The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1876-08-27

will move his uptown restaurant from Four
teenth street to its proposed location on
Madison square-in Dodworth's old academy
buildings IN event in the history of our
metropolis. The growth of great city is so
slow as to be almost imperceptible. 1t is
only when the old resident recalls previous
generation and remembers how ancient
landmarks have vanished and how new ones
have taken their place that he realizes the
growth of the town. There are many of our
citizens, who would take unkindly any in
timation of old age, who remember when
Blocker street was the home of fashion
and Bond street our Fifth avenue
But the dentists and the milliners came,
and on their heels the boarding house keep
ers and pensions for eminent foreigners in
exile. So fashion had to migrate to Murray
Stuyvesant square and Washington square
and Gramercy Park-respectability has
barrcaded itself, and will not surrender.
AS we push through the shops and auction
stores to these regions we see lusty old
Knickerbocker, who has lived there for
couple of generations and refuses to strike
his flag to any mob of merchants and tooth
pullers. But the battle is unavailing, the
mob will win. The Battery was once as
fashionable as Central Park, but who walks
in the Battery now? Greenwich street was
once the home of wealth and station,
but even the ghosts of fortune and
high society have vanished from it's
busy pavements. Two or three intrepid
families make fight for Union square, but
in short time they must surrender. Del
monico accepts the inevitable when he
closes the grateful and sumptuous halls of
his Fourteenth street house and follows the
world toward Murray Hill.
Delmonico has been in one sense the pill
grim of responsibility. And we can note the
progress of our metropolis when we remem-
Der that it has taken him fifty years to march
from the Battery to Madison square.
General Sherman in his memoirs tells how,
when he came from California, fresh
and blooming lieutenant, anxious about
banking facilities and for success in
love affairs and never dreaming Of
his laurcl-laden years of effort and achieve
ment, that he went to Delmonico's and there
had an awe-stricken audience with the illus
trious Scott, who, our readers will permit
us to remark, was once great soldier in
these lands. This was twenty-five years
ago, and the Delmonico's where the great
soldier of one generation met the great SOL
dier of the next was in the present Stevens
House, near the Bowling Green, where Jer-
sey farmers and shipping people and down.
town merchants most do congregate It
will be remembered also that when the adj
vancing Delmonico took up his camp at the
corner Of Fifth avenue and Fourteenth
street wise people, who saw the decadence
of the times and how we were all going to
the devil, and who wanted reformers in
the Napoleon Of the menu and the Alexander
of dfjciners d Ia foarchette, had made the
mistake common to ambitious emperors, and
would find his march to the wilds of Four
teenth street like the march of his great pre-
ceptor to Moscow. They confidently ex-
pected that the great captain of mayonnaise
and lyonnaise and ponmes de terre pdrisiennes
would be compelled to retreat, with his con-
tingents of Chambertin and Clos de YOU
geot, of Chateau Lafitte and Pommery,
of Johannisberger and Verzenay and
other renowned corps before the merci-
less Sheriff. But the famous captain saw
further into the future than his critics, and,
after reign Of one generation in his palace
halls, he now seeks new conquests in Madi-
son square.
If some Boswell or Pepys could only tell
us the inside history of these halls SO soon
to be abandoned what a volume it would be {!
IfDelmonico had literary ambitions he might
easily have appointed o historian to note the
wit and wisdom of his ten thousand dinners.
What story it would be to our children !
How much would we give for true history
of some of the nights which Napoleon spent
with Talma in the little cafe near the Palais
Royal when times were hard and money was
or when Sheridan and Burke reasoned with
Fox over the fifth bottle of port about In
dian and French politics or when Hamilton
and Washington and jay fingered over their
wine and breathed the salt breezes from the
bay. What chapters those walls could write
if they could speak What procession of
beauty, fame, wealth, rank, valor, genius and
renown has passed through these halls or
under the welcoming eye of the celebrated
chef, from the day when Napoleon, fragrant
with Havanas and mellow with wine, sat
moaning about destiny and empire, to this
day. when We see what has become Of that
uuenchless ambition, how it is all dust and
ashes If it takes half century for the
pilgrim of fashion and responsibility to
march from the Battery to Madison square
where will his scat be fifty years from now
We can answer that question better when
He'll Gate is opened md the country is thor