patronage from near-by steamship piers and the first Grand Central Terminal, then across the street. Among the patrons were bearded 'Frisco gold miners who staggered into the lobby after a trip around the Horn, dumped their gold-dust, went out to the barber, and came back "unrecognizably clean." The hotel survives, a ramshackle building, with stores crowding its entrance, and an incongruous neon sign flashing from its fagade. Many buildings on the block between Church Street and Broadway, and Thomas and Worth Streets represent the florid architectural style of the post-Civil War period when decorative feats, structurally impossible in stone, were accomplished in cast iron. These white buildings were erected by Griffith Thomas in 1869 for the flourishing textile trade, in which many of the town's wealthiest citizens were engaged. This block was the first site (17731870) of the New York Hospital (see page 246). One of the great riots in the city occurred here in 1788 when a mob stormed the hospital to attack medical students and doctors who, it was claimed, had used for dissection the cadavers of "respectable people, even young women of whom they made an indecent exposure." The militia, summoned by the governor and mayor, removed the students to a near-by jail for safekeeping, and when the crowd gathered in front of the prison, the troops fired, killing five and wounding scores. The WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH BUILDING, at 60 Hudson Street, LOWER WEST SIDE 79 rises twenty- four stories high in thirteen shades of brick, like a huge red rock projecting out of the city; Voorhees, Gmelin, and Walker were the architects. The LONG DISTANCE BUILDING of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 32 Sixth Avenue, near Walker Street, designed by the same firm, is the world's largest communication center and the junction point of many important telephone trunk routes. It has direct circuits to important cities and radio telephone circuits to points in every part of the world. All private wires from New York to other cities, whether telephone, telegraph, or teletypewriter, lead through the building, which is also the main control point for the great radio broadcast series. The land west of Broadway to the river, between Fulton and Chris- topher Streets, was once known as the Queen's Farm. In 1705 Queen Anne granted it to Trinity Church. Since 1731 descendants and alleged descendants of Annetje Jans, an early owner of the farm, have sued Trinity, either for the return of the land or for pecuniary compensation. William Rhinelander in 1794 obtained ninety-nine-year leases of a large part of Trinity land; the Common Council in 1797 augmented these holdings by granting him all rights to the water front adjoining his prop- erty. With the rapid northward expansion of the city in the nineteenth century, the area became the site of large commercial structures and yielded millions in rent annually to the Rhinelander family. For many years Trinity land was ignored by builders because of its leasehold status, and not until the Lower East Side of Manhattan had been built up did they turn to this section. In 1803 the streets from Warren to Canal were laid out. Four years later, St. John's Church, a chapel of Trinity parish, was erected on Varick Street near Beach, and St. John's Park, named for the chapel, was set up on the block bounded ; by Varick, Hudson, Laight, and Beach Streets. The park was open only to residents of the houses facing it. From 182550 this district was the home of the city's wealthy aristocrats. When the plebeian population en- | croached upon it the wealthy moved northward. The park was razed in ' 1869 to make way for the freight terminal of the Hudson River Railroad which later was merged with the New York Central Railroad; in 1936 the terminal was moved to West Houston and West Streets. Canal Street, named for and following the course of a stream that ran from Collect Pond (the site of the present Foley Square district) to | the Hudson, is the main traffic artery connecting New Jersey and Long Island by way of the Holland Tunnel and the Manhattan Bridge. The HOLLAND TUNNEL, named for its chief engineer, Clifford M. Holland, begins at Watts Street, between Hudson and Varick Streets, a 80 LOWER MANHATTAN block north of Canal, and bores underneath the Hudson River to Twelfth Street, Jersey City, New Jersey (toll: passenger cars 50$). A spacious and impressive plaza leads to a narrow tunnel entrance, whose dingy masonry lacks the exciting quality of the glistening interior. The tunnel is made of cast iron lined with concrete and the side walls are inset with white vitreous tiles, with markers at -quarter-mile points. East- and westbound tubes are separate, each two lanes wide, together carrying a traffic of 12,000,000 cars a year. (The exit of the eastbound traffic tube is on Canal Street.) Catwalks in each tube are paced by guards who keep vehicles at the required speed of thirty miles an hour. The tunnel was constructed by the states of New York and New Jersey at a cost of fifty million dol- lars. Work was begun on October 12, 1920, and the tunnel opened on November 13, 1927. It is operated by the Port of New York Authority. Old SPRING STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, founded in 1811, stands at Varick and Spring Streets. In 1834, a mob spurred by prominent poli- ticians, almost destroyed the original frame building because Dr. Henry G. Ludlow, the pastor, was a firm advocate of abolition. Two years later, the present brick structure was erected. The firearms firm of FRANCIS BANNERMAN AND SONS, still active at 501 Broadway, near Broome Street, was founded in 1865 by a former naval officer in the Civil War. It has a remarkable collection of military arms and war relics. (Open Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Satur- day 8:30 a.m. to 12 m.; admission free.) Chronological arrangements of the exhibits lucidly indicate the stages in the development of modern lethal weapons. Prized possessions include such objects as the headquar- ters flag of Major General "Light Horse" Harry Lee, famous Revolu- tionary cavalry leader and father of General Robert E. Lee; a double- barreled flintlock shotgun that belonged to Napoleon I, and the guidon of the Seventh U. S. Cavalry used in the battle of Little Big Horn (Gen- eral Custer's last stand). SOUTH STREET Area: South Ferry to Corlears Hook along the East River. Map on page 91. The bowsprit of many a clipper Baltimore, California, McKay and Liverpool packet once jutted over South Street, now visited by ungainly scows, fishing smacks, lighters, and car floats from Long Island and Jersey City. This famous "street o' ships," a two-mile stretch of bumpy stones skirting the East River from the Battery to Corlears Hook, is historically SOUTH STREET 8l associated with New York's development as a great port; though today but few ocean-going craft breast the piers that once berthed whole fleets of gallant windjammers. The Lightnings and Comets and Flying Clouds of a later day, requiring deeper water, steam up the broad fairway of the North (Hudson) River, leaving South Street to the traffic of the ten-ton truck. Viewed, from the piers near the Battery end of South Street, the East River bridges Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg form a superimposed pattern of steel and stone, like a photograph from a camera that was jarred during exposure. Across the river, on a bluff overlooking the plebeian harbor activities, are the staid residences of Brooklyn Heights, for more than a century the center of wealthy conservative society. The rumble of speeding trucks, the blasts from near-by steam shovels, and the intermittent whistles from passing river traffic join in crescendos of dissonance. Sailors in pea jackets and dungarees, workmen in overalls, neat office clerks and shabby drifters throng the highway. On mild sunny days the drifters sit along the docks with their "junk bags," share ciga- rette butts, and stare endlessly into the water. In winter they cluster in little groups about small bonfires; many sleep at night in doorways with newspapers for covering. Others join the homeless men who sleep in the MUNICIPAL LODGING HOUSE, ANNEX No. 2, in the old ferry shed at the foot of Whitehall Street, which can accommodate about 1,200 nightly. The majority of the piers along South Street are leased or owned by railroad companies. Pier 4, at the foot of Broad Street, marks approx- imately the site of the first dock built by the Dutch on Manhat- tan Island. What is now South Street was then under water, so the exact location is inland. The NEW YORK STATE BARGE CANAL TERMINAL oc- cupies Pier 6 where arklike, weather-beaten Erie Canal barges are moored. Many of the barge captains are married, and their families live on board the year round. In winter the boats sometimes lie for months along the river banks farther north. At 6 1 Whitehall Street is the old EASTERN HOTEL, now used as an office building. In 1822 the owner, Captain John B. Coles, remodeled the original structure, a warehouse, and named it the Eagle Hotel. It was re- named the Eastern in 1856. The frame of the building reputedly contains mahogany beams that were used as ballast in eighteenth-century merchant- men. Among the hotel's guests were Robert Fulton, Jenny Lind, P. T. Barnum, and many of the illustrious entertainers who appeared in Castle Garden, now the Aquarium (see page 307). The two blocks between Whitehall and Broad are typical of the lower length of South Street. Here, dilapidated brick and brownstone structures 82 LOWER MANHATTAN crowd the sidewalks, upper floors forlornly vacant, street floors occupied by cut-rate "drink and food" stores, low-priced barber shops, secondhand clothes stores, sail lofts, and chandleries. Broad Coenties Slip, which was filled in about 1835, encloses JEANETTE PARK, a rendezvous popular with South Street's army of beached seamen and homeless unemployed. The, park was named for the ill-fated vessel of the Jeanette Polar Expedition, promoted in 1880 by the elder James Gor- don Bennett. The concrete and chromium structure within the park houses the famous OYSTER BAR, established in the neighborhood in 1849. ^ s founder, Robert Peach, opened up shop by the simple device of setting three planks across two barrels. In 1898, Patrick O'Connor, age twelve, became his assistant, and, five years later, his partner. Peach retired in 1917, but O'Connor carried on. He now operates the park bar. The SEAMEN'S CHURCH INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK occupies a thirteen- story brick and stone-trimmed structure at 25 South Street (latitude 40 42' 10" N, longitude 74 oo' 35" W). Surmounting the roof is a small lighthouse tower erected in 1913, by public subscription, as a memorial to the passengers, officers, and crew of the S.S. Titanic, luxury liner that sank April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage to America. Standing guard over the main entrance of the building is a gilded figurehead of Sir Galahad, reminiscent of the carvings on the prows of the clipper ships which docked near by during the nineteenth century. Above the figurehead is a ship's bell rescued from the S.S. Atlantic which foundered off Fisher's Island on Thanksgiving Day, 1846, with a loss of seventy-eight lives. The bell, connected with a clock, rings ship's time every half -hour. The institute was founded in 1834, and in 1843 estab- lished churches on the water front. In 1854 activities were expanded to include provision for sailors' lodging and entertainment. Several missions, floating churches, and boarding houses were operated throughout the port until 1913 when the present building was opened as the institute's center. An annex with accommodations for a thousand guests making a total lodging capacity of about fifteen hundred at the institute was com- pleted in 1929. Seamen are charged moderate rates for lodging and meals; privileges include admission to moving pictures and other entertainment, and the use of libraries, club, game, and writing rooms. A merchant marine school, conducted by the institute, is the oldest surviving school of its kind in New York. It was founded in 1916. In the middle of Old Slip is the FIRST PRECINCT POLICE STATION, a grim, solid structure reminiscent of a fortified Florentine Renaissance palazzo. North, across the street, is the UNITED STATES ASSAY BUILDING, SOUTH STREET 83 a five-story granite building with a massive chimney. The public is not admitted to this sanctuary where scrap gold and silver are melted into bullion. The thoroughfare's only skyscraper is at Wall and South Streets, 120 WALL STREET. It is a huge, white, thirty-three-story building, uncom- promising in its literal conformance to the setback ordinance. Ely Jacques Kahn was the architect. A bronze PLAQUE identifies the site as that of Murray's Wharf, where George Washington landed April 23, 1789, on his way to Federal Hall for his inauguration as President. Private sea- planes of Wall Street commuters land at the MUNICIPAL DOWNTOWN SKYPORT between Piers n and 12. The squat fortress-like WAREHOUSE on the corner of De Peyster Street is one of the oldest buildings on the street. It was built of rough-hewn granite blocks more than one hundred years ago by the Griswold brothers, East India merchants. FULTON MARKET, largest wholesale fish mart on the Atlantic Coast, was established in 1821 as a retail market to "supply the common people with the necessities of life at a reasonable price." The market covers an area of six city blocks bounded by Fulton, Water, Dover, and South Streets, and includes two large markets on the South Street docks near Fulton. Before daybreak tons of fish are unloaded from the holds of stubby-sticked trawlers and draggers and from refrigerated trucks from New England and New Jersey. Six days a week, from 2 to 9 A.M., the sec- tion is a bedlam as rubber-booted men in the street and in narrow stalls clean, bone, ice, unpack, and repack approximately one hundred varieties of fish. After a section of the market structure collapsed in 1936, the city undertook the modernization of this landmark. Three new market build- ings have been planned (1939). SWEET'S, a restaurant established almost a century ago, is on the south- west corner of Fulton and South Streets. In old days it was especially popular among shipmasters and South Street merchants, and from 1850 to 1860, when "blackbirders" flourished along the East River, many ne- farious slave-running deals were transacted in this South Street "Del- monico's." From a pier near the present Peck's Slip, the first licensed Brooklyn ferry began operations in 1654. Fares were three stivers for whites, and six stivers for Indians. Between Dover and Roosevelt Streets, South Street passes under the Brooklyn Bridge (see page 313). Near by, at 174 South Street is the BIRTHPLACE OF FORMER GOVERNOR ALFRED E. SMITH. Almost the entire block between Catharine Slip and Market Slip is oc- 84 LOWER MANHATTAN cupied by the HEARST PUBLICATION PLANT which houses the editorial and press rooms of the New York Journal and American and the Sunday American. The American Weekly is also printed here. The stretch of shore from Catharine Slip to Corlears Hook was oc- cupied by the shipbuilding industry during the War of 1812 and in the decade preceding it. Many of New York's privateers that harassed British sea-traffic during the war were constructed in the local shipways. And from these yards was recruited Noah