USA > New York > New York City > New York panorama : a comprehensive view of the metropolis > Part 33
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College football, of course, still dominates the situation. On any Satur- day through the season there's at least one important game in town, since Fordham and N.Y.U. like to be at home when Columbia's away, and since the feeling is mutual.
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New York is a big-time football town these days. True, during the 1937 eason New York University was something less than a ball of fire, and ThColumbia never reached the boiling point. But Fordham? Indeed, yes. The divionly game the Rams didn't win was a tie, and it took Pitt to do that to hem. New Yorkers are hard put to it to understand those Rose Bowl canbeople.
The Army-Navy game or the Army-Notre Dame classic can always fill hethe Yankee stadium.
pa an Manhattan and City College have been coming fast of recent years, but hey're still far from the class of the others. The five local teams draw omething like a million persons at the gate each season, and the Army- 10 Navy or Army-Notre Dame session pulls about 90,000 more.
n It's the pros, though, who provide the really astonishing feature of foot- all in New York. They've only been at it for about ten years in these ntebarts, but they've arrived. The Giants, of the National Professional League, last fall played to almost 250,000 spectators in seven home games. ish The old charge that the pros were inclined to take things easily is heard no more; possibly the greatest game played in New York during the 1937 eason was the Giants' 10-0 win over the Green Bay Packers-great be- 50 cause with a skill never seen on a college field was combined a viciousness n tackling and line play that even the collegians at their maddest couldn't surpass.
Naturally this new dispensation needed a patron saint to guide it on its tesuccessful way. His name is Tim Mara. He books the horses here and there about the land; he is a shrewd father to his players, and nourishes care- fully the growing "Die for dear old Mara" spirit among the fans. The Giants organization is often referred to as Mara University, which tells he story.
Disorder on the Court
Collegiate basketball has come in for some previous attention, but it's h worth another word. For the game about here has risen to an eminence I that it boasts in few other sections. On the basis of year-in and year-out intersectional play only the Pacific Coast teams can claim an advantage over the big town schools, though few of the far westerners have ap- peared here.
In spite of the changes in rules there is little uniformity of basketball method throughout the country. Western teams shoot fast and often, and
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when two such teams meet the resulting score may be anything at all of Defense is the word in the Midwest. But in New York it's all floor play- mil passing to the point, sometimes, where the spectators stagger slightly onlan the way out. New York teams, City College, notably, tend to overdo th Vel passing game, sacrificing points to technical brilliance.
In basketball the minor schools hereabouts play on an equal footinį po with the bigger ones; as often as not City College (one of the outstand for ing basketball schools of the nation ) is better on the court than such giant as N.Y.U. or Columbia. St. John's of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Long Island University draw crowds as great as those which watch Fordham o. do Columbia.
While the five other teams meet one another every season, Columbia, &G member of the Eastern League, is inclined to be a bit coy with the loca talent. The Lions met only N.Y.U. during the 1937-38 season.
The pro game in New York is at the moment in a bit of a muddle: Despite its great influence on the collegiate brand of play, it has undoubt edly suffered at the hands of the schoolboys. Good gates are still the rule at the Hippodrome, but the accruing prestige isn't what it was.
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There are too many teams, for one thing. There are the Celtics (now owned by Kate Smith), the Visitations, the Jewels, and a host of other less conspicuous pro clubs. It is not uncommon for a player during a single week to appear with two or more teams, and the loosely-organized prc loop tends to take on the aspect of a wrestling troupe, with the difference that the pro basketballers play to win.
Probably the oldest and the best team now playing professional basket- ball is the great Renaissance Five of Harlem. This Negro club, members of no league, can beat almost any pro team in the business, and their audi. ences are constant and large. Of late they have taken to protracted tours. but they make an occasional stand against local teams, to the acute discom- fort of the latter.
The game is popular in every one of the city's thousands of gyms, and several amateur leagues for men and women flourish.
