USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 57
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The necessity of an ample water-supply for cleanliness, comfort. and health can hardly be overestimated. Compared with former times the city is singularly free from epidemic diseases. Not only every decade, but several times each decade, the smallpox or yellow fever was wont to devastate the little city below Chambers Street or Canal Street, until the middle of this century. Now with a popula- tion approaching two millions no serious outbreak of pestilence has occurred for a score of years. Never was the city's sanitary condition put to a severer strain than during the summer of 1896. On Wednes- day, August 5, four deaths occurred from the excessive heat, and the newspapers the next day announced in headlines that it was the " worst day " of the season thus far. But matters grew incredibly worse before another week had elapsed. On the 6th five deaths were reported : on Saturday, the 8th, there were ten. Then there was a sud- den leap to forty-five deaths on Sunday the 9th. The next day (10th) seventy-two deaths occurred, and two hundred prostrations. On the next. Tuesday, August 11, the citizens were appalled by a record of one hundred and twenty deaths from the heat, and three hundred prostrations. Even yet the death angel was not through with the afflicted city; ninety-three deaths on Wednesday (12th), with three hundred and fourteen people prostrated; and sixty-eight deaths on Thursday, the 13th. closing the awful list. Thus the nine days had carried off four hundred and twenty victims, the temperature for the nine days averaging 90.77 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat did not reach 100 degrees at any time during this period. It was rather the continuance of it night and day, the absolute stagnation of the air, and the oppressive humidity, that made these days so trying to all and fatal to so many. Yet it was the heat pure and simple and no dis- ease produced or fostered by the high temperature that caused the death-record to rise to such alarming figures. As was intimated be-
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fore, the remarkable cleanliness of the streets, by the thorough work of Col. Waring's department, prevented the steaming atmosphere from breeding the pestilence that usually attends.
It is in the poorer districts on the east side, between the Bowery and the East River, that the greatest sufferings prevail during heated terms. Here people are huddled together in tenement houses, con- taining four families on a floor, and mounting up floor after floor to the fifth story. Not content with choking people to death in this manner, with a narrow street in front, some of the landlords have put up rear tenements on the same lots, separated from the front building by scarcely twenty feet. So crying is this evil, in its cruelty to those dwelling in such places, and in its peril to the general health of the city, that a move- ment has been late- ly organized com- pelling the tearing down of these rear CH tenements. Yet in spite of the discom- forts and miseries besetting them, the multitudes who crowd these dis- triets cannot be in- duced to leave the city for the coun- try. or to dwell in airy homes in towns MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. bordering on the city. The fascina- tion of the city holds these people. The instinct of segregation possess- es them; in a blind, unreasoning way they feel it is good to be near others of their kind. The brilliant lights, the gayeties, pageants, shops. bustle of a great city, all have a charm for them. They want to be par- ticipants in the great throb of life around them, though often their own individual breath is drawn with pain. For the criminal classes too the multitude is a hiding place, and the serried masses their proper prey. Thus there is indeed, as one thoughtful student of city life expresses it, a " threat " about great cities. They act as load- stones upon the surrounding country, drawing indeed its best, but also its worst, and apt to make its average material worse rather than better. Religious principles weaken as religious as- sociations are abandoned, and in the crowd men and families are lost to religious surveillance and pastoral care. The threat of New York city life, as compared with that of London, is greater because the masses here are not homogeneous as they are there,
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
either in nationality or faith. In New York the preponderance of the foreign element, divided into a score of vastly differing peoples, makes it difficult to deal with the " submerged tenth." and there is no one church, not even the Catholic, that can go in among the masses, as the Anglican Church can do in Lon- don, and claim as its lost lambs or sheep the miserable creatures that need redemption or rescne. A dozen must enter the field at once, often at cross purposes with each other, and rendering confused and indirect the efforts to reclaim; as constantly some hostile creed repu- diates the work already done because not done along its own cher- ished lines or because upsetting some of its own peculiar tenets.