Brown's heroic band who fashioned Commodore Perry's fleet for the Battle of Lake Erie. South Street gradually assumes a quieter tempo at Market Slip as trucks and pedestrians become less frequent. Farther on, at Rutgers Slip, there is a pathetic little park more liberally supplied with benches than with shade. From Clinton Street to Corlears Hook Park the East River is walled from view by a continuous line of railroad pier sheds, and only an occa- sional blast from an unseen tug reminds one that water-borne traffic is passing. WALL STREET DISTRICT Area: Battery Place, Beaver St., and Old Slip on the south to Fulton St. on the north; from Trinity Place and Church St. east to South St. Map on page 91. Wall Street, financial heart of the nation, is itself but little more than a third of a mile long from its head at Broadway to its foot at the East River, although its name is applied to a small district lying to the north and south. Functionally, Wall Street is a complex mechanism developed to provide the centralized banking and credit facilities and the efficient securities market place that modern industry and commerce demand. Walled in by towering structures, the street, by historical coincidence, is well named. At this place in 1653, Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Amsterdam, ordered a protective wall built across what was then the colony's northern- most limit. It was not long before the city had pushed past this barrier, and under British rule the district flourished as a center of government and fashion. Following the Revolution, Wall Street became for a year the seat of the Federal Government, and here were located the establishments of such statesmen and leaders of commerce as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. The four buildings of the famous NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE cover the area between New, Wall, and Broad Streets and Exchange Place one block east of Broadway. The original building, designed by George WALL STREET DISTRICT 85 B. Post, was finished in 1903, and the twenty-two-story addition, in 1923, from the plans of Trowbridge and Livingston. The adjoining BLAIR BUILDING and COMMERCIAL CABLE BUILDING were bought in 1928. The Exchange building proper, with its well-proportioned Corinthian order and sculptured pediment, shows an expressive use of the "temple" form of facade. The Exchange is owned and administered by 1,375 member brokers, each of whom possesses a "seat." In the boom year of 1929, seats sold for as much as $625,000; the top price in 1938 was $85,000. Dur- ing 1937, the Exchange had on its trading list some 1,200 stock issues, valued at almost sixty billion dollars, as well as 1,400 bond issues valued at more than forty-two billion dollars. The Exchange was established shortly after the formation of the United States. In 1790, the first Congress authorized the issue of eighty million dollars in bonds. Three large banking institutions were incorporated about this time, and for the public sale of their stock, a market was developed under a buttonwood tree at what is now 68 Wall Street. Here, in 1792, a group of twenty-four brokers drew up a trading agreement. Financing the next war, in 1812, gave the exchange a new importance and the New York Stock and Exchange Board was organized with offices at 40 Wall Street. It was as a result of financing the Civil War, however, that the board began to approach its full power. The organization was combined with the Open Board of Brokers and the Government Bond Department to form the present New York Stock Exchange early in 1863. There followed a half-century of unprecedented expansion. Money was needed for railroads, telegraph lines, factories, for building cities over night and exploiting the resources of the West. Financial titans arose: Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Daniel Drew, Jim Hill, E. H. Harriman, and the elder J. P. Morgan. After Gould, Fisk, and Drew, with the help of bribed New York legislators, had succeeded in their struggle with Commodore Vanderbilt for the control of the Erie Railroad, Gould and Fisk conceived the plan of cornering the gold market, counting on the United States Treasury not to sell from its gold reserve. But when the price of gold reached 162 on Black Friday (September 24, 1869), President Grant ordered the Treasury to sell, breaking the corner. The panic of 1869 re- sulted, followed by a depression which lasted ten years. Banks, brokers, merchants suspended business; nearly one hundred railroads failed, and the Stock Exchange closed its doors. With the fall of men like Fisk came the rise of Morgan, Harriman, and others, unbridled expansion, larger fortunes, and further battles for personal financial dictatorship. It was in this period that Morgan's and 86 LOWER MANHATTAN Harriman's struggle over the great Northern Pacific Railroad was followed by the collapse of the market and the nation-wide panic of 1901. Again, in 1907, Morgan's struggle with the Knickerbocker Trust Company brought about the failure of that and other institutions. The World War brought further prosperity to the Exchange and necessitated the erection of a twenty-two-story addition to its building. After the war, except for the depression of 192022, the market rose to new heights, and with it the expectations of an expanding nation. The panic of October, 1929, and another depression were the inevitable re- actions. One radical result of this depression was the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1934, which for the first time at- tempted governmental regulation of the influential Stock Exchange. The function of the Exchange is to provide a liquid market where se- curities can at all times be disposed of or acquired virtually without delay. Trading in America's greatest securities market is conducted on the floor of the Great Hall, one of the largest rooms in the world. Orders to buy or sell, telegraphed and telephoned from all over the world, are relayed through brokerage houses to their active members on the floor, who trans- act business orally with traders stationed at numerous horseshoe trading posts. Despite the informal nature of these transactions, they are quickly recorded in meticulous detail on the Exchange's ticker tape and are communicated by telegraph and cable to other markets. Trading operations may be viewed from the visitor's gallery. Admission was comparatively easy until 1933, when a visitor unkindly deposited a tear gas bomb in the ventilating system. Today admission is available only to guests of an Exchange member firm. The visitor, standing in front of Trinity Church (see page 310), Wall Street and Broadway, shortly before nine o'clock in the morning, will see the empty "street" fill suddenly with swift-moving clerks, tellers, stenog- raphers, and office boys pouring from subways, ferries, and elevated trains ; while bankers and brokers arrive almost as promptly in chauffeured auto- mobiles or by planes landing at a ramp near the foot of Wall Street. Directly behind Trinity Church, is the NEW YORK CURB EXCHANGE, 78 Trinity Place, second largest securities market in the nation. Here cer- tain other securities not listed by the New York Stock Exchange are traded. The Curb Exchange's two buildings, designed by Starrett and Van Vleck, were opened in 1921 and 1931 respectively. The 550 regular and more than four hundred associate members include many members of the Stock Exchange. WALL STREET DISTRICT 87 Before 1921, the Curb conducted transactions in the open street, from which comes its name. The brokers, known originally as "Curb brokers" in Wall Street, met at the northern end of Broad Street and communicated by violent gesticulations with their colleagues in the windows above. In 1908 the New York Curb Agency was organized, and reorganized in 1911 as the New York Curb Market, with fixed trading hours. The present name was adopted in 1929. The lowest price accepted in 1929 for a Curb seat was $150,000; the 1938 minimum was $8,000. At the entrance to Wall Street are two skyscrapers, the IRVING TRUST COMPANY, at No. i, and the FIRST NATIONAL BANK, at No. 2. The former, completed in 1931, from the plans of Voorhees, Gmelin, and Walker, is fifty stories high, and resembles a solid shaft of stone. Fluted walls and chamfered corners (an expensive device on land worth $520 a square foot) help create this illusion. The site is about 180 by no feet and is assessed at $10,250,000 without improvements. The twenty-one- story First National Bank, erected in 1933 from a design by Walker and Gillette, is marked by a flat, unimaginative use of classic precedent. At No. 14, is the entrance to the thirty-nine-story BANKERS TRUST COM- PANY, designed by Trowbridge and Livingston, and erected in 1911. The twenty-five-story addition, facing Pine Street, was completed in 1933. Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon designed the addition. Opposite the Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets is the SUBTREASURY BUILDING, a dignified structure designed in Greek- Revival style by Ithiel Town and A. J. Davis. Built in 1842 as a Custom House, it was remodeled in 1862 for use as a Subtreasury. The Federal Reserve Bank used it until 1925. Now the building houses the New York Passport Agency of the Department of State, several departments of the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Bureau of Accounts of the Interstate Commerce Commission. It stands on the site of the Colonial City Hall, built in 1699 and torn down in 1812. Here, in 1735, John Peter Zenger, imprisoned editor of the New-York Weekly Journal, was. tried on charges of libeling the administration of the royal governor, William Cosby, and was acquitted after the country's first major battle for freedom of the press. The Stamp Act Congress met here in 1765, and the Continental Congress in 1785. In the expectation that New York would be the na- tional capital, Major L'Enfant, who later planned the city of Washington, was commissioned to remodel the building in 1788 as the Federal Hall, and here Washington took oath, April 30, 1789, as President of the United States. The place above the steps where it is claimed he stood on this occasion is marked by J. Q. A. Ward's STATUE OF WASHINGTON 88 LOWER MANHATTAN erected in 1883. The actual stone on which Washington stood is preserved in a glass case within the building. Near the Subtreasury, in front of the adjoining old Assay Office, a horse-drawn wagon, loaded with explosives, blew up shortly before noon, September 16, 1920. Thirty of the noonday crowd were killed and one hundred wounded. Scars of the explosion are still visible on near-by build- ings. Occurring during a period of anti-radical hysteria, the disaster was said by some to have been a protest dynamiting of this important financial corner. Others held that the wagon had belonged to an explosives com- pany and had been using a prohibited route when its load of dynamite was accidentally discharged. Neither theory ever was proved. At 23 Wall Street, across from the Stock Exchange, is the diminutive MORGAN BUILDING, home of America's most powerful private banking firm. Erected in 1914, the gray five-story building is impersonal to an almost forbidding degree. It was designed by Trowbridge and Livingston. East, at 40 Wall, is the BANK OF THE MANHATTAN COMPANY, the city's second oldest bank. By-product of the feud between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Manhattan Company was organized by Burr in 1799, and though chartered as a water company, the bank was opened al- most immediately. The water service ceased in 1842. The present building, called the Manhattan Company Building, was designed by H. Craig Severance in association with Yasuo Matsui. Seventy-one stories in height, it was intended to be the world's tallest structure when construction was begun in 1929, but the last-minute addition of a spire to the Chrysler Building (see page 224) defeated the plan. Within five years it had dropped to fifth place in height. The observation tower stands 830 feet above the street. (Open daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; admission free.) Solid glass automatic doors in the lobby are an unusual feature. Hamilton's bank, the BANK OF NEW YORK AND TRUST COMPANY, the city's oldest, is just east, at No. 48; it was organized in 1784. The present thirty-two-story structure was erected in 1928, from the plans of Benjamin Wistar Morris III. The NATIONAL CITY BANK, the second largest bank in the country, has offices at No. 55. The building's lower part, with its four-story colon- nade, was built in 1842, and served- as customhouse from 1862 until 1907, when it was taken over by the bank, and the second tier of four stories and another colonnade were added under the direction of McKim, Mead, and White, architects. The simple power of the composition of the north fagade is most effective. The bank, chartered in 1812, was an outgrowth of the First Bank of the United States, established in Philadelphia in 1791. WALL STREET DISTRICT 89 A block to the north, at 18 Pine Street, is the CHASE NATIONAL BANK, the nation's largest bank since its merger with the Equitable Trust Com- pany in 1930. At its Cedar Street entrance is a free exhibit of more than forty thousand coins. (Open weekdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 12 m.) The tallest building in lower Manhattan, and third highest in the city, is SIXTY WALL TOWER (the Cities Service Building), at 70 Pine Street. An underground passage and a bridge connect with older quarters at 60 Wall Street. Sixty-seven stories (965 feet) high, it was designed by Clinton and Russell, and erected in 1932. A complicated play of over- lapping forms emphasizes long vertical lines that accentuate the height of the building. There is an observation room in the tower. (Open weekdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; admission 400, children under eight, free.) The TONTINE BUILDING, northwest corner of Wall and Water Streets, is on the site of the Tontine Coffee House, erected in 1794, a favorite meeting place for merchants and political groups. The Merchants' Coffee House, erected about 1737 on the southeast corner of Wall and Water Streets, was a rendezvous for Revolutionary plotters, and is memorialized by a bronze plaque on the present building. Hanover Square, where Hanover, Stone, Pearl, and William Streets converge on OM Slip, south of Wall Street, was a public Common as early as 1637. On the southwest side of the square is INDIA HOUSE, built in 1837 by Richard Carman, and headquarters since 1914 of a group of foreign traders. Ship models, prints, and other relics are housed here. Nicholas Bayard built a house on this site in 1673, while across the square (119-21 Pearl Street) in about 1691 lived his friend Captain William Kidd. The Bayard House, together with a greater part of the square, was destroyed in the great fire of 1835. The lower end of William Street has probably undergone more changes of name than any other street in the city. It has been known as: The Glass Makers' Street, The Smith Street, Smee Street, Smit Street, Suice Street, De Smee Street, Burghers Path, Burger Jorisens Path, King Street, Berger Joris Street, and Borisens Path. The NEW YORK COTTON EXCHANGE, at 60 Beaver Street, two blocks south of the Stock Exchange, is the most important cotton market in the world; it was organized in 1871. Its present building, designed by Donn Barber, was erected in 1923. Other exchanges in the vicinity include the MARITIME EXCHANGE at No. 80 and the COMMODITY EXCHANGE at 81 Broad Street, three blocks south of the Stock Exchange; and the NEW 90 LOWER MANHATTAN KEY TO MAP OF SOUTH STREET, WALL STREET DISTRICT, CITY HALL DISTRICT, AND CHINATOWN SOUTH STREET 1. Hearst Publication Plant 9. First Precinct Police Station 2. Birthplace of Alfred E. Smith 10. Seamen's Church Institute 3. Fulton Market 11. Jeanette Park 4. Sweet's 12. State Barge Canal Terminal 5. The Old Griswold Warehouse 13. Site of the First Dock 6. 