Chapter II: Part 2

At Bond Street, in advancing up Broadway, are encountered the booksellers, this with adjacent streets being the home of much of that trade. In Lafayette Place is the spacious Astor Library, and in the wide Astor Place is the handsome new building of the Mercantile Library. The former is now a part of the New York Public Library. A half-century ago the site of the Mercantile Library was occupied by the "Astor Place Opera House," then a leading theatre, and in the adjacent streets occurred the "Macready riots" in 1849. The rivalries of Edwin Forrest and Macready resulted in an effort by the partisans of the former to prevent the latter from playing in the Opera House on the night of May 10th. The Forrest faction attacked the building with stones, and the police being unable to control them, troops were called out, and, firing several volleys along Astor Place, they suppressed the riot and dispersed the mob, but at a cost of about sixty killed and wounded. At the end of Astor Place and its junction with Third Avenue is the Cooper Institute, occupying an entire block, a large brownstone building with a fine front, founded and endowed in 1857, at a total cost of about $1,000,000, by Peter Cooper, for the free education of men and women in science and art. His statue stands in front. It also received in 1900 additional gifts from his executors and $300,000 from Andrew Carnegie. Peter Cooper was a wealthy manufacturer and merchant of the broadest philanthropy. At a recent anniversary of the Institute his son-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt, speaking of him, said: "Fifty years ago three men, all of whom started in life as poor boys, got together and talked over various ways by which they could be of benefit to the public. They were Peter Cooper, Ezra Cornell and Matthew Vassar. The latter said he would found a school for girls, and he founded Vassar College. Mr. Cornell said he would found a school for boys, and he founded Cornell University. Peter Cooper said he would found a school for both girls and boys, and he founded Cooper Union. But Mr. Cooper's school differs from the others, in that here, any boy or girl may receive an education absolutely free of charge." Opposite the Cooper Institute is an immense red building, the "Bible House," the home of the American Bible Society, where the Scriptures are printed by the millions, in all languages, for distribution throughout the world--over eighty different languages and dialects being used.

Diagonally northeast from Astor Place runs Stuyvesant Street, formerly the country lane leading out to the ancient farmhouse of old Governor Stuyvesant, surnamed "Peter the Headstrong." Here was built "St. Mark's Church in the Bowerie" in the last century, then a mile out of town, and the quaint little Stuyvesant House still stood, at that time, perched on a high bank near the church, having, with its odd-looking overhanging upper story, been built of small yellow bricks brought out from Holland. In the days of New Amsterdam this region was Governor Stuyvesant's "Bauerie," and to it he retired when compelled to surrender to the English in 1664. He lived in this secluded spot for eighteen years, dying in 1682, and his brown gravestone occupies a place in the wall of the church. He was the last of the Dutch Governors, energetic, aristocratic and overbearing, and described by Irving as a man "of such immense activity and decision of mind that he never sought nor accepted the advice of others;" Irving further saying that he was a "tough, sturdy, valiant, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate leather-sided, lion-hearted, generous, spirited old Governor."

Returning to Broadway, for a mile or more it, with the adjacent streets, is the great retail shopping district. Here on the pleasant afternoons are throngs of shoppers. A short distance above, Broadway bends to the left, displaying Grace Church, with its rich marble façade, beautiful spire, and adjoining rectory, chantry and church house, an unique ecclesiastical group, dating from 1846, when it was far "up town," but now almost covered-in by the huge surrounding stores. Fourteenth Street crosses beyond, and here is Union Square, a pretty oval park of about four acres, adorned by an ornamental fountain and statues of Washington, Lafayette and Lincoln. Large buildings and stores surround the square, the chief being Tiffany's noted jewelry establishment. Fourteenth Street is a wide avenue, with an extensive shipping trade. To the eastward of Broadway is the Academy of Music and the noted Tammany Hall. This is the seat of the "Tammany Society," established in 1789 for benevolent purposes, but now controlled by the Democratic political organization ruling New York. The Hall is a capacious brick structure with stone facings, surmounted by a statue of its presiding genius, the old chief and warrior of the Lenni Lenapes, St. Tammany, who with outstretched hand beneficently looks down upon the street. The sturdy Indian, however, was probably more used to the mild and just methods of William Penn and his Quakers on the Delaware than to the political schemes on the Hudson, of which fate seems to have made him a patron saint.

MADISON SQUARE.

Broadway reaches Madison Square at Twenty-third Street, another wide highway crossing the city, and also intersects Fifth Avenue, which is the western side of the Square. This junction has a park of about six acres, surrounded by large hotels and noted buildings, and alongside the triangular intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue is a handsome granite monument to General Worth, a hero of the War with Mexico. The plateau on which it stands is usually availed of as the site for the official reviewing stage for processions. This Square is the great centre of elaborate civic and military displays, and has, with its surroundings and the light stone of the adjacent buildings, an air that is decidedly Parisian, it occupying much the same position for New York as the Place de la Concorde in Paris, or Trafalgar Square in London. In Madison Square are statues of Admiral Farragut (the finest statue in New York), William H. Seward, President Arthur and Roscoe Conkling. At the northwest corner of the Square was for many years Delmonico's famous restaurant, since moved farther up town. Its owner, after feeding wealthy New Yorkers on the choicest viands for several decades, finally lost his mind, and in a fit of aberration wandered over into the wilderness in New Jersey, and becoming lost in the woods, actually died of starvation. The new Appellate Court of New York is on the eastern side of the Square; at the northeast corner is the Madison Square Garden, and at the southeast corner the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, where the great clerical censor of New York, Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, occupies the pulpit. Madison Square may be regarded as the social centre of modern New York. Far to the northward Fifth Avenue stretches, with its rows of palatial brownstone residences, and towards the north-northwest Broadway extends for two miles to Central Park, passing many hotels, theatres, and the tall "French flats" that have been devised for residences in the crowded city where the land surface is so scarce. It also passes, at the intersection of Sixth Avenue, the Greeley and Herald Squares, with statues of Horace Greeley and William E. Dodge, and the _New York Herald_ Building. A short distance beyond is the Metropolitan Opera House, the finest theatre in the city, rebuilt after a fire in 1893. Broadway at Fifty-ninth Street reaches the southwest corner of Central Park and intersects Eighth Avenue, and here is the Columbus Monument, a tall shaft surmounted by a marble statue, erected in 1892. Broadway then becomes the magnificent "Grand Broadway Boulevard," with rows of trees, prolonged far northward.

