a formula for a city which contains within its larger boundaries Fifth
Avenue and the Bowery, the Riverside Drive and Brooklyn, Central Park
and Coney Island?
And this contrast of race and character is matched by the diversity of
the city's aspect. Its architecture is as various as its inhabitants.
In spite of demolition and utility, the history of New York is written
brokenly upon its walls. Here and there you may detect an ancient
frame-house which has escaped the shocks of time and chance, and still
holds its own against its sturdier neighbours. Nor is the memory of
England wholly obliterated. Is there not a homely sound in Maiden Lane,
a modest thoroughfare not far from Wall Street? What Englishman can feel
wholly abroad if he walk out to the Battery, or gaze upon the austere
houses of Washington Square? And do not the two churches of Broadway
recall the city of London, where the masterpieces of Wren are still
hedged about by overshadowing office and frowning warehouse? St Paul's
Chapel, indeed, is English both in style and origin. It might have been
built in accord with Sir Christopher's own design; and, flanked by the
thirty-two storeys of the Park Row Building, it has the look of a small
and dainty toy. Though Trinity Church, dedicated to the glory of God
and the Astors, stands in an equally strange environment, it is less
incongruous, as it is less elegant, than St Paul's. Its spire falls not
more than a hundred feet below the surrounding sky-scrapers, and were it
not for its graveyard it might escape notice. Now its graveyard is one
of the wonders of America. Rich in memories of colonial days, it is as
lucid a piece of history as survives within the boundaries of New York.
The busy mob of cosmopolitans, intent upon trusts and monopolies, which
passes its time-worn stones day after day, may find no meaning in its
tranquillity. The wayfarer who is careless of the hours will obey the
ancient counsel and stay a while. The inscriptions carry him back to the
days before the Revolution, or even into the seventeenth century. Here
lies one Richard Churcher, who died in 1681, at the tender age of five.
And there is buried William Bradford, who printed the first newspaper
that ever New York saw, the forefather in a long line of the Yellowest
Press on earth. And there is inscribed the name of John Watts, the last
Royal Recorder of New York. Thus the wayfarer may step from Broadway
into the graveyard of a British colony, and forget, in contemplating
the familiar examples of a lapidary style, that there was a tea-party at
Boston.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account