Manhattan '45
Morris, Jan
N ew York, writes Jan Morris in this valentine to just-postwar Gotham, has never lost "its excitement, its power to move, its limitless energy; but never again, perhaps, would it possess the...
...outside California: 1-800-634-9797...
...One that gives the eye something to look at, or one that looks like packing crates...
...On the contrary, they far more often wondered at its formality...
...the wharves sit crumbling in the Hudson like beached plesiosaurs, or Roman ruins...
...Classes are small...
...Now there is Ed Koch...
...Business moves on to MANHATTAN '45 Jan Morris/Oxford University Press/$17.95 Richard Brookhiser The Scene: A college campus, a party in full swing...
...Waltzes, polkas, the Virginia reel...
...Civilization...
...Or, most remarkably, these...
...Spirits are high, the dance floor is full...
...So there is food for thought in Manhattan '45...
...This is browsing—with one exception, Morris's dedication: a noble gesture, gracefully explained...
...Later, the tape plays Glenn Miller...
...Most buildings are ugly because most architects aren't geniuses...
...Where else did secretaries drop the morning mail down mail chutes 800 feet long, iced to prevent the letters catching fire...
...But you'll rarely hear such orderly, reasonable talk Rational discourse...
...Indeed, everyone says no one accuses him—it has become the obligatory opening of all corruption discussions, as ritualized as Oyez...
...The pursuit of truth...
...Or write: Thomas J. Susanka Director of Admissions Box 104 THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE 10000 North Ojai Road Santa Paula, CA 93060 Financial aid program Bachelor of Arts degree • Coeducational Fully accredited, Western Association of Schools & Colleges THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1987 45 other business...
...Here the highest studies are at peace with the highest standards...
...or that, for two decades, a vain, applause-hungry woman has used the cant of compassion to catapult herself into positions of power...
...In the library of her house on the corner of 51st Street, almost opposite St...
...In my life, I've heard one defense of the manners of New Yorkers, from a Queens girl, just moved to Powertown, who complained that the stately shuffle which passes for walking in WashRichard Brookhiser, managing editor of National Review, is the author of The Outside Story (Doubleday...
...There's nothing stuffy about this party, but there is nothing like it at State U or Ivy Towers College either...
...Helen Payne Whitney, widowed heiress to $178 million, with the cherry and black racing colors of the Whitney stables flying from the roof...
...While the artists wrangle, give me a crew of sappers and a week to work...
...In 1945, the mayor was Fiorello LaGuardia---!`an inflexible fighter of municipal corruption...
...They set out, as Frank Lloyd Wright remarked, not only to amaze, but also to entertain...
...If Koch is honest, which I still believe he is, then he is dumb or lazy, take your pick...
...Morris describes "the ocean steamships stacked side by side from the Battery up into the 60s, parked there like trucks in their bays...
...From California and Canada: (805) 525-4417...
...civilized...
...But this is certainly the minority view...
...But we fans are grateful for whatever we get...
...What kind of place is this...
...And both are strengthened...
...Only the Seagram Building will be spared, on account of its proximity to the Four Seasons...
...It's...
...For information or to arrange a visit, CALL TOLL FREE from the U.S...
...This is Thomas Aquinas College, where the intellect and heart live in harmony...
...New York is widely thought to be running low these days...
...The Sound: The latest, a rap music routine...
...Few foreigners commented then, as they would so often later, upon the rudeness of Manhattan...
...They are part of the island's shape, and their protruding angular piers seem to complete the composition of the city, like a decorative frame...
...Classes are like conversations...
...This college audience finds the contrast hilarious...
...But don't go to it for a main course...
...Today, Manhattan's slips are landfilled...
...then we shall range up and down Third, Park, and Sixth Avenues, blasting and leveling as we go...
...Well, so what...
...beguilingly idiosyncratic...
...but never again, perhaps, would it possess the particular mixture of innocence and sophistication, romance and formality, generosity and self-amazement, which characterized it" in 1945...
...A third change for the worse has been an apparent drying up of manufacturing and commerce...
...Cornelius Vanderbilt was At Home each evening, with . . . her usual assortment of diplomats, maharajahs, admirals, local swells and foreign royalty—as she remarked to a visiting Englishman once, "I have known personally three of your kings...
...We also use them as monitors of larger rises and falls—dipsticks in the oil of history...
...The curriculum is rich with classics of philosophy and Catholic theology, mathematics and science — all required...
...In recent years, there has been a reaction to the blight of Bauhaus, Post-Modernism, and even a reaction to the reaction, as critics notice that a lot of the post-modern buildings are ugly...
...But in class everyone uses formal terms of address and the College choir sings Palestrina at Mass...
...The Empire State high-speed elevators had lately been slowed down, from 1200 feet per minute to 1000 feet, because people sometimes felt seasick in them...
...Take the Port of New York...
...Oyez...
...A few years ago, the three-piece-suit left—the Felix Rohatyns of this world—were using the deindustrialization of the Northeast as an argument for corporate socialism, or state capitalism, or whatever the buzzword was...
...Patrick's, Mrs...
...But I sometimes wonder, walking through Soho, if it is an entirely good thing that every old loft building—wEiNsTocK AND WEINSTOCK, BALL-BEARINGS—has become a gallery...
...A building might be made of bricks of a dozen different colours, or clad in artificial textiles, or decorated with Aztec motifs, or flaunt a big glass globe on top, or sprout with sculpture and abstract images...
...ington is actually inconsiderate: Hurrying New Yorkers, by contrast, appreciate the fact that you are probably hurrying somewhere yourself, and step lively to keep the traffic flowing...
...The Lyrics: Aristotle's Categories, Chapter I. Yes, you read it right...
...What is worse about, say, Bess Myer-son, the former Miss America turned former cultural-affairs commissioner—that she took the Fifth before a federal grand jury investigating her lover, a crooked sewer contractor...
...Will George Gilder please explain it to me...
...It is possible to get sentimental about heavy industry...
...Theoretical studies but eminently practical...
...Aristotle...
...At number 972 [Fifth Avenue] was Mrs...
...The students do most of the talking...
...The best, it is now clear, is a lot worse than I thought...
...T.vo elections ago, I thought Koch, mainly because of his seeming independence from this kind of thing, was the best New York was likely to-get...
...But the fact is, under Koch, the pols are once again in it up to their elbows, and it seems like half the borough presidents are suicides or jailbirds...
...If they still sold ball-bearings, of course, I wouldn't be walking there...
...The routine over, dancing begins...
...Or these...
...diffidently did the murmur come "Out, please," when somebody wanted to leave...
...Punctiliously did every man remove his hat, when a woman stepped into the elevator...
...The question is, what kind of ugliness do you want to live with...
...No one accuses Mayor Koch of being personally corrupt...
...They often start with a question...
...Apart from actual thievery, there is the corruption of benefit-mongering, which infects all political discourse...
...The faculty know the students personally and often invite them to their homes...
...What, using Morris's book as a gauge, has changed for the worse in the last forty years...
...We will begin by dynamiting the PanAm building...
...There is too much gush in Morris's prose here and not really enough nostalgic nuggets...
...Before him was Tammany Hall...
...T he most obvious blow to the city 1 has been the arrival of the International Style of architecture...
...I came to Manhattan '45 as a fan of Morris and a fanatic for New York history, and I was slightly disappointed on both counts...
...The predominant look of Manhattan," writes Morris, used to be...
...Another change for the worse has been less a decline than a reversion to type, and that is crooks in government...
...I still think so...
...We read period pieces, and pieces about periods, to smile at the gadgets or manners of the past...
...And who can resist tidbits like these...
...Come and see for yourself...
...And the graduates go on to careers in law and medicine, business and politics...
Vol. 20 • July 1987 • No. 7
