New York - New York City - Points of Interest - Downtown to Uptown
NEW YORK AQUARIUM, in Battery Park, contains the largest collection of marine life in the country.
FRAUNCES TAVERN, SE. corner of Pearl and Broad Sts., was built in 1719 as a residence by Etienne de Lancey, wealthy Huguenot. A merchant firm of de Lancey's grandson remodeled the building for use as a store and warehouse in 1757. It was sold in 1762 to Samuel Fraunces, a West Indian of French and Negro blood, who opened it as the Queen's Head Tavern. In 1783 George Washington bade farewell to his officers here. It now contains a restaurant frequented by bankers and brokers from the neighborhood.
TRINITY CHURCH ( 1846), facing Wall St. on Broadway, is a Gothic brownstone edifice by Richard Upjohn. Trinity, the first Protestant Episcopal church established in New York, came into ownership of a good section of lower Manhattan and, as a consequence, became possibly the world's wealthiest parish of that denomination.
Compared to the great cathedrals subsequentty erected in New York, there is little about the century-old structure, fronting on Broadway and facing into Wall Street, that in any way suggests this great wealth. Yet, for its day -- it was completed in 1846 -- the church, designed by Richard Upjohn, one of the famous architects of the period and sponsor of the Gothic Revival mode, doubtless was considered duly impressive. The church is constructed of dark brownstone in a free rendering of perpendicular English Gothic. Although only 79 feet wide and 166 feet long, the building is so beautifully proportioned that it holds the attention, even in its present setting, enclosed as it is by high office buildings that would dwarf any less inspired structure. Graceful porches project beyond its side entrances. The main entrance, at the foot of Wall Street, is in the base of the rectangular tower fronting the nave. The tower is surmounted by an octagonal spire with a cross at the top. For years, the spire, attaining a height of 280 feet above the steps, served as a landmark. Both the tower and the spire are of brownstone ashlar, and are exceptionally fine in work, manship. The first "Ring of Bells," a gift from London, was received in 1797, and is the oldest in the city. Others were added and today the chimes of Trinity include ten bells. They were originally intended to be swung, but the difficulty of obtaining competent ringers, and the fact that the public preferred tunes to changes, resulted in their being made stationary. The clappers are connected to a ringing case in the room below the belfry.  
SUB-TREASURY BUILDING. ( 1842), corner of Wall and Nassau Sts., by Ithiel Town and A.J.Davis, is an example of Greek Revival architecture.
THE CITY HALL ( 1811), in City Hall Park, by Joseph Mangin and John McComb, is reminiscent of a small palace of Louis XVI's reign.
The WOOLWORTH BUILDING ( 1913), Broadway and Park Place, by Cass Gilbert, with Gothic details, is the first of the 'cathedrals of commerce.' It is 60 stories high.
BELLEVUE HOSPITAL ( 1816), First Ave., 26th to 30th Sts., is the oldest general hospital on the North American continent.
PENNSYLVANIA STATION ( 1910), between Seventh and Eighth Aves. from 31st to 33d Sts., by McKim, Mead and White, has a Roman Doric fagade. At each end is a clock, with a dial seven feet in diameter, flanked by figures symbolizing Day and Night. The main hall is a copy of a Roman bath; the coffered vault is carried by eight Corinthian columns.
The METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE ( 1883), Broadway at 39th St., is New York's premier home of grand opera.
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ( 1925), Eighth Ave. between 49th and 50th Sts., America's best known indoor arena, is the scene of the horse show, prize fights, political rallies, hockey, six-day bicycle races, rodeos, trade exhibitions, tennis, and even Paderewski—once.
New Yorkers think only of what happens inside of Madison Square Garden. The rare individual who wanders down Forty-ninth or Fiftieth Street for a view of the building itself sees nothing but blank brick walls and fire escapes. The main entrance opens on Eighth Avenue through an arcade, but the Garden proper is concealed behind a smaller structure and runs back toward Ninth Avenue.