FIFTH AVENUE.

Fifth Avenue, one hundred feet wide, is probably the New York street that is most talked about, for they say the main object of working so hard to get rich in the metropolis is to be able to live in a fine mansion on Fifth Avenue. This great highway extends northward almost in the centre of Manhattan Island, but it has an humble beginning, starting from the original "Potter's Field," where for many years the outcast and the unknown were buried and over a hundred thousand corpses are believed to have been interred. When the city spread beyond this cemetery it was decided to make the place a park, and thus was formed Washington Square on Fourth Street, a short distance west of Broadway, an enclosure of about nine acres. From this Square Fifth Avenue is laid in a straight line six miles northward, to the Harlem River. The fine Washington Centennial Memorial Arch spans the avenue at the southern end, near the Square, marking the Centenary of Washington's inauguration as President. In the lower portions the famous avenue has been largely invaded by business establishments, but above, it is the finest residential street in the world, there being four or five miles of architectural magnificence, in which for two miles it borders Central Park. The street displays the best dwelling and church architecture, the progress northward into the newer portion showing how the styles have changed. All railways have been carefully excluded from this street. At the southern end the older houses are generally of brick, gradually developing into the use of brownstone facings, and then into almost uniform rows of elaborate brownstone buildings, with imposing porticos reached by high and broad flights of steps. The rich yet gloomy brown is somewhat monotonous, but as Central Park is approached this is broken, as all styles of designs and materials are used. Fifth Avenue has the great "Methodist Book Concern" at Twentieth Street, and in this neighborhood are also several of the leading book houses. The wealthy and exclusive Union Club is at Twenty-first Street, with the Lotus Club in a more modest house adjacent.

Northward from Madison Square the great street stretches up the aristocratic grade of Murray Hill, with its rows of stately buildings. Parallel and a short distance eastward is Madison Avenue, also a street of fashionable residence, and second only to Fifth Avenue in grandeur. At Twenty-ninth Street is the plain and substantial granite Dutch Reformed Church, and to the eastward is an odd-looking little church that has attained a wide reputation. It is a picturesque aggregation of low brick buildings, set back in a small enclosure between Fifth and Madison Avenues, and looking like a quaint mediæval structure. Some years ago a pompous rector, when asked to read the last prayers over the dead body of an actor, sent the sorrowing friends to this church, saying he could not thus pray for the ungodly, but they might be willing to do it at the little church around the corner. The public quickly caught on, through newspaper aid, and the result was that this attractive Church of the Transfiguration performed the last rites in presence of an overflowing congregation, and its official title has since been overshadowed by the popular one of "the Little Church Around the Corner." It is much attended by the theatrical fraternity, and contains a handsome memorial window to Edwin Booth.

Mounting the gentle grade of Murray Hill, we come to Thirty-fourth Street, the locality typifying the two greatest fortunes amassed in America before the advent of the Vanderbilts. The whole block between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets is occupied by the towering Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, built of brick and sandstone in German Renaissance, and occupying the land originally the home of the Astors, while across Thirty-fourth Street is the white marble Stewart palace. The ancestor of the Astor family, John Jacob Astor, accumulated the largest fortune known in this country before the Civil War, his estates representing the early growth of New York, and the wealth coming from the advancing value of land as the city expanded. He was a poor German peasant-boy who came from the village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, to London, and worked there prior to 1783, making musical instruments for his brother. In that year, at the age of about twenty, he sailed for America with $500 worth of instruments, meeting a furrier on the ship, who suggested that he trade the instruments for American furs. This he did in New York, and returning to London, sold the furs at a large profit. Coming back to New York, he established a fur-trade with England, and built ships for his business. He prospered, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century was worth $250,000. Then he began buying land and houses in New York, built many buildings, and was so shrewd in real-estate investments that they often increased a hundredfold. He was liberal and charitable, and dying in 1848, his estate, then the largest in the country, was estimated at $25,000,000. His chief public benefaction was the Astor Library, which his son, William B. Astor, also aided, so that besides the buildings it has an endowment of about $1,800,000. The great Astor estates, now represented by the fourth generation, are estimated at over $200,000,000.