120 Wall Street Building 14. Municipal Lodging House 7. Municipal Downtown Skyport 15. Site of the Eastern Hotel 8. U.S. Assay Building WALL STREET DISTRICT 16. Maritime Exchange 32. New York Curb Exchange 17. Commodity Exchange 33. New York's Oldest Restaurant 18. India House 34. Trinity Church 19. Cotton Exchange 35. First National Bank Building 20. Coffee, and Sugar Exchange 36. Bankers Trust Company Building 21. Site of Merchants' Coffee House 37. Chase National Bank Building 22. Tontine Building 38. Equitable Building 23. Sixty Wall Tower 39. New York Clearing House 24. Bank of N.Y. and Trust Company 40. Mutual Life Insurance Company 25. National City Bank Building 41. Federal Reserve Bank 26. Manhattan Company Building 42. Chamber of Commerce 27. U.S. Subtreasury Building 43. Singer Building 28. Morgan Building 44. Site of John Street Theater 29. New York Stock Exchange 45. Golden Hill 30. Irving Trust Company Building 46. Old John Street Church 31. Aldrich Court Building 47. Washington Irving's Birthplace CITY HALL DISTRICT 48. St. Paul's Chapel 61. City Court Building 49. Woolworth Building 62. Stewart Building (The Sun) 50. Statue of Nathan Hale 63. Hall of Records 51. Civic Virtue 64. Court Square Building 52. Statue of Benjamin Franklin 65. St. Andrew's Church 53. Newspaper Row 66. U.S. Court House 54. Tribune Building 67. Site of Tea Water Pump 55. Old Beekman (Tavern) 68. Supreme Court Building 56. Pulitzer Building 69. State Office Building 57. Brace Newsboys' House 70. Health Department Building 58. Municipal Building 71. Tombs 59. Statue of Horace Greeley 72. Criminal Courts Building 60. City Hall CHINATOWN 73. Chinese School 77. Tom Noonan's Rescue Society 74. Wall Newspaper 78. Bloody Angle 75. On Leong Tong 79. Hip Sing Tong 76. Joss House LHH sU 8 SH 5 SOUTH STREET WALL STREET DISTRICT CITY HALL DISTRICT CHINATOWN 3 Cj *fi" MURRAY Sr ; ' : PARK ] L ^9 BARCMY ST. KEY 92 LOWER MANHATTAN YORK COFFEE AND SUGAR EXCHANGE at 1 1 3 Pearl Street. The New York Produce Exchange (see page 66) is at 2 Broadway. At 45 Broadway, between Morris Street and Exchange Alley, is the ALDRICH COURT BUILDING, housing the United States Shipping Commis- sion, the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation and other Federal agencies. A TABLET in the building's fagade marks what is said to be the site of the first residence of white men on Manhattan. In November, 1613, the ship Tyger burned offshore, and the captain and crew landed here and built four huts. Running north of the Stock Exchange, Nassau Street, known origi- nally as "the Street that Runs by the Pye Woman," a continuation of Broad Street, is the retail shopping center of the financial district. Here in low old buildings are shops and restaurants catering to the noonday crowd. At 77 Cedar Street, between Nassau and Broadway is the NEW YORK. CLEARING HOUSE, a five-story building with a marble front, erected in 1896. R. W. Gibson was the architect. In this important institution many millions of dollars in checks and drafts drawn on member banks are cleared daily. Although constant mergers have reduced member banks from a maximum of sixty-seven to twenty, the volume of business has expanded enormously since it was organized in 1853. New York's oldest restaurant, YE OLDE CHOP HOUSE, is located at 118 Cedar Street, and for more than 1 30 years has catered to men in the Wall Street area. At 120 Broadway, between Cedar and Liberty Streets is the EQUITABLE BUILDING, planned by E. R. Graham. Erected in 1914, before the setback law, it shoots up forty-one stories, unrelieved and formidable. Its total of 1,200,000 square feet of rentable floor space makes it the second largest building in floor area in the city. The MUTUAL LIFE INSUR- ANCE COMPANY of New York is at 34 Nassau Street, between Cedar and Liberty Streets. Chartered in 1842, it is the oldest organization of its kind in America. The insurance section of the financial district is now largely concentrated in the neighborhood of Fulton and William Streets. The FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF NEW YORK, 33 Liberty Street, occu- pies the block bounded by Maiden Lane, Nassau, Liberty, and William Streets. The fourteen- story building, completed in 1924 from plans by York and Sawyer, is constructed of heavy limestone blocks. It strongly sug- gests the fortified palaces of the Florentine Renaissance. The rusticated stone exterior is almost without ornament except for iron lanterns, and the iron grilles of the great arched windows complete the picture of a build- ing ready for a siege. Five stories are below street level. Subterranean WALL STREET DISTRICT 93 vaults are barred by doors weighing as much as ninety tons. The NEW YORK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, 65 Liberty Street, occupies a five-story building designed by James B. Baker and completed in 1902. This, the oldest commercial organization of its kind in the world, was founded in 1768 in the Long Room of Fraunces Tavern (see page 68) and chartered by George III in 1770 with the aim of encouraging commerce and sup- porting industry. Its resident membership, limited to two thousand, in- cludes many of the city's prominent bankers and industrialists. Maiden Lane, one block north of Liberty Street, was so named when, as Maagde Paatje (the Dutch equivalent), it was a footpath used by lovers along a rippling brook. Once the city's noted retail jewelry center, the street is now given over to wholesale trade and manufacturing. A TABLET in the Jewelers' Building, 17 Maiden Lane, marks the location of the John Street Theater, built in 1767, and frequently attended by President Washington. One block north, John Street, center of insurance and jewelry busi- ness, was known before the Revolution as Golden Hill and was the scene of the "Battle" of Golden Hill where, in January, 1770, two men were wounded in a skirmish between citizens and British soldiers. A TABLET at the northwest corner of John and William Streets marks the site of this early encounter. The SINGER BUILDING, 149 Broadway, at the head of John Street, was built in 1908 and remained the city's tallest edifice for eighteen months ; forty-one stories (612 feet) high, today (1939) it ranks sixteenth. Ernest Flagg, the architect, gave it the first slender skyscraper tower. At 46 John Street is the OLD JOHN STREET METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, mother church of American Methodism. The present edifice, Federal in style, and erected in 1841, is the third on the site since 1768. In 1783, Washington Irving was born at 131 William Street, corner of Fulton an appropriate birthplace for the man who coined the phrase "the Almighty Dollar." One block east, at the corner of Pearl Street, Holt's Hotel, later known as the United States Hotel, was erected in 1833. It was considered "the pioneer of the 'great' hotels of New York City and of America." The roof contained a promenade and an observatory whence the city's traders could watch for incoming vessels. 94 LOWER MANHATTAN CITY HALL DISTRICT Area: Fulton St. on the south to Franklin St. on the north; from Church St. east to Pearl St. Map on page 91. One mile north of Battery Landing, the imperfect triangle of CITY HALL PARK is wedged into Broadway's steep eastern wall. Here is the venerable seat of the municipal government, and the scene of important historical events. Broadway clips the park precisely on the west as does Chambers Street on the north and hems it in with a palisade of commer- cial buildings whose architectural distinction, except for the Woolworth Building, lies mainly in their renovated store fronts. The apex of the park's ten-and-one-half-acre triangle points to St. Paul's Chapel, the oldest church in the borough and probably the only building that presents its back to Broadway. The eastern boundary of the park is fixed by two streets: Park Row, which slants northeast from Broadway past old "News- paper Row," and Centre Street, which runs north from the end of Brook- lyn Bridge (see page 313) through the new civic center at Foley Square. Paved walks subdivide the park into small grassy areas set with trees. Rows of benches bordering the walks accommodate strollers and idlers who pause to rest, to read, to have their shoes shined, to feed the pigeons, or to enjoy the transient sunshine. This is a restless park: six days a week crowds of office workers stream to and from the IRT subway kiosks on both sides; elevated trains rattle and screech in a rambling shed at the approach to Brooklyn Bridge; well polished automobiles bearing low license numbers nudge into a parking space "For Official Cars Only"; policemen ceaselessly patrol the grounds; lunch-hour crowds, released from near-by office buildings, fill the paths at noontime. There are but two buildings in the park proper, although a third, the triangular post-office building that was called "Mullett's monstrosity," occupied the southern segment until 1938. In the north central section of the park is City Hall, and to the rear and fronting Chambers Street is the City Court Building, formerly known as the Old County Court House. CITY HALL houses the offices of the Mayor, chief executive and magis- .trate of the city, and his staff; the City Council, the municipal legislative body; the Board of Estimate, the general administrative body; and the Art Commission, the agency that passes on the designs for all public buildings and works of art. Architecturally, City Hall is an exceptionally well-executed design of the post-Colonial period showing clearly the fact, noteworthy in its day, CITY HALL DISTRICT 95 that professional rather than amateur architects planned it. The design, a beautiful adaptation of French Renaissance and American Colonial influ- ences, was essentially the work of Joseph F. Mangin, a Frenchman, but his partner and co-winner of a competition for the commission, John Mc- Comb, a Scotsman, supervised the work in New York and received most of the contemporary credit. He was paid six dollars a day, a very good salary at the time. Construction was under way for nearly a decade; it took three years to settle on the plan alone. To save $15,000 the city fathers, tempering their recklessness in spending a half million dollars for the structure, insisted that brownstone be used for the rear. City Hall was completed in 1811. Reminiscent of the Hotel de Ville of the eighteenth century, the digni- fied marble structure, chastely embellished with Louis XVI pilasters be- tween arched windows, is noteworthy for its unusual grace and delicate scale. The two wings are balanced on either side of a central portico that is surmounted by a cupola. Its finial is a figure of Justice, said to have been executed by John Dixey. The interior is marked by McComb's fine attention to detail, especially in the rotunda, in the superb double curve of the self-supporting marble stairway with its delicate wrought-iron rail- ings, and in the slender columns of the upper gallery. Portraits of former governors crowd the walls of the corridors, and mayors' portraits are hung in the mayor's antechamber and reception room on the first floor. Over the mantelpiece in the mayor's office is a portrait of Lafayette, painted by Samuel F. B. Morse on the occasion of the general's visit to America in 1824. The Governors' Suite, on the second floor, was originally intended for the official use of the State's chief executive when in New York, but its three rooms have been converted into a museum. (Open Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 12 m.) A mahogany writing table used by George Washington during the first days of his Presidency is exhibited along with other historic pieces of furniture. In the Governors' Room of the suite are Trumbull's portraits of such noted personages as John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington (valued at more than a quarter of a million dollars), and in the other two rooms are hung paintings by John Wesley Jarvis, Henry Inman, John Vanderlyn, Thomas Sully, George Catlin, and others. The portrait of Henry Hudson is the work of Paul van Somer, a seventeenth- century Flemish master; the identity of the subject is doubtful, however, for there is no authenticated portrait of the navigator. This valuable col- lection is under the care of the Art Commission. The mahogany- lined City Council chamber, once the aldermanic cham- 96 LOWER MANHATTAN her, on the second floor, contains portraits of Henry Clay and George Washington, a statue of Thomas Jefferson by Pierre Jean David (d' Angers), and a pretentious ceiling mural, New York City Receiving the Tributes of the Nations, by Taber Sears, George W. Breck, and Frederic C. Martin. The adjoining committee room is decorated with portraits of General George B. McClellan, by William H. Powell, and of William Bainbridge, by John Wesley Jarvis. The former Common Council chamber, on the second floor, is now the meeting place of the Board of Estimate. Corinthian columns and pilasters give the room an atmosphere of dignity. A bust of John Jay, on the north side, is the work of John Frazee; that of John Marshall, on the south side, is by an unknown artist. The steps of City Hall are worn smooth by official public receptions and ceremonies. Here the mayor welcomes distinguished visitors, awards promotions to members of the fire, police, and sanitation departments, and makes contributions opening charity campaigns. The CITY COURT BUILDING is a white marble structure with Corinthian columns and pilasters. Built (1861-72) by the Tweed Ring at the cost of more than $12,000,000, it provided the opportunity for one of the most gigantic steals in the city's history. City Hall Park is New York's approximation of a courthouse square or village green. This little plot of land is all that survives of one of New York's earliest municipal gathering places. The site was once part of the common lands. Whenever the community peace was threatened or cause for celebration arose, the populace gathered there. An oak planted near City Hall in 1911 does honor to the memory of Jacob Leisler, who fought against the tyranny of English rule and was hanged for treason in 1691 close to this spot. Near the front of the building the Sons of Liberty erected five successive "liberty poles" between 1766 and 1776. In 1776 the Declaration of Independence, brought by courier from the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, was read here, for the first time in New York, in the presence of George Washington. On February 13, 1837, the "Flour" or "Bread Riot" took place during a financial panic then threatening the country. The price of flour had ad- vanced from six dollars to fifteen dollars a barrel amid widespread specu- lation. A placard was carried through the streets announcing a meeting at the park, and declaring: "All friends of Humanity, determined to resist Monopolists and Extortionists are invited to attend, rain or shine. Bread, Meat, Rent, Fuel the voice of the people shall be heard." The