Some Others
Track and field events, long handicapped by lack of facilities in and about New York, have come to the front recently as spectator sports, with the indoor version bulking ever more large in the public eye. The Knights
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If Columbus games and the Millrose meet, with its famed Wanamaker iile, attract outstanding men in every event. Of the track events, sprints hd the mile are favored by the fans, with such figures as Cunningham, enzke, San Romani and Lash making the mile run a highlight of any heet. Field events suffer somewhat indoors, though the high jump and the ole vault, granted that topnotchers are participating, will evoke a cheer r two.
Completion, during 1936, of the Randall's Island Stadium has given the ty a fine outdoor field. Its cinder track is said to be the best in the ountry, though no spikes have yet cut it in record time.
The city's outstanding outdoor meet has come to be the annual Labor james at the Island stadium. It attracts stars and crowds, and presages ibor as a growing force in sports. Track and field sports among the pungsters are principally under the supervision of the Public School thletic League and the Parks Department.
Golf, too, has a bright future in the city. There are ten civic links within he town's area, but they were something to be ashamed of until a while ack. But WPA, in collaboration with Commissioner of Parks Robert Moses, has taken the tin cans out of the fairways and sodded the greens, mong other things.
Golf in New York is still far from a mass game, and not many of the itizens ever see an event like the Metropolitan Open. But the sport is oming along, and will come faster when equipment prices fall within he range of the average purse.
Not a great deal of competitive swimming is done around New York. uch amateur competition as occurs is confined to indoor pools in various lubs and institutions. But from the public standpoint swimming is the greatest mass sport of all.
Here again WPA takes a bow, for since the beginning of the work ad elief agency II great public swimming pools have been opened in the ive boroughs, and two beaches have been made habitable for humans. Orchard Beach, opposite City Island in the Bronx's share of the East River, is alleged by experts to be one of the world's outstanding examples of reclamation.
Then, of course, there remain such beaches as Coney Island, Brighton, Rockaway and (farther out) Jones Beach, as well as several others along she Long Island and Jersey shores, with their immense summer crowds.
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Then there's tennis. The game grows and grows, but if one comen down to it it's not a mass game in New York, even today. Some fev hundred thousands hold a racquet at one time or another, but the numbe. of real devotees looms very small, to use a paradox, on the New Yorl scene. There's a distinct lack of public courts, and a noticeable lack o: money to pay rental fees or club dues.
Forest Hills may be regarded as a New York enterprise, but the gall leries at the annual National Amateur tourneys or the not-annual-enough Davis Cup finals represent a very, very small segment of the populace.
Pro tennis, meanwhile, isn't as important as the newspapers once claimed it to be. A Vines-Perry match once filled the Garden, but filling the Garden once in a year is no criterion. The case could be clinched by pointing out that New York has never produced a great hand with the racquet, but why labor the point?
The six-day bike races have two functions: they keep people away from home nights, and they bring the Garden about $170,000 a year. But they occur only once or twice during each year, which may be just as well, al things considered.
Polo is played indoors and outdoors by men who can afford polo ponies They're strictly amateurs, because they have money enough or resource: enough. Pros are pros because they need the money. Polo is played anc watched by people who don't need the money.
Auto races haven't attained much foothold around and about New York, in spite of the reopening of Roosevelt Raceway at Westbury, L. I The Vanderbilt Cup races were held at this road track in 1937, but one race, even a big one, is still one race.
There remain other games which New Yorkers watch while other New Yorkers play. Soccer, for instance, boasts 700 teams in various city leagues but attendance is pretty well restricted to the foreign born. Rugby is playec occasionally, but there are no figures on where, when or why. People fence, shoot arrows at targets, play lacrosse and field hockey, bowls anc billiards. But they do these things because they like to do them, and you could count the gate on the fingers of one billiard cue.
The usual gym games-handball, volley ball, and the rest-haven't the appeal in New York that they have in other cities, because we have here too many people and too few gyms. The court games, such as court tennis, squash racquets and squash tennis, are prohibited to most, since relatively few people belong to private clubs. There is, incidentally, only one public court tennis layout in the entire city.
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National Games
The Italians are steeped in a very old culture, and any one of them ould beat you at bocci. The Irish sing well, have elected a lot of alder- hen, and play hurley better than the Sassenach. West Indians are polite, year white flannels, and will take you on at cricket and trounce you in a enteel manner.