Madison Square Garden is a successor to two earlier Gardens that were actually on Madison Square, at Madison Avenue and East Twenty-sixth Street. The first of these occupied the abandoned New York and Harlem (Railroad) Union Depot that had housed Barnum's Hippodrome and then Gilmore's Garden before acquiring the name Madison Square Garden in 1879. It was replaced in 1890 by the building later known as the "old Garden." P. T. Barnum, J. P. Morgan, and Darius Mills were among its directors. Stanford White designed the structure -- one of the most impressive of its day. Its beautiful tower, copied from the Giralda in Seville, was surmounted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens' statue of Diana. In the roof garden White was killed in 1906 by Harry K. Thaw, and the murder developed into one of the outstanding scandals of the era.
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ( 1877), Central Park W. and 79th St., is one of the world's largest institutions devoted to natural science exhibits.
HAYDEN PLANETARIUM ( 1935) is a separate unit in the group of National History Museum buildings, the gift of Charles Hayden. Main attractions are the Hall of the Sun and the Theater of the Sky.
CATHEDRAL OF ST.JOHN THE DIVINE, Cathedral Parkway (110th St.) to 113th St., Amsterdam Ave. to Morningside Drive, by Heins and La Farge, and Cram and Ferguson, is Romanesque and Gothic. Seven clustered chapels burst into the soaring splendor of the apse. When completed, it will be the largest Gothic cathedral in the world.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (founded 1754 as King's College), Broadway and W. 116th St., its buildings grouped on Morningside Heights, has 30,000 students and 3,000 teachers.
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 633 W.155th St., represents the country's nearest approach to the French Academy. It offers a permanent exhibit of sculpture, paintings, and manuscripts of Academy and Institute members.
The AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, Broadway and 156th St., has largest collection of geographical publications and maps in the Western. Hemisphere.
At the AMERICAN NUMISMATIC SOCIETY, Broadway and 156th St., is a collection of coins and currencies.
HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA, Broadway and 155th St., is devoted to the study of culture and history of the Spanish and Portuguese peoples; its library has more than 100,000 volumes, and canvases by Velasquez, El Greco, Goya, and others.
The MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN, Heye Foundation, Broadway and 155th St., the only organization of its kind in the world, contains an extensive collection of items pertaining to primitive Indian culture.
COLUMBIA PRESBYTERIAN MEDICAL CENTER, Broadway to Riverside Drive, 165th-168th Sts., has four major units: Columbia University medical and dental group, Presbyterian Hospital group, Babies' Hospital of the City of New York, Neurological Institute of New York; the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital is not affiliated, but adjoins the group.
JUMEL MANSION (about 1765), in Roger Morris Park, on a cliff above Edgecombe Ave., between 160th and 162nd Sts., was the headquarters of George Washington until his defeat at Fort Washington and the Laurel Hill redoubt. The museum displays relics of Colonial and Revolutionary periods.
THE CLOISTERS, Fort Tryon Park, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, contains famous collection of medieval architecture, sculptures, and tapestries.
DYCKMAN HOUSE ( 1783), 204th St. and Broadway, is the only eighteenth-century farmhouse on Manhattan. Its museum contains a collection of Dutch and English Colonial furniture and curios.
Wall Street. IRT Lexington Ave. subway to Wall St. station; IRT Broadway-Seventh Ave. subway to Wall St. station.
WALL STREET, focal point of the financial district, is a gloomy canyon along which multitudes of people scurry during business days; after sundown and on Sundays it is silent and deserted. The traffic of the banks, largest in the country, is staggering; through the New York Clearing House passes an enormous volume of exchange. Private banks bear the renowned names of Morgan, Kuhn, Loeb, Harriman, Belmont. Besides the security exchanges, cocoa from Venezuela and West Africa, hides from the Argentine, coffee from Brazil, sugar from the West Indies, cotton from Texas—all have exchanges here. The telegraph and stock-indicator ('ticker') record split-second banking transactions in London, Rome, Paris, Berlin.
Chinatown. Second or Third Ave. el to Chatham Sq. station; IRT Lexington Ave. subway to Worth St. station.
