cessarily sketchy view of the old times of the city. "In 1712, the population of NewYork was 5,840. In 1731, the city extended to Wall-street, and there were whites 7,055, blacks 1,567, total 8.622. On the east side of Broadway were bushes or woods, where a gentleman assured me he had caught quails. In 1742, from the fort to the country, Broadway was a mere road, with a few straggling houses, only one of three stories! In 1756, there were two houses of three stories. The principal house, where all distinguished and wealthy strangers were entertained, rented for £40 per annum. In 1800, houses in that street rented for from £200 to £600 per annum. In 1742, there were only two ships in the regular English trade. In 1745, a stockade ran across from North to East River, where is now the front of bridewell, jail, &c. In 1789, a lot of six acres, one and a half miles from Federal Hall, situated on the northwest corner of Wall and Nassau streets, was purchased for $7.500. In 1796, three acres of said lot were sold for $15,000. There were in 1756, one bookseller, one Latin school, and no college. In 1800. [and here we picture Mr. Longworth's heart swelling with pride, in view of the magnificent contrast] there are upwards of thirty booksellers, a vast many excellent Latin schools, and a well organized college." Fifty-three years have passed since these words were written, and what changes have passed over the scene! Imagine the emotions of some venerable Dutch burgher, in whose dull brain no visions of future change ever quickened the pulse to a more than ordinary beat; imagine his emotions, on lifting the lid of his coffin, and gazing around him at the wealth and splendor of the whilome village of New Amsterdam. What is left the poor astounded ghost but to sink back bewildered and dejected, from the stunning bustle and confusion, and the inextricable whirl, to the welcome silence and inanition of the grave.

The large wood engraving which serves as frontispiece to this paper, gives but a faint idea of the size of New-York city. By referring to it, you will see that three broad avenues start from the southern side of Union Square, which, with its pretty, circular park, forms the centre of the picture. The middle one of these avenues is Broadway; the one at your left hand, having a railroad running through it, is the Bowery, and the short one at the right is University Place, which terminates at the Washington Parade Ground. Still

further to the right, and stopped at its southern end by the same Parade Ground, is the Fifth Avenue, taken as a whole, perhaps the finest street in the New World, but not, by any means, more desirable than many others as a residence. If you allow your eye to run down Broadway till it meets a street running to the right, you will have paid an imaginary visit to Canal-street, through whose broad avenue there formerly flowed the canal from which the name is derived. The Bowery at its southern end merges into Chathamstreet; you may trace it by a lighter line running diagonally northeast and southwest. The only buildings to which the engraving before us gives any prominence are the churches, to which we shall devote a separate article. The buildings which surround Union Square are, with few exceptions, spacious and well-constructed private dwellings, and when first erected were among the finest in the city. We have said that this view gives no idea of the city's size.* It has the appearance of some large trading town, like Poughkeepsie, or Troy, on the Hudson, rather than of such a great metropolis as it really is. Broadway, whose actual length from the Battery to Union Square is two miles and two-thirds, is shrunken in this view to an avenue about half as long; on the other hand, its true width is exaggerated; it is by no means as wide in proportion as it is here represented. The engraving, it is true, is small, and wood is a poor medium for the effects which it was desirable should be produced in such a view; but one may get from it a tolerable idea of the situation and general effect of the portion of New-York which lies below Union Square. The foreign reader is requested not to accuse us of a desire to indulge in the national recreation of bragging, if we modestly hint that the shipping of New-York could hardly be counted in reality, with precisely the ease with which our engraver has rendered it possible; nor is the main thoroughfare, Broadway, nor indeed its nearly equally busy sister, Bowery, so thinly peopled that one can distinguish the gentlemen in black, who, in the print, perambulate at leisure through the middle of the street from one end to the other.

The Italian Peninsula has been compared to a cavalier's leg, attired in an unexceptionable high-heeled boot. We can hardly claim for Manhattan Island so illustrious a resemblance. It rather seems like the leg of some well-to-do Dutch

baby-that is the part above Fourteenthstreet, while all below that noble avenue may be compared to the round fat foot of no particular shape, the principal features being the toe and the heel. Morse's map of "New-York City and the Vicinity," contained in his North American Atlas, gives a clear and complete view of the whole island; you may there see that the aforesaid leg is by far the finest part of the city. It was laid out in 1807 by three commissioners, appointed by the State to lay out the city into streets and squares. "These commissioners were De Witt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, and John Rutherford. Josiah Randall, Jr., was their engineer and surveyor. Their report was made in 1811, and accepted by the Corporation. That report, accompanied with a map, laid out the whole city in noble avenues and spacious streets, numbered up to 176th street, and designated, as to their corners, by marble monuments firmly fixed in the ground. These commissioners had no authority to alter or regulate the level of the future avenues or streets, but simply to run and mark the level by permanent monuments; and to that magnificent plan we owe it that there are no lanes nor alleys in the new city, but that twelve noble avenues, each 100 feet wide, running parallel, and in the direction of the island, give access to the city, and that these are cut at right angles by numerous streets, every tenth one of which, is also a hundred feet wide, and the narrow streets sixty feet in width, or ten yards wider than the boast of Philadelphia-Chestnut-street." *