The splendid palace at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street was built by Alexander T. Stewart when at the height of his fame as the leading New York merchant. Intended to eclipse anything then known in New York, he expended $3,000,000 upon the building and its decoration, so that this house outshone all other New York residences until the Vanderbilt palaces were erected farther out Fifth Avenue. Its latest occupant has been the Manhattan Club. Stewart's fortune was accumulated through the facilities at New York for successful trading, though much of his wealth was afterwards invested in large buildings in profitable business localities, and notably in great hotels. Stewart, like Astor, began his career with almost nothing, but at a later period. He was born at Belfast, Ireland, in 1802, studied at Trinity College, Dublin, but before taking his degree migrated to New York as a teacher in 1818. He got into the dry-goods trade in a small way near the City Hall Park, and his business grew until he acquired all the adjacent buildings, and put up the store at Chambers Street, and afterwards the retail store farther up Broadway. Enlarging in every direction, his business became the greatest in the country, with branches in the leading cities. He was an extensive importer, and owned various factories making the fabrics he sold. His business methods were profitable but unpopular, involving the remorseless crushing of rivals, so that he had few friends and many enemies. Yet he was charitable, sending a shipload of provisions to relieve the Irish famine in 1846, and he made large public gifts to aid suffering. When he died he was building on Fourth Avenue an enormous structure intended as a "Home for Working Girls," on which $1,400,000 were expended. It was opened soon after his death, but with such stringent regulations that a rebellion soon arose among the intended beneficiaries, and it had to be closed. There was a shrewd suspicion that the difficulty came by design, for the building was soon reopened as a hotel. Stewart had scarcely moved into his marble palace when he died, his body being put temporarily into a vault in the churchyard of old "St. Mark's Church in the Bowerie," awaiting removal to the magnificent mausoleum preparing for it at Garden City, Long Island. Then came the horrible news that the corpse had been stolen to avenge business tyranny. The childless widow lived in gloomy grandeur in the palace until her death, rarely seeing visitors, and having watchmen pacing the sidewalk at all hours. Stewart left no direct descendants, and his great business has gone, like his estate, to strangers.

THE VANDERBILTS.

The construction of the white marble Stewart palace was the first serious innovation made upon the rich brownstone fronts of Fifth Avenue, the possession of which was a necessary adjunct to social standing in New York before the Civil War. The material, quarried generally in Connecticut, was in such extensive use that it gave a distinctive coloring to New York, its sombreness and uniformity of architecture making most of the residential streets corridors of gloom. For years, as a local authority described it, "our new houses and blocks were all turned out from the same moulds, and apparently congealed from the same coffee-colored liquid." The builders, since the war, have made large inroads with other materials, thus giving more individuality to the finer buildings of later construction. To the eastward, Fourth Avenue is tunnelled for several blocks under Murray Hill, to carry street railways up to the Grand Central Station at Forty-second Street, the open spaces above, giving the tunnel light and air, being surrounded by pleasant little parks, so that the widened street, called Park Avenue, is an attractive residential region, the view being closed to the northward by the louvre domes of the Vanderbilt railway station.

Continuing out Fifth Avenue, the "Old Brick Church" of the Presbyterians, built solid and substantial, with a tall spire, stands about on the most elevated portion of Murray Hill, the congregation dating from 1767. A short distance beyond, at Thirty-ninth Street, is the finest club-house in New York, the elaborate brick and brownstone Union League Club, its spacious windows disclosing the luxurious apartments within. Just above is the historic Vanderbilt house, where the old Commodore lived--a wide, brownstone dwelling, having alongside a carriage entrance into a small courtyard. The Vanderbilt fortunes, the greatest accumulated, represent the financially expansive facilities of modern New York as manipulated by corporation management and the Stock Exchange. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, born on Staten Island in 1794, in 1817, at the age of twenty-three, owned a few small vessels, and estimated his wealth at $9000. He became a steamboat captain, and went into the transportation business between New York and Philadelphia, afterwards broadening his operations, and in 1848 owning most of the profitable steamboat lines leading from New York. When the California emigration fever began, he started ocean steamers in connection with the transit across the Isthmus of Panama. This business grew, and at the height of his steamship career the Commodore owned sixty-six vessels. The finest, named the Vanderbilt, which cost him $800,000, he gave the Government for a war vessel, to chase the rebel privateers. As American vessel-owning became unprofitable, he determined to abandon it and devote himself to railway management, having already bought largely of railway stocks. When he thus changed, he estimated his fortune at $40,000,000. He got control of various railroads leading east, north and west from New York, buying the shares at low prices, his excellent methods improving their earning powers, so that their value greatly enhanced. The greatest of these corporations was the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. When the Commodore died his estate was estimated at $75,000,000, left almost wholly to his son William H. Vanderbilt. When the latter died it had reached $200,000,000, bequeathed chiefly to his two eldest sons, Cornelius, who died in 1899, and William K. Vanderbilt. The family are now housed in a row of palaces farther out the avenue near Central Park, and there are fabulous estimates of their colossal fortunes, which are the greatest in America, and probably in the world.

