The Secrets of the Great City Part 42

Previous to the completion of the new cupola, our city fathers contracted with Messrs. Sperry & Co., the celebrated tower-clock makers of Broadway, to build a clock for it, at a cost not exceeding four thousand dollars, that our citizens might place the utmost reliance upon, as a time-keeper of unvarying correctness. During the month of April the clock was completed, and the busy thousands who were daily wont to look up to the silent monitor, above which the figure of Justice was enthroned, hailed its appearance with the utmost satisfaction. It is undoubtedly the finest specimen of a tower-clock on this side of the Atlantic, and, as an accurate time-keeper, competent judges p.r.o.nounce it to be unsurpa.s.sed in the world. The main wheels are thirty inches in diameter, the escapement is jewelled, and the pendulum, which is in itself a curiosity, is over fourteen feet in length. It is a curious fact that the pendulum bob weighs over three hundred pounds; but so finely finished is every wheel, pinion, and pivot in the clock, and so little power is required to drive them, that a weight of only one hundred pounds is all that is necessary to keep this ponderous ma.s.s of metal vibrating, and turn four pairs of hands on the dials of the cupola. The clock does not stand, as many suppose, directly behind the dials, but in the story below, and a perpendicular iron rod, twenty-five feet in length, connects it with the dial-works above.

The building contains the offices of the Mayor and city officials.

In the rear of the City Hall is the new County Court House, which, when completed, will front on Chambers street, and const.i.tute one of the handsomest edifices in the city. It is built of white marble.

THE PARK BANK,

Situated on Broadway, below Ann street, is a magnificent white marble edifice, ornamented with a profusion of statuary and carving. The bank- room is a model of beauty. The vaults are the most perfect and secure in the city.

THE ASTOR LIBRARY,

In Lafayette Place, is a substantial building of red brick. The property, and the library, are the gift of John Jacob Astor to the trustees, for the benefit of the cause of education throughout the land. The interior is in keeping with the exterior. It is simple and elegant, and contains a collection of over one hundred thousand volumes, carefully and judiciously selected. It is free to all persons, on condition of good behavior and careful usage of the books. The officers are courteous and obliging, and every care is taken to make the inst.i.tution meet the wishes of its founder.

THE COOPER INSt.i.tUTE,

In Astor Place, is a handsome freestone building, devoted to science and art. It occupies an entire block, and is the gift of Peter Cooper, Esq., to the public. It contains lecture rooms, rooms for experiments, free schools of science and art for the working cla.s.ses, a reading room, and a library. The street floor and that, above are rented out for stores and offices, and yield an annual income of from twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars.

THE BIBLE HOUSE,

Faces the Cooper Inst.i.tute, and occupies a whole block, being bounded by Third and Fourth Avenues, and Eighth and Ninth streets. It is an immense structure, nearly triangular in form. It is the property of the American Bible Society, and was erected at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars. The revenue of the society is about five millions of dollars annually. Thousands of copies of the Bible are printed here annually, and sold or distributed in all parts of the world. The Bible has been printed here in twenty-four different dialects, and parts of it have been issued in others still.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cooper Inst.i.tute.]

About six hundred persons find employment in this gigantic establishment. Of these about three hundred are girls, and twenty or thirty boys. The girls feed the presses, sew the books, apply gold-leaf to the covers ready for tooling, etc. About a dozen little girls are employed in the press-room in laying the sheets, of the best description of Bibles, between glazed boards, and so preparing them for being placed in the hydraulic presses. Every day there are six thousand Bibles printed in this establishment, and three hundred and fifty turned out of hand completely bound and finished. The sheets of the Arabic Bible, which has been so long in preparation, are now exhibited to visitors, and elicit universal admiration, both on account of the peculiarity of the character, and the striking neatness and elegance which the work exhibits. A large edition of this translation has just been forwarded to Constantinople. Much of the mechanical portions of this admirable work has been executed by children. They are fairly paid by the Society, and appear to be very happy and comfortable at their work.

THE ACADEMY OF DESIGN,

At the corner of Twenty-third street and Fourth Avenue, is one of the most beautiful edifices in the city. It is built in the pure Gothic style of the thirteenth century, and the external walls are composed of variegated marble. It has an air of lightness and elegance, that at once elicit the admiration of the gazer. The interior is finished with white pine, ash, mahogany, oak, and black walnut in their natural colors; no paint being used in the building. Schools of art, a library, reading room, lecture room, and the necessary rooms for the business of the inst.i.tution, occupy the first and second stories. The third floor is devoted to the gallery of paintings and the sculpture room.