Below Fourteenth-street the city is quite irregular. This irregularity, however, is in the position of the streets, rather than in their direction. We had an excellent comparison ready on the tip of our pen, by which to illustrate this, but having a strong faith in the unities of composition, we shall adhere to the one originally presented. Continue, then, if you please, oh admiring reader! to regard the island of Manhattan as the beau ideal representative of a Dutch baby's foot. If you ask what we have to say in excuse for the lines which score this unhappy member up and down, and in every direction, and which never appeared, and we hope never will appear upon the leg of any baby whatever, we answer, that the leg and foot are encased in an excellent brick and mortar stocking, covering neatly the whole member, from toe to knee, and tastefully confined at the latter point by the Harlem River, by way of garter. Now, every one who has ever examined a stock

ing, that is, a good old-fashioned worsted manufacture, must have observed that the lines of the leg are regular and symmetrical, and easily comprehended, while those of the foot are hopelessly inexplicable, except to the eye of the practised knitter. Here they run round the heel, there they are parallel to the sole; again they diverge at the toes, and slide by ingenious stratagems into the ascending leg. And so it is with our good city. For in the upper part, as we have seen, the streets are regular, straight, and easily seen to be beautiful; but on the lower part, though you may with some assurance navigate the instep, and are not wholly beyond hope in the heel, yet none but an old-fashioned New-York pig or policeman can ever be perfectly at home in the sole of the metropolitan foot. The triangle, whose two inland sides are formed by Grand-street and Broadway, contains the most irregular and confused part of the city. Within this boundary, the unhappy stitches of streets cross and recross one another, as if they were playing a game of "Puss in the corner." Pearl-street runs circuitously from Broadway to Whitehall, like a dropped thread, but it is the most flagrant example, only because it happens to persevere longest in its irregularity. It is a haunting nightmare to a stranger in town, this long narrow alley, meeting him at every turn and leading him into inextricable confusion, but there are other streets quite as bad in their way; the difference is, as we have said, that they are smaller, and have not the intrepidity to keep up the game quite as long. William-street would do it if it dared, and so would Beaver-street. Fulton-street has a leaning that way, and Maiden Lane is quite disposed to join John-street and Gold-street, in the commission of nearly equal improprieties. Indeed, if the baby's foot aforesaid would by any fortunate accident be set upon a large hot coal, and the crooked stitches and patched portions of the sole of the stocking above mentioned be wholly burned away---in other words, if a great but discriminating fire could clear up and destroy the badly built and crooked streets of that part of the city, we have no doubt, although the present loss of property would be terrible, and the evil severely felt, yet the city and business would be materially benefited thereby. No calamity is ever wholly a calamity. Always some good springs out of the worst seeming evil the thunder clears the air, the volcano's eruption defers the final conflagration, the destroying floods of Nile and

Mississippi fertilize Egypt and the Great Western Valley; wars and plagues, say the wise and cruel, make it easier for the lives they spare to live; and the city of NewYork has never had a more beneficial manure than the ashes with which her great conflagrations have covered her streets. We make no question that the crop of profits has been increased on that soil to five hundred times the number of bushels to the acre, which our merchants formerly stored away into their barns.

It is owing to this irregularity in great measure, that the old haunts of business are being slowly transformed in character, and that the western side of the town, for many years neglected, is becoming the promised land to which the heavy business of the city is slowly migrating, from the land of bondage in the southeastern part of the island. In the part of the city west of Broadway the streets are arranged with nearly all the regularity of which the land admits. We have there three great avenues, running parallel to the North River side of the town, two of them longer than Broadway, and the other a great deal wider than that central street. The streets which intersect these avenues are laid out with much regularity and judgment. Half way up Broadway we have Canal-street, a magnificent avenue, broad, sunny, and straight, and which must, at no very distant time, become one of New York's proudest business streets. The urchin who has just been kept in all the afternoon, to study his Natural Philosophy lesson, which he failed to recite in the morning, will understand me when I speak of capillary attraction. He will also understand me when I say that a sponge absorbs water by the aid of this principle. Very well, my little fellow, New-York city is just like a sponge; and the water, that is, the business, is creeping gradually up into all the hitherto dry and contracted pores. To be sure it had a terrible squeeze in the great fire of 1845, and was left rather shrunken by the operation, but capillary attraction, like the good faithful principle that it is, rushed to its aid, and filled it fuller than ever with the enlarging fluid. The dried and contracted pores above alluded to were situated in the northern and western parts of the city. For many years no drop of a dry goods jobbing house, or other sign of large business-life, crept up in that direction. At last it slowly began to move. Gradually the overflowing abundance of wealth and business left the dark corners of Pearl-street, Hanover Square, and Exchange Place, and showed itself in Cedar-street, Pine-street, Maiden Lane, and John-street. These were the first notes of preparation. The