six thou- sand who attended vented their anger by breaking into the flour stores, CITY HALL DISTRICT 97 dispersing only after the militia had been called out. The distressed gathered again in ominous protest during the lean days of the 1850'$. The park was the scene of a peculiar riot in 1857 when opposing bands of policemen cracked one another's heads. The Municipal Police, venal and inefficient, had been abolished by an act of the State Legislature and a new body, the Metropolitan Police, established under State control. The Municipals refused to disband, however, and when a large force of Metropolitans attempted to serve warrants for the arrest of Mayor Fer- nando Wood, the two groups clashed in a savage battle that stormed through the corridors of City Hall and was finally checked only by a show of bayonets by the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard. During the Civil War, food for the soldiers went out across the park from the supply base at City Hall. A ceremony held here on March 24, 1900, marked the commencement of construction of the subway transit system. A STATUE OF NATHAN HALE, the work of Frederick MacMonnies, is on the west side of the park. The FIGURE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, near the east side of the park, was sculptured by E. Plassman and was erected in 1872 as the gift of Albert de Groot to the press and printers of New York. Another journalist, Horace Greeley, is honored by a heroic STATUE in bronze by Henry Bonnard. But the MacMonnies statue, Chic Vir- tue, erected in 1922, is the one generally associated with City Hall Park. Said to be the largest piece carved from a single block of marble since Michelangelo's David, the central figure is a gigantic muscular youth, nude except for a dash of foam (or seaweed) encircling his middle: a sword over his right shoulder, he fixes his gaze forward, seemingly unaware that he is trampling on two sirens writhing at his feet. In summertime chil- dren splash in the basin of the monument. Protests against the unembar- rased nudity of the group and the conception it presents of virtuous man's chivalry have brought a promise of removal to Foley Square, where, pre- sumably, criticism is less stringent. The region north of City Hall Park is a district of wholesale commerce, where caps, pants, and woolens are manufactured and sold. For almost a score of years before 1930 the sixty-story WOOLWORTH BUILDING, erected in 1913 west of the park's apex, at Broadway and Park Place, was the world's tallest building; its architect was Cass Gil- bert. Intended as a huge "sky sign" to advertise Frank W. Woolworth's chain of five-and-ten-cent stores, it was acclaimed a masterpiece, the first "cathedal of commerce." Its tower rises without a setback from the center of the Broadway front to 792 feet above the curb. The lower and broader 98 LOWER MANHATTAN section of the building mounts thirty stories to a height of about four hundred feet. This section has been criticized as being too high in com- parison with the tower, when seen from the west. All the horizontal ele- ments of the building are subdued in color to strengthen the soaring qual- ity of the vertical lines. The color is as delicately graded as the modeling. The chief effect is a glistening white, set off by the weathered green of the copper peak and copper roof; but as many as six different colors were used on a single terra-cotta ornamental detail. Pinnacles, carved canopies, and gargoyles soften the silhouette and impart an atmospheric lightness. Crisp and delicate terra-cotta surface ornament drops over the building like a veil. All the details are Gothic, even to the tourelles that surround the peak, the finial that surmounts it, and the flying buttresses. Despite its Gothic decorations, the Woolworth Building was a genuine contribution to the development of an American skyscraper style. It repre- sents one of the earliest attempts to express the steel- frame structure a departure from the "immobility of mass and weight of masonry" that char- acterized the classic type of building. Below the Woolworth Building, on Broadway between Vesey and Ful- ton Streets, is ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL OF TRINITY PARISH, the oldest church building in Manhattan. Its cornerstone was laid May 14, 1764, in a field sloping to the Hudson River. The architect, James McBean, a Scot, is said to have been a pupil of James Gibbs. Gibbs designed the Renaissance church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, in London, which greatly influenced the de- sign of St. Paul's. The church was constructed of stone quarried from the site which is now the graveyard. Its original, lovely warm color has been greatly dulled by age. The church is surmounted by a tower at the west end, to which a wooden spire, more elaborate than the rest of the church but of excellent design, was added in 1794. At the east end, facing Broadway, is a carriage portico with a pediment and slender but well-proportioned Ionic columns. The light, spacious interior is handsomely decorated, with a barrel vault carried on slender columns, and a gallery on each side. On the north side of the interior a painting of the arms of the United States marks George Washington's pew; opposite, on the south, the arms of New York State mark Governor Clinton's pew. Immediately after Washington's inaugura- tion, April 30, 1789, both houses of Congress accompanied him to St. Paul's, where Bishop Samuel Provoost conducted a service. On the Broadway side is a monument to Major General Richard Montgomery, killed in the attack on Quebec, December 25, 1775. It CITY HALL DISTRICT 99 was executed by J. J. Caffieri, French sculptor, on order from the Con- tinental Congress. Montgomery's grave is beneath the monument. Among the memorials on the west wall of the interior is a bust of John Wells (17701823) by John Frazee, the first known portrait bust by a native American sculptor. The graveyard, which flanks the church on three sides, is a favorite noonday retreat of office workers in the neighborhood. It contains the weatherbeaten tombs of many historic personalities. The churchyard gates are closed during the two days preceding the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, as they have been since the chapel's founding, to remind the pub- lic that the property belongs to Trinity Parish, and that it is open only by the courtesy of that body. Newspaper Row Across Park Row from City Hall Park, near the approach to the Brook- lyn Bridge, stands the brownstone PULITZER BUILDING, once the proud home of the World; its gilded dome makes it one of the section's most imposing buildings. George B. Post designed the structure in 1890; it was enlarged in 1908. This was an early example of buildings whose walls carry only their own weight; the floors are supported by columns. Never- theless, the exterior walls are, in places, more than nine feet thick. Today the World is dead, the dome in which Joseph Pulitzer had his office is deserted, and the structure has become merely another office build- ing a relic of New York's NEWSPAPER Row. In the late decades of the nineteenth century Park Row and northern Nassau Street constituted the publishing center for the great metropolitan dailies. Today only the Sun, housed in the Stewart Building, flanking City Hall Park on the northeast corner of Chambers Street and Broadway, remains in the vicinity. A little to the south of the Pulitzer Building, at Spruce and Nassau Streets, is the red-brick, clock-towered TRIBUNE BUILDING, former home of the Tribune and one of the earliest elevator buildings. Dana's Sun was once next to the Tribune in the same building, incidentally, which for a time housed Tammany. The modest building that housed the Times in the days of its humble beginnings occupies the site of the old Brick Presby- terian Church at Park Row and Nassau Street. The nonpartisan CITIZENS UNION, founded in 1897 for the purpose of obtaining honest, efficient municipal government, is now one of the tenants of the building. A little off the Row, on near-by William Street, were quartered Hearst's Evening Journal and American. The Evening Post, edited by William Cullen Bry- ant, had its home at Broadway and Fulton Street. James Gordon Bennett's 100 LOWER MANHATTAN Herald had its workshop on the southeast corner of Ann Street and Broad- way, site of the old Barnum Museum. Long a familiar feature of the Row was the i2O-year-old building of the Roman Catholic CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW, famed for its 2:30 A.M. Mass for night workers, most of them printers from the great dailies. In 1938 a new church structure was erected on the original site at Duane Street and Cardinal Place, behind the Municipal Building. The site also includes 15 Cardinal Place, birthplace of Patrick Cardinal Hayes. On New Chambers, corner of William Street, is the BRACE MEMORIAL NEWSBOYS' HOUSE, founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace and now one of five shelters maintained by the Children's Aid Society. It provides food and lodging at low cost for homeless boys. Horatio Alger is said to have found material for his rags-to-riches stories there. This section was New York's Rialto before it became the domain of the Fourth Estate. Its theaters presented the first American dramas as well as the most famous stars of the English and American stage. Through the Park Theatre's stage entrance the narrow lane still known as Theatre Alley, parallel to Park Row and connecting Ann and Beekman Streets passed such celebrated stars as Edwin Booth, Edmund Kean, Edwin For- rest, and Fanny and Charles Kemble. In 1825 the first formal opera pre- sented in America, Rossini's Elisabetta, was performed here. Other playhouses in this section were the Anthony Street Theatre, An- thony Street (now Worth Street) near Broadway, which presented Joseph Jefferson, the elder, and James Wallack; the Old Broadway Theatre at Broadway and Pearl Street, which opened in 1847 with Sheridan's School for Scandal; and Palmo's Opera House, 39 Chambers Street, renamed Burton's, which opened in 1844 and presented opera intermittently during two decades. South of the Brooklyn Bridge and east of Park Row is the "Swamp," center of the city's wholesale leather market since the late 1690'$. When the tanning industry was expelled from Broad Street, the mart fol- lowed it to Beekman Swamp the site bounded approximately by Frank- fort, William, Beekman, and Cliff Streets. During the nineteenth century, an encroaching population gradually drove the tanneries from the neigh- borhood, but the leather merchants remained. Beekman Street, southern boundary of the "Swamp," is the center of downtown New York's job printing industry, which took root in this sec- tion when most of New York's newspapers were published on near-by Newspaper Row. (The printing and publishing industry is the second largest in the city.) CITY HALL DISTRICT IOI On the northeast corner of Beekman and Gold Streets is THE OLD BEEKMAN, a tavern and coffee house where General Grant is said to have imbibed his favorite Peoria whisky. The Chic Center Despite the northward expansion of the city, the vicinity of the City Hall has remained the center of governmental activities in New York. This concentration of official business municipal, State and Federal occurs in an impressive group of buildings erected within the past decade in and around Foley Square, the neighborhood northeast of City Hall Park. On the two triangular blocks bounded by Park Row, Centre, and Duane Streets, and looking down on City Hall, is the forty-story MUNICIPAL BUILDING, designed by McKim, Mead, and White. It straddles Cham- bers Street, forming an arcade through which flows west-east vehicular traffic; this passageway has been called the "Gate of the City," the title of an oil painting of the scene by William Jean Beauley. The building has a flattened U-shaped plan, with its open side toward Centre Street. It gains dignity through the bold treatment of the intermediate stories, de- spite the poorly related tower and the disturbing character of the Corin- thian colonnade at the base. In themselves the elements are well designed, but their combination lacks unity. It is surmounted by a heroic figure of Civic Fame, by Adolph Alexander Weinman, who was also the sculptor of the relief on the lower part of the building. The building, opened in 1914, cost about twelve million dollars. De- spite its size (650,000 square feet of floor area), it has proved inadequate, and several departments have been housed in buildings on Foley Square proper. The municipally owned and operated RADIO STATION, WNYC, on the twenty-fifth floor, broadcasts no commercial programs; performers are supplied by government agencies and educational institutions. The MUNICIPAL REFERENCE LIBRARY, on the twenty-second floor, a branch of the New York Public Library, contains documents, pamphlets, maps, directories, and reports from all important cities. On the second floor, across the hall from the marriage license bureau, is the MARRIAGE CHAPEL, a sunny room decorated with flowered wallpaper and potted palms. The seven-story granite structure at Chambers and Centre Streets is the HALL OF RECORDS, repository for all legal records relating to deeds of Manhattan real estate and to court cases some of the documents were drawn as early as 1653. It contains offices of the New York County Register, Surrogates' Court, and Commissioner of Jurors. Designed by John R. Thomas and opened in 1911, it is New York's best example of 102 LOWER MANHATTAN the eclectic baroque style used in French nineteenth-century municipal buildings. Heroic statues of distinguished New Yorkers on the ornate granite fagade and symbolic figures representing such conceptions as Philosophy, Poetry, and Industry are by Philip Martiny and Henry K. Bush-Brown. The interior is sumptuously decorated. Beyond the Municipal Building and the Hall of Records lies Foley Square proper, a plot of land' shaped somewhat like a hatchet head, around which several public buildings have been grouped to form a civic center. Unfortunately, this group lacks a unifying architectural design. Several city departments are housed in the COURT SQUARE BUILDING at 2 Lafayette Street, a commercial office building. Across, on Centre Street between Duane and Pearl, is the new UNITED STATES COURT HOUSE, last architectural work of Cass Gilbert, and com- pleted in 1936 by his son, Cass Gilbert, Jr. The architects attempted the difficult task of harmonizing their work with the neoclassic structures on either side. The tower, thirty-two stories high, is crowned by a pyramidal roof covered with gold leaf. The offices of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York as well as the United States District Court and Circuit Court of Appeals are in the building. A block east, at Pearl Street and Park Row, was the famous Tea Water Pump, which was the chief source of water supply for the city until 1789. Its water, so housewives declared, was excellent for brewing tea. Carted about in casks, it was sold from door to door. North of the United States Court House on Centre Street is the eight- story, neoclassic SUPREME COURT BUILDING, designed after the drawings submitted in competition by Guy Lowell, of Boston, in 1912. Skillfully planned for a difficult site, the hexagonal building has a refreshing ro- bustness. Unlike the other columns of Foley Square, its great Corinthian order presents a real portico of convincing form