These are the three great national games still flourishing hereabouts. You may see bocci on any vacant lot where Italians gather, and if you want to cheer at the sight of one wooden ball colliding with another yooden ball that's up to you. The Irish lay the caman fiercely about every unday at Innisfail and Van Cortlandt Parks. The West Indians stand round Van Cortlandt Park weekly with those funny bats and that mys- erious manner affected by cricketers.
Sailboats sail, yachts yacht, and shooters shoot here and there. People lay lawn bowls, roque and croquet. But not many people could name one tar in these sports.
Supervised Sports
One doesn't have to tell the young how to play. They seem to figure it but for themselves. But in such a city as this other considerations enter uninvited. How are the kids to be kept out of the way of trucks, trolleys, Ind gangs? How are they to learn other games as well as, unattended, hey would learn dice, blackjack and pitch-penny?
The Public School Athletic League tries to answer the question during hose days and hours when the kids are within the League's range of fire. The Police Athletic League (on the badge it says PAL) supplements the effort of the schools.
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PAL-a branch of the Juvenile Aid Department-had a membership of 74,260 boys and girls at the close of 1937, each a dues-paying member it ten cents per year. Adults may become associate members at a cost of one dollar, and it's worth it.
The organization boasts a double-barreled value. It teaches a boy or girl how to play team games-off the streets-and it unlearns a lot of what the streets teach him about cops. The kid who is taught to box by a cop s never likely to become a cop-fighter, the Juvenile Aid Department rea- sons. The cops seem to agree.
New York, more than any other city in America, is dotted with insti-
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tutions devoted to the welfare of the young. The welfare of the younlx is partly bound up with games, so the kids do fairly well. They coul do a lot better, but housing has nothing to do with an essay on sports.
On a Moral Note
The horse is admittedly a noble beast which runs at four tracks in ( adjacent to New York City. The primary idea in a horse race is to se which horse is best in a given group. In an effort to determine this super ority men have lost their shirts, homes and happiness, and have macht merry and money. th
The four metropolitan tracks are Belmont, Jamaica, Acqueduct an ho Empire City, and during 1937 they played to more than 1,300,000 fans. Sisa racing is a mass sport; but that isn't the half of it. W
Of each hundred persons who follow the races one may say conservabe tively that 30 will see a race at one time or another during their lives. Thet others are occupied only with the possible riches to be gained by monetar insistence on the quality of some particular horse. According to thekto estimate of a large booking syndicate, about 950,000 New Yorkers la a bet with the corner bookie at one time or another. (The track-goer usually bet with the books there. )
The bookies are much less numerous than the bettors, and the bookie take rather than lay bets. In the long run, against any run of luck by an number of bettors, a bookie will win. He will win because he risks onl his theory that horse players really don't know horses, or anything.
Here are some figures:
About 10,000 horses are raced in the United States each year. Of thes about 500 are fairly consistent winners. About 1,500 are in-and-outers ("give him a heavy track and he'll deliver"), and the remainder are plugso a charitable enough term. The bettor doesn't know which of his pick belong to the 8,000 and which to the 500. The bettor, therefore, loses.
Horse-racing, a great sport in itself, has tended to bring about the ex tension of small-time gambling into every other game. This gambling ha always been a business with a small portion of the population. Today i has become a pastime among a great number of people. One bets on th horses, the fights, football, baseball-and the game ceases to be a game
But in the end it's hard to blame the bettor. He likes to play; there isn' quite enough room or time, so he plays at a distance. That's the traged of that typical crowd.
ounKVII. MARITIME AFFAIRS
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aMBRYONIC New York evolved from the germ of ocean commerce, and he infant settlement was nurtured on salt water. Salt water provided its aranourishment during more than three hundred years of prodigious growth. .Salt water conveys sustenance to the modern city's gargantuan anatomy. Without its great harbor, in short, the New York of today would have røpeen impossible. By the same token, commerce and shipping have molded The city's destiny.
