The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1872-07-04
Our New York Correspondence.
NEW YORK, June 27, 1872.

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Some one has put on record the remark that
''New York is not by any means an American
city" To certain degree, it is true. Like
Paris and New Orleans it has its QUARTERS,
where you may find respectively classed the
Frenchman, Spaniard, Italian, German and
Chinaman. And yet all of these national ele
ments you will find cosmopolised in one locali-
ty-the Bowery.
What Broadway is to the West side of the
town, the Bowery is to the East. 1t is the
shilling promenade. The poor live there; and
you see the peculiar characteristics of poverty
written in blurred and nasty emblems all over
the neighborhood. Starting from City Hall,
within two hundred rods of Broadway, you
strike little old cloth-shops, intermingled with
cheap corner groceries and subterranean saloons
You are on the old colonial stage road to Bos-
ton-Chatham street. The procession that
passes you is composed of the working class
during the day-but at night, look out for
thieves. There are dens notorious to the po-
lice as receptacles for stolen goods, "cribs"
where congregate the robbers of the town, and
houses in which every window for six or seven
stories upwards is q picture of squalid, half
dressed women and children. The street ter
inmates in an irregular open space, on what
was once a steep hillside, and is known as
Chatham Square, but mockery, by the way,
on that shape, for it is anything but square.
This is the beginning of The Bowery proper,
the vestibule of the social catacombs, in which
lie buried all around you every species of hui
manity that is obliged to plod for an existence.
See it at night. In spite of the street lamps
there is nothing brilliant about it. The shad-
ows seem to float out from the overcrowded
tenement houses that loom in the darkness on
either side. In the dingy beer-shops and dir
tier cellars, lurk some of the worst specimens
of our population, uncanny forms of varied
evil staring at you from every corner, or diving
down dimly-lighted stairways to shrink from
sight. Here are to be found the little street
Arabs, the boys and girls preposterously old,
who will soon fill the penitentiaries; here the
once innocent country girl who has dropped
into the grea elstrom, and is reeling round
and round in her dance towards death-a red,
bloated fearful burlesque upon woman. Here
is the city "rough," black and white, hiding
perhaps from justice, or awaiting some new
opportunity to go forth with brass knuckles,
knife or burglars 'jimmy."
The beer-gardens are also feature of this
locality. Step into the Atlantic" and you
may almost fancy yourself in the Faderlana.
The hall is immense, and thronged by hun
dreds who gather around the little tables
where, with pipes, lager and Rhein wine, they
while away the hours. A fine band furnishes
the music, and the scene is bewildering. Fur
ther on is the Bowery Theatre-theg grand play
house of the gamias, where the audience may
eat peanuts and shout their criticisms at the
top of their voices. The deities of the true
blood-and- thunder drama preside here, and
curious phases of life are visible on all sides.
The worst-by far the worst feature of this
neighborhood is its tenement houses; or rather
they ought to be called Seven Story Cofhns,
for probably nowhere else in America is there
such congregation of people literally packed
in death-tainted dens and dying by inches.
Windows broken; dodgers dirty; clothes lines
extending across the tunnel-like street, whereon
are flying in the wind the ghosts of ragged
garments; children playing around the filth
that lines the curb stone; cutters reeking with
pollution; fumes of liquor from the cellar dram
shop; screams, jeers, oaths-these are part
of the rude surroundings of New York tcne-
ment house, with its wild, untamcd population
of thousands.
We leave this disgusting locality with
sense of relief and re-enter the Bowery to
continue our journey up town until it merges
into the clearer and more slightly neighborhood
of the Cooper Institute and Union Square.
All of the breathing spots" of the Metrop-
oils, by the way, have now put on their sum-
mer dress, and you will find no spectacle moro
animated than that which is presented on a
summer evening, and especially on Sundays,
bv the thousands who flock thither to enjoy
fresh air.
In this connection 1 may remark that all of
the public squares have undergone marked
improyements-she iron railings being remov-
ed the paths widened and the birds encour-
aped to build their nests. Union Square, just
at the bend of Broadway and Fourteenth
street, is destined to become beautiful spot.
Twenty years ago the houses around it were
the residences of the most aristocratic citizens,
and there was an air of dignifed seclusion
about the place peculiarly West Endish, Now
these old homes are giving place to magnificent
business establishments, and in little while
YOU will see an array of architectural beauty
unequaled in any city of the United States.
Among the ancient landmarks thus yielding
to the march of progress is the Roosevelt man
sion on the corner of Fourteenth Street and
Broadway, and fronting Union Square, The
- ..-al.aaad h,r tho Domastic