USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 50
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C. C. Haight has contributed to New York the present buildings of
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Columbia College, several great hospitals, the new buildings of the Trinity Corporation, and a number of private houses. Renwick, Aspin- wall, & Russell have been made famous by St. Patrick's Cathedral and Grace Church and its new buildings, - all specimens of the pure Ameri- can Gothic as introduced by the late James Renwick.
R. H. Robertson is the architect of the beautiful building of the American Tract Society, of (with Rowe and Baker) the United Charities, and of the Mohawk Building, as well as of St. Paul's Methodist Epis- copal Church and the Corn Exchange Bank. Bruce Price has sent his fancy finely soaring aloft in the twenty-story tower-like building of the American Surety Company, - that rises, pierced by innumerable windows, opposite Trinity Church, - and is also known for designs of many attractive pri- vate houses in and near New York and else- where.
George Fletcher Babb, assistant for many years of Russell Sturgis, upon the retirement of that eminent architect and art critic from professional affairs went into partnership with Cook & Willard. Babb is said, upon high au- thority, to be "naturally more of an artist," and to have "more feeling for delicate and beautiful detail, than any one yet born on this side of the water." The work of his firm, and that of C. W. Clinton, is favorably known in many quarters of the town.
The late Joseph M. Wells, an architect whose ability was of the highest order, made, when an assistant of McKim, Mead, & White, all the Broadway, near Wall Street. drawings for the Villard houses and the Century Club; and, indeed, his hand was seen in all the best work of that firm.
The talent of Carrere & Hastings, who also began their labors as pupils of McKim, Mead, & White, is brilliantly known throughout the country in the Ponce de Leon Hotel at St. Augustine, Florida. Thomas Hastings is an able exponent of architectural art as a lecturer, also. Their success has been emphasized here in the Mail and Express Build- ing, the Edison Building, and in designs for many private houses.
H. J. Hardenburg, the architect of the Waldorf Hotel, is erecting the new Astor Hotel adjoining it. The great Savoy Hotel, twenty stories high, and of an Arabian Nights magnificence within, is also his work ;
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and so are the American Fine Arts Building in West Fifty-seventh Street, and the new Manhattan Hotel.
N. Le Brun & Sons have supplied the fine Metropolitan Building that covers the site of the late S. L. M. Barlow's residence, the Home Life Insurance Company's Building, and many school-houses and fire-engine houses.
Of Ernest Flagg's clever work, some of the most pleasing examples are St. Luke's Hospital, the Scribner Building, and the new St. Nicholas Skating Rink, -- the latter the resort of smart society in New York when debarred by freez- ing weather from its usual diversion of driving in the Park. The Postal Telegraph Building, by Harding & Gooch, is a striking structure, - as is also the Ayer Building at Broadway and Leonard Street. The Greenwich Savings Bank and New York Clearing House are particularly attractive specimens of R. W. Gibson's work. The Manhattan Life Insurance Building speaks for the taste of Kimball & Thompson. Dele- mos & Cordes are to be credited with the huge emporium of Siegel & Cooper, covering nearly a city block ; and F. L. V. Hoppin, a pupil of McKim, Mead, & White, whose draw- ings of the New York State Building at the Chicago Fair were conspicuously good, has done strong and original work in private Exchange Place. houses. The Metropolitan Opera House, so large a factor in the æsthetic joys of our day and generation, was designed by Cady, the architect also of the Museum of Natural History, and of the Shoe and Leather Bank. Carnegie Music Hall, with its great audi- . torium and minor theatre, and many rooms and studios above, was the work of William B. Tuthill ; the Colonial Club is Henry Kilburn's. To Cyrus Eidlitz, in addition to many another architectural success familiar in our streets, is due credit for the charming Savings Bank at Twenty- second Street and Fourth Avenue, the Racquet Club, and the great un- finished building for the Bar Association.
Enough among the recent erections in New York have been cited to give a fair idea of the march of good taste and refinement fast removing us from our share of the reproach of that middle period of vulgar and lifeless architecture, that babel of styles seen among English-speaking races everywhere, which, alas! replaced the simpler
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Columbia College.
St. Luke's Hospital. Cathedral.