Upon the west side of Fifth Avenue the New York Public Library is being erected on the site of the old Croton Reservoir, which occupied the summit of Murray Hill, and behind it is the pretty little Bryant Park, extending to Sixth Avenue. This Library comes from the consolidation of the Astor and Lenox Libraries, augmented by the Samuel J. Tilden Trust Fund, amounting to about $2,500,000. North of this, Forty-second Street crosses the city, having the Grand Central Station of the Vanderbilt lines opposite Fourth Avenue, the only railway station in New York, though other roads are expecting to come in by tunnels under the rivers. At Forty-third Street and Fifth Avenue is the finest American synagogue, the Jewish Temple Emanu-El, a magnificent specimen of Saracenic architecture, the interior being rich in Oriental decoration. Creeping plants tastefully overrun the lower portions of its two great towers. There are numerous fine churches on this portion of the avenue, two of which are rather more famous than the others. When the old Dutch Governor Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Indians, he founded an orthodox Dutch church in 1628. This church is now a costly brownstone structure in Decorated Gothic at the corner of Forty-eighth Street, having a crocketed spire two hundred and seventy feet high. Its inscription tells us it is the "Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York, organized under Peter Minuit, Director General of the New Netherlands, in 1628, chartered by William, King of England, 1696." The present church was built in 1872. Occupying the entire block at Fiftieth Street is the magnificent white marble Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Patrick, in Decorated Gothic, with two spires rising three hundred and thirty-two feet. This noble church much resembles the great Cathedral at Cologne, particularly in the interior. Behind it, fronting on Madison Avenue, is the Archbishop's white marble residence, and adjacent is the old building of Columbia College, the original King's College of New York, founded in 1754 by a fund started from the proceeds of various lotteries, which then raised $17,215. It now has new buildings elsewhere.

In the neighborhood of these churches there must not be overlooked, in this part of Fifth Avenue, the residence of Helen Gould, a square-built house with an elaborate portico, at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street. This was originally the home of one of the most extraordinary men ever developed in New York--Jay Gould. He was an orphan boy in Northeastern Pennsylvania, who became a clerk in a country store, a surveyor and map-maker, and finally was employed in a tannery, and to sell its leather first took him to New York. Finally he removed there, and soon became a leading Wall Street stock operator. Nobody ever made such daring ventures; he became the "great bear" on the market, wrecking, pulling down, ruining; controlling newspapers, courts, legislatures, and being even accused of trying to bribe a President. Then, as he acquired wealth, he became an extensive investor in railways and telegraphs, and died, leaving a fortune estimated at $80,000,000. He is buried in a magnificent mausoleum, a miniature of the Pantheon, in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the northern suburbs, and his daughter Helen is trying, by her beneficent charities, to make the best use she can of the share of the money she inherited. Westward from Fifty-first Street are the famous Vanderbilt palaces where most of the sons and daughters of William H. Vanderbilt reside, five grand residences which cost $15,000,000 to build and furnish. Standing among them is the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, said to be the largest and wealthiest in the world of this denomination, where the late pastor, Dr. John Hall, is described as preaching to $250,000,000 every Sunday. This is the most splendid portion of Fifth Avenue, with grand residences all about, and as Central Park is approached, there are also enormous apartment-houses and huge hotels. The avenue reaches the Park at Fifty-ninth Street, and for two miles its grand buildings face that attractive pleasure-ground. At Seventieth Street is the Lenox Library, the benefaction of James Lenox, and at Eighty-second Street the Metropolitan Museum of Art, containing some of the finest collections in the world, and patterned largely after the British Museum. Its treasures of art and science, antiquities and museums, are valued at $9,000,000, and it has an elaborate building fronting on Fifth Avenue, within the Park.

CENTRAL PARK.

New York is very proud of its great pleasure-ground, the Central Park, upon which has been lavished all that art and money could accomplish. This Park is a parallelogram in the centre of Manhattan Island, a half-mile wide and two and a half miles long, covering eight hundred and forty-three acres, though nearly one-fourth of this space is occupied by the Croton water reservoirs. The original surface was either marsh or rock, very rough, and with topography generally the reverse of that needed for a park. It took prodigious labor and an enormous outlay to overcome the difficulties, but skillful engineering and landscape gardening have made the most of the unsightly surface, so that it has become one of the handsomest parks in the world, its beauties increasing as the growing trees mature. Entering at the "Scholar's Gate" from Fifth Avenue, the road within the Park leads by a gently winding course past vista views and pretty lakes to the Mall, or general promenade. Here, on pleasant days, thousands gather to listen to the music. To the westward are broad green surfaces giving a tranquil landscape, and looking northward through the avenue of elms upon the Mall, a little gray stone tower called the Observatory closes the view far away over another pretty lake. At the end of the Mall a terrace is crossed bordering this lake, the ground sloping to its edges. Here a fountain plashes on one side, and on the other is the concert ground, overlooked by the Pergola, a shaded Gallery. Across the lake, on the Observatory side, is the Ramble, a rocky, forest-covered slope with paths winding through it, and on the highest point a massive Belvedere. There are a menagerie and an aviary, and the children have playgrounds and varied amusements. Beyond this enchanting region the road winds past statues and ever-changing beauties of garden and landscape, and comes out in a space alongside the smaller reservoir, where stands Cleopatra's Needle, brought from Egypt and set up near the Museum of Art. Then the road passes alongside the larger reservoir, with barely enough room to get through between it and Fifth Avenue, though both are admirably masked. The northern portion of the Park has greater natural attractions and less ornamentation, the land ascending to a fine lookout on the western side, where there is a grand view over the Harlem River, displaying the tall arches of the "High Bridge" bringing the Croton Aqueduct across, and the tower alongside, which makes a high level reservoir. The expanding city, however, is extending its buildings over large surfaces north and west of the Park.