and scale. It is ap- proached by a sweep of granite steps one hundred feet wide. The elab- orately decorated central rotunda is three stories high. The building houses one of the country's finest law libraries. Various New York State departments centered in Albany have offices in the granite-faced, nine-story STATE OFFICE BUILDING which stands on the northeast corner of the square (Worth and Centre Streets). Built (1928-30) under the supervision of W. E. Haugaard, State commis- sioner of architecture, it is of "chastened classic" design. Its walls are re- lieved by flat carving and at its four entrances are black granite lighting standards. The offices are grouped around two large courts. The main floor halls are finished in gray marble with green marble pilasters and CITY HALL DISTRICT 103 bronze capitals, and plaster cornices and ceilings decorated with gold leaf. The building to the west, occupying an entire block and with its main entrance on Worth Street, contains offices, laboratories, and clinics of the CITY HEALTH, HOSPITAL, AND SANITATION DEPARTMENTS. It was de- signed by Charles B. Meyers to conform with the State Office Building, and was completed in 1935. It is ornamented with metal grilles and lan- terns, and a series of panels depicting medical subjects. Occupying the two blocks between Centre and Lafayette Streets, a few steps north of Foley Square, are the bleak structures of the TOMBS and the CRIMINAL COURTS BUILDING connected by the famous BRIDGE OF SIGHS. The Tombs, a prison for men awaiting trial, derives its funereal name from its predecessor on this site, which resembled an Egyptian tomb. The pres- ent huge gray pile, with its rounded ends and high pitched roof, is more suggestive, however, of a gloomy medieval fortress. Notorious criminals have been incarcerated within these somber walls before being led across the enclosed bridge for trial in the Criminal Courts. The long career of both structures neared an end in 1938, when the State Legislature au- thorized the expenditure of $15,000,000 for the erection of modern build- ings. The new site is directly across Centre Street from the old one. This entire area in the eighteenth century comprised marshland and a pond known as the Collect. It was on this pond that John Fitch, in 1796, conducted experiments with a steamboat. In the depression of 1808, munici- pal authorities established a work relief project to drain the section. It became a recreational center for holiday-making laborers, sailors, and oystermen. But when the land began to sink into the imperfectly drained swamp, the houses and taverns of the region were abandoned to freed slaves and hapless immigrants. Such was the origin of the historically infamous Five Points section. The territory derived its name from the intersection of five streets forming a triangular area, with Paradise Square, now the southwest corner of Colum- bus Park (opposite the State Office Building at Baxter and Worth Streets), in the center. It reached its peak in disorder and debauchery about the middle of the ninetenth century when the first gangs of New York made their appearance in the congested slum with such picturesque names as the "Forty Thieves," "Kerryonians," "Chichesters," "Plug Uglies," "Shirt Tails," and "Dead Rabbits." The most unsavory place was the "Old Brewery," a converted tenement swarming with thieves, prostitutes, and degenerates. In one room called the "Den of Thieves" more than seventy- five men and women made their home. This warren was vividly described by Charles Dickens in his American Notes. 104 LOWER MANHATTAN CHINATOWN Area: Baxter St. east to Park Row and New Bowery; south of Bayard St. Map on page 91. New York's Chinatown is trying to live down a myth ; a myth kept alive by the sight-seeing companies that pile tourists into Chinatown busses, transport them to prepared points of interest, and frequently prime them with tales of mystery and crime. The truth is (and the policemen on the beat will verify it) that no safer district is to be found in New York City. Yet guides have been known to warn tourists to "hold hands while walking through the narrow streets." Tourist trade, which supplies a small part of its income, is but a sec- ondary concern of the Chinese quarter; for though its population is only 4,000 the district serves as "home town" for the 18,000 Chinese of New York City and for the 30,000 in the metropolitan area. Laundrymen, res- taurant workers, servants, shopkeepers, and professionals come here, espe- cially on Sunday, to meet their friends, do their shopping, see a Chinese movie, eat a holiday dinner, play fan-tan, or arrange a marriage or burial. The first Chinese known to have visited New York was Pung-hua Wing Chong, who arrived in 1807, the year the embargo on foreign trade was established. Later he became known as John Jacob Astor's mandarin because Astor got permission from President Jefferson to send out a ship, despite the embargo, on the pretense of taking "this prominent man- darin" home. Historians differ as to the identity of the first Chinese resident of New York City. Some say it was Quimbo Appo, who came to San Francisco in 1844 and arrived here a few years later; others state it was Ah Ken, a Cantonese merchant who made his home on Mott Street in 1858. Still others contend it was Lou Hoy Sing, a sailor who shook off his wanderlust and settled in New York in 1862. (He married an Irish lass who bore him two stalwart sons, one of whom became a policeman and the other a truck driver.) From 1875 until shortly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese migrated in large numbers to the city, displacing well- to-do families in the neighborhood of Mott and Pell Streets. The colony soon overflowed into Bayard and Canal Streets, and at its peak numbered 6,000 residents. For many decades Chinatown kept intact the religious and cultural cus- toms of old China. The younger generation, however, like that of other immigrant groups, no longer adheres strictly to the traditional mores; CHINATOWN 105 changes in China have been an added factor in the weakening. Though the joss houses, shrines of Buddhist worship, still exist, they are rarely attended by Chinese, certainly not by the youth. The Chinese New Year is still cele- brated in traditional paper-dragon-and-firecracker style but the more rigid ethical customs, such as suicide because of failure to pay debts, are being ignored or abandoned. No longer is American citizenship frowned upon ; and mixed marriages cause little comment. So far has the process of assimilation progressed that in the 1936 Democratic National Convention Wong Lee was seated as a New York delegate. The tongs, Chinese equivalent of American fraternal societies, which for so many years ruled the quarter with iron discipline and fought each other with hired gunmen, now share influence with newer groups. The Chinese Journal and the Vanguard, recently established liberal-progressive news- papers, are steadily gaining in circulation, and the Chinese Republic News and the Nationalist Daily reflect the new trend. Since the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, a new spirit of unity has developed in Chinatown which has eliminated social and political friction and discouraged tong wars. Old and young, conservatives and moderns, have joined in raising funds for the homeland and in promoting the boy- cott against Japanese goods. One custom, however, the devout Chinese still retains ; he arranges that when death comes his remains shall be sent to China for interment. This is accomplished with characteristic patience and thrift. The deceased is first buried in this country, an identification tag sealed in a bottle being placed in the casket. Ten years later the grave is opened and the remains, removed to a zinc-lined box two feet by one, are shipped to China for reburial. Freight charges are thus brought within the means of the dead man's family. A leisurely stroll at sundown through Chinatown's winding streets is an interesting experience. Throughout the neighborhood Chinese import- ing houses and groceries, like the New England "general stores," offer a wide variety of goods. Neatly stacked in the windows are Chinese vege- tables (grown on Long Island) tender green Chinese cabbage, blanched bean sprouts, fibrous brown lily roots, crinkly bitter melons, great squashes resembling watermelon covered with a white bloom, water chestnuts, young pods of peas with smoked squid, shark fin, blubber, roast ducks, and roast pork hanging from hooks. In these shops, patronized almost exclusively by Chinese, many articles for use and decoration may be purchased: hexagonal and fluted green bowls, native spoons of China, simple brown paper fans, packets of joss 106 LOWER MANHATTAN sticks, sturdy black cotton slippers without backs, strangely shaped but un- usually durable toothbrushes, kites shaped like butterflies or dragons, wooden flutes, beautiful green-leaved Chinese lilies, wall pockets for flowers, long-handled wooden back-scratchers. Mott Street, entered from Worth Street, which extends west of Chatham Square, gives the first colorful view of the quarter. The large Chinese signs of a native temple at No. 5 emphasize the oriental style of the facade of the adjoining PORT ARTHUR RESTAURANT BUILDING (No. 7). The CHINATOWN EMPORIUM in the Port Arthur Building attracts souvenir buyers, and near by at No. 13 the Joss HOUSE presents for curious passers-by and the herded throngs from the "rubberneck wagons" an in- accurate but highly dramatic lecture on Chinese religious customs. At No. 37 the oldest JEWELRY STORE in Chinatown offers gold objects hammered according to the design requested by the customer. The headquarters of the powerful ON LEONG TONG are at No. 41, and beyond is the LIQUOR STORE of Wing Lee Quon at No. 53, where authentic Chinese wines and cordials, medicated with snakeskin and tiger bone, are available. At No. 58, Wah Kue sells Chinese books, brushes, and writing ma- terial ; at No. 64 is the CHINESE SCHOOL where, after regular public-school hours, children are taught Chinese culture and language according to the traditional method. Just qprth of Pell Street on Mott hangs the WALL NEWSPAPER. Sheets of brilliant red and orange paper flecked with gold are covered with characters which inform knots of readers that a business is for sale or has been sold, that a job is available or is wanted, and of the latest war news from China. At 32 Pell Street, the MEE TUNG COMPANY announces "Ladies Dresses Made to Order in Chinese Styles." The ESTABLISHMENT OF MAN GAR CHUNG at No. 26 offers an assortment of Chinese drugs and ingredients for an assortment of love potions: dried sea horses, blanched snakes, pre- served bears' testicles, neat slices of deer's horn, and ginseng root. The last-named sells for as much as a hundred dollars an ounce. The headquarters of the HIP SING TONG are situated appropriately near the corner of Pell and Doyers Streets, for just beyond is the BLOODY ANGLE, the bend in Doyers Street where henchmen of this tong fought the On Leongs in the early i9oo's. The Hip Sings, led by Mock Duck, a gambler, battled the On Leongs, captained by Tom Lee, for control of the lucrative gambling and opium rackets. At this bend, occupying the quar- ters of the old Chinese theater, is Tom Noonan's famous RESCUE SO- CIETY. The ex-convict sponsored the mission for twenty-three years, until his death in 1935. Near by, at 6 Doyers Street, is a building once occupied CHINATOWN 107 by the Chatham Club, where a young singing waiter, Isadore Baline (Irv- ing Berlin), 'occasionally performed. Here, too, Chuck Connors, whom the movies years later made king of Chinatown lobbygows, Bowery thespian and philosopher, served as bouncer. Each night the Chinese take over the ten-cent movie house on Chatham Square just north of Mott Street, and Chinese pictures made either in China or in San Francisco replace the customary Westerns. At 8 Chatham Square the old-fashioned TOBACCO EMPORIUM of Seckler Brothers is crowded with smokers' oddities. The next building houses the establish- ment of Rocks Grille, the artist who makes "black eyes" look normal. Two doors north is the studio of Charlie Wagner, "champion tattooing artist in the world." A visit to Chinatown should include dinner at one of the numerous restaurants, declared by the Board of Health to be among the cleanest in the city. Some of the less prominent places, many of which are on the sec- ond story or in unpretentious basements, are as good as the larger ones. The food in most of the quarter's restaurants is authentically Chinese and of a uniformly high quality, and most places specialize in one or more native dishes. Chop suey came into existence in Chicago in 1896 during the visit of Li Hung Chang, famous "ambassador of good will." Literally translated the name means "hodge-podge." As prepared by the restaurants in China- town the dish is far superior to that served in drug stores and cafeterias. A good Chinese meal consists of soup, fish, and of preparations of sea food, pork, or chicken, served with Chinese vegetables and sauces. When a group dines together it is advantageous to order "by the table," fixing a price beforehand with the waiter. The most delicious soups are won ton soup, made with little dumplings filled with duck ; water-cress soup, tart with quantities of fresh water cress ; chop suey soup, rich with chicken gizzards, livers, and oddments. Shrimp is usually fried and served with egg or lobster sauce or with steamed Chinese vegetables, or combined with chopped lobster and seasoning as the filling for the fried dough cakes known as egg rolls. Stuffed crab, served in deep-sea crab shells, is a pungent and exotic delicacy, and fish- balls covered with delectable sauce and with native vegetables is a favorite dish. Roast pork prepared by Chinese chefs is famous. Soft noodle chow mein, Canton style, and chicken diced with almonds and fresh peas with a Chinese white sauce, are two other appetizing dishes. A Chinese meal is not complete without one sweet and pungent dish, preferably spareribs prepared with a rich sauce of ginger, pineapple, and spices. 