From this darker picture, which it behooves us not to forget, we may well turn to a brighter, lest gloom overwhelm the sympathetic soul. Ere we close this volume we must not fail to indulge in a brief glance at the later higher life of the city. And as a natural transition from the one view to the other, we begin with the University Settlement, or University Extension, as the movement is variously styled. Plac- ing themselves right in the midst of the poor and wretched. at 26 De- lancey Street, here, as in London, men and women of education, with University training, endeavor to elevate taste and enlist sympathy for the pure and the good by direct contact with the people and earn- est instruction in that which is highest in thought or art or nature. As an evidence of the late higher life and its connection with the past. the extension of the Park system deserves a share of our attention and commendation. The people's pleasare grounds are an important fac- tor in the people's elevation, and New York has gone far ahead of any city in the world in providing these in amplest measure. The new territory north of the Harlem has been utilized to furnish several large parks possessing by nature many of the advantages which art was compelled to supply on this side of the river. Jerome Park. Clare- mont Park. Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx Park. Crotona Park, Pelham Bay Park-combine attractions of hill and dale and woodland and bay scenery, which the hand of the landscape gardener can aid in ren- dering all the more bewitching. Fon thousand acres, or five times the area of Central Park. are thus reserved for the purpose of promot- ing health and taste, ends usually not greatly emphasized where com- merce reigns supreme. Historic associations also lend their charm. The Van Cortlandt Park contained the old family mansion, and this has been set aside as a historical cabinet. Again, science claims as her own parts of these beautiful reservations. In Bronx Park there is to be laid out a Botanic Garden. with a museum having a front of 304 feet and 50 feet deep, to be later supplied with two wings two hundred feet long. In another part of the Park a Zoological Garden is to be provided. far surpassing the extempore affair in Central Park. At the Battery, what was once Castle Garden, squalid and malodorous, is now a handsome Aquarium, opened on December 10, 1896, con-
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
verted to its present uses at a cost of half a million dollars, and en- dowed with a quarter of a million; no entrance fee is charged, so that the display of these inhabitants of the deep, not otherwise accessible to study, is open alike to rich and poor. In Manhattan Park, the an- nex of Central Park, at Eighth Avenne and Seventy-seventh Street, stands the large and handsome structure of the Museum of Natural History, containing a marvelous collection of shells presented by Miss Catharine L. Wolfe, whose benefactions to the Museum of Art have also been most munificent. Birds and beasts are here shown in the forms of life by the taxidermist's art; a notable feature being the rep- resentation of great varieties of birds with their nests and eggs as in real life. Skeletons also furnish data for the student and observer, among them being those of primeval mastodons.
Free to the people also are the treasures of art stored in the exten- sive galleries of the Metropolitan Museum in Central Park. Here the possessors of great wealth have vied with each other to bestow upon the city the most rare and costly canvases. Meissonier's " Friedland, 1807," was bought by Judge Henry Hilton for $69,000, and presented to the Museum. Rosa Bonheur's " Horse Fair," famous all over the world, and familiarized by engravings, painted by order of A. T. Stew- art, was bought by Cornelius Vanderbilt for $55,500, and given to the people's art gallery. " Champigny," the scene of the last stand made by the Paris Commune in 1871, by Détaille, costing $35,000, is also a gift of Judge Hilton's. Josef Israel's " Maternity," an exquisite life- size interior, representing a tisherman's hut, with a young woman seated by a cradle and daintily preparing garments for the great event awaited, also a canvas worth its tens of thousands, is another gift by a liberal citizen's hand to his fellow citizens of less fortune but equal love of art. Here Rubens and Rembrandt and Jan Steen, and a host of noble old Dutch and Flemish masters educate the eye to esti- mate the true merits of the painter's brush. Miss Catharine L. Wolfe at her death left all her rich collection of paintings (and $200,000 be- sides to take care of them), so that an additional wing had to be built to contain them properly. But besides paintings the people here may look upon specimens of architecture that are world-famous. Models of the Parthenon, the Pantheon, the Notre Dame of Paris, reproduce these structures on a small scale, but furnish sufficient evidence of their original grandeur. In cabinets without number specimens of the ancient glass maker's art abound; the Egyptian sarcophagus gapes to show its rifled interior, and a hall of sculpture shows what W. W. Story and some others of our land have done to win the admi- ration of older adepts.
