old street in this part of the city. The Bowery, extending
N. from Chatham Square to East 4th St. (practically continued
by Fourth Avenue), is not now a street of commercial
importance, being largely taken up with Yiddish tenements.
Broadway, in its southernmost part, is a financial and business
street; the financial interests centre particularly about Wall
Street,[1] which is about one-third of a mile above the Battery,
runs E. from Broadway, and was named from a redoubt built
here by the Dutch in 1653 on news of a threatened attack
by the English. The wholesale dry goods district is on
Broadway and the side streets between Reade and Prince Streets
and the wholesale grocery district immediately W. of this. In
Maiden Lane is the wholesale jewelry trade. The leather and
hide trade is centred immediately S. of the approaches to the
Brooklyn Bridge. A little farther up-town on the East Side is
the tenement district, one of the most crowded in the world.
The principal shopping districts are on Broadway from 17th
Street to 34th Street; on Sixth Avenue from 14th Street to
34th Street; and to an increasing degree on Fifth Avenue
from 23rd Street to 42nd Street, and on the cross-streets in this
area, especially 23rd, 34th and 42nd Streets. Next to Broadway
the best known of the avenues is Fifth Avenue, which extends
from Washington Square to the Harlem river (143rd Street) in a
straight line. On Fifth Avenue there are a few residences in its
lower part and between 34th and 45th Streets; but N. of 50th
and on the E. side of Central Park are many fine residences.
The cross streets within one block to the W. and two blocks
to the E. of Fifth Avenue, Central Park West, and in general
the upper West Side and in particular Riverside Drive, high above
the North river, are the newer residential parts of the city.
Parks.—The park system in 1908 included property valued at $501,604,188. The principal parks are: Central Park in Manhattan; Prospect Park in Brooklyn (q.v.); and Bronx Park, Van Cortlandt Park and Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. The first park (as distinguished from “square”) of any size in Manhattan was Central Park (840 acres; between 59th and 110th Streets and between 5th and 8th Avenues; about 212 m. long and 12 m. wide), which was laid out (beginning in 1857) by F. L. Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Nearly one-half is wooded, with a variety of native and foreign trees and shrubs. The park contains a large pond, the Mere, in the N.E. corner; the Croton retaining reservoir and the receiving reservoir, and other sheets of water. Near the 65th Street entrance from 5th Avenue is the Arsenal, the executive quarters of the Department of Parks, with a meteorological observatory (1869).
Pelham Bay Park (1756 acres), in the north-easternmost corner of the city, lies on Long Island Sound, includes Hunter’s Island and Twin Islands, and has a total shore front of about 9 m. Bordering on the city of Yonkers, S. (from 262nd Street) to 242nd Street, is Van Cortlandt Park (1132 acres), in which are the Van Cortlandt Mansion (1748), for a time Washington’s headquarters and now a Revolutionary Museum under the Colonial Dames, a parade-ground (75 acres), and Van Cortlandt Lake, a skating pond. East of Van Cortlandt Park is Woodlawn Cemetery. Mosholu Parkway (600 ft. wide and about 6000 ft. long) leads from Van Cortlandt Park to the S.E., and Bronx and Pelham Parkway (400 ft. wide and 12,000 ft. long) from Pelham Bay Park to the S.W. connecting these parks with Bronx Park (719 acres) on either side of the Bronx river, a small stream which here broadens into lakes and ponds and has a fall at the lower end of the park. Bronx Park reaches from 180th Street to 205th Street. The northern part is occupied by the New York Botanical Gardens and the southern part by the Zoological Park.
Battery Park is at the southern end of Manhattan; here are the New York Aquarium (in what was until 1896 Castle Garden, on the site of Fort Clinton) and a children’s playground (1903). In City Hall Park are the public buildings mentioned below.
The other down-town open spaces are small; many of them are recreation grounds, some, such as Mulberry Bend Park and Hamilton Fish Park, being on the site of former slums, condemned by the city at great expense. Especially in this part of the city municipal recreation piers and free baths have been constructed. Washington Square (1827), between Waverley Place, Wooster and Macdougal Streets, at the foot of 5th Avenue, became a pauper burial-ground about 1797, and was laid out as a park in 1827; on the N. side of the square there are still a few fine old residences. Union Square, between Broadway and 4th Avenue, is a favourite place for workmen’s mass meetings. Madison Square is reclaimed swampy ground on which there was an arsenal in 1806–1815, then a parade-ground, and in 1825–1839 a municipal House of Refuge in the old barracks, and which was then laid out as a park and was a fashionable centre in 1850–1875. Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, between 40th and 42nd Streets, was a Potter’s Field in 1813–1823, and in 1853 was the site of a world’s fair with Crystal Palace, which was destroyed in 1858. In De Witt Clinton Park between 52nd and 54th Streets on the North river, there was the first children’s farm school[2] in New York. Riverside Park (140 acres; 1872), between 72nd and 129th Streets, on the North river front, is a finely wooded natural terrace with winding paths. Morningside Park (3115 acres), between W. 110th and 123rd Streets, beautifully wooded, and Mount Morris Park (20 16 acres) from 120th to 124th Streets, interrupting Fifth Avenue, are high rough ground, Mount Morris being the highest point on Manhattan Island.