An annual exhibition is held during the winter months, when the public are admitted at a small charge. Only the works of living artists are exhibited.

The hospitals and benevolent inst.i.tutions of the city are numerous, and are conducted in a liberal manner. Visitors are admitted to all of them at stated times, and much instruction and profit may be gained from an examination of the system upon which they are managed.

CHAPTER LXIX.

THE POST-OFFICE.

The General Post-office of the city is located on Na.s.sau street, between Cedar and Liberty streets. It was formerly the Middle Dutch Church, and was built long before the Revolution. It was in the old wooden steeple of this building that Benjamin Franklin practiced those experiments in electricity, which have made his name immortal. When the British occupied the city, during the War for Independence, they occupied this church for military purposes. The building was very greatly injured by the rough usage to which it was put, by its sacrilegious occupants. The pews and pulpit were broken up for firewood, and the building was used first as a prison, and then as a riding school. It was repaired in 1790, and again used for religious services. Some years later, it was purchased by the Government, and fitted up as a post-office. The growing business of the office has made it necessary to make so many additions to the structure, that it is hard at present to distinguish the original plan of the edifice. The building is much too small to accommodate the business required to be transacted within its walls, and efforts are being made to secure the erection of a larger and handsomer building, at the lower end of the City Hall Park. It is supposed that the movement in this direction will be successful, though the Government would seem, by its delay in the matter, not to consider it a matter of much importance to accommodate the citizens of the metropolis in this respect.

The Post-office being situated so low down in the city, it has been found necessary to establish branches, called "Stations," in the upper part of the island. They are distinguished by the letters "A," "B,"

"C," etc. Many persons receive and mail their correspondence here. The drop letter system places an immense amount of business in the hands of these stations.

Street boxes, for letters, are scattered through the city. They are never more than a block or two apart, in any of the streets below Fifty-ninth street, and the distances are not very great in the other portions of the island. Letters dropped in these boxes are collected seven or eight times during the day, and there is a delivery of letters and papers by the postman every hour. These are left at the houses of the parties to whom they are addressed, without additional charge. The system is excellent, and is a great convenience to all cla.s.ses of the population.

CHAPTER LXX.

THE PATTERERS.

By this term we refer to the street vendors of the city, who hawk their wares through the public thoroughfares. A recent number of the _Cornhill Magazine_, of London, contains the following interesting description of this cla.s.s:

As New York is the largest city in America, we naturally find more of this cla.s.s there than anywhere else. It takes a long residence in the city to become familiar with them, for they vary with the season, and their occupations change according to circ.u.mstances. In many respects New York city resembles London or Paris. And so would any other town with a million of inhabitants, surrounded by a cl.u.s.ter of cities, which swell the united population to almost two millions. It may well be doubted if there is a city in Europe which presents so many strong characteristics as the American metropolis. The population of Manhattan Island is a mixture of all the peoples under the sun, fearfully and wonderfully jumbled together. About one thousand foreigners a day arrive in New York from all parts of the world the year round. The resident American is always coming in contact with Spaniards, Germans, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Africans, Chinese, j.a.panese, Indians, Mexicans, Scotchmen, Canadians, Englishmen, Arabs, Prussians, Swedes, and Italians. The Frenchman is as much at home as in his native Paris; the Scotchman hears the bagpipes in the City Hall Park, and sees the shepherd's dog at the Central Park; the Chinaman can find a whole street devoted to the selling of his teas, his native idols stare him in the face as advertis.e.m.e.nts before a Yankee shop door, and all the ladies on Broadway are toying with his fans; the Irishman rules the city, and hoists his green flag upon the public buildings; the African is the most important man in the crowd, and expects soon to colonize the whites in British America, or somewhere else, while the German has his sangerbunds and his schutzenfests and lager bier, and runs a _halle_ and a boarding _haus_. Great is the mystery of New York.