To the art of music two noble temples have been recently erected in the city. On Broadway, between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth streets, stands the Metropolitan Opera House, a huge structure of brick and iron, with a stage ninety-six feet wide, seventy-six feet deep, and one
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
hundred and twenty feet high; big enough, therefore, to contain a good-sized church. It was opened in 1883, and has been devoted to the highest class of opera. Most of the Wagner operas have here been produced with telling effect. But it has never been exclusive in its education of the people; during the season of 1891 to 1892 it pre- sented the best examples of Italian and French opera. Sometimes when it appears questionable whether a season can be made profitable with the costly settings and the vastly expensive singers, there are always found citizens of wealth and culture who generously come forward with their subscriptions to secure success. In September, 1892, the interior of the Opera House was quite ruined by fire. It seemed doubtful if the place could be restored, but after a year's de- lay, in 1893 it was put into condition again to minister to its grand purpose of lifting up the publie's taste to thevery highest achievements in the musician's art. An- other immense build- ing distinctly set apart in the interest of music is the Carnegie Music Hall. intended only for concerts, vocal and in- strumental, having no stage settings. It was opened on May 5. 1891. its cost being $1.250,- 000. It will seat 3.000 people, and give stand- ing room to 1,000 more. With so great METROPOLITAN OFERA HOUSE. a number of represen- tatives of nations noted for musical genius among our citizens. it is not to be wondered at that there are evidences here of an earnest pursuit of that art. In June, 1894, a Saengerfest was held in New York for five days, which proved to be the largest singing fes- tival over held in America or Europe. There were delegates from societies in twenty-five cities of the Union. in which there are from six to thirty-six associations each, and whose membership ran from fifty to one hundred and fifty. Madison Square Garden was made the scene of the concerts, at which some of the most famous singers of the world were heard. On one of the evenings there was a torch-light procession enlivened by open-air serenades. In 1889 the Manuscript Club was founded, constituted by American composers, having for its object " the advancement of musical composition in this country and
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the development of honest and intelligent musical criticism." Besides private meetings it gives occasional public concerts, at which the pro- grams consist of pieces rendered from the original manuscripts, no music being performed that has ever been heard in public before.
In the service of learning is soon to be reared the New York Public Library, which is to be one of our most conspicuous architectural ornaments. In 1886 ex-Governor Tilden died, and by will left seven millions of dollars, or the greater part of his fortune, to admin- ister which a corporation called the Tilden Trust was to be created, who should take steps to found and maintain a public library in New York City. The heirs at once began litigation on the ground that this beneficence was excessive, and in 1891 the court decided the case in favor of the testator's natural heirs. One of these, however, had the grace to respect Mr. Tilden's wishes. The Trust having in the mean- time organized with the remnant of half a million from the seven millions, the heir above mentioned added to this two millions of dol- lars. In 1895 it was resolved to consolidate with the Lenox and Astor Libraries, to form one great Public Library. The old reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street will be removed, and the library erected on that site.
It was a New York citizen. Mr. James Gordon Bennett, proprietor and son of the founder of the New York Herald, who sent forth Henry M. Stanley upon the quest after David Livingstone, lost in the jungles of darkest Africa, in 1869. Again. in 1874, the New York Herald and the London Daily Telegraph combined. dispatched him on the second expedition, which resulted in his descent of the Congo River from the interior, and thus in the ultimate establishment of the famous Congo Free State in 1884. Explorations in the exactly opposite zone -- the Arctic-had interested New York citizens in 1851 and 1853; and again in this decade enlisted the sympathy and support of the me- tropolis, when Lieutenant Peary, with his heroic wife, left our port to repeat his Arctic triumphs in 1894.
An evidence of higher life again is the multiplication of societies for the express purpose of fostering ancestral memories and historic associations in a city so apt to whelm everything of that kind beneath the onward rush of its immense business interests. The St. Nicholas Society and the Holland Society were formed to recall the days of the beginning of the city, linking lovingly and reverently the present generation with the fathers that came from the brave little republic of Holland. The Holland Society, while quite as convivial as its older sister, does something more than enjoy banquets. It has devoted time and means to mark historic spots that tell of the Dutch occupation. In September, 1890, it put up bronze tablets on the build- ing at 4 Bowling Green, the site of Fort Amsterdam; at 39 Broadway, where Christiaensen spent the winter of 1613 to 1614; at 73 Pearl Street, the site of the City Tavern in 1642, which became the City Hall
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in 1653, continuing such till 1700; and at 115 Broadway, the Boreel Building, the site of Lieutenant-Governor James De Lancey's house, later the City Hotel. The Society have under serious consideration the raising of funds to place among the many memorials to great for- eigners presented by their countrymen or descendants among our citizens a statue of William the Silent, the founder of the Dutch Re- public.
Benevolence has also many noble examples of the munificent scale whereon citizens of New York are in the habit of practicing it. The Hospitals are legion, and it may seem invidious and unjust to the others to mention the Roosevelt, or the Maternity, or St. Luke's. As was noted before, to secure buildings for the better pursuit of its
COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, 1887.
excellent instruction, the College of Physicians and Surgeons received a gift of $500,000 from Mr. William H. Vanderbilt before his death. Other members of his family have added large sums for the erection of a hospital (the Maternity) and other adjuncts necessary to the training of medical and surgical experts.