old order of things once disturbed, the revolution once begun, young New-York armed itself with bricks and mortar, found out quarries of freestone with which to astonish old fogyism, and went energetically to work, tearing down and building up. Still, though there was a movement, it was a slow one, and the energy display-ed was not at first manifested in beautiful buildings. It was necessary, first of all, to prove the value of the change. Thus the pioneers who pitched their tents in the then new streets which we have mentioned, built plain, substantial, unhandsome stores of brick, or accepted those which they found ready for them, and went to work to establish their position. It seems almost absurd to talk now of enterprise, in connection with such a movement; but let not our shopkeepers, who exult in their marble palaces, and behind their freestone posts, despise the work of their predecessors. From all present appearances we do not hesitate to predict, that in ten years the finest buildings now in NewYork will be far surpassed, by the growing taste and wealth of builders. We have seen the last of the plodding business life, which, even within our recollection, bought and sold contentedly in the primitive regions of Pearl-street and Coenties Slip. No magnetic attraction, which draws the iron particles to itself from every adjacent quarter, and makes itself felt by those which it cannot move, is surer than the spell which has drawn the business of New-York within the last few years, away from the old channels and time-hallowed abodes. Gladly would we rescue from oblivion the name of the first adventurer, who launched his frail shallop of a jobbing store on the yet untried waters of Broadway or Dey-street. Gladly would we register the jeers with which his determination was received by the merry old merchants, with their portly figures, working in blind security by candle light, on the terra firma of the old established haunts. What an addition to our histories of business science would be the names of those first green shoots which, after being confined for years within the cellars of business conservatism, crept, thin, pale and meagre, through the first crack they could discover, into the warm cheerful sunlight, and have now grown into a flourishing verdure, putting out new branches of beauty day after day.

Many of our readers will remember when the whole of Broadway was consecrated to the dwellings of the wealthy, and when the Battery, or rather Statestreet, was the selectest part of the city proper. We shall have occasion in a

future paper, to speak of some of the old mansions, and stately dwellings which adorned that aristocratic quarter; for the present we merely hint at their existence, in order to show how rapidly since the first inroads were made, the whole character of that part of the city has changed. Aristocracy, startled and disgusted with the near approach of plebeian trade which already threatened to lay its insolent hands upon her mantle, and to come tramping into her silken parlors with its heavy boots and rough attire, fled by dignified degrees up Broadway, lingered for a time in Greenwich-street, Park Place, and Barclay-street, until at length finding the enemy still persistent, she took a great leap into the wilderness above Bleecker-street. Alas for the poor lady, every day drives her higher and higher; Twenty-eighth-street is now familiar with her presence, and she is already casting her longing eyes still further on.

Old New-York was built entirely of brick. The first Dutchmen imported bricks from Holland, with something of the same sagacity with which we import iron from Wales. None of these bricks adorn the present city, nor have any existed on the island within our memory.'

*

was

The City Hall was commenced in Sept. 1803 and built on three sides of white marble, the fourth was of brown freestone. It is stated, and we have never seen the story contradicted, that freestone used on the north side, because the sage builders were firmly persuaded that no one would ever see it, since it was so far up town, that the city could never extend above it; but such stupidity and blindness is too serious a matter to be laughed at; it is therefore a very poor piece of wit, if it is intended as such, and a very outrageous slander on the intelligence of our most worthy ancestors, if it be not true. We therefore hope that some persevering historian will set this matter right as soon as possible. However, be the reason what it may, this must have been nearly the first instance of an extensive use of the brown freestone in the city. It has now, as all our town readers know, come

to be the favorite building material for shops, churches, and residences; we shall see hereafter that in some parts of the city, and in a few instances, other materials are preferred, but they are exceptions, and the prevailing tint of New-York is fixed, whether for better or worse, there may be conflicting opinions, as a waim brown which takes the sunshine with a quiet elegance, and would take the shadow, if our architects would give it the chance by a bolder treatment, with all desirable clearness and nobility of effect. Moreover, the freestone, admirably suited as it is for large and massive buildings, such as stores and churches. is of so fine a quality and so delicate a tone, that no fine work is thrown away upon it, and we rejoice to see that in many of the new stores recently erected, the work which has been bestowed upon them is of very fine quality, and shows a daily advance in our architectural ability, if not to originate, at least to copy well.

The freestone used in building NewYork city is not all the product of one quarry. That of the best quality is brought from Little Falls, in New Jersey, on the Passaic River, a short distance from Patterson. It is light in color, and delicately shaded, and takes shadow with greater distinctness than the darker varieties. There is no finer specimen of this freestone than that used in Trinity Church, in Broadway, to which we shall allude at some length in our article on the Churches of New York. Much of the brown stone used in the city comes from quarries in Connecticut, but the color of this variety is much darker than that from Little Falls, and we think less desirable. It has always been a maxim with good architects, that stones used in building should be laid upon their natural beds; that is, that the stone should always be placed with its grain in the same position in which it lays in the quarry. Yet we find in almost every building which is in the course of erection, where the rough brick walls are being faced or veneered with plates of ashlar freestone, four or five inches thick, that this principle is almost entirely neg