tar One hundred years ago, your average New Yorker was acutely port- thonscious. Even more than Broadway, South Street was the Main Street of the little metropolis; and virtually every stream of metropolitan life- erfinancial, commercial, industrial and social-flowed into the "street o' hips." Here was the profitable outlet for accumulated capital; this was ithe happy hunting ground for enterprising traders, where golden oppor- and unity beckoned-and rewarded-the ten-dollar-a-month clerk no less nthan the established merchant. Here ships were bought and sold, within :arshot of the famed East River yards that laid them down. Here too were he gala launchings and Liverpool packet sailings, always attended by vast hrongs and not a little conviviality. The New Yorker of 1837 could boast something besides a trace of salt in his veins; there was inevitably a wisp of seaweed in his hair. "The beach" evoked aspirations and images not Heven vaguely resembling those that contemporary New Yorkers associate with Coney Island. There was an immediate tie-up between what hap- pened on South Street and a man's bank balance or his butcher bill.
One hundred years ago, the Port of New York was the City of New York. There were distinctions, of course, but historically they are unim- portant. New York in 1837 was America's premier seaport, but hardly more than that. It was primarily a mercantile city. And precisely at that time ships and shipping were laying the foundations of an edifice that would engulf South Street and require water frontage extensive beyond the wildest dreams of early 19th century merchants. The City of New
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York today is more than the port; and the port includes more than th li waterfront of the city.
.In less than 100 years New York was transformed from a seaport towi maintained by a few docks, warehouses and shipyards, into a great worl Y metropolis, supported by tens of thousands of factories and countles other wealth-producing enterprises. And while that aggregate of wate: in front activity which may loosely be called maritime industry is not th Ja city's only industry-as, practically speaking, it was a hundred years ag -it is still the city's basic industry.
The waterfront is the heart of a gigantic metropolitan organism. Befor we dissect this mighty heart and investigate some of its mysteries, w might consider our initial postulate that New York City without its harbc would have been impossible. On the surface, this is almost axiomatic. Bu as we shall see in our observations on the Port of New York's life-anc death struggle with competing ports, this obvious proposition require frequent argument and proof.
Nature was unusually beneficent with New York Harbor. This bod of water is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. Seve major bays (Jamaica, Upper and Lower, Raritan, Gravesend, Newark an Flushing), some of them bigger than well-known harbors abroad, plu the mouths of four large rivers (Raritan, Passaic, Hudson and Hacker sack), plus four estuaries (Arthur Kill, Kill van Kull, East River an Harlem River), go into its composition. Its 67 well-defined anchorag grounds have an area of 92,500 acres. Heavy ocean fog is infrequent i the harbor. In addition to being virtually landlocked, it is never ice-bound its mean tide range is only four and a half feet; and it is equipped with exceptionally deep channels, both natural and dredged. New York's mail channels have a depth of 40 feet, practically a minimum requirement fo such modern liners as the Normandie and Queen Mary. What natur marred or forgot man has remedied or supplied; since 1853 the Federa Government has expended more than $10,000,000 on harbor improve ments here.
Besides these outstanding physiographical features, New York Harbo is blessed with an extraordinary geographical location. It is directly acces sible to the Atlantic Ocean, only two hours' steaming time, or about I· miles, separating the Manhattan waterfront from the open sea. The good fortune of New York in this respect is doubly apparent when we not that Philadelphia and Baltimore, two of the port's chief rivals, are situ ated 102 miles and 179 miles respectively from the sea. New York i
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thlikewise remarkably favored with a short all-water route to Boston, via the sheltered East River, Long Island Sound and the Cape Cod Canal; and wn:rom 1835 until 1933 there was an inland all-water barge route from New orldYork to Philadelphia via the Delaware-Raritan Canal.