The public school system has recently added a new feature of excel- lence. For some time men who gave much thought to the city's educa- tional problem had come to the conviction that several high schools should be established in various parts of the city, to relieve the pres- sure upon the City College. Young men who could not continue through the course, and did not intend so to do. crowded the Introductory and Freshmen classes to excess. This gave them practically the high school education they wanted, but hindered the work of those who wished to achieve a full college course.
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
Hence by act of Legislature, at its session closing in the spring of 1897, several high schools were authorized, and principals and teachers for the same have already been appointed. In 1896 an act of the Legislature abolished the Ward Trustees, a system giving to uneducated men many of the most important functions of educators, and paid inspectors, experts in school matters, have taken their places. For the sake of keeping pace with the times, and with the growing needs of the city's increasing bounds and population, the expenditure of over a million dollars was author- ized to remove the College of the City of New York to a more suitable location, and to erect buildings for its use. The site chosen is at One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street and St. Nicholas Avenne, the grounds to extend to One Hundred and Fortieth Street northward, and Amsterdam (Tenth) Avenue westward. On the heights south of the valley of the Harlem Plains (now Manhattan Avenue) are already seen the splendid proportions of the new Columbia University build- ings. The center is occupied by the Library, the cost of which is $1,000,000, given by President Seth Low as a memorial to his father. It is of marble, and flanked on either side by great structures of brick, with stone trimmings. The grounds stretch from One Hundred and Sixteenth Street to One Hundred and Nineteenth Street, and between Amsterdam (Tenth) Avenue and the Boulevard. A fine wooded cam- pus in the rear is inclosed by a splendid iron fence ten feet high, with massive Scotch granite posts, surmounted by urns, at every fifty feet. Barnard College, its annex for women, stands on the Boulevard oppo- site One Hundred and Nineteenth Street, fronting on the Boulevard, and with a quadrangle opening on One Hundred and Eighteenth Street, whose piazzas seem to be intended to resemble cloisters. On One Hundred and Nineteenth Street, near Amsterdam Avenue, stands the Teachers' College, erected in 1893. The New York University has also left its historie pile on Washington Square, and is erecting nu- merous buildings upon Fordham Heights.
This, then, is the city in the year of grace 1897. To this it has grown from its days of small things in 1614, when white men first made a habitation on Manhattan Island; or in 1626, when it became the seat of Colonial Government ; or in 1653, when it was incorporated as a Dutch municipality; or in 1789, when it was made the capital of a budding Republic. It has grown to an immensity of physical magnitude, cov- ering the island whose utmost southern tongue it barely filled with houses even up to the commencement of the nineteenth century; and adding an equal territory across the Harlem on the mainland. It has grown to a vastness of population, numbering in March, 1896, no less than 1,916,891 souls, which places it alongside of the few greatest cities of the world. It has grown to a fullness of life, in commerce, industry, art, intelligence, benevolence, which has won for it a com- manding position among the capitals of Christian civilization. But
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
even this showing does not do justice to the real New York; hers is a city greater than that covered by that name. Brooklyn was a part of her, with a population of a million souls, for several years the third city in the Union. ' Jersey City, with one hundred and seventy thous- and inhabitants; Hoboken, with fifty thousand; Yonkers, with forty thousand; even Newark, with two hundred thousand, and more dis- tant Elizabeth and New Brunswick, must all be counted as part of New York, made possible by her greatness. All that territory, with cities, towns, and villages, within a radius of at least thirty miles of the City Hall, is the real extent of the City of New York. These places are dependent upon her commerce and industry; they exist by the business done in her streets; they furnish residences to her business men.