108 LOWER MANHATTAN ) LOWER EAST SIDE Area: Fulton St. (South St. to Pearl St.) and Franklin St. (Baxter St. to Broadway) on the south to i4th St. on the north; from the East River west to Pearl St. and Broadway; excluding Chinatown. Map on page in. The dramatic, intensely human story of the Lower East Side is a fa- miliar chapter in the epic of America; a host of writers some seeking out the Lower East Side and others originating there have described its people. Here have dwelt the people whose hands built the city's elevateds, subways, tubes, bridges, and skyscrapers. Its two square miles of tenements and crowded streets magnify all the problems and conflicts of big-city life. The inhuman conditions of its slums and sweatshops brought about the first organized social work in America. Crowded, noisy, squalid in many of its aspects, no other section of the city is more typical of New York. The district is best known as a slum, as a community of immigrants, and as a ghetto ; yet not all of the district is blighted, not all of its people are of foreign stock, and not all are Jewish. From its dark tenements, gen- erations of American workers of many different national origins and an amazing number of public figures have emerged ; politicians, artists, gang- sters, composers, prize fighters, labor leaders. One of the first New York tenements designed for multifamily use was erected in the Lower East Side in 1833, on Water Street near Corlears Hook. The most notorious "modern" slum, however, was Five Points centered at the intersection of Baxter, Worth, and Park Streets flourish- ing when Charles Dickens described it in 1842. The southern part of the Lower East Side soon shared the conditions if not the notoriety of Five Points and, thanks to potato rot, political oppression, and pogroms, the northern part took on the same character, as the last great waves of the "old immigration" and the first great waves of the "new immigration" surged in. The overwhelming majority of the tenements still standing are of the kind banned in 1901. Many antedate the Civil War, but most were built in the i88o's and 1890*5. Two million Irish, fleeing famine, migrated to America between 1846 and 1860, and many of them settled, at least temporarily, in the Lower East Side. It was the Lower East Side that produced Alfred E. Smith, four- time Democratic governor of New York State, Democratic candidate for President in 1928, and a founder of the American Liberty League; and three of the best-known sachems of the originally anti-Irish Tammany LOWER EAST SIDE 109 Hall: "Boss" Tweed, leading figure of the infamous Tweed Ring, "Honest John" Kelley, and Charlie Murphy. From 1811 to 1867 the Tammany Wigwam was located at Chatham and Frankfort Streets. Large numbers of Irish workers went into the shipping and building trades, and later into the police, fire, and other city departments. The first of thousands of Germans came to the Lower East Side at the middle of the nineteenth century. Many of them were skilled workers with a background of labor organization, and they played an important role in the trade union movement in New York: they formed the General German Workingmen's Union, which in 1867 affiliated with the Inter- national Workmen's Association (The First International) ; they founded the Free Workers' School (housed in Faulhaber's Hall on Second Av- enue), one of the first of its kind in the United States; they established labor and progressive newspapers. German Jews became traders, profes- sionals, clothing manufacturers, furriers, jewelers. By 1880 they were the dominant element in New York's Jewish community of eighty thousand. In 1 88 1 the great influx of Italians, Russians, Rumanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Greeks, Poles, and Turks, into the Lower East Side began. Be- tween 1 88 1 and 1910, 1,562,000 Jews came to America. Many of these Jewish emigrants, chiefly from Russia, settled on the Lower East Side, forming the world's largest Jewish community. The Jews, like other peo- ples in the region, grouped themselves in more or less compact colonies determined by language, customs, country or province of origin. Little Rumania, for instance, centering around Allen Street, was one of the most distinct and interesting quarters during the 1890'$. Most of these new Jewish immigrants worked as peddlers or entered the expanding needle trades. Workshops, established in the tenements, en- slaved entire families, and the sweatshop era began, with its disease and degradation. Many of these workers succeeded after a time in improving their position, and a few became large-scale employers themselves. Through appalling sacrifice, some Jewish families realized their fondest aspiration: a son became a doctor, teacher, or lawyer. Those who rose above poverty moved to more desirable localities, but "greenhorns" -new and bewildered immigrants, Jew and Gentile continued to augment the population of the East Side until the third decade of this century, when quota laws severely restricted further immigration. During that decade the population remained between five and six hundred thousand. An East Side family was often divided against itself by the conflict of the old and the new. "Many of us were transient, impatient aliens in our parents' home," Samuel Ornitz records 'in Haunch, Paunch and Jowl 110 LOWER MANHATTAN (1923), a semi-autobiographical novel of the Lower East Side. There were almost no play areas. Boys formed themselves into gangs, roamed the streets in search of mischief and money ; many became gangsters. One of the toughest thugs in the city's history, "Monk" Eastman, rose at the turn of the century, commanding hundreds of gunmen. From his head- quarters on Chrystie Street came in a later period, Johnny Torrio, "Legs" Diamond, and Jacob ("Little "Augie") Orgen. During the latter part of the nineteenth century the writings of Jacob Riis and others stimulated the housing reform movement and social- welfare work. The Neighborhood Guild, first of the many settlement houses established in the Lower East Side, was founded in 1886 at 147 Forsythe Street. Two years later East Siders themselves took an important step toward combating their intolerable living conditions by forming the United Hebrew Trades, a trade union body. Today such centers as Christa- dora House, the Church of All Nations, the Educational Alliance, Grand Street Settlement, Henry Street Settlement, Stuyvesant Neighborhood House, and University Settlement are invaluable community agencies. Unionism, anarchism, capitalism, socialism, and communism have been thoroughly discussed in the streets and parks of the East Side. Yet Tam- many Hall has reigned almost uninterruptedly over the actual political life of the area. Anarchist and Socialist papers and periodicals, some short- lived, others continuing to appear for many years, have been issued in KEY TO LOWER EAST SIDE MAP 1. Lavanburg Homes 16. Secondhand Clothing Market 2. Bed Linens Market 17. Manhattan Bridge Plaza 3. Orchard Street Pushcart Market 18. Bowery Outdoor Jewelry Market 4. Henry Street Settlement Play- 19. Mott Street Pushcart Market house 20. Police Headquarters 5. Amalgamated Dwellings 21. "Thieves' Market" 6. Henry Street Settlement (Main 22. Salvation Army Hotel House) 23. Bowery Mission 7. Educational Alliance 24. First Houses 8. Jewish Daily Forward 25. Condict Building 9. Division Street Shopping Center 26. Old Merchant's House 10. Knickerbocker Village 27. Colonnade Row 11. Oldest House in Manhattan 28. Statue of Peter Cooper 12. Franklin Square 29. Cooper Union 13. Spanish-Portuguese Cemetery 30. Secondhand Book Market 14. Columbus Park 31. St. Mark's In-The-Bouwerie Mulberry Bend 32. Jewish Theater District 15. Olliffe Pharmacy ttdft U 32 W E. 14th U ,5i nfec=i5 \ t 13th Dem 1 Q O WANAMAKER PL. TOMPKINS i: ; : = : : ':': : - : -'l ISQUAREI ) D- E 4U) "" ' t -J i O |l| r \ \ n- i ,_, GRar JONES ST. >:^ Q iQQ Uj a ST. ! a Off H^SF 6 ' SlQlQ o ^ s v' r ? t^ 1 ^ ca & ^ ^ jrx* <\ QM 2*?r LOWER EAST SIDE 112 LOWER MANHATTAN many languages. Johann Most published Freiheit, and later (1906) Emma Goldman founded Mother Earth. Under the editorship of Abraham Ca- han, the Jewish Daily Forward, a labor paper in Jewish, has been most in- fluential, and still has a circulation of about 170,000. The Socialist Party's work was rewarded when Meyer London was elected to Congress in 1914, and again in 1918 when three Socialist assemblymen were elected. Morris Hillquit, leader of the Socialist Party for many years after the war, was from the locality. B. Charney Vladeck, of the Forward, was elected ma- jority leader of the City Council in 1937, the year the East Side assembly districts cast 14 per cent of their votes for the American Labor Party as against 8.5 per cent in the rest of Manhattan. The intellectuals among the immigrants brought with them their old- world avidity for culture, and their influence on the East Side provided thousands with their first contact with art and literature. A lunch hour at a garment factory would find many of the workers absorbed in Tolstoy, Kropotkin, or Heine. Maeterlinck, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Gorky, and other European dramatists had their American premiers in the ghetto. While Broadway was receiving Ibsen coldly, the East Side was enthusi- astically applauding Nazimova in Ghosts. The ghetto has produced a re- markable Jewish literature of its own, much of it mirroring the harsh life of sweatshop and slum. The Yiddish poet, with his relatively small pub- lic, ordinarily sells many more copies of his works than a poet who writes in English. Probably the two most widely read books in English about the East Side by East Siders are Abraham Cahan's novel, the Rise of David Levinsky (1917), and Michael Gold's autobiographical Jews Without Money (1930). Fannie Hurst, born in St. Louis, lived in the East Side while gathering material for her stories. "Humoresque," dealing with this locale, is perhaps the best known. Jo Davidson and Jacob Epstein, sculptors, and Max Weber, the painter, are from the East Side, as are scores of younger artists whose works have gained wide recognition. Jazz owes much to the district where George and Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin started their careers. The wise-crack- ing brand of humor, and much language which has become part of popu- lar speech, have roots in the Lower East Side. Such expressions as gabfest, plunderbund, it listens well, bum, dumb (in the sense of stupid), come from the Germans; the Jews have given words like kibitzer, kosher, ma- zuma, p hooey; and the Irish, shillelagh, smithereens, ballyhoo, and she- bang. The district's environment has influenced Jimmy Durante, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Fannie Brice, George Jessel, Lionel Stander, Milton Berle, and the Marx brothers. LOWER EAST SIDE 113 Immigration quotas at the beginning of the 1920'$ brought a great change to the district. No longer maintained by new arrivals, the popula- tion dropped from well over a half million in 1920 to less than a quarter million in 1938. Land values have declined and many of the rookeries are no longer profitable. Some have been condemned and demolished, leaving vacant lots used as playgrounds. The building of the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges (opened in 1903 and 1909) cut swaths through the close-packed dwellings; and recently Chrystie, Allen, and part of East Houston Streets have been widened, removing blocks of tenements. The East River Drive and its park have transformed the water front north of the Williamsburg Bridge. The Amalgamated Dwellings, built in the 1920*5, and Knickerbocker Village, built in the 1930*5, replaced some of the worst houses. But throughout most of the section the smothering heat of summer still drives East Siders to the windows and fire escapes of their ill-ventilated dwellings, to the docks along the river or to the crowded smelly streets, where half -naked children cool themselves in streams from fire hydrants. In winter, basement merchants sell coal and kindling in minute portions for the stoves of unheated cold-water flats. In 1939 a $19,500,000 Federal-financed housing project was considered for the Lower East Side. Other changes are in prospect and even the push- carts may yet be housed in respectable markets. But the tenements that have been home to so many generations will probably be home to many more. Shored up with great beams against their sagging walls or vacant and crumbling, they still seem defiant. Great slums die hard. East Side Neighborhoods Several well-defined neighborhoods, with different backgrounds, dis- tinct populations, and varied street plans, make up the Lower East Side. Along the East River above Fulton Street, bounded on the north by Divi- sion and Grand Streets, and roughly corresponding to the outlines of the old Fourth Ward, lies the oldest of these neighborhoods. Between Divi- sion and Houston Streets, and from the Bowery to the East River is the Jewish quarter with its small shops and markets. The Little Italy district lies west of the Bowery as far as Broadway, bounded on the north by Houston, and on the south by Franklin and Bayard Streets. Its Italian population now occupies only those four streets closest to the Bowery, the rest being given over to prosaic small businesses. Northward, from Hous- ton to Fourteenth Street and between Broadway and Third Avenue, the Astor Place district retains, among second-rate commercial buildings, a few 114 LOWER MANHATTAN relics of its aristocratic days in the early i88o's. Lastly, between Third Avenue and the river, and between Houston and Fourteenth Streets, lies a district populated by a mixture of many nationalities (which for conven- ience will be named for its large park, Tompkins Square). The Lower East Side is connected with Brooklyn by the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Wil- liamsburg bridges. Automobiles bound for Holland Tunnel cross the neighborhood in great numbers by way of 'Canal and Delancey Streets. Old Fourth Ward District Four blocks east of City Hall, an abandoned building at n Peck Slip (near Pearl Street) is reputed to be the oldest house in Manhattan. It was built in 1725. Constructed of roughhewn stone and faced with plaster, the structure is still in good condition. At No. 7 is a tumbledown clapboard house, now serving as a junk shop, which was the farmhouse in which David Thomas Valentine, famous editor of Valentine's Manual, lived during his youth. In Revolutionary days the rich and influential built their mansions on fashionable Cherry Hill. The center of this section, Franklin Square, originally called St. George Square, at the junction of Pearl, Frankfort, Dover, and Cherry Streets, was named for Walter Franklin, a wealthy im- porter in whose home President Washington resided, from his inaugura- tion on April 30, 1789 to February 23, 1790. One of the piers of the Brooklyn Bridge covers the site of the house. Near by, at 326 Pearl Street, stood the Walton House, home of William Walton, one of the city's richest merchants. The display of wealth at Wal- ton House was cited in the British Parliament as incontestable proof of the Colonists' ability to pay higher taxes. The house was destroyed by fire in 1853, an d its site is now occupied by a warehouse. John Hancock lived at 5 Cherry Street, and Captain Samuel Chester Reid, a hero of the War of 1812, made his home at No. 27, now the site of a parking lot. Here Mrs. Reid is said to have sewed the first American flag in its present-day design, with a star for each state. The house was the first (1823) in America to have gas lighting. The old mansions, gradually abandoned by their owners, became tenements in the early iSoo's and the district degenerated into a slum area. At 36 Cherry Street, in 1850, was erected Gotham Court, hailed as a private venture in model housing. It covered an entire lot, with only two narrow alleys for sunshine and air, the wider of which the neighbors iron- ically nicknamed Paradise Alley. In cholera epidemics the death rate in this house was highest in the city. It was torn down in 1896, but the name LOWER EAST SIDE 115 Paradise Alley lingers on in one of the sentimental songs of the period, the Sunshine of Paradise Alley, which, like the Sidewalks of New York, and Maggie Murphy's Home, was written about life among the Irish im- migrants in this district in the 1 890*5. Near by, at 25 Oliver Street, lived Alfred E. Smith. The population of this former Irish district is chiefly Italian and Russian; a Greek colony occupies the lower end of Madison Street, while a small group of Spaniards lives in the neighborhood of Roosevelt and Cherry Streets. Today Cherry Street itself for the most part is a dismal- looking quarter of lumberyards and many abandoned tene- ments. Among rancid tenements, at Cherry and Catharine