This combination of factors would have been sufficient, in itself, to ternsure the port's popularity with shipping interests. But the harbor has thanother geographical virtue as well, equalling and at one time surpassing agfull others in economic significance. It is connected, by inland water routes, with the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River. The orgeneral and historical importance of this circumstance is clearly demon- waitrated by a simple statement of fact and a few well-worn statistics. New bonY'ork is the only port on the Atlantic coast of the United States connected Butpy waterways with the interior. In the decade 1811-20, before the Erie nd Canal (which completed the inland route to the interior) was opened, ireNew York exports were valued at $88,000,000, as compared with $65,000,000 for South Carolina, which was second, and $50,000,000 each odfor Louisiana and Georgia. Between 1840 and 1851, as canal traffic versteadily mounted, New York exports increased to $302,000,000; while the indexports of South Carolina, its nearest rival on the Atlantic coast, amounted lugduring the same period to $86,000,000, and those of Massachusetts to en 376,000,000.
Given a harbor naturally magnificent, plus a great estuary located at 'the seaboard portal of the best highway approach to the West," plus the Erie Canal linking that harbor with a fabulously wealthy interior, and dsthe sum spelled immense advantage to trade. It is self-evident that trade tilittracts vessels and vessels attract trade. This is not necessarily an endless inprocess ; and it is, of course, subject to a multiplicity of other factors. But owith the opening of the Erie Canal, New York decisively captured resupremacy from her rival ports. She retains that supremacy today, on a alscale beyond comparison in the western hemisphere.
Radius of the Port
Before surveying that colossus, the New York waterfront, it may be advisable to glance briefly at the map in order to understand exactly what constitutes the Port of New York. Your average New Yorker thinks of athe shores of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and lets it go at that. But not so the scientific student of port affairs.
Considered as an economic unit, the Port of New York embraces the
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entire area within a 25-mile radius of the Statue of Liberty. It extend fa westward beyond the Passaic River and southward beyond Perth Amboy inha New Jersey, farther than Jamaica Bay on the east, northward to Tarrytownab on the Hudson River, and as far as Port Chester on Long Island Sound This territory of more than 1,500 square miles, with a population of beto tween II and 12 million persons, contains some 40,000 industrial estaba lishments, which produce annually goods valued at about $8,000,000,000 Altogether, the port district ranks as the country's greatest commercial financial and residential community.
Rail and Road
Serving this community overland are upwards of 300 motor truck line and 10 great trunk line railroads, competing thunderously for the million of tons of freight dumped and loaded on port district shores annually The importance of these railroad systems in the port economy cannot bi overemphasized. Shipping in the port constitutes the right arm of the giant organism, and railroad transport is the left. Deprived of one or the other, the organism would be disastrously crippled.
As another glance at our map will show, the difficulties of railroad freight distribution in the port district are enormous. The Cyclopean bod' of the metropolis was conceived on Manhattan Island. As it grew andto became cramped in these narrow confines it spread, perversely, not to the mainland but to Brooklyn and Long Island. This anatomy was reasonably in harmony with the times in which it was molded. But under the condi tions and demands of a voracious and prolific hinterland, whose verwe life-blood flowed through railway arteries, it was bound to be an exas peratingly inefficient structure. Long before railroads appeared on the scene, shipping had taken root on the east bank of the Hudson, next to the center of population. In order to reach this rich source of revenue and compete successfully with canal and river carriers, the railroads had nda alternative but to occupy the west bank of the Hudson and go nautical Rails cannot be laid on a river, but they can be bolted to a scow. Anche freight can be transferred to lighters. Thus the Port of New York's fre lighterage and carfloat system, which makes every dock in the port avail able to every railroad in the port, came into being. We shall have occasion to consider this system later.
The first railroad to connect the port with the interior, the New York Central, alone succeeded in establishing passenger and freight terminal
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ndfacilities on Manhattan Island. Most of the great railroads that followed yinad to accept the Jersey shore as the end of their lines and, as indicated owibove, very grave maritime responsibilities for the delivery of freight. ind'he consequent investment in terminals, classification yards, pier stations, bebwing vessels, float bridges, carfloats, lighters, barges, ferries and other tab harine equipment runs into hundreds of millions of dollars.
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The complexities and ramifications of railroad transportation in the port istrict require far more extended discussion than is possible here. Else- here in our survey of harbor activity we shall find it necessary to outline ertain phases of railroad marine operations. It is sufficient now to note hat in the development of Port of New York's waterfront, railroads have layed a part that equals and may even exceed that of the strictly seagoing nenterprises.
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