Among the other parks in the north part of Manhattan Island are: Roger Morris Park, between 160th and 162nd Streets, containing the Roger Morris or Jumel Mansion (1763), Washington’s headquarters for five weeks in 1776, then the headquarters of Sir Henry Clinton, and after 1777 of the Hessian officers; High Bridge Park (7314 acres) at the Manhattan end of High Bridge, between W. 170th and 175th Streets; Audubon Park between 155th and 158th Streets, from Broadway to the North river, the home in 1840–1851 of John James Audubon; and Ft. Washington (4045 acres) from 171st to 183rd Streets on the North river, the site of Ft. Washington in the War of Independence. Along the W. bank of the Harlem river for about 3 m. N. and N.W. is the Harlem River Driveway (or speedway), about 95 ft. wide. Besides the large parks in the Bronx the more important are Crotona (154·6 acres), and Poe Park (213 acres) on E. 192nd Street, the site of E. A. Poe’s Fordham cottage. The great baseball grounds of the National and American leagues furnish amusement to the crowds interested in professional baseball. Coney Island (q.v.), similar resorts on Staten Island, on the shores of the North river and on Long Island on the Sound, and on the Hudson river are popular amusement places.
Buildings.—The city’s sky-line is broken by the tall business buildings, known as “sky-scrapers,”[3] the construction of which was made necessary by the narrowness of the down-town portion of the island in which the increasing business population had to be accommodated. The ten-storey Tower Building (1889; 21 ft. wide; first 9 then 11 storeys; replaced in 1908–1910 by a taller and wider building) was the first of these, and was soon followed by much taller ones.
The prominent business buildings include the Singer Sewing-Machine Company’s Building[4] (612 ft. high, built in 1905–1908 by Ernest Flagg); the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s Building (693 ft.; completed in 1909); the Produce Exchange (with a 225-ft. tower); the Manhattan Life Building (with a 360-ft. tower); the Empire Building (20 storeys); on Wall Street, the Drexel Building, the Trust Company of America (23 storeys), and the National City Bank; on Broad Street, the white marble Stock Exchange (1903), the Broad Exchange Building (276 ft. high), and the Commercial Cable Building (317 ft. high); in Cedar Street, the New York Clearing House; in Liberty Street, the New York Chamber of Commerce (1903), built of white marble and granite, with Ionic columns, the Trinity Building (with a Gothic façade) and the United States Realty Building (both by F. H. Kimball), the City Investing Building (32 storeys; 486 ft. high); in Church Street, the Hudson Terminal Buildings (1909, Clinton & Russell), 22 storeys high, with four storeys below ground (including the terminal of the down-town Hudson tunnels), office buildings with a tenant population of 10,000; in Park Row, the Park Row Building (30 storeys; 390 ft. high), and the office building of the World (the Pulitzer Building, with a dome 310 ft. high); the white marble Home Life Insurance Building with its sloping red tiled roof; the Fuller (or “Flatiron”) Building (290 ft. high); and the New York Times Building (363 ft. high) at 42nd Street and Broadway.
The principal public buildings are: the Custom House (1902–1907; by Cass Gilbert), on the site of Fort Amsterdam, built of granite in the French Renaissance style; in Wall Street, the United States Sub-Treasury, on the site of Federal Hall, in which George Washington was inaugurated first president of the United States; and in and about City Hall Park, the Post
- ↑ See F. T. Hill, Story of a Street (New York, 1908).
- ↑ See Jacob A. Riis, “City Farms and Harvest Dances,” in the Century Magazine for September 1909.
- ↑ On the mechanical equipment of the New York “skyscraper” see R. P. Bolton, “High Office Buildings of New York,” vol. 143 of Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1901). See also Frank W. Skinner, “The Foundation of Lofty Buildings,” in the Century Magazine for March 1909.
- ↑ See A History of the Singer Building Construction (New York, 1908), edited by O. F. Semsch. The building’s steel columns are carried on pneumatic caisson piers which reach bed rock 90 ft. below the street-level.
