The weekly herald. [volume] (Cleveland, Tenn.) 1876-1888, 1881-01-28
Squatter Life In New York,

Inc metropolis ab0unds with con-
trasts OF splendid intentions and mis-.
carried achievements. P~rincelness OF
space and brilliance of architecture are
confronted by dilapidalion and IN.
cleanliness, and even on Murray hill,
that pinnacle of all earthly ambition,
disreputable little tayerns and tene-
ments exist in sight Of the fashionable
mansions with their carved balustrades
and ample porticoes. But these con-
trasts, which have led one writer TO de-
scribe New York as Paris with a touch
Of the backwoods, and another 10 say
that the city is more like a savage, the
~resplendence OF his trinkets, war-paint
and chromatic blanket only half over
ing his abundant dirt-these anomalies
are nowhere so apparent as above the
southern borders of Central Park.
Reaching as far al Manhattanville on
he west, and to Harlem on the east, the
land has nearly all been graded, and
many streets have been laid out, and in
some instances paved, curbed and IL
Illuminated. Ten years 2 or more,
when the imperial Tweed was seated
with apparent firmness on the municipal
throne. this region, with the splendid
park as a center, was seized upon by
real estate spectators, and predictions
were made that in a very few years it
would be covered with handsome
dwellings. But the tide of success
turned another way, with what eff
feet, as concerns Tweed and his ambi-
tions, is well known; and though on
the east side some of the vacant spaces
have become p%opulous, and some nota-
BILE churches, hospitals, armories and
houses have been put up, the west side
has altered so little that it has seemed
to be l%ifeless.- The new museum OF
natural history, with its imposing
facade looking over the hill and dale Of
the park, glances from its rear upon a
neighborhood which, in my experience,
is quite unique. 1t is not to be precisely
described as city, nor as suburb, nor as
the unsettled but broken territory that
ontlies most cities while waiting to be
absorbed in their advance. The antici-
pations that led to the grading
and paving Of the streets have had q
very limited fruition in isolated rows Of
pretentious and rectangular brown.
stone fronts" which seemed oddly out
of place. Here and there a vestige Of
old times remains in a pre-metropolitan
homestead, with an impoverished
orchard around it, or in a grand mansion
with a classic front of Doric columns,
and a genesis far ~antedating
Fifth avenue. But it is not
the new buildings, premonitory
OF the city's advance, nor the old ones
rejecting the past, nor these two in
contrast, that give the region its charac.
teristics and peculiar interest. ALI
down in the hollows between the graded
streets, and in spaces where, no streets
b avIng been opened, the gray Lauren.
tian rock stands with but a superficial
layer of soil upon it, thousands of acres
are under cultivation by squatters, and
without other Enclosure to the land than
the entertainments formed around the
hollows by the trap-rock foundations Of
the streets. Agriculture is carried on
with a primitive simplicity of life aud
under a picturesqueness Of condition
that set an artist on the edge of desire.
Many square miles are green with vege-
tables. You see the gardeners with their
wives and mothers bending to their
work; you hear the querulous call of
geese and the contentious of pigs; and if
you could shut out from the view the
immature streets and the precursory
dwellings, you would never realize that
you are within the limits of the city, or
that immense steamers are loading with
grain by the riverside a quarter of o
mile away, and that the buzzing which
vibrates in the air comes from an ele-
waited railway.
The holdings are Of various proper
lions, sometimes being limited to an
irregular strip, and sometimes embrac-
ing three or four blocks in possession of
one man. 1t is not an occasional load,
The product of one patch, that goes to
Washington market, but n large pro-
of all the green stuff consumed
the city is grown in these hollows-
,he lettuce, the parsley, the celery, the
,abbages, and the potatoes. But though
,ne man trebles the quantity his neigh
Dor produces, he is no better off nor
more ambitious in the matter of archi-
ecture than the poorest; and in the
or in the center of the hollows,
,r perched high up on the wintry
is found a grotesque variety OF
nakeshift dwellings, mere concessions
o exigencies in mary cases, which by
% means indicate the pecuniary re-
ources of the occupants. Some of
hem are simply squalid, but upon
thers the sunshine and the rain have
out a soft color, and the scraps
t which they are built have borrowed
quaint grace from the weathering.
t is scarcely safe to let an artist loose
mong them. They abound with pictu-
esque "bits," which he declares it
ext to impossible to exhaust; and not
ong ago, when l scared into the SKYE
7ard region where C---.has his studio, ,
found him black to the wrists with
,r with xvhioh ho uyo nrint;nn oloh-