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Columbia ^nitJersEftj) LIBRARY ' FROM THE BEQUEST OF BYRON B. GOLDSMITH '87 SCIENCE NEW YORK OF TO-DAY VtQl JdshxqoD—"xBboT !o shoY T/fsVl" loi iftsaH 33iIA yd h-ijiiis^ 30AJJIV HOIWH335^0 HI Y3JJA JAOUOQOAM :-IHT ROT ATaHT A QJOH aaM3If=n TaiTHA J1HH QUA Y3HTIHW BUYA^ YJ^flAH .ay?M aaOf?0 QHSl 3HT •^o Tnai/iHB Painted by Alice Heath for "New York of Today"—Copyright 1917 MACDOUGAL ALLEY IN GREENWICH VILLAGE MRS. HARRY PAYNE WHITNEY AND HER ARTIST FRIENDS HOUP A FESTA FOR THE PENEFIT OF THE RED CROSS NEW YORK OF TO-DAY BY HENRY COLLINS BROWN Editor of Valentine's Manual New York THE OLD COLONY PRESS 15-17 East 40th Street Anderson Galleries Building 1917 S'wm the Library of Byron B. Goldsmith NOV d 1927 3 0 1T^ COPYRIGHT, 1917 HENRY COLLINS BROWN 15-17 EAST 40TH STREET, NEW YORK TO THE STEANOEE WITHIl^ OUE GATES- CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTEE I The City Itself 13 CHAPTEE II Broadway—The Main Street in Our Village . 32 CHAPTEE III Wall Street—The Best-Known Half Mile in the World 62 CHAPTEE IV Fifth Avenue—The !N'ew Eetail Shopping District 73 Madison Square and Its Soap-Box Orators . 82 CHAPTEE V Eiverside Drive 90 CHAPTEE VI The Morris House or Jumel Mansion, Wash ington's Headquarters in Washington Heights .107 CHAPTEE VII Famous Churches in New York .... 120 St. PauFs Chapel 120 John Street Methodist Church .... 129 CHAPTEE VIII Greenwich Village 130 CHAPTEE IX Places of Historic Interest 142 Audubon's Home in New York .... 156 New York in pre-Eevolutionary Days . 103 7 8 CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTEE X New York's Men of Letters .... 167 Washington Irving 167 Joseph Eodman Drake . 175 Fitz-Greene Halleck . .179 Edgar Allan Poe 182 Julia Ward Howe 185 CHAPTEE XI "Direct from Broadway, Original New York Cast" 190 Cabaret and Eestaurants 198 CHAPTEE XII In New York 206 CHAPTEE XIII What Do You Like About New York? . 219 CHAPTEE XIV The Hispanic Society of America . 232 The Clubs of New York 239 The Catskill Aqueduct 242 The Hudson Eiver, an Adjunct of the City . 246 A Curious Book About Old New York . 253 New York in the Great World War of 1917 . 257 CHAPTEE XV How to See the City 261 Ascent of the Woolworth Tower . 265 Women Who Travel Alone . ... .266 Living in Hotels 270 Travel in the City 271 CHAPTEE XVI Isles of Eecreation 275 Coney Island 280 The Eockaways and Jamaica Bay . 284 Sandy Hook and Back . .286 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Lower Manhattan Looking South from Brook lyn Bridge, 1917 . Folded Supplement Greenwich Village, McDougal Alley ' (Col ored) Frontispiece FACING PAGE Night View from the East Eiver . , . .14 Sea Wall, at Battery Park 18 View of New York South from Woolworth Building 22 Wall Street West to Trinity Church, Showing ing Patriotic Decorations (Colored) . 26 North on Broadway from Trinity Church . 31 A Little Bit of Old New York .... 35 City Hall Park, World and Tribune Buildings at Night 39 Broadway and Singer Building .... 40 Madison Square, Christmas Eve .... 44 Trinity Spire Surrounded by Skyscrapers . 48 The New General Post Office .... 52 Fifth Avenue Shopping District with War Decorations (Colored) 56 The Stock Exchange and Morgan Building . 61 Nassau Street, North from Wall Street . 65 Fifth Avenue, North from Forty-second Street 69 The Municipal Building 73 The New York Public Library .... 74 9 10 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE The Metropolitan Tower and Madison Square . 78 Fifth Avenue, North from Thirty-fourth Street 82 Eiverside Drive 84 Plaza at Fifty-ninth Street Decorated in Honor of Visiting War Commissions (Col ored) . 88 Obelisk in Central Park 93 Woman Suffrage Parade — Passing Public Library 95 Madison Square Park .99 Grant's Tomb . .103 Approach to Palisades Interstate Park . 104 Winter Night Scene, Madison Square . 108 Wall Street West to Trinity Church . .112 St. Mark's Church Entrance .... 116 St. John's Chapel 125 Aquarium at Battery Park 129 Sixth Avenue Shopping District . 133 Eoger Morris House or Jumel Mansion . .137 Fraunces' Tavern 138 Van Cortlandt Mansion . 142 St. Paul's Church and Park Eow . .146 The Chelsea Steamship Piers .... 155 Maine Monument and Columbus Circle En trance to Central Park 159 Lower New York from East Eiver . 163 The City Hall 164 Battery Park and New York Bay . .168 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 11 FACING PAGE Poe Cottage 172 Brooklyn Bridge at Night . 176 Brooklyn Bridge Eush Hour .... 185 HaU of Fame 189 East Eiver Shipping Scene 193 Broad Street North to Wall Street . 197 Fort Tryon from the South 198 Museum of Hispanic Society .... 202 Martyrs' Monument—Fort Greene Park, Brook lyn ... 