which the business almost entirely monopolizes. The U. S. Bonded Warehouse, fronting on Broadway, is used mainly for storing drygoods; and there were recently stored in this one building, goods to the amount of three millions of dollars. The drygoods dealers were once confined almost exclusively to Pearl-street; the business extending from Coenties Slip to Franklin Square. But now Pearl-street has been nearly abandoned by the business, and

Stewart's Store, Chambers-street front.

the dry goods men occupy almost entirely Broad-street, Beaver-street, Exchange Place, Pine-street, William-street, Libertystreet, Cedar-street, Courtlandt-street, Dey-street, Maiden Lane, and about a mile of Broadway. These are the streets that are almost wholly monopolized by importers and jobbers of drygoods; while, in addition to them, are numerous large drygoods stores in Nassau-street, Fultonstreet. Park Place, Park Row, and even Murray and Warren streets. These are all wholesale streets. The retailers of drygoods are nearly as numerous, and are found principally in Canal-street, Grand-street, Broadway, the Bowery, Greenwich-street, and the Avenues. It is startling to enumerate the number of churches which have been pulled down and displaced to make room for the great business which spreads with such astounding rapidity over the whole lower part of the city, prostrating and utterly obliterating every thing that is old and venerable, and leaving

not a single land-mark, in token of the former position of the dwelling-places of our ancestors. These demolished temples are the Dutch Reformed Church in Garden-street, now Exchange Place, the Presbyterian Church in Wall-street, the French Protestant Episcopal Church du St. Esprit in Pine-street, Grace Church on Broadway, the Presbyterian Church in Cedar-street, and the Quaker Meeting House in Liberty-street. Within the past twenty years all these stately houses of worship and their parsonages have been torn down, the contents of their grave-yards and family vaults ruthlessly scattered, and the sacred ground covered with long blocks of brick and free-stone warehouses for the storage of drygoods. Hotels, theatres, and private mansions have shared the same fate.

Calico is omnipotent, and whole streets melt away at her approach. On the sites of the time-honored and venerated Mansion House and the City Hotel, on Broadway, are now blocks of brown-stone drygoods warehouses. Where the National Hotel once stood is a white marble building, of Elizabethan architecture, devoted exclusively to the sale of silks and ribbons; Stewart's "Marble Palace" is on the site of the Washington Hotel, and where the old Park Theatre once stood, there are now spacious brown-stone stores, occupied by drygoods jobbers and clothiers. Deystreet, which, but a short time since, was exclusively occupied by private dwellings and boarding-houses, has been entirely torn down and rebuilt for the accommodation of drygoods dealers. The first of the great brown-stone warehouses erected on Broadway, is the block on the corner of Rector-street and Broadway, which covers the entire site of Grace Church and its rectory. This superb store is fifty feet front on Broadway, and two hundred and twenty feet on Rector-street. It is built of brick, and faced with brown free stone. The finest of the Broadway drygoods stores, and, we believe, the most extensive and elegant building occupied by one firm, in the world, is Stewart's store on Broadway. This immense dry goodsery occupies the entire block between Reade and Chambers streets, with a frontage on Broadway of one hundred and fifty-two feet; the front on Chambersstreet is one hundred feet, and about the same on Reade-street; it is eighty-three feet high, from the sidewalk, and is divided into five stories. The Broadway and Chambers-street fronts are of a delicate light cream-colored marble of remarkable uniformity of tint. It was brought from the Westchester Quarries, which are part of a vein nearly as delicate in tint