Streets, stands the immense KNICKERBOCKER VILLAGE, a housing project completed in 1934 by a limited-dividend corporation with assistance from the Federal Gov- ernment's Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Built on the site of a no- torious "lung" block, it rents 1,600 apartments for an average of $12.50 a room a month to better-paid white-collar workers. The average rental elsewhere in the district is nearer five dollars and the former occupants of this site have moved to other slums. With a total of twelve floors, the buildings form an overcrowded group whose essential monotony is barely relieved by the sparse planting which differentiates it from hundreds of equally undistinguished apartments farther uptown. At the fourth floor level a projecting band of bricks hints at the parapet that should have marked the termination of the buildings. Four blocks north of Cherry Street, at 175 East Broadway, standing head and shoulders above its neighbors, is the building housing the liberal Jewish Daily Forward, founded in 1897. It is the largest Yiddish daily newspaper in the world. On the next corner, East Broadway at Jefferson Street, the EDUCATIONAL ALLIANCE, a non-sectarian social settlement maintained by Jewish societies, organizes educational and recreational ac- tivities for the neighborhood. The famous HENRY STREET SETTLEMENT, at 265 Henry, a block south of East Broadway, still maintains its modest main house. Opened in 1893 by one of the great pioneers in social work, Lillian Wald, the settlement has attracted world-wide attention through its work in nursing the sick, aiding in the solution of domestic and social problems, and striving for better housing, recreation, and education facilities in the slums of the Lower East Side. Buildings at 301 Henry Street and 8 Pitt Street have been acquired and the settlement employs 265 nurses working from sixteen branches throughout the city. During the depression of the early 1930*5, before public relief was taken over by the Federal Government, the settlement Il6 LOWER MANHATTAN issued thousands of food tickets, gave aid, and directed relief. Lillian Wald retired in 1933 and the work is being carried on under the guidance of Helen Hall. Three blocks north, at 466 Grand Street, is the Henry Street Settle- ment's PLAYHOUSE, once famous as the Neighborhood Playhouse. Organ- ized in 1915 for the purpose of staging productions of the settlement's dramatic groups, it branched out into professional production under the leadership of Alice and Irene Lewisohn. The Playhouse saw the American premieres of The Dybbuk and of James Joyce's Exiles. Yvette Guilbert; Roshanara, the Hindu dancer ; Ratan Devi, the Hindu singer and musician ; Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet; and the Isadora Duncan dancers appeared here. A satiric revue, the Grand Street Follies, was such a suc- cess that in 1927 it moved uptown. The theater now serves its original function. Jewish Quarter Here tiny shops huddle between wide-fronted chain shoe stores and clothing establishments. Housewives carrying shopping bags walk to the dimly lighted food stores; shriveled old women sit on the steps before the tenements; an occasional elder in beard and yarmalka (skull cap) climbs the steps to a tiny synagogue maintained by some struggling con- gregation; a Jewish passerby may be solicited to come into the synagogue to make up a minyan (quorum of ten) so that the service may start. In this district may be found some of the marriage brokers who advertise "rich and professional connections" in the Jewish newspapers. At 504 Grand Street, between Columbia and Sheriff Streets, stands AMAL- GAMATED DWELLINGS, a co-operative apartment house sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. The architecture diverts the eye with parabolic archways, and a surface patterning of brick designs and stucco inserts. An early development, it has a certain charm and human quality notably lacking in its more famous neighbor, Knickerbocker Vil- lage. Designed by Springsteen and Goldhammer, and completed in 1930, it was the first housing development built in Manhattan under the State Housing Law of 1926. Rents average $12.23 a room a month, and it is said that few clothing workers can afford to live there. Four blocks north at Goerck and Stanton Streets are LAVANBURG HOMES, a semi-philan- thropic venture, built in 1927 and administered by the Fred L. Lavanburg Foundation to furnish modern housing at reasonable cost to families with small children. Two blocks south of Stanton is Delancey Street, the district's main LOWER EAST SIDE Iiy traffic and shopping artery. The WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE, a steel suspen- sion structure, runs through its center as far as Clinton Street. It was opened in 1903, the second to span the East River. Its designer was L. L. Buck. The bridge has a i,6oo-foot over-water span and cost $23,278,000, including land. With its two roadways, two sidewalks, and six tracks for surface and elevated cars, it carries more than fifty thousand vehicles a day. A number of interesting markets lie west of Clinton Street. In the fa- mous ORCHARD STREET PUSHCART MARKET, which stretches for several blocks above and below Delancey Street, fruits, vegetables, bread, hot knishes (boiled buckwheat groats or mashed potatoes, wrapped in a skin of dough and baked), bagel (doughnut-shaped rolls), and hot arbes (boiled chick-peas) are offered for sale; also tools, hardware, work clothes, and many odd types of merchandise. It may not be long before this and other open-air pushcart markets will disappear, for the Department of Markets, more interested in sanitation than in the picturesque, plans to house them all indoors. A block west, on Allen Street, under the elevated tracks, red, green, and purple quilts hanging on poles advertise a market for bed linens between Stanton and Grand Streets. A few Rumanian restaurants and night clubs contrast with these surroundings. South of Delancey on Allen Street, the little shops feature copper coffee urns, silver vases, and candlesticks, ornate Victorian lamps and mantel clocks, and an occasional porcelain shepherdess. Antique metalware is sold here as well as the shoddiest machine-made articles. The brass and copper market ends at Grand Street. The three blocks south on Division Street, from Eldridge Street to the Bowery, are occupied by an unbroken series of women's apparel shops with gleaming plate-glass windows. In the doorways schleppers (pullers-in, a recognized profession on the East Side) stand ready to draw prospective customers into the stores. Some nationally known clothing firms started here. One block west is Chatham Square, a jagged confluence of streets over which clatter two old elevated lines. South a block on New Bowery, be- tween James and Oliver Streets, is the oldest JEWISH CEMETERY in Man- hattan. The plot, once covering all of Chatham Square, was purchased in 1682 by a band of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had fled to New Amsterdam from the Inquisition. Gershom Mendez Seixas, one of the great rabbis of early America and a patriot during the Revolution, is buried here. The little triangle is owned today by the uptown Spanish- Portuguese congregation of Shearith Israel. Il8 LOWER MANHATTAN Little Italy and the Bowery According to a 1932 survey, 98 per cent of the heads of households in this area were of Italian birth or parentage, mainly from Sicily and the south of Italy. During church festivals the streets are festooned with colored electric lights, the sidewalks lined with booths selling souvenirs and delicacies, and there is music, along with dancing, and a parade in the streets. The old Mulberry Bend on Mulberry Street between Bayard and Park, two blocks west of the Bowery one of the worst slums in the city, was torn down in 1892 and replaced by Columbus Park, after drawing the fiery criticism of the reformer, Jacob Riis. However, many five-story tene- ments remain decked with cluttered fire escapes, washlines, and crowded stoops. The pushcarts on Mott Street from Canal to Broome, a block east of Mulberry Street, are relics of a thriving market that once embraced the four streets west of the Bowery. They sell ripe and green olives, artichokes, goats' cheeses, finochio (sweet fennel), and ready-to-eat pizza, an unsweetened pastry filled with tomatoes and cheese, meat, or fish. At 240 Centre Street, between Grand and Broome Streets, is NEW YORK POLICE HEADQUARTERS, a large stone building designed by architects Hop- pin and Koen in the French Baroque manner of the nineteenth century. A profusion of carved ornament gives it a somewhat pretentious aspect. Until thi$ building was completed in 1909, headquarters was at 300 Mul- berry Street. From offices on the second floor, the Police Commissioner and his deputies direct the activities of 19,346 police officers operating from eighty-three precinct houses scattered throughout the five boroughs. De- tectives, patrolmen, policewomen; a great fleet of radio cars, three motor- cycle divisions, twenty emergency squads, two mounted squads, thirteen traffic and two bridge traffic units, and a flotilla of launches are controlled from this building by means of an intricate system of telephone, telegraph, teletype, and radio communication. Three short-wave radio stations, WPEE, WPEF, and WPEG, provide almost instantaneous contact with all units. The daily "line-up" of arrested criminals takes place in a large, semi- darkened room on the fourth floor. Offenders parade across a brilliantly lighted stage to be questioned through a public address system, while detectives memorize their appearance and mannerisms. Criminologists from many countries come to witness the procedure. The building also houses the Traffic Division, the Surgical and Medical Bureau, the Traffic LOWER EAST SIDE 119 Safety Bureau, the Legal "Bureau, the Missing Persons Bureau, the Head- quarters Detective Division, a law library, and a disciplinary trial room. In the Police Academy, directly across Broome Street, police specialists give elementary training to rookies and advanced instruction to veterans of the force. Also housed in this building are the Criminal Identification Bureau (fingerprints and photographs), the Technical Research Labora- tory, and the offices of a number of specialized detective squads. The Bureau of Equipment is maintained on the ground floor where members of the Department may buy all kinds of police equipment, from guns, nightsticks, and "nippers," to uniform caps, shirts, and shoes. THE BOWERY, dividing line between the Jewish Quarter on the east and Little Italy on the west, was once an Indian trail used by aborigines in their expeditions against New Amsterdam. In the days of the Dutch it became known as "the road to the bouwerij (farm)," Peter Stuyvesant's country estate. The street was later part of the highroad to Boston and fig- ured in many a Revolutionary incident as the only land entrance to New York City. From 1860 to 1875 the city's theatrical life centered here. At the Bowery Amphitheatre (37 Bowery), the first blackface minstrel group made its appearance. At the National Theatre (104 Bowery) Frank S. Chanfrau, actor-manager, appeared with his brother in a long series of plays about Mose, the Bowery Paul Bunyan, an epic slugger, eye-gouger, and hobnail- stamper in New York's rowdy history. The legendary Big Mose was eight feet tall, with hands as big as hams. In his belt was thrust a butcher's cleaver, and in summer a keg of beer hung there for his refreshment. He loved to lift a streetcar off its track and carry it on one hand as a waiter carries a tray, the horses dangling from their harnesses; and Big Mose laughing thunderously at the terrified passengers. Another of his favorite jests was to stand in the East River, and blow back approaching vessels with a few puffs from his mighty lungs. The first stage version of Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared at the National on August 23, 1852. Harrigan and Hart with their idealized pictures of East Side life, Weber and Fields, George M. Cohan, and Eddie Cantor are a few of the many actors who first succeeded in Bowery theaters. The Jewish theater in the United States had its beginnings here, and the well-known Eli, Eli by Jacob Sandier was first sung in a Yiddish play at the old Windsor Theatre in 1896. After 1870 came the period of the Bowery's celebrated degeneration. Fake auction rooms, saloons specializing in five-cent whisky and knockout drops, sensational dime museums, filthy and rat-ridden stale-beer dives, 120 LOWER MANHATTAN together with Charles M. Hoyt's song, "The Bowery, the Bowery! . . . I'll never go there any more!" fixed it forever in the Nation's conscious- ness as a place of unspeakable corruption. The Bowery today is chiefly given over to pawnshops, restaurant equip- ment houses, beer saloons, and miscellaneous small retail shops. Here flop- houses offer a bug-infested bed in an unventilated pigeonhole for twenty- five cents a night, restaurants serve ham and eggs for ten cents, and stu- dents in barber "colleges" cut hair for fifteen cents. Thousands of the nation's unemployed drift to this section and may be seen sleeping in all-night restaurants, in doorways, and on loading platforms, furtively begging, or waiting with hopeless faces for some bread line or free lodging house to open. No agency, at present (1939), provides adequate food, shelter, and clothing for these wanderers. Missions furnish food and lodg- ing for a few, and try by sermon and song to touch the souls of the down- and-outers and the sympathies of generous tourists. The Bowery begins at Chatham Square, and at No. 6 stands the OLLIFFE PHARMACY, established before 1803 and reputed to be the oldest drugstore in America. At No. 15 is the twenty-five-cent lodging house where Stephen C. Foster, author of Swanee River and My Old Kentucky Home, lived in 1864. To the west of the Bowery is Chinatown (see page 104). West for a block on Bayard Street to Elizabeth Street is a secondhand clothing market occupying the basements. A suit or overcoat hangs out on the street by way of a sign, and the proprietor stands halfway up the cellar steps, peering eagerly for customers. Two blocks north, at Canal Street, is the MANHATTAN BRIDGE, opened in 1909. The approach was designed by Carrere and Hastings, and the bridge proper, by Gustav Lindenthal, the engineer. The triumphal arch and curved colonnade are combined in a vigorous baroque composition, inspired by the Porte St. Denis, a gateway in Paris, and the Bernini colon- nade that forms the Piazza of St. Peter's in Rome. Beginning here, and for several blocks north, the Bowery is a row of jewelry stores displaying dia- monds. On the sidewalks, braving the weather, stand diamond dealers whose whole stock in trade may consist of one diamond, wrapped in tissue paper and carried in the vest pocket. -The stretch between Delancey and Houston Streets is jocularly known as the THIEVES' MARKET. Those who have any small objects to sell or exchange congregate here. At No. 227, between Rivington and Stanton Streets, stands the BOWERY MISSION, which has been in existence for more than fifty years. It is now guided by Dr. Charles St. Johns, who conducts a radio broadcast from his chapel every Sunday afternoon. Guest singers LOWER EAST SIDE 121 perform and men from the audience appeal for jobs and testify to their conversion. At No. 225 is the SALVATION ARMY HOTEL, which runs a buttermilk bar where beef