One Hundred and Tenth Street is the northern boundary of Central Park. Upon the western side of the Park, in Manhattan Square, is being gradually constructed the American Museum of Natural History, with elaborate buildings and collections already exceeding $3,000,000 in value. Near the northwestern corner of the Park, extending to One Hundred and Twenty-third Street, is the long and narrow Morningside Park, a high elevation held by massive retaining walls on the hill-slope, and ascended by flights of steps. Morningside Avenue, its western boundary, has at One Hundred and Twelfth Street what will be the largest ecclesiastical edifice in the United States, the new Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, of which the corner-stone was laid in 1892, and building slowly progresses. The splendid St. Luke's Hospital adjoins to the northward, while to the northwest, on an elevated site overlooking the Hudson River, are the fine new buildings of Columbia College in an enclosure of about twenty acres. This great University has buildings and collections valued at $7,000,000, an endowment of $12,000,000, and is attended by about two thousand students. Farther westward, upon the high ground at the edge of the Hudson River, stretches the stately Riverside Park for about three miles, making a magnificent drive, along which many handsome residences are being constructed. Near its northern end is the tomb of General Grant, a white granite mausoleum ninety feet square and surmounted by a cupola, which was finished in 1897 and cost $600,000. The interior arrangement is like Napoleon's tomb in Paris, the body, contained in a red porphyry sarcophagus, being placed in an open crypt below the centre of the dome. Beyond Central Park, the broad public roads known as the Boulevards traverse the island northward, and many elaborate structures are being erected along them.

SPUYTEN DUYVEL AND CROTON.

The Spuyten Duyvel Creek, the strait connecting the Harlem with the Hudson, winds through a deeply-cut gorge around the northern end of Manhattan and makes it an island. Knickerbocker, the veracious historian of early Dutch New York, tells how it got its name. Old Governor Stuyvesant, he says, had a wonderful trumpeter, Anthony von Corlaer, who persisted in swimming across during a violent storm, and lost his life. Thus of it, Knickerbocker writes: "The wind was high, the elements were in an uproar, and no Charon could be found to ferry the adventurous sounder of brass across the water. For a short time he vapored like an impatient ghost upon the brink, and then, bethinking himself of the urgency of his errand (to arouse the people to arms), he took a hearty embrace of his stone bottle, swore most valorously that he would swim across in spite of the devil--_en spyt den duyvel_--and daringly plunged into the stream. Luckless Anthony! Scarcely had he buffeted half-way over when he was observed to struggle violently, as if battling with the spirit of the waters. Instinctively he put his trumpet to his mouth, and giving a vehement blast, sank forever to the bottom. The clangor of his trumpet, like that of the ivory horn of the renowned Paladin Orlando, when expiring on the glorious field of Roncesvalles, rang far and wide through the country, alarming the neighbors around, who hurried in amazement to the spot. There, an old Dutch burgher, famed for his veracity, and who had been a witness to the fact, related to them the melancholy affair, with the fearful addition (to which I am slow in giving belief) that he saw the Duyvel, in the shape of a huge moss-bunker (a species of inferior fish), seize the sturdy Anthony by the leg and drag him beneath the waves. Certain it is, the place, with the adjoining promontory which projects into the Hudson, has been called _Spyt den Duyvel_ ever since."

The narrow and elevated northern prolongation of Manhattan is the picturesque district of Washington Heights. Here is the attractive Trinity Church Cemetery, laid out on the battlefield of Harlem Heights, a hotly contested Revolutionary conflict, fought on September 16, 1776, and some distance northward, on the highest point of the island, elevated two hundred and sixty feet above the Hudson River, there are still seen the remains of Fort Washington, which was bravely but unsuccessfully defended against British attacks in the following November, and had to be abandoned. Across the Harlem River is the ancient suburb of Morrisania. Here was Washington's headquarters during those conflicts, and here lived Lewis Morris, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and his half-brother, Gouverneur Morris, a noted New York statesman, who bore a striking resemblance to General Washington. The historic old house at Morrisania was afterwards acquired by Madame Jumel, and when Aaron Burr, in his old age and poverty, met this wealthy widow, he courted and married her in 1833, he being then seventy-eight years old. Here they lived for a brief period "during the days of his octogenarian love," as the annalist has it, but soon quarrelled and separated. The house is now preserved as a Revolutionary Museum. Not far away was the Grange, the home of Alexander Hamilton, who planted there a group of thirteen trees named after the thirteen original States of the Union, in which all flourished, as we are credibly informed, excepting the "South Carolina tree," which persisted in growing up very crooked. Upon the top of Washington Heights and the precipitous slopes of the Spuyten Duyvel and Harlem there are many fine villas, and down in the bottom of the gorge the New York Central Railroad seeks its route out to the Hudson River bank. The historic old King's Bridge spans the Harlem, deep down in the valley, while all along the river is the fine new drive, the "Speedway," upon which the New Yorkers display the qualities of their fastest horses.