CHINATOWN lies west of Chatham Square and the Bowery and extends westward to Mulberry Street between Canal Street on the north and Worth Street on the south. Of the 18,000 Chinese in New York City, only 4,000 live in Chinatown. Despite its reputation, the district is as safe as any other in the city. So few women are seen, it appears to be inhabited by men only—and children. Men stand in little clusters before shop doors, discussing in the native tongue affairs of the moment with inscrutable expressions and in modulated tones, while in the narrow winding streets the children play American games and fling at each other American slang phrases. The shop windows are stacked with Chinese fruits, vegetables grown on Long Island, and strange unfamiliar foodstuffs. Curio shops display in piled-up disorder a variety of bric-a-brac. A movie front offers the prospect of Chinese pictures made in China or San Francisco. The Chinese restaurants are declared by the Board of Health to be among the cleanest in the city. Animosities that once divided the district have given way to unity in the face of the Japanese invasion of China.
Lower East Side. IRT Lexington Ave. subway to any station from 14th St. to Worth St.; Eighth Ave. Independent subway, Queens-Church Ave. line, to any station from Second Ave. to E.Broadway; Third or Second Ave. d to any station front 14th St. to Chatham Sq.
The LOWER EAST SIDE stretches along the east of Chinatown, from Brooklyn Bridge to 14th Street. With the Bowery, a battered relic of its early days, the East Side is a notorious slum district. Here are tens of thousands of Jews and Italians, thousands of Poles, Greeks, Russians, Spaniards, Lithuanians, and a scattering of Turks, Persians, and Chinese: a concentrated melting pot of the Nation's immigrants. The one blatant characteristic common to them all is poverty. Ragged children play 'potsy' in the streets. Young mothers with old expressions search for pushcart bargains. Old men in threadbare clothes hobble along the sidewalks. Couples, flashy in cheap finery, dawdle here and there. Against the malodorous streets rise the façades of monotonous unbroken rows of brownstone structures with outside fire escapes and first-floor shops. Clotheslines straddle the huddled roofs. Grimy warehouses and sooty factories add their depressing touch. The average population to the acre for the city's residential area as a whole is 266; here are acres crammed with 600. The East Side is the birthplace of Alfred E. Smith, Irving Berlin, and others who have risen high in the world.
Greenwich Village and Washington Square. IRT Broadway-Seventh Ave. subway to Sheridan Sq. and Christopher St. station.
GREENWICH VILLAGE streets, turning abruptly or crossing where they should be parallel, express the antic spirit of the community. For the Village has performed some amazing mental acrobatics. Not for nothing is it called the Latin Quarter, the Bohemia of New York City. Free love, Freudianism, Socialism, imagist poetry, and fads of all shades have waxed and waned here. Today the burden of its incessant talk is economics. The Village retires late, rises late. In eccentric night clubs visited by the curious, it listens to a crapulent poet melodramatically reciting his effusions. Its Main Street, 8th, is a bazaar of art objects and second-hand books, odd tearooms and studios cheek-by-jowl with drug and grocery stores, movie houses, tailor shops. The real-estate boom of the 1920's, with its intrusion of tall, ostentatious apartment buildings, has added a Midas touch.
WASHINGTON SQUARE, near the center of the Village, is dominated by an arch erected in 1892 in memory of Washington's inauguration. Washington Square College of New York University is on the east. The old red brick houses on the north were once the homes of the Nation's social leaders; and No.61, on the south side, has sheltered Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, John Reed, and Alan Seeger. Today along the tree-shaded walks of the Square stroll residents of the vicinity—the well-to-do of Fifth Avenue, members of the poor Italian section to the southwest, university students, and visitors from far and wide.
Union Square and 14th Street. BMT, Union Sq. station; IRT Lexington Ave. subway, 14th St. station.
UNION SQUARE is America's open-air center of radical propaganda, the district of liberal and trade-union ferment. The Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Rand School of Social Science, the American Civil Liberties Union, and others share it with Tammany Hall. On a day in 1930, 80,000 workers and sympathizers met here to protest against unemployment. In the late night hours, the benches in the Square give rest to the wandering homeless.