stew, oatmeal, and coffee sell for five cents. Astor Place District This was quite an aristocratic neighborhood in the early i88o's. Wil- liam Cullen Bryant lived here, as well as Isaac M. Singer, improver of the sewing machine. Five blocks north of the Salvation Army Hotel and west of the Bowery, at 29 East Fourth Street is one of the old mansions, a red- brick structure in late Federal style, known sometimes as OLD MER- CHANT'S HOUSE. Built about 1830 by the nephew of the Reverend Samuel Seabury, first Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, it has a richly de- tailed interior that shows the dominant influence of the Greek Revival. The house was purchased in 1936 by the Historic Landmark Society and re- opened as a museum. (Open weekdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.; admission 500.) Bronze whale-oil mantel lamps, old gaslight fixtures, and Duncan Phyf e furniture are on view. On Lafayette Street, south of Astor Place, the Greek Revival style finds expression in COLONNADE Row, formerly La Grange Terrace. Only four out of the eight original houses remain, but they serve to give some idea of the handsome proportions of a fashionable residence of the 1830*8. The CONDICT BUILDING, 65 Bleecker Street (near Lafayette Street) is New York's sole example (1898) of the work of Louis H. Sullivan, whose buildings in Chicago and the Middle West counted among the leading structures in the development of modern architecture here and abroad. A minor example of his work, it displays some of Sullivan's clarity of expression and inimitable ornament. The department store of JOHN WANAMAKER (see page 136) consists of two buildings between Broadway and Lafayette Street, separated by Wanamaker Place (Ninth Street). Across Lafayette Street and slightly to the south, is COOPER UNION, founded in 1859 by Peter Cooper, philan- thropist, reformer, and inventor. His purpose was to establish a center where all public questions might be openly and freely discussed, and where young people might receive the technical education which he had been denied, and which was becoming increasingly important in that era of industrial expansion. Cooper Union Forum has often been the meeting hall of reformers gathering their forces against corrupt city administra- tions. Henry Ward Beecher, William Cullen Bryant, William Lloyd Gar- rison, and others thundered there against slavery and in defense of the Union, and Lincoln, in 1860, made the speech that is credited with win- 122 LOWER MANHATTAN ning for him the nomination for the Presidency. Cooper Union today offers to students, irrespective of race, creed, or color, courses in engineering and other technical subjects, secretarial training, and art. It has about ten thousand applicants a year, of whom only 3,500 can be accommodated. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Adolph A. Weinman, and Leo Friedlander are three illustrious graduates of the art school. The main library, open to the public, contains 67,000 books; the art library, 17,000. The MUSEUM FOR THE ARTS OF DECORATION includes textiles, drawings, and designs, and musical instruments. (Open weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., from the day fol- lowing Labor Day to June 30; 6:30 to 9- '30 p.m. from October 1 to May 1 ; admission free.) The institution was supported entirely by the Cooper family until 1900; since then other philanthropists have helped. The in- novations used by Peter Cooper in the construction of the school were important developments in the history of building. To support the flooring, he used rolled, wrought-iron beams arranged in a light grid; and by replacing heavy stone arches with thinner piers, he increased the usable space. In the tiny green triangle south of the building is a STATUE OF PETER COOPER by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Just east of Third Avenue, at 15 East Seventh Street, is McSor ley's Old Ale House, which was established in 1854. No women are served at McSorley's. Fourth Avenue, from Eighth to Thirteenth Streets, is faced with the longest row of secondhand bookstores in the city. The outside tables, displaying bargain items, attract browsers at all hours. Tompkins Square The population here is composed of Italians, Slavs, and East European Jews. Some of the Greek Orthodox churches are under the guidance of priests who wear long beards, according to the custom of the Slavic coun- tries. The grocers, merchants, and mechanics of the district are Russian; and their language is heard in a dozen basement cafes where men sit drinking tea. Politically, the colony is violently divided between pro- and anti-Soviet. On Avenue A and Third Street, three blocks east of the Bowery, rise the FIRST HOUSES, the first project of the New York City Housing Au- thority, opened in 1935. Of the old slum tenements which formerly occu- pied this space, some were torn down and others were completely rebuilt by WPA labor, using the old materials. Unfortunately the attempt to utilize old structures has forced the new ones into a dull scheme. Bath- rooms, sound-proofed partitions, gardens, and playgrounds promote the LOWER EAST SIDE 123 health and comfort of the occupants, who pay five dollars to seven dollars a room a month. Four blocks north is TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK. Within the park, near the East Tenth Street side, a small MONUMENT depicting a boy and girl looking at a steamboat commemorates the tremendous loss sustained by this district, in the sinking of the excursion steamer, General Slocum, on June 15, 1904. Most of those who lost their lives, more than a thousand in number, came from this neighborhood, then predominantly German, and the disaster changed the character of the district. A large number of German families, overwhelmed by painful memories, moved to other parts of town. Second Avenue, from Houston to Fourteenth Street, is known as the JEWISH RIALTO. The theaters specialize in melodrama and musical com- edy, leaning heavily on success themes in which the immigrant makes good. Bertha Kalich, Jacob Adler, Molly Picon, David Kessler, Boris Thomashef- sky, Sigmond Mogulesco, Jenny Goldstein, Morris Moscovitch, and Lud- wig Satz are famous Jewish players who have performed here. Two of Adler's children, Luther and Stella, now famous on Broadway, had their start on Second Avenue. This Rialto is also famous for its foreign res- taurants. Just below Fourteenth Street several Russian eating places offer entertainment and dancing to balalaikas, and a menu including borscht, pirojski (pastry), and shashlik (chunks of roasted lamb). There are Pol- ish restaurants near St. Mark's Place that serve stuffed pig and bigos my si iw ski (cabbage and game). And there are many reasonably priced Hungarian-Jewish and Rumanian-Jewish restaurants where a meal includes chicken soup with mandlen (a kind of crouton) and stuffed kishkes (in- testines). In the incongruous setting of the theater and restaurant district is ST. MARK'S IN-THE-BOUWERIE, Second Avenue and Stuyvesant (East Tenth) Street. Erected in 1660, as a Dutch chapel, on the farm of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, it was rebuilt in 1799. The steeple and portico were added in 1826 and in 1858. Pagan-looking frescoes fill the pediment above the porch. They recall the pastorate of Dr. William Norman Guthrie. In an effort to make the church attractive to progressive parishioners, Dr. Guthrie worked out a ritual based on the theory of the essential unity of all religions, which included Greek folk dancing, American Indian chants, and many other things which the conservative element in the diocese heatedly declared to have no place in an Episcopalian church. A Body and Soul Clinic was attached to the church with the aim of combining physical and spiritual treatment. 124 LOWER MANHATTAN In the graveyard lie buried Governor Stuyvesant and Commodore Mat- thew C. Perry. A statue of the Dutch governor, presented by Queen Wil- helmina of Holland in 1915, stands near his grave. In 1878 the graveyard was the scene of a sensational body snatching when the remains of A. T. Stewart, well-known merchant and owner of a store which is now part of Wanamaker's, were stolen and held for $20,000 ransom. They were not returned till two years later. On Second Avenue at Twelfth Street is the CAFE ROYAL, forum and meeting place of the Jewish intelligentsia. Behind the box hedges that make it a sidewalk cafe in summer, or in the big inside room on Friday nights, vehement arguments are carried on for and against a new play, book, or art movement. Managers on the road telephone the cafe by long distance to fill some sudden need, and unemployed actors eat there in the hope of attracting the eye of some impresario. GREENWICH VILLAGE Area: Spring St. on the south to i4th St. on the north; from West St. east to Broadway. Map on page 127. A nation, coming into its own artistically after an era of ruthless indus- trial expansion, of materialism and strait-laced conventionality, seized upon Greenwich Village as a symbol of revolt in the ferment of postwar years. The "Village" was the center of the American Renaissance or of artiness, of political progress or of long-haired radical men and short-haired radical women, of sex freedom or of sex license dependent upon the point of view. Greenwich Village, actually, is a cross section of American urban life. Here are old families in their gracious mansions ; bankers and clerks in tall apartment buildings; and a foreign-born population of some twenty-five thousand, largely Irish and Italian, in tenements. If in 1939 there were more serious artists and writers, more "bohemians" in renovated old houses, more colorful tea rooms and wild night clubs than in other Ameri- can centers, the number each year was lessening. In the years just preceding and following the World War the political, artistic, and literary rebels who flocked to the Village gave it a character unique in this country. The literary history of Greenwich Village, however, begins much earlier. Here Tom Paine spent the last years of his life. Poe lived, drank, and worked at several Village addresses. Walt Whitman lived in the vicinity, Henry James was born near Washington Square (he named LOWER MANHATTAN iiiii BROOKLYN BRIDGE f t- n ii II n II II II Ill s HANOVER SQUARE DERELICTS (East River Water Front) CHERRIES 5C CHATHAM SQUARE EL SALVATION (A Bowery Mission) RAIN (The Bowery) ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL GREENWICH VILLAGE 125 one of his books for the square), and Mark Twain adopted the neighbor- hood for his city home. In 1896 John Masefield, English poet laureate, made his living here by scrubbing the floors of a saloon. But the story of Greenwich Village is the rounded story of an old and lively American community, at once typical and individual. Here explor- ing parties were entertained by the natives of the hamlet of Sapokanican; and, in return, with the earliest settlement of lower Manhattan, the Dutch drove the Indians from this neighborhood. In 1633, while most of the island north of Wall Street was still a wilderness, Governor Van Twiller was cultivating here a large tobacco plantation Bos sen Bouwerie (Farm in the Woods) and built his home at the foot of the present Charlton Street. During the fall of 1679, the Labadist missionaries, Danckaerts and Sluyter, visited what had grown to be a small village, where they drank "some good beer." In 1740, Sir Peter Warren, vice admiral of the British Navy and at that time commander of the fleet in New York, chose the locality for his home. The Village grew throughout the Colonial period as a community of the wealthy. Here was the great Brevoort estate, sold in 1762 to one John Smith, a large slaveholder; the Bleecker farm; and the mansions of the Bayards, the Jauncys, and the De Lanceys. A popular drive for New York's fashionable reached the Village by way of Greenwich Street, which then ran along the river; when wet weather rendered this route impassable, the drive was made along the Bowery to an extension of what is now Green- wich Avenue, with a monument erected to General James Wolfe, hero of the French and Indian War, as its goal. A spurt was given to the growth of the community following the Revo- lution, particularly in the neighborhood of the State prison, erected at the foot of Tenth Street; that institution, like the Bedlam Madhouse of Eliza- bethan days, was considered a residential attraction. An epidemic of smallpox in 1739 in the Battery region gave impetus to the first hasty migration of the well-to-do to the healthier climate of the Village; scourges of yellow fever in 1797, 1799, 1803, and 1805 re- sulted in similar stampedes northward in crowded stages, and goods-piled carriages and pushcarts. Some drifted south again when conditions became normal, but others remained in their new homes. The greatest of all the yellow fever plagues, in 1822, brought such a rush of refugees that the Brooklyn ferry changed its course from New York to a point opposite the Village. Makeshift dwellings and business houses were thrown up al- most overnight; lanes and cowpaths winding haphazardly through the neighborhood became busy streets. One of these lanes, during the 1822 126 LOWER MANHATTAN epidemic, quartered temporarily the counting houses of Wall Street, and still bears the name Bank Street. From 1825 to 1850, the population of Greenwich Village quadrupled, its inhabitants being largely of middle-class and well-to-do American stock. But for the next half-century, its growth, although steady, was slower than that of New York as a whole. While the city moved steadily northward, along Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and other great arteries, the Village, with its narrow erratic streets, remained a quiet backwater. As late as 1875, since only 32 per cent of its population was foreign-born unusual for Manhattan the section was known as the "American Ward." An area so central, however, could not escape the ever encroaching poorer classes. Already numbers of Irish immigrants had moved into the neighborhood, and later a Negro invasion, starting at the southeastern edge of the Village and moving north to Washington Square itself, KEY TO GREENWICH VILLAGE MAP 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. Salmagundi Club First Presbyterian Church Church of the Ascension Grace Church School Grace Episcopal Church Hotel Lafayette Home of Mark Twain Hotel Brevoort One Fifth Avenue Clay Club Whitney Museum of Art A.C.A. Gallery MacDougal Alley The Row Rhinelander Mansion Washington Mews Wanamaker House Washington Arch Bust of Alexander Lyman Holley Judson Memorial Baptist Church World War Memorial Flagpole Statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi New York University Museum of Living Art Broadway Central Hotel Bannerman Museum 26. Holland Tunnel 27. Spring Street Presbyterian Church 28. St. John's Park Freight Terminal 29. Hudson Park Playground 30. Little Red School House 31. Narrowest House in New York 32. Cherry Lane Theater 33. St. Luke's Chapel 34. Grove Court 35. Greenwich House 36. Site of Tom Paine House 37. Statue of General Sheridan 38. Northern Dispensary 39. House of Detention for Women 40. Jefferson Market Court 41. Patchin Place 42. Rhinelander Gardens 43. Milligan Place 44. Spanish-Portuguese Cemetery 45. New School for Social Research 46. St. Vincent's Hospital 47. Downtown Gallery 48. Bell Telephone Laboratory 49. Gansevoort Market 50. West Washington Market - UJ _, > J < :gj ]