The Home Office of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. is in the “Metropolitan Life Building.” It covers the whole block between Madison and Fourth Avenues and from Twenty-third to Twenty-fourth streets: some twenty-five acres. Its forty-odd-story tower dominates the whole of Madison Square and dwarfs its neighbors of a meagre twenty stories. Above the level of their roofs the face of a giant clock covers three stories of its front and stares unwinking at the thousands in the park. To old women and to newsboys, to strong men and to wasters, to honest and to sick, to those who read the columns under “Help Wanted--Male,” and to those who have gone far beyond doing so, to the restless and the lonely among the crowds, waiting for that thing to “turn up” that never, never does; to all these this ponderous clock points the passing of the minutes, hours, days,--of life itself: this clock, relentless as the sun, upon the _Life_ Insurance tower. [Illustration] XIV THE CATHEDRAL ON THE AVENUE Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue is the largest and finest Catholic church in the city. It is a magnificent structure, taking up the whole block between Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets and Madison Avenue. It fronts, of course, on Fifth Avenue, from where perhaps it can best be seen. One longs to see it standing in a more open space and to see its beauties as a whole from further off as one now sees its spires, which are remarkable from nearby but glorious from a greater distance. [Illustration] XV QUEENSBORO BRIDGE Queensboro Bridge is the most northerly of Manhattan’s four East River bridges. Its mile and a half of mighty steel structure reaches from Second Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street well into Queens County, Long Island. Far below it in the middle of the river is Blackwells Island, on the south end of which is one of the city hospitals. The rest of this island is the cheerless home of an ever-changing group of those unfortunates, who through some unkind trick of fate have slipped, or have seemed to slip, into that uncharted realm vaguely called “Without the Law.” [Illustration] XVI FIFTH AVENUE AT FIFTY-NINTH STREET Whether under the régime of private or of business houses the region of Fifth Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street has been for a long time the luxury-centre of New York. On this enchanted soil is the well-known Vanderbilt home, one of the few dwellings that still resist the tide of business uptown to this point. Southward for miles “The Avenue” used to be the smartest residential street in the city. It is now the home of Rembrandts, pearls, sables, Rolls Royces beyond number, first editions, tear bottles, jades, and silken ankles. It is more dangerous to cross than the Continental Divide. It separates East from West in the city. [Illustration] XVII HELL GATE BRIDGE