and texture as the best Italian, which strikes in a northerly direction through Massachusetts and Vermont, and terminates in Canada. The architectural details of Stewart's store are open to technical objections, but, as a whole, it is an imposing structure, and an ornament to the city. A warehouse built for the sale of merchandise is not the kind of building to which we should look for architectural perfection, but the only public building we can boast of that is superior to Stewart's store is our City Hall. The interior of this great establishment is divided into departments for the sale of distinct varieties of goods; in the centre of the building there is a superb hall, one hundred feet long, forty feet wide, and eighty high, lighted from an elegant lantern in the dome. The walls and ceiling of this splendid apartment are very elegantly and chastely decorated with paintings, and the merchandise, to the sale of which it is appropriated, is of the most costly description of silk stuffs and brocades. The first floor is appropriated to retail customers, while the basement, with spacious subterranean galleries beneath the side walk, is set apart for all kinds of carpetings and floor-cloths. The upper lofts are appropriated to the wholesale departments. There are three hundred salesmen and clerks constantly employed. When lighted up at night, there are upwards of four hundred gas burners in use. The number of panes of French plate glass, used in the building, is about two thousand. The sheets of plate glass in the windows on each side of the principal doors are one hundred and thirty-four by eight-four inches the doors have but one plate each, one hundred and thirty by fortyone. The other windows are divided into four lights, sixty-seven by forty-two; there are sixty of these. All the sashes are made of metal. The windows and doors have revolving iron shutters. The business of Stewart's store, we are informed, amounts to over seven millions a year. Stewart's is the only retail drygoods store on the east side of Broadway; the tide of fashion sets on the sunny side of our great thoroughfare, but the scarcity of stores will compel some of the great establishments further up to cross over, before long, and we hope to see more white marble fronts on the shady side of the street, where they are more needed than on the other side.

Murray-street, which, but a short time ago, was wholly occupied by private dwellings of most intense respectability, has felt the influence of the great change that has overcome the lower part of our city; the following view is from the

corner of Churchstreet, looking towards the City Hall, which is seen in the distance. The square building on the corner is a church edifice which has undergone very great changes within very short time. It was erected by a Dutch Reformed Congregation, worshipping in a Gothic brown-stone church in the Fifth Avenue. It was sold by the original proprietors to the Universalists, under the pastoral charge of Rev. E. H. Chapin, who, in turn, purchased the Church of the Divine Unity, in Broadway, and sold their own church to be converted into the inevitable drygoods stores. There are

already several large, and well-built stores in Murray-street, which, before long, will become wholly a business street. Just below the church, of which we have a view in the engraving, stood the venerable Presbyterian Church, which was ta

ken to pieces and reconstructed in Eighthstreet, opposite the Opera House, precisely as it looked on its original site. Since its transportation it has been occupied by a great variety of sects, but is now in the possession of the Roman Catholics.

A bare enumeration of the hotels of New-York would tell the whole story of her commercial greatness, and the prosperity of the country of which she is the metropolis. Our hotel-keepers bear as little resemblance to the Will Bonifaces of the past century, whom we read of in English novels, as Baron Rothschild bears to Isaac of York. Hotel-keeping has become a great business, requiring a large capital, a knowledge of the world, intelligence, liberality, and an enterprising spirit.There are, in Broadway alone, fifteen large first-class hotels, and innumerable restaurants, cafés, and boarding-houses, some of them large enough, and splendid enough, to be included in the list of hotels. The oldest hotel in the city is the United States, formerly Holt's, an immense, and well-constructed marble building, fronting on Pearl, Fulton, and Waterstreets. It has more than four hundred windows, and, though a perfectly plain building, without the slightest pretension

to architectural beauty, it makes a very imposing appearance from its magnitude. It has never been ranked among our firstclass hotels. The next in age, and the first in reputation, is the Astor House, which is probably more widely known than any other hotel in the world. The position of this great hotel is one of the finest in the city, and it will probably retain its attractiveness during the next half century, let the city change as it may. The Astor House was first opened in May, 1836, by the Boydens of Boston; the next year it passed into the hands of Boyden, Coleman and Stetson; and, in the year following, it came under the sole administration of its present proprietors, Coleman and Stetson, who have given it a reputation such as no other hotel has ever enjoyed. It is a massive structure of Quincey granite, spacious and well arranged. having a frontage on three streets, with the Park fountain in front, and the south end overlooking the green inclosure of

St. Paul's churchyard, a position that secures a free circulation of pure air. It contains three hundred and forty rooms, and has often entertained six hundred guests. It is built round a quadrangular court, which, until lately, had a fountain in the centre; but the proprietors have recently erected a spacious saloon, framed of iron, and richly decorated, in this open space, to be used as a kind of exchange and bar-room, on the plan of the New-Orleans hotels. The proprie tors are wide awake to the changes going on around them, and contrive to keep their hotel always supplied with the latest inventions and discoveries in the great art of living well. Until

within the last year or two all great dinners, of a public character, were given in the Astor House, and its dining rooms have witnessed more sumptuous feasts than any other house on the continent.