N. R. Bridge.
Bird's-eye View looking south from General Grant's Tomb. (By permission of " Leslie's Weekly.")
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STREET PAVING AND STREET LIGHTING.
and delightful methods of Colonial times in America. Whilst our island, in all its chief business and home localities, is dotted inter- mittently with such fine creations as have been named, it is to the upper parts, those regions not so long ago apparently forgotten by the gods, that we may look for the grouping of the most stately edifices upon appropriate grounds.
The trend of great wealth toward occupancy of the eastern side of Fifth Avenue, above Fifty-ninth Street, is unmistakable. Already that quarter displays a series of palaces, varying in architectural merit, but imposing in general effect. Thence, undoubtedly, Fashion will rule coming generations of New Yorkers; and, with its broad open space in front, looking into the boscage of the Park, its free air and sunshine, its facilities for reaching with ease the new drives of the town, the locality must be called a wise selection for those who can afford to enjoy it. In the Boulevard, a continuation of Broadway, and on Eighth Avenue west of Central Park, enormous apartment houses and many handsome dwellings have appeared.
To the mausoleum at the northern end of Riverside Park, where General Grant is interred, will soon be added the attraction of a monu- ment befitting the fame of the great soldier it commemorates. River- side Drive, unsurpassable in its views of the Hudson and Palisades, is already dotted with substantial houses of solvent citizens.
As far north as the new localities designated, and as far south as old Washington Square, which has lost none of its prestige as a fashionable quarter, New Yorkers are already forced to pursue their weary way, to include in their social intercourse the people who live at these opposite extremes or along the lines between them.
It is to be wished that the glowing tale of New York's external progress could be continued to include praise for our street paving and street lighting. In the first particular, although in some parts greatly improved, and in many parts soon to be still further improved, by the laying of asphalt, our city is open to sharp criticism. Upon what should be our best thoroughfare, Fifth Avenue, owing to the incessant jar from the passage of vehicles over stones, conversation is not possible, other- wise than at a strained and fatiguing pitch of the voice. It is not to be wondered at that a visit to Paris, London, or Washington, where wheels run noiselessly over smooth pavements, is regarded by New Yorkers as a "rest." : In many of the side streets, and in the lower part of the city especially, driving is rather a punishment than a luxury. The irregu- larity of, and the dirt harbored by, these old pavements make them a
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blot upon our civilization which no beauty of sky or of soaring archi- tecture can remove; no effort on the part of householders to make attractive the outside of their homes can avail to secure for us pleasing streets, when the pavements are so unsightly and uncomfortable. The total sum of asphalt laid in New York up to the end of 1894 was 62.34 miles ; the amount laid and under contract since is 7.55 miles. For the benefit, if not for others, of those who take to bicycles and now form so large a part of our locomotive population, several more of the avenues running north, to connect with the resorts of the annexed district, are to be made smooth with this material; and a few years may see the existing occasion of our present complaints much ameliorated.
In the lighting of our streets, we are still, in some portions of the city, behind many towns of yesterday throughout the country ; and the traveller abroad now sees the historic haunts of Europe, and even places in the storied and dormant East, better illuminated by electricity. . This is certainly remediable, and, we hope, is soon to be changed. It is here commented upon because, whilst, to be true, no picture may be drawn without shadows, the shadows we live in, for lack of street lights, are a necessary feature of any picture even approximately true of New York in our time.
Such as our streets are, their condition was far worse until the Department of Street Cleaning passed into the charge of Col. George E. Waring, Jr., in January, 1895. For many years, press and citizens had been protesting in vain against the want of cleanliness in our thorough- fares, and the fact that, except Broadway and Fifth and Madison avenues, most of those in populous districts were encumbered every night, and during all the twenty-four hours of Sundays, with standing trucks to the number of more than sixty thousand. The questions arising naturally in every man's mind, Why should these things be ? and What has become of the money appropriated to better them ? received no answer.