The splendid Washington Bridge, built of steel at a cost of $2,700,000, carries one of the Boulevards across the Harlem at a height of one hundred and fifty feet; but the great landmark is the High Bridge which brings the Croton Aqueduct over, its tall granite piers and graceful arches displaying singular beauty from every point of view. This aqueduct is forty miles long, and has been well described as "a structure worthy of the Roman Empire." It originally cost $12,500,000, subsequent improvements absorbing millions more. The Croton River, coming down through Westchester County, falls into the Hudson about twenty-five miles above the city, and its headwaters are dammed, making artificial lakes gathering the supply. The Aqueduct was finished in 1842, and, going through tunnels and rock-cuttings, has a cross-section of about fifty-four feet and an inclination of one foot to the mile, or thirty-three feet in the distance to the Harlem River. About one hundred and fifteen millions of gallons go through it daily, moving at the rate of a mile and a half per hour. Three huge pipes carry the water across the High Bridge at one hundred and sixteen feet elevation. There are eight arches in the river crossing, their openings being eighty feet wide and one hundred feet high, to allow the passage of vessels, and seven narrower arches of fifty feet span on the banks. At the New York end of this picturesque bridge is the tall tower, rising two hundred and sixty-five feet, which has water pumped into its surmounting tank to supply the highest parts of the island. New York, however, long since outgrew the capacity of this famous aqueduct, so that a new one of much greater size was tunnelled underground and finished in 1890, which is fourteen feet high, and bored at an average depth of one hundred and fifty feet below the surface, and is carried three hundred feet under the Harlem River bed, its estimated daily capacity being three hundred millions of gallons. The receiving reservoirs in Central Park hold over a thousand millions of gallons. An imposing gate-house at One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street admits this supply into the northern city mains. The great Quaker Bridge dam across the Croton is two hundred and seventy-seven feet high and thirteen hundred and fifty feet long, making the most enormous artificial reservoir in the world, holding forty thousand millions of gallons. It has cost New York over $70,000,000 to thus insure an ample water supply, free of all risk from drought.

THE BRONX AND THE NEW PARKS.

Across Harlem River, to the north and east, is the attractive region of the Bronx, much of the surface being yet in its primitive condition as maintained in the old estates that have come down from the early days of the Knickerbockers. Here are being laid out several new and large parks. Van Cortlandt Park, near the Hudson, about four miles north of the High Bridge, covers about eleven hundred acres, Pelham Bay Park, on the shore of Long Island Sound, nine miles from the Harlem, seventeen hundred and fifty acres, and the Bronx Park, between them, six hundred and fifty acres. These three great pleasure-grounds are being gradually developed, and the plan is to connect them with magnificent tree-lined avenues six hundred feet wide. The western verge of Van Cortlandt Park finely overlooks the Hudson, and it is intended largely for military uses, with parade-grounds and rifle-ranges. It has an attractive lake; and the quaint old mansion where lived the Van Cortlandts, whose successive generations owned the estate, built in 1748, is preserved as a Museum of Colonial Relics. To the eastward, a shallow and almost aimless little stream, flowing from above White Plains down to Long Island Sound, with many pools and rapids, and occasionally broadening into mirror-like lakes, was long the eastern boundary of New York City. This is the Bronx River, coming through a green, well-watered and shaded valley, a half to three-quarters of a mile wide, and a considerable part of this bewitching region makes the Bronx Park,

"Where gentle Bronx, clear, winding, flows
The shadowy banks between;
Where blossomed bell or wilding rose
Adorns the brightest green."

The wildness and seclusion of this place, its natural charms and romantic character, make one almost believe that New York cannot possibly be near such an attractive wilderness. Nature seems to have especially designed it for a park, and art cannot improve it. Huge rocks and giant trees flourish here, among them the Delancey pine, one hundred and fifty feet high and straight as an arrow, standing in a prominent position and having a huge branch reaching upward upon one side, with interlacing boughs, making it appear not unlike a gigantic harp. The Delanceys once owned the place. A "balanced boulder" is nearby, weighing hundreds of tons, yet very easily rocked. The Bronx in one portion flows deep down between high, rocky walls, where the thin-armed white birches wave their slender limbs a hundred feet above the water. Here was an early home of the Lorillards, now a Museum and large Botanical Garden. Here are also the grounds of the New York Zoological Society, the animals roaming in extensive enclosures, where they are placed, as far as possible, in their native surroundings.

The peninsula of Throgg's Neck is the northern headland at the entrance of East River into Long Island Sound. Beyond this, the waters deeply indent the New York shore, and there is thrust out the green peninsula of Pelham Neck. This is some distance beyond the Bronx. Eastchester Bay is on the southern side of the neck; Pelham Bay beyond it; and immediately in front City Island, reached by a long drawbridge. To the north is Hunter's Island, connected by another bridge. Hunter's Island and more than two square miles of the hills and meadows adjacent on the mainland make the new park of Pelham Bay. Various old mansions scattered over this domain were the homes of the Hunters, Lorillards and other prominent families. The island belonged to many generations of Hunters, and near the bridge a large gateway has "Hunter's Island" carved on one of the marble gate-posts. Years ago another wealthy man bought the island, and these words offending him, he brought a marble-mason out from New York, who chiselled them off, and carved instead the words "Higgins's Island." But after Higgins had his day and was gathered unto his fathers, the next owner, revering rather the antiquity of the place, had "Higgins" eliminated and "Hunter's Island" restored, though the gate-post became quite thin under this treatment. On the western edge of Pelham Bay Park is Hutchinson's River, flowing down into Eastchester Bay, and recalling the days of the Salem witchcraft. Poor Anne Hutchinson fled here to escape burning as a witch, and on City Island built a hut on a little cape still called Anne Hook. She lived there peacefully for a year, harming nobody and declining every invitation to stir from her humble abode. One day a young girl went to visit Anne, but found the hut in ashes, and before the door lay the poor woman, where she had been tomahawked and scalped by the Indians. No one has built a house on Anne Hook since, and many have been the tales told of ghostly Indian revels on bleak and rainy nights around the site of the burning hut. On the mainland were Indian villages, and here have been found relics, and in 1899 there was exhumed the skeleton of an Indian warrior.

EAST RIVER AND HELL GATE.

