Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-05-23
An Impending Rerolu,Ion.

1t has been accepted as a law Of the growth of
New York city that the lower extremity of the
island will forever be devoted to business while
the upper end will be occupied almost exclusive
ly by residences. In other words, that people
will hive above Fourteenth street and do bust
ness below it, But the success of the present
efforts to widen the channel at He'll Gate may
result IN materially changing the ASPECT of the
city. The great engineering operations now In
progress at Haletts point and elsewhere in that
neighborhOod aim to make the channel from
the sound to the East river, not only safe, but
as nearly perfect as the most thronging com
merce could demand. The water is TO
have a depth sufficient to float YES
sells even larger than the Great East
ern at all conditions of the tide. The rocks
and shoals that now exist will be entirely swept
away, and Hell Gate itself will be transformed
into broad and placid channel bounded by
smooth and perpendicular rocky sides. When
this result shall have been accomplished vessels
coming from the cast and northeast will not
only be able to save more than a hundred miles
OF hazardous navigation by awaiting themselves
OF this new route, but the delays now caused by
the lack of water on the bar at Sandy Hook and
the heavy pilotage fees which the shoals of the
lower bay entail upon all outward as well as in
ward bound ships will be wholly avoided.
Should the new channel prove to be as safe
and commodious as the engiC, ers assure us
that it will be it will actually be the gateway by
which the transatlantic and northern coast
ing trade of New York will enter our
waters. In such case what could be more natu-
raj than that Harlem should become the centre
of the shipping interest? The next generation
might thus find its ship-yards and dry docks at
the mouth of the Harlem river, its warehouses
crowding the now quiet and somewhat monastic
shores of BlackwelPs island, and its trade of all
sorts occupying the region a.ong the river above
Thirty-fourth street Brooklyn, too, might
share in the revolution thus wrought, and Asto-
ria and Ravenswood become the heirs of its de
parted greatness. In such an event it would be
only fair that the fashionable world should grace.
fully yield to the exigenciesl of commerce,
and, abandoning its uptown palaces, return
to the Battery and State street, from which it
migrated so many years ago. Union square
would then become what the City Hall park
now is, and the wall of the fashionable infant,
temporarily neglected by its flirting nurse, echo
through the fashionable silence of Wall street
and Printing-house square. Our grandchildren
will then shun the dangerous locality of Madi-
son square, and charitable societies will be or
gained TO purify the slums of Fifth avenue and
the swarming tenements Of contiguous cross
streets, while fashionable theatres will be built
in Canal street and n1ilionaires rear their pal
aces in the aristocratic quarter of the Five
| Points.
Possibly these speculaiions may be somewhat
! premature Nevertheless it is unquestionable
that the opening of Hell Gate will exercise very
marked influence upon our city, and the great
submarine explosion of20,000 pounds of gun
| powder, which is TO celebrate TO some purpose
the fourth of July, 1872, may seriously shake
| the solid foundations of the now business quar-
J TER OF New fork.-NeD York World.