Colonel Waring, fortunate enough to secure at the outset of his endeavors the services of a number of well-educated and well-prepared young men, many of them graduates of technical schools, and all full of enthusiasm for their work, judiciously placed these aids in various positions of responsibility under him. By persistent effort, and by con- scientious attention to the minutiæ of his important office, the new Commissioner, little by little, succeeded in putting his Department into its present satisfactory condition. A marked feature of the new régime has been the reform in the character of the working force. To bring this about, the men employed were made to feel that their retention depended entirely upon themselves, -that, if they worked and behaved
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well, they would be kept; if the reverse, no power or "influence " of politicians or of any one else would enable them to hold their places. This understood, the character of the force was changed as if by magic:
New York Street Cleaning under the Old and the New Regime.
such removals and new appointments as were made were in individual cases, and only after careful examination; and the muster of twenty- five hundred men, working efficiently to-day, is practically that of two
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years ago, with only such differences as proper discipline must effect. The matter of costuming the workers in white duck suits and caps, although the subject of satirical comment by the casual critic, is use- ful for many purposes, - keeps the men more easily under observation, and is even gratifying to many of them, because it identifies them with one of the most popular reforms in recent years; though others are still to be found who resent any uniform as a badge of servitude no American should tolerate. The four hundred and nineteen miles of paved streets on the island, and in the annexed district across the Harlem River, are all swept once a day, three fourths of them twice daily ; the streets of considerable traffic, three times a day; and some streets in the tenement-house districts, even five times a day.1 Regarding the expense to the city of this notable reform, it is of interest to know that the cost of all the work of the Department, including the removal of snow and ice, amounted, for the year 1895, to three cents per week for each member of the population.
The appropriation for 1895 for the Department of Street Cleaning, with an allowance from the Board of Health added, amounted to $2,831,131.96, for the five items of administration, sweeping, carting, final disposition, and rent of premises, scows, &c .; and of that amount there remained at the end of the year an unexpended balance of $126,- 152.77. The expenditure in 1895 for removal of snow and ice was $217,829.83. The outlay of this busy Department, all items added, for that year, was in excess of the most expensive of the years preceding ; but the service rendered to the public was greater in a much larger per- centage of increase, and no expenditure by the municipality in our time has been more cheerfully provided for by the tax-payers. Not the least, perhaps the most considerable, of the blessings for which we must be grateful to Colonel Waring's administration is to be found in the fact that he has demonstrated it to be possible to conduct the affairs of the municipality with which he has been intrusted not only with the best results but by the best methods of an efficient business enter- prise. It is to be hoped that such a demonstration will make it pos- sible to maintain the morale and efficiency of the Department under his successors.
In March, 1888, the streets were for some days seriously encumbered by an extraordinary snow-fall, which passed into local tradition under
' The gatherings of this industry, being street sweepings, ashes, garbage and refuse, amount to 2,500,000 tons per annum. The force at the command of Commissioner Waring is about 1,400 street sweepers, 700 drivers with horses, and some 200 other men in various capacities, bringing up the total personnel of the Department to about 2,500, as already stated.
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the name of " The Blizzard." Several casualties resulted, among them the death of Roscoe Conkling, an ultimate consequence of exhaustion incurred by trying to force his way through the snow-drifts in Broad- way and in Union Square during the progress of the storm. For a time the wheels of busy life were virtually blocked ; and photographs of certain localities taken at the time suggest rather the glaciers of the Alaskan mountains than the familiar thoroughfares of New York.
On April 30th, 1889, the beginning of the centennial celebration of Washington's inauguration as President lent to our streets a splendor of
Washington Arch.