Unmindful of the frothy political ripples in the Square itself, waves of bargain-hunters and amusement-seekers billow along FOURTEENTH STREET, the poor man's street of the city. Fourteenth Street has undergone change after change, each as violent as the other. Laid out in 1811, it soon attracted; the prosperous; the theater made it the city's Rialto until the turn of the century; large retail stores made it the shopping aristocrat of New York. Then exclusive business moved northward and the needle trades took over the square. The old stately buildings disappeared or were broken down into offices and lofts, and even into rooms for rent. Flashy dinusement spots, hole-in-the-wall eating places, cheap clothing shops, and cheaper dance halls now give the street its character.
The Garment District. IRT Broadway-Seventh Ave. subway and BMT subway, both Times Square station; Eighth Ave. Independent subway, 42d St. station.
The GARMENT DISTRICT, center of New York's famous garment industry, is set in the very heart of Manhattan, from 30th to 42d Streets between Sixth and Ninth Avenues. To see the district best is to see it at the lunch hour, when the sidewalks become surging masses of humanity spilling over into the streets; 'pushboys' maneuver their hand trucks loaded with garments through the crowds; 'pitchmen' hawk their gimcracks on the curb. Side streets are blocked by Gargantuan trucks loading and unloading.
The work-shops are the lofts clustered about the three tall buildings— themselves garment factories—between 36th and 38th Streets on Seventh Avenue, and from them buyers carry the new styles to all parts of the country. Small production units and an antiquated system of manufacture make for expensive competition and a high percentage of bankruptcies.
Times Square. IRT Broadway-Seventh Ave. subway and BMT subway, both Times Square station; Eight Ave. Independent subway, 42d St. station.
The glow in the sky when dusk has fallen is the reflection of TIMES SQUARE, amusement center of the country. At Times Square, Broadway becomes the Great White Way, its night turned into synthetic day by flashing, glittering, multicolored light-pictures advertising the Nation's products. The scene is cheap and tawdry, yet impressive and stimulating. The ebb and flow of the human tide never ceases here. The Times Square district, embraced by 39th and 57th Streets, from Fifth to Eighth Avenues, abounds in theaters, hotels, movie houses, small shops, lofts, spacious automobile showrooms, night clubs, restaurants, and 'taxi-dance halls.' Tin Pan Alley, workshop of the song-makers, jingles here. To the Metropolitan Opera House, Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall on the rim of the district come the great singers, the great solo performers, the great conductors, from everywhere. Its newest attraction is Rockefeller Center. The western section—Radio City—is devoted primarily to entertainment: the
RKO Building contains offices, and the adjoining Radio City Music Hall offers stage shows and first-run movies; the National Broadcasting Company's extension is the home of stations WJZ and WEAF; the Rainbow Room is a swanky night club requiring formal dress; the Rainbow Grill is less formal; the Center Theater has presented spectacular shows.
Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Park Avenue. Fifth Ave. bits; IRT Lexington Ave. subway, any station from 33d St. to 59th St.
After four successive migrations northward, New York's principal shopping center reached its present location—between 34th and 59th Streets along Fifth and Madison Avenues—in the first decade of the twentieth century. The FIFTH AVENUE segment is called the 'Magnificent Mile.' But Fifth Avenue has lost something of its former exclusiveness; even the five-and-ten stores have arrived. Display windows have created a new art, fascinating to hordes of 'window shoppers.'
The section of MADISON AVENUE above 49th Street has become a smart shopping center, primarily because it lies between Fifth and Park Avenues. The shops here are smaller and more highly personalized in style than those on Fifth Avenue. Farther north are expensive food stores, antique dealers, and interior decorators, most of them in old brownstone buildings. Cafes and bars stud the area.
PARK AVENUE, cast of these two shopping thoroughfares, is a street of large and expensive apartment buildings.
The long stretch of Fifth Avenue that faces Central Park from 59th to 110th Streets is called 'Millionaires' Row.' Here, in palaces of limestone, once lived Andrew Carnegie, Senator William A. Clark, Jay Gould, O.H. Havemeyer, John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Hamilton Fish, and others. Banker, broker, successful writer and artist live in the neighborhood; to it have come others seeking a pretentious address. The large apartment buildings extend almost three miles northward. In spite of changes, 'Millionaires' Row' has kept something of its old character and, because of its social traditions, remains New York's most impressive residential street.

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