The Harlem River, flowing into the East River, divides Manhattan from Ward's Island, and this, with Randall's Island to the north and Blackwell's Island to the south, forms the group of "East River Islands" upon which are the penal and charitable institutions of the great city. The chief of these are on Blackwell's Island, a long, narrow strip stretching nearly two miles in the centre of East River, and barely more than two hundred yards wide. It covers one hundred and twenty acres, and has the penitentiary, almshouses, workhouses and hospitals, the spacious buildings being of granite quarried there by the convicts. Over on the New York City shore is the extensive Bellevue Hospital. In cases of vagrancy and minor crimes, the offender is said to be "sent up to the Island." Ward's Island has a surface of two hundred acres, and here are the Lunatic Asylum and Emigrant Hospital. Randall's Island has the institutions for children and idiots, while upon Hart's Island, out in Long Island Sound, are industrial schools and the pauper cemetery. The buildings are all upon a most elaborate scale, and it costs over $2,000,000 for their annual maintenance. A steamboat ride along East River, with these extensive establishments and their well-kept grounds passing in review, is a most interesting suburban excursion.

The Long Island shore to the southward of Ward's Island is thrust out in a way that curves and contracts the East River passage, which, turning eastward just below where the Harlem River comes in, goes through the famous Hell Gate to reach the Sound. Formerly, the swift tidal currents boiled and eddied through this dangerous pass, Hallett's Point, jutting out from Long Island, narrowing the channel, and Pot Rock, Flood Rock, the Gridiron and other reefs making navigation perilous. Many were the wrecks here, and frequent ineffective efforts were made to improve the passage. The Government finally undertook the work in 1866 under a comprehensive plan projected by General Newton. His first task was the removal of the Hallett's Point reef, a mass of rock projecting three hundred feet into the stream and throwing the whole tidal current coming in from the Sound against the great opposing rock called the Gridiron. He first sunk a shaft upon the Point and excavated the inland side so that it made a perpendicular wall which was curved around, and designed for the future edge of the river. From the shaft, tunnels were bored into the reef under the river in radiating directions, being connected by concentric galleries. The design was to remove as much rock as possible without letting the water in from overhead, and then to blow the rocky roof and supporting columns into fragments and remove them at leisure. This work began in 1869, the shaft being sunk thirty-two feet below mean low water and the tunnels drilled out, inclining downward under the river. In 1876 the task was finished, and thousands of separate dynamite blasts had been placed in the roof and supporting columns, ready for the explosion on Sunday, September 24th. This being the greatest artificial explosion ever attempted, there was much trepidation shown in New York for fear of the shock, while everywhere the keenest interest was taken in the result. The blast was entirely successful, being discharged by General Newton's little child, who touched the electric key. The calculation had been so accurately made that the great reef was pulverized, and the fragments fell into the spaces excavated beneath without causing more than a slight tremor in the adjacent region. By a similar system and more extensive work, Flood Rock was afterwards removed from mid-channel, the second great blast reducing it to fragments, being discharged in October, 1885. The terrors of Hell Gate are gone, though the tide still flows swiftly through the strait.

THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE.

The growth of population on Long Island has caused various new bridges and tunnels to be projected for crossing East River. One new bridge is to cross at Blackwell's Island, with a pier on the island. Another now nearly completed, and estimated to cost $10,000,000, crosses from Grand Street to Broadway in Brooklyn. The Long Island Railroad is arranging to bore a tunnel under East River, to be operated by electricity, to bring its trains into New York. The East River being the locality for most of the foreign shipping, the bridges are at high elevations, the great Brooklyn Bridge, which crosses from City Hall Park, being one hundred and thirty-five feet above the water. Its massive piers are among the tallest structures about New York, rising two hundred and sixty-eight feet. This, the largest suspension bridge in the world, was begun in 1870 and opened for traffic in 1885. The piers stand upon caissons sunk into the rocky bed of the river, which is forty-five feet below the surface on the Brooklyn side and ninety feet below on the New York side. Their towers carry four sixteen-inch wire cables that sustain the bridge, which is built eighty-five feet wide, giving ample accommodation for two railways, two wagon roads also carrying electric cars, and a wide raised footway in the centre. The bridge cost nearly $15,000,000, the distance between the piers is about sixteen hundred feet, and its entire length between the anchorages of the cables is three thousand four hundred and seventy-five feet. The cable anchorages are enormous masses, each containing about thirty-five thousand cubic yards of solid masonry. The whole length of the bridge and its elaborate approaches is considerably over a mile. Its projector was John A. Roebling, who died during the early work, and its builder, his son Washington Roebling, who caught the dreaded "caisson disease" while superintending labor under water, and for years afterward an invalid, watched the progress of the later work from his chamber window on Brooklyn Heights nearby. The bridge has carried an enormous traffic, taxing its capacity to the utmost, and its passengers average over a million a week. The view from its raised footway is one of the most superb sights of New York, disclosing both cities, and the extensive wharves and commerce of East River, the Navy Yard just above, and for miles over the surrounding region and down through the harbor to the distant blue hills of Staten Island.

THE CITY OF CHURCHES.