Hence for many years it had been the thought of public spirited men that justice should be done to the real state of affairs; that by the name of New York a somewhat larger extent of that territory owing its population and business to the city on Manhattan Island should be designated. The proximity of another State on the west side of the Iludson forbade the incorporation of the communities there existing with the mother city. But on the south and east and north no State barriers interfered; and a movement was started to include in one great municipality Brooklyn, part of Queens County. Staten Island or Richmond County, and a portion of Westchester County. The orig- inators of this scheme may be said to be Mr. James S. T. Stranahan. Brooklyn's " first citizen." as he is fondly called, and the Hon. Andrew H. Green, who was made Comptroller when the Tweed Ring collapsed. In 1890 the project had advanced so far as to obtain legislative action. The Legislature appointed a commission of eleven, of which Andrew H. Green was made President, to inquire into the expediency of con- solidating into one municipality New York. Brooklyn, and contiguous towns and villages, and to submit a report with recommendations. As a result of their work a bill was prepared and introduced into the Legislature of 1893, calling for the submission of the question to a vote of the people of the cities, towns, and villages involved. No action was reached at this session upou the bill, but it was passed at the session of 1894, and on November 6, 1894. as already related. the people gave their vote. It will be interesting to present a record of this vote:
New York County
for 96.938 against
59.959
66
64.744
64.467
Kings County.
..
7.712
4,741
Queens County.
5.531
1,505
Richmond County
..
873
1.603
East Chester (Town)
374
260
West Chester (Town)
..
620
621
Pelham (Village).
251
66
153
Total
177.043
133,309
..
Mt. Vernon (City).
..
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ARMORY OF THE SEVENTY-FIRST REGIMENT.
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
While this larger consolidation was thus pending, by act of the Legislature of the preceding spring, on June 1, 1895, West Chester, East Chester, Pelham, and Wakefield (or South Mount Vernon) were annexed to New York City, adding another 20,000 acres to her terri- tory, and making void the plurality of one against consolidation in West Chester township. But the overwhelming adverse vote of Mt. Vernon seems to have been respected. This annexation carried the city line up to the limit in Westchester County contemplated by the commissioners on the Greater New York. Oh January 6, 1896, the first consolidation act was passed. The small excess in the number favor- ing the project in Brooklyn was considered, and an amendment was proposed granting a referendum of the bill to the people of that city, but this was lost. By the constitution adopted by the State in 1894, a certain degree of home-rule had been conceded to cities by giving their Mayors the privilege of vetoing bills referring to matters in which they were specially concerned. The Consolidation Bill was therefore sent for approval or disapproval to the Mayors of New York, Brook- lyn, and Long Island City. It was returned with the vetoes of Mayors Strong, of New York, and Wurster, of Brooklyn, with messages giving reasons for their objection. The Mayor of Long Island City, with its straggling population of about thirty thousand, approved the bill. It was again passed over the vetoes of the Mayors, and the Governor ap- proved the bill on May 11. 1896, and it became a law. The Governor thereupon carried out the provision requiring him to appoint a com- mission to draw up a charter for the new municipality. It was to include the Mayors of the three cities, and certain State officials, to- gether with " nine other persons, residents of the localities under con- solidation." Of these nine, appointed on June 9. 1896, Hon. Seth Low and General B. F. Tracy, ex-Secretary of the Navy, formed a part. The Commission was to have its charter framed and reported to the Legislature by February 1, 1897, the same to be adopted by that body before it adjourned. When it had been presented and approved by the Legislature, the bill doing so was again sent, accompanied by the charter, to the three Mayors. The Mayors of Brooklyn and Long Island City sent it back with their approval; Mayor Strong again with his veto. This was disregarded by the Legislature, who passed the bill adopting the charter, and on Wednesday, May 5, 1897, Gover- nor Black affixed his signature. The act of consolidation and the charter of the greater city is to go into effect on January 1. 1898, the Mayor and Council to be elected in November, 1897. The charter di- vides the city into five Boroughs: 1. Manhattan, covering the whole of Manhattan Island, the original extent of New York. 2. The Bronx. embracing all the annexed territory in Westchester County. 3. Brooklyn, covering all of that city, embracing the original territory of Kings County. 4. Queens, embracing that part of Queens County in- cluded within the territory of the city. 5. Richmond, embracing all
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
of Staten Island. The legal title of the city is to be " The Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the City of New York." Besides the Mayor, the city is to be under the control of a Municipal Assembly consisting of two houses; the upper, to be called the Council. and com- posed of a President and twenty-eight members; the lower, to be called the Board of Aldermen, composed of sixty-one members. The whole area needs a radius of twenty miles, with the City Hall in New York as a center, to circumscribe it, its precise measurement being 317.7 square miles. The population is estimated to reach on January 1. 1898,3,430,000 souls, making New York the second city in the world. Thus will be realized the climax of municipal existence in the West- ern Hemisphere by that quaint little town on Manhattan Island, lying back of the palisades on Wall Street, which began life two hun- dred and forty-five years ago as the City of New Amsterdam.
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