The first house in Broadway, and the only ante-revolutionary building left in this great artery of our city is the WASHINGTON, a hotel and restaurant; a few doors above on the same side of the street, on the corner of Morris-street, and opposite that little oval spot of verdure, with its white marble fountain in the centre, called the Bowling Green, and which was once decorated with a leaden statue of George the Third, is Delmonico's Hotel and re

staurant, kept on what is called the "European plan." The other restaurant of the Delmonicos is on the corner of South William-street and Beaver-street; it has been the most renowned "eating house" in New-York during the past twenty years, and the principal resort of the French and German merchants who do business in the lower part of the city. The first Delmonico's was in William-street, and was destroyed in the great fire of 1835, after which the two brothers opened their restaurant in Broad-street, while their present house was building. The busi

ness was established by the father and uncle of the present proprietor, who emigrated to this country from Switzerland some thirty years ago. Delmonico's in Broadway includes but two of the buildings given in the engraving. It is a favorite hotel with foreigners, and keeps up its reputation for excellent cookery. Above Delmonico's, and just below Wallstreet, is Judson's Hotel, which is also kept on the European plan, and has a public restaurant, which is a favorite dining place for "down town" merchants. There is no hotel in Broadway between Jud

son's and the large hotel known as Howard's, on the corner of Maiden Lane, but there are great numbers of respectable restaurants, both in Broadway and the neighboring streets, for almost the entire male population of New-York dine "down town," and they require a great many feeding places. In Maiden Lane, near Pearl-street, is the Franklin Coffee House kept by Clark and Brown, which deserves a passing notice, as a remarkable instance of stability in this constantly changing metropolis. It was one of the first dining houses established in NewYork, and it has been kept by the same proprietors in the same spot thirty years. It has always been a favorite resort of English merchants, and is the only place of the kind in the city where the traditions of the English kitchen are preserved in all their old-fashioned purity. It is one of the few respectable restaurants in New-York where they ignore napkins and eat with steel forks. The atmosphere of Clark and Brown's is thoroughly English, and when you enter its dining-room, with its John Bullish little exclusive mahogany boxes, that resemble church pews, you might fancy yourself in an eating house in the neighborhood of Threadneedlestreet, without any great effort of the imagination; and the bluff-looking landlord in his white apron and long carving-knife standing behind a sirloin of beef, with his back to a plum-pudding, will not destroy

the illusion. It is frightful to think of the rounds of beef and legs of mutton that Mr. Brown must have cut up during the thirty years he has been head carver at the Franklin Coffee House. The city East of Broadway has never been favorable to hotels, but, on the West side there are a good many large and flourishing ones; there are three in Courtlandt-street, one in Dey-street, three in Murray-street, two in Park Place, and three in Chambersstreet; on the East side of the Park there are the Clinton, Lovejoy's, Earl's, French's and Tammany Hall, all large and well-conducted houses, but not ranking with the great hotels in Broadway. The next hotel on Broadway after the Astor is the American, on the corner of Barclay-street; then comes the "Irving," which is a congeries of houses, rather than one house, and includes the entire block between Chambers and Reade streets. These houses were not originally intended for hotel purposes, but were converted to their present use, and amalgamated under the name of the Irving House, by their original proprietor, about five years ago.

The Irving, which is named in honor of the author of the Sketch Book, is an immense pile of dark granite, irregular in outline, and entirely free from architectural embellishment. It is one of the largest hotels in the city.

The external aspect of a hotel should be light and cheerful, and even a bizarre