The Borough of Brooklyn, which has grown from the overflow of New York, whose people are said to go over there "chiefly to sleep or be buried," is popularly known as the "City of Churches." A large portion of the working population of the metropolis, as well as the merchants and business men, make it their home and dormitory, while there are beautiful cemeteries in the suburbs peopled largely by dead New Yorkers. Greenwood, overlooking New York harbor from Gowanus Heights in South Brooklyn, is regarded as one of the finest American cemeteries. In no other city can be found such an aggregation of churches, developed in a past generation, and under the ministry of a regiment of distinguished clergymen, then led by Beecher and Storrs, so that the popular title was well bestowed. Brooklyn is entirely the growth of the nineteenth century, a growth due to the inability of New York to spread, excepting far northward. It stretches several miles along East River and three or four miles inland, and grows rapidly. When the century began, however, it was hard work to find three thousand people there, and, strangely enough, they had to cross over to New York to go to church. Just about the time old Peter Minuit was buying Manhattan from the Indians, a band of Walloons first settled in Brooklyn. Their descendants drove cows across East River to Governor's Island to graze, the Buttermilk Channel between them being then shallow enough for fording, though it is now scoured out deep enough to float the largest vessels, the docks located where the cows then crossed now accommodating an enormous commerce. At first a little ferry from Fulton Street to Peck Slip, New York, accommodated the straggling village, and it has grown into more than a dozen steam ferries of the largest capacity, which (besides the bridge) will carry daily a half-million people across at one cent apiece, this fleet of packet-boats being the greatest transporters of humanity in the world.

The Indians called the region around Wallabout Bay, and Gowanus Mercychawick, meaning "the sandy place." When the Walloons came along, they began settling on the shores of the bay, which they called Waal-bogt, afterwards gradually changed to its present name of Wallabout. In 1646 the town was organized by Governor Kieft as Breuckelen, he appointing Jan Eversen Bout and Huyck Aertsen as "schepens" or superintendents to preserve the peace and regulate the community. During the Revolution the British prison-ships were moored in the Wallabout, and it is estimated that eleven thousand five hundred Americans, chiefly seamen, died upon them, the shores of the bay being full of dead men's bones, which the tides for many years washed out from the sand. In 1808 these bones were finally collected and put in a vault near the Navy Yard, which had been established on the bay. This is the chief naval station of the United States, covering about eighty-eight acres, including all the available space. There is attached a large naval hospital, while between the two is the immense Wallabout Market, covering forty-five acres, the largest in Brooklyn, its buildings being brick structures in the old Dutch style.

Fulton Street is the chief highway of Brooklyn, beginning almost under the shadow of the great Bridge. It is a broad and attractive street, stretching six miles to the eastern edge of the city, and about one mile from the river it passes the various city buildings, including the Post-office, Court-house and Borough Hall, all handsome structures. In front of the Borough Hall is a fine statue of Brooklyn's most famous clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher. From Fulton Street radiate several of the highways leading into the fashionable residential quarter,--Brooklyn or Columbia Heights,--overlooking East River, where the tree-bordered streets are lined with costly and attractive dwellings. Here in Orange Street, in a very quiet spot, is Brooklyn's most noted edifice, a plain, wide, unornamented brick building, with the inscription, "Plymouth Church, 1849." Here preached for nearly forty years, until he died in 1887, Beecher, the great Puritan, whose family was so noted. His father, Lyman Beecher, like the son, fought slavery and intemperance in Boston, Litchfield and Cincinnati, and was an impressive pulpit orator. The old man was eccentric, however, and after being wrought up by the excitement of preaching, is said to have gone home and let himself down by playing on the fiddle and dancing a double-shuffle in the parlor. He had thirteen children, nearly all famous, and has been described as "the father of more brains than any other man in America." Four sons were clergymen and two daughters noted authoresses. Henry Ward, who ruled Brooklyn, and Harriet, who wrote _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, were among the great leaders of the anti-slavery movement.

Clinton Street leaves Fulton a little beyond Orange, and passes southward through Brooklyn Heights, being the chief street of the fashionable district. Embowered in trees, handsome churches and residences border it, and Pierrepont, Remsen, Montague and other noted streets extend at right angles from it to the edge of the bluff, where the Heights fall sharply off to the river. Here, at seventy feet elevation, and overlooking the lower level of buildings and piers at the water's edge, are the terraces where the finest residences are located, having a magnificent outlook upon the harbor and New York City beyond. The ships land their cargoes within almost a stone's throw of the palaces. In this district there are several large apartment-houses and various clubs, a statue of Alexander Hamilton adorning the front of the Hamilton Club at Remsen and Clinton Streets. Upon Remsen Street is another noted building, the Congregational "Church of the Pilgrims," a spacious graystone edifice with towers, its most prominent tower and spire being a commanding landmark for vessels sailing up New York Bay. There is let into the outer wall of this church, about six feet above the pavement, a small piece of the original "Plymouth Rock" whereon the Pilgrims in 1620 landed in Massachusetts Bay--a dark, rough-hewn fragment, projecting with irregular surface a few inches from the wall. As an author, lecturer and preacher, the veteran pastor for over a half-century, Dr. Richard Salter Storrs, acquired wide renown. Upon Clinton Street is the elegant Pointed Gothic brownstone St. Ann's Episcopal Church, famous for its choir, and on Montague Street the Holy Trinity Church, its spire rising two hundred and seventy-five feet. But almost everywhere are churches, there being about five hundred in Brooklyn. The noted Pratt Institute is one of the best known charities of the city, founded and endowed by Charles Pratt, an oil prince, as a technical school, its spacious and well-equipped buildings caring for thirty-four hundred students. The object of this noble institution is "to promote manual and industrial education, and to inculcate habits of industry and thrift."

GREENWOOD CEMETERY AND PROSPECT PARK.