But to the patterers. These are that large cla.s.s of people who hawk their wares upon the street, or get a living at a stand. Some of them do a thriving trade, others barely eke out a miserable existence. Take them all in all, and they are a very curious cla.s.s of people, interesting to study. A large number of them are women, from the oldest gray-haired grandmother, tottering on her cane, down to the young woman of sixteen. There are numerous little girls struggling to get a living, too, from three years old upwards. The women always excite our pity, and we patronize them in preference to the men.

The women patterers are usually a very ugly-looking set. That is, they are not handsome. Most of them are Irishwomen, although we now and then see an Italian or German woman. We never saw more than two American women patterers in New York, and have no recollection of ever seeing a Jewess, a Scotch woman, or a Spanish woman. The women and girls sell flowers, newspapers, candy, toothpicks, fruit, various kinds of food, turn hand-organs, sell songs, and beg. A woman never sells cigars or tobacco, and we have never seen one crying gentlemen's neckties. There is an old woman on Na.s.sau street, not far from the General Post-office, who sits behind a stocking stall, covered with ladies' hose and gentlemen's socks, suspenders, mittens (the women always were fond of dealing in mittens) list slippers, yarns, and such stuff. So far as we know, this woman is an exception to her s.e.x.

Very few women patterers in New York cry their wares. There is one ancient dame in the vicinity of St. John's Park, who screeches '_straw- ab-berries_' in the spring time, following it up in the summer with '_blackberrie-e-e-s_.' She seldom gets above Ca.n.a.l street, and always stays upon the west side of Broadway. Her voice has been familiar in that section of the city for the past five years, at least, and would be sadly missed if some day she should happen to get choked with one of her own _berries_, and, turning _black_ in the face, be laid out on a bier of _straw_ ready for _burial_.

There is a very stout old lady who always sits by the City Hospital gate, on Broadway. She has been in that selfsame spot, ever since before 'the late war,' and how much longer we know not. She is immensely stout, and must weigh at least two hundred pounds. Rain or s.h.i.+ne, hot or cold, there she sits, with a little stand of newspapers before her--the _Tribune_, _World_, _Herald_, _Times_, and _Sun_. She only sells morning papers, and leaves when they are all sold. She always has her knitting-work, or sewing with her, and can often be seen making her own garments. Now and then she grows weary, the eyes close, the head falls forward, the mouth opens, the fingers stop, (still holding on to the knitting work,) and she dreams! What are her dreams?

Possibly of a happy home in a distant land, a long time ago, when she was a little girl, and had a father to bless her, and a mother to love.

A brace of omnibuses come thundering down the pavement, and she awakes.

If people purchase papers of her while she is asleep they drop the pennies upon her stand, and pa.s.s on. This old body has a daughter who sells newspapers at a stand directly opposite, upon the other side of the street. The daughter is not as dutiful as she ought to be, and sometimes there is a family jar upon the street, not at all to the edification of those who witness it.

One of the saddest sights in New York is that of a pale-faced, light- haired woman, middle-aged, who can frequently be seen sitting on a Broadway curbstone behind a small hand-organ, from which she grinds a plaintive tune, the notes of which are seldom heard above the thunder of the street. She always appears bareheaded, and with a small child in her lap. The little straw hat of the babe is put upon the top of the organ to catch the pennies and bits of scrip. We are glad to notice that many men remember her in pa.s.sing.

City Hall Park, Printing-House Square, Bowery, and Na.s.sau street, are the great centres for all kinds of patterers. Here women sell ice cream, lemonade, doughnuts, buns, tropical fruits, and sweetmeats.

Bananas and pineapples are favorite fruits and all forms of chocolate candies are in great demand. Most of the women who attend stalls grow very stout, as they get little or no exercise. It is noticed that very few of them ever partake of the fruits or other edibles which they deal in. They always bring a lunch with them of bread and b.u.t.ter, cold soups, and cold tea or coffee, with occasionally a bit of meat. One evening, opposite the Fifth Avenue Hotel, we saw a young woman, evidently nineteen or twenty, playing upon a violin. She was blind, and, as it was a warm, bright moonlight night, her head was bare. The countenance had a very sad, sweet expression, and the air she played was a far-away dreamy romance. We never saw her but once.

The poor little girls of New York do a wonderful number of things to get a living. They sell matches, toothpicks, cigars, songs, newspapers, flowers, etc. There is a good deal of romance published in the newspapers, about the flower-girls, which does not exist. The _Evening Post_ once said they were as handsome as the flower-girls of Paris. If they are, the Paris flower-girls must be frightful little wretches. The flower-girls of New York cl.u.s.ter about St. Paul's churchyard and the Astor House, and can be found scattered up Broadway as high as Twenty- third street. They sell magnolias, hand bouquets and b.u.t.ton-hole bouquets for gentlemen's coats. They appear on the streets with the earliest spring violets, and only disappear with 'the last rose of summer.' A rainy day is a very good one for the flowers, and they sell better than in fair weather. When the skies are lowering, man wants something to cheer him, and so he takes a tuberose and a geranium leaf, and puts it in the b.u.t.ton-hole of his coat. The girls buy their flowers of the gardeners out in the suburbs of the city, and then manufacture their own bouquets.

Some of the little girls who patter upon the street make a tolerably good living, if they are industrious and stick to their business.

Oranges and sponges sell well, and often from two to four dollars'

worth are disposed of between the rising and the setting of the sun.

Pattering is only profitable during business hours, which, in New York, do not commence much before 9 o'clock, and close by 5 P. M. So the patterer is a gentleman with the rest of them, and shuts up shop at the same time A. T. Stewart and H. B. Claflin do their marble and sandstone palaces. There are exceptions to this rule, as there are to all rules.

Those who patter at the Battery, and in the vicinity of South Ferry, where a constant stream of people is pa.s.sing back and forth far into the night, stick by their stands as long as there is any one upon the street. At midnight, when the thunder of the streets is hushed, and the moon is rolling beneath a dark cloud, the heads of old men and women can be seen nid, nid, nodding, from Bowling Green to the Battery wall.

Where they go to when they close up their stalls and crawl away in the darkness, it is impossible to say.

The most interesting sights in connection with pattering may be seen in the vicinity of Castle Garden, and on the east side of City Hall Park, opposite Park Row. At Castle Garden the patterers meet with a constant stream of freshly arrived emigrants. They have just landed in 'free America,' and the first thing which greets their eyes after they have left the officials, and pa.s.sed the portals of the Garden, is a long row of patterers behind stalls filled with ginger-cakes, lemonade, tropical fruits, apples, etc. Many of the poor peasants from the interior of Europe never saw a bunch of red or golden bananas, they know nothing of the mysteries of a pineapple, and are unacquainted with cocoa-nuts.

They look with no little astonishment upon these products of the soil, but hesitate to purchase them. They are shy of the new-fangled American drinks, but being very thirsty, occasionally indulge in a gla.s.s of lemonade. How their eyes sparkle as the delicious nectar runs down their throats. Such _wa.s.ser_ is unknown to the springs of Germany.

Bread, cakes and apples are readily bought by them, but as they deal in hard cash, and talk German, and as the old woman they are trading with speaks Irish-English, and has nothing but scrip, it takes some little time to conclude a bargain. A great deal of talking is done on the fingers, and the emigrant goes away satisfied, nay, pleased, at the great amount of something to eat he is able to buy in America with a small lot of silver. Besides this, the old woman behind the stall gives him a variety of paper money, curiously printed. He looks at it, then doubles it up, and puts it carefully away.

The men patterers are a much larger cla.s.s in New York than the women.

They are engaged in all imaginable occupations and dog your steps at every corner. Some of these men are middle-aged, able-bodied fellows, quite strong and healthy enough to be clearing up land in the West or laying bricks at five dollars a day. For some unaccountable reason they prefer to remain in New York, living from hand to mouth, and doing nothing to improve themselves, mentally, worldly, or financially. We have one of these in mind now. Sitting on the west side of Broadway, not far from White street, a young man of about thirty-two or three, healthy, stout, and quite intelligent looking, employs his time in tending a small stand, upon which a few gum-drops and chocolates are displayed for sale. Here is enterprise and ambition for you. We have pa.s.sed his stand several times a day for the last year, and we never saw him selling anything to a man. They are ashamed of his presence on the street in such an occupation. A girl, or a poor woman, would get some sympathy, but for an able-bodied man in America, none! The fellow has a wife, and sometimes she takes place. There is a sad, disconsolate look upon her face, and well there may be, since she is united to such a lazy dolt of a husband.

It has been noticed that dwarfs and deformed people often resort to pattering. Like Gloster, in King Richard III., they are