206 Bear Mountain Park Landing .... 215 Night Scene, Bryant Park 219 Straus Fountain 223 Washington Square and Arch at Night . 224 Catskill Aqueduct 228 The Steamer Washington Irving . 232 Largest Tree on Manhattan Island . 236 Hudson Monument, Spuyten Duyvil Hill . 245 Fort Tryon from the East 249 Fifth Avenue North from. Fifty-fifth Street . 253 College of the City of New York . .257 City Hall Park 258 Atlantic Fleet Arriving in New York Harbor . 262 The Low Memorial Library, Columbia Uni versity ^^^ The Soldiers' and Sailors^ Monument . 275 West Street Docks 279 The Best Known Picture in the World . 283 NEW YORK OF TO-DAY CHAPTEE I THE CITY ITSELF GREAT centres of population possess for many per sons a curious and fascinating interest. Why one particular hamlet should wax and grow strong while others remain stationary or retrograde is not always easily explained. Compared with the capitals of the Old World, New York is still but an infant in arms. The directories of London and Paris stretch back almost five hundred years. The beginning of Eome, of Athens, of Alexandria, of Vienna are lost in the shadow lands of antiquity while the city of New York as we know it to-day dates only from 1784, a trifle more than a hundred years. A growth so tremendous, so unexampled in the history of 13 14 NEW YORK OF TO-DAY civilization is in itself of such dramatic interest as to challenge the wonderment and arrest the attention, not only of historians, but also of the man in the street. It is to a consideration therefore of its present position and its alluring future, that we invite your attention. And for the mo ment, we shall address ourselves not to the student or the antiquarian, but to the stranger within our gates and to our own people—many of whom have not even yet seen the Woolworth Building and only know by rumor that there is such a house as the Jumel Mansion. This indifference to the history of his home town does not indicate a lack of affection on the part of the New Yorker. It is, however, frequently made a subject of reproach. But when one has lived here for some years and experienced condi tions in the Metropolis as they actually exist the matter is more easily understood. It must be borne in mind that enough new residents come to New York in the course of ^Ye years to make another city the size of Boston or Cleveland. This process is continuous, and there always exists a large num ber of our people to whom the question of perma nency is not yet an established fact and whose in terest in the traditions of our glorious past has naturally not yet been aroused. In this respect, however, there has been a notable improvement of late. Books on New York are of better quality and more widely read, and pictures of her imposing public and private buildings and her towering sky scrapers are familiar in all parts of the world. Eelics of bygone days in the nature of old prints, rare books, etc., are in constant demand at in- NEW YORK EDISON Night view from the East River—New York's electric blaze. NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 17 creasingly high prices, and this evidence of a quickening interest in all things pertaining to her history is unmistakable. It is, however, the spectacular and blatant aspect of our city which seems to make an irresistible appeal to that group of society novelists and guide book historians whose works are among our best sellers. They unduly emphasize the seamy side of our great city—the tango parlors, Chinatown, the East Side and other banal features. This school of literature is merely a development of the time when the Eev. Dr. Bonehead spent a two weeks' vacation in the city and returned to write a weird and bulky volume entitled "Sunshine and Shadow; or, Life in the Great Metropolis," wherein every innocent little waitress was pictured as a vampire of the most malignant type and the whole city as a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. Not a word about its magnificent public school system, its wonderful charities, or the utter absence of that abject poverty which is the scourge and shame of Europe! "That New York has accepted without protest her role as Siren City cannot be denied," remarks one gifted writer. "Indeed, she rather expects writ ers and dramatists to portray the dangers which lurk within her bosom for the pure young men and women from the country. Boston and Philadelphia are not free from evil, Heaven knows, but there is something faintly ridiculous in the idea of their luring a man to destruction." And so the great mass of literature produced outside of the city for rural consumption, must necessarily feature this phase of city life or be forever eschewed by its bu colic constituency.