Morning journal and courier., 1883-08-22
The Future of New York.

A striking article in the September century is W. 0. Conant's inquiry, "Will New York be the Final World Metropolis ?" which he answers in the affirmative. 1.-The pivot of the whole development of the metropolis" he says, 'is on the eastern side, at the lower end of Manhattan Island. Here is the per manent financial centre. It will not move, for all the world seeks it where it is. Wall street will preserve it's character as long as the cosmetropolis endures Banking, ex- change, stocks, insurance. capital and mer- chandise brokerage, speculation and financial and commercial agencies from all parts of the world, will circle around Trinity church un- til it's walls crumble. Offices of railroad and mining companies, of steam and other ship ping, of telegraphs, of staple imports and ex- ports (stores and warehouses crowded into the distance and for the greater part on the Jersey hRts) next center closest around the financial hub, attended by manufacturing and miscellaneous corporations, lawyers with out number, brokers, courts, newspapers, and. farther up. the importers of foreign and agents of domestic manufactures. Tho physiognomy of this part of the city is fixed, time by the crowding out of small manufac turing concerns and warehouses for the storage of heavy products. The jobbing trade