animation rarely seen here. The order of exercises was, in brief, as follows : At sunrise, salutes of artillery were fired, and at 9 o'clock reli- gious services were held in various churches, - one at St. Paul's Chapel, to which we have made reference elsewhere. Beginning at 9.45 o'clock, commemorative speeches were heard upon the steps of the Sub-Treasury,
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from President Harrison, Hamilton Fish, and Elbridge T. Gerry, the latter the chairman of the Centennial Committee; Clarence W. Bowen read Whittier's poem, "The Vow of Washington ; " the oration was deliv- ered by Chauncey M. Depew ; a prayer was offered by the Rev. Dr. Storrs. At 10 o'clock was put in motion the military parade, the largest and most brilliant array of troops seen in New York since war times. The head of the column started from Wall Street and Broadway, to wend its way up-town to Madison Square, where, passing under a triumphal arch of spring flowers, it was reviewed by the President and Cabinet, a host of other civil and diplomatic dignitaries looking on. In the evening there was a dinner at the Metropolitan Opera House, given by the Cen- tennial Committee to the President ; and, by the general public, German Singing Societies were heard in an open air concert in Madison Square. From dawn till midnight the streets were alive with throngs of people in gala dress and humor. The air resounded with the clash of joyous military music. Flags took the April breeze with daring color ; the dull house fronts and prosaic buildings of commerce were ablaze with bunt- ing; and windows along the line of march everywhere were crowded, many having been sold for the occasion to the highest bidders, - one of them fetching $150 for occupancy during the two parades. The ex- travagant enthusiasm of English people over the processions at the Queen's Jubilee was surpassed by New Yorkers agog over the Washing- ton Centennial. On May 1st., when a great industrial parade was mar- shalled in like fashion before the President, the scenes of the preceding day were repeated.1
During the evenings following these two days of unceasing excite- ment the world was out-of-doors, and fire-works witched the eye with bedazzlement. It is safe to say that, at the final close of the proceed- ings, most weary citizens dropped into bed satisfied to relegate the cele- bration of even Washington's glory to the distance of another hundred years.
An imperishable monument of this strong and genuine outburst of New York's regard for the greatest of Americans is the Washington Memorial Arch, finished in 1891, designed by Stanford White, and standing on Washington Square facing the lower end of Fifth Avenue.
1 On April 29th there had been a Centennial Ball at the Metropolitan Opera House, with a quadrille of honor in which Mrs. Gerry, Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Cruger, Mrs. De Peyster, Mrs. Gracie King, Mrs. Van Renssellaer, Miss Schuyler, Miss Livingston, and Mrs. Webb repre- sented, in this pageantry of modern days, some of the names of old New York. During the same week a fine Art Loan Exhibition of historical portraits and relics was on view at the Metropolitan Opera House.
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The present permanent structure, built of marble, by popular subscrip- tion, to replace a temporary arch made for the celebration and the parade, is a noble addition to the architectural embellishment of the town, symbolizing in its perfect proportions the strength and symmetry of the ideal of our republican government shaped by Washington. It has fitly been called a " poem in stone," and is destined for all time to lift the thoughts of observers into the ethereal regions of pure art.
On February 4th, 1890, the Supreme Court of the United States held its centennial celebration in New York, bringing together a remarkable assemblage of famous jurists and laymen. At the exercises in the Met- ropolitan Opera House, Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller and Associate Justices Miller, Bradley, Harlan, Gray, Blatchford, Lamar, and Brewer, were present. In the evening, at a banquet at the Lenox Lyceum, more than eight hundred guests were seated. On this occasion James C. Carter of the New York bar was toast-master, and speeches were made by Justice Harlan, Senator Evarts, Joseph H. Choate, Rev. Dr. Wm. R. Huntington, President Seth Low, and others.
In October, 1892, the patriotism of New Yorkers again expressed itself in a mammoth "Columbian " celebration, which lasted for several days. This began with a procession of fifty thousand school-children, including Indians from the schools at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. On the second day, the harbor was the centre of attraction, with a naval parade of all the available war ships of the United States and of foreign nations, attended by numberless other craft. On the 12th of October occurred a military procession in which forty thousand men marched from the Battery to Fifty- ninth Street between sidewalks black with jostling crowds, and house fronts of which every window showed a muster of holiday faces. In the evening Madison Square was illuminated, and hundreds of thou- sands of watchers patiently kept their places along the line to view a night-parade, with allegorical floats, and figures fantastically garbed, its numbers swelled by five thousand riders of bicycles.
In the spring of 1893 New York was again astir with tumultuous excitement over a naval parade instituted for the entertainment of foreign visitors in war-ships. An international flotilla, gathered at Fort- ress Monroe, Virginia, and consisting of English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Argentine, Brazilian, and other men-of-war, sailed thence for the harbor of New York, where they were met and made welcome by an American squadron under Rear Admiral Gherardi,
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assembled in their honor. On April 27th, amid the roar of many guns, President Cleveland reviewed this fleet at anchor in the Hudson River.
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It was a gray day, lighted by the frequent flashes of powder from salutes, when, in the afternoon, the review began. As the United States Steamer " Dolphin," with the President on board, passed between two long lines of foreign and American battleships, cannon were fired from their decks in swift succession ; shrouded with smoke wreaths, the yards were covered with thousands of sailors and marines; and whistles from the observation fleet sounded shrill above the mighty and continuous roll of drums. Of chief interest in the naval array were the little caravels of Spain, reproductions of Columbus' fleet, which, in con- pliment to America, had been towed across the Atlantic by the Spanish ships of war. At the Grant birthday dinner that evening, at the Waldorf Hotel, speeches were made by the Duke of Veragua, a lineal descendant of Columbus, by General Horace Porter, and by each, in turn, of the foreign admirals, - or by orators selected by several of the more diffident of them to respond to the toasts to their nationalities and commands. Later on, the same evening, occurred the naval ball at the Madison Square Garden, where President Cleveland, the foreign guests, and eight thousand citizens were present.
It was reserved for the 28th of April to present to New York one of the most striking and unique of spectacles, - that of four thousand brawny tars and gallant marines from the foreign war ships, armed men of nine nationalities, parading in peace, but in arms, in military array and under command of their own officers, through the streets of this republican and commercial metropolis. From the reviewing stand with the mayor each admiral saw his blue jackets and soldiers march by him. From Forty-second Street to City Hall a double wall of crowded spectators surveyed the scene, and every window and housetop was alive. That day was followed by a banquet given by the Chamber of Commerce to the city's guests ; and the officers of all the ships were afterwards entertained at the University Club.
There have been, from time to time, strikes instituted and conducted in the city of New York by the " Knights of Labor " or other organiza- tions of working-people, to secure larger pay and shorter hours or other amelioration of their relations to employers. The one the general public suffered the most inconvenience from, and felt the most direct interest in, was the great strike at the end of January, 1889, by em- ployees of surface street-car companies. January 29 very few cars were
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running, the employees of thirteen companies had quit work by direction of the leaders of their associations, and the car tracks were in places obstructed ; more than six thousand men were on strike. Next day more cars were running, with new drivers and conductors who were not members of the associations; but the police were kept busy protecting them and repelling riotous demonstrations, - the companies declining all overtures for compromise or treaty with the strikers, and adding every day to the number of cars in actual but not very satisfactory ser- vice, with inexperienced men in charge. In the collisions between the mobs and police, heads were broken and other injuries inflicted ; but no considerable amount of property was destroyed, and only one life was lost. February 5, when the disturbances had continued for a week, the leaders called the strike " off," having obtained no concessions, admitting a crushing defeat for the labor organizations, and leaving their men to the mercy of the employers. No part of the National Guard had been ordered out. The police force had proved equal to the occasion, and had handled it with discretion.
In 1892 there was a great strike by the railway employees in the ex- tensive yards at Buffalo, under direction of the "Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association." It began August 3, and continued three weeks; at first only two hundred men were out, but accessions to their number soon made them too strong for the local police, and all traffic through Buffalo "was suspended. By the 14th, incendiaries were at work, and during that and the following day great numbers of railway cars, many of them loaded with valuable freights, and large amounts of other rail- way property belonging to one or another of several different companies, were destroyed. On the 15th, the local civil authorities finding them- selves powerless to deal with the situation, troops were by the Governor ordered to the scene. The first of the regiments arrived on the ground on the 16th, under command of General Doyle. On the 18th the entire National Guard of the State was put in motion, and Buffalo soon became a camp of some eight thousand armed men ; though, instead of immedi- ately being over-awed by the troops, the numbers of the strikers contin- ued for a time to increase, and it was repeatedly necessary to disperse the mobs at the point of the bayonet. Firing was several times unavoid- ably resorted to, but only two or three lives were sacrificed. The regi- ments from the city of New York attracted general attention by the fulness of their ranks, their gallant appearance, cheerful bearing, excel- lent discipline, and admirable efficiency. Such a demonstration was said to be costing Erie County $50,000 per day, and there was a loud protest by tax-payers against prolonging the uproar and the continued
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