The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Three Centuries Of New York Mirror for Gotham, by Bayrd Still (New York University, $7.50), is a fascinating book about the city of New York. As I lay it down, I...
...One fact rises out of his evidence which should bring blushes to all of our cheeks...
...Despite its dirt, it is a gorgeous place...
...The reader thinks first of the enormous energy which has been exhibited through the ages...
...As I lay it down, I am astonished at how much of the old place's history I recall...
...Still records the pictures which this amazing city has etched upon the minds of its visitors from 1625 down to now...
...Still has given them ample space in which to speak their pieces...
...A French writer remarked that it was "not unusual to see animals of all sorts wandering about, chiefly cows and pigs...
...Over and over again down through the years, the author gives us quotations about the disgracefully littered highways...
...When I consider what a change has been wrought since I looked out over the roof of the Waldorf-Astoria and up toward the Public Library still shining in its first newness, I can easily understand the enthusiasm with which Mr...
...But with the restless and often ruthless progress there has often gone a frank disregard of important activities and values...
...From the dizzy height of its top row of windows, I could look up a Fifth Avenue solidly packed with glittering equipages...
...Our author reports...
...It is also a city of working people, of artists, of little bands of street-musicians playing Christmas music...
...This lasted—to our shame be it confessed—only until the town became American...
...On my first visit, in 1903, they took me to the top of the Flatiron Building, then the tallest structure in the city and the tallest in the world except for the Eiffel Tower...
...And when I stroll down toward Sixth Avenue, the people wave and bow and smile—and we stop to talk for a minute...
...If Mayor Wagner succeeds in his noble effort to clean the place up and keep it clean, he will deserve a medal...
...One striking notion which emerges is that, though this town has changed enormously in outward form, there is a remarkable continuity about its inner spirit...
...In the earliest days, when it was still New Amsterdam, and later when the British had changed its name to New York, people from Europe invariably spoke of the tree-shaded streets, clean pavements and neatly painted houses...
...They are not millionaires or glamorous folks of any sort...
...The reader takes in the great wealth of comment from the first Dutchman to the last Englishman as if he were meeting all these lively persons at the gangplanks of their boats and happened to overhear their final remarks...
...We have dug tunnels under the land and under the water...
...In the beginning, this was a clean town...
...His general view leads him to write: "To judge from contemporary comment, New York City was physically more unattractive during the decades from 1870 to 1900 than at any other period...
...In this respect, it is like London or Paris, yet it is different...
...It must have taken an immense job of research to gather these Centuries slew York quotations, but there is no sign of labor pains...
...It is a multiplex series of impressions culled from hundreds of visitors—among whom are many of the most talented and discriminating authors of the past couple of centuries...
...These were such vehicles as will never be seen there again, shining carriages with coachmen sitting high in front and lovely ladies lolling luxuriously on the richly upholstered seats...
...He finds good, tough language for the degradation of Tammany Hall, for the horrible existence in the slums and the low wages, long hours and disease-breeding conditions of the garment industry...
...Walt Whitman was perfectly right about his city...
...The abiding thing within that gives the place its quality is unique...
...But for me, a country boy, no ladies could compete in attraction with the splendid steeds which furnished the horse-power for the rich of those days...
...From about 1795 most visitors criticized the filthiness of the streets...
...They are...
...Toward the end of the 19th century, there was a brief respite while Colonel George E. Waring as Street-Cleaning Commissioner made a brave attack on the filth, but it did not last long...
...It is not exclusively a place of multi-storied buildings, of towering fortunes and immense projects...
...We have thrown bridges high into the air in order to tie together our land masses...
...Caustic visitors from England, France and Germany could not be expected to overlook our weak spots, and Mr...
...And now we are busy rearing shining palaces of glass...
...But his exposition goes far beyond appearances...
...in fact, the same kind of people I have met on the streets of Kalamazoo or San Francisco...
...It is, especially, a wide-open and tolerant place...
...Since my first awed survey, we have rebuilt the place on a gargantuan scale...
...Having colonies of all sorts of Europeans among its citizens, it serves as a bridge from the deeper parts of America to the wide, wide world...
...For this has been, from the start, a wonder city, a center of energy, imagination, dynamism...
...The book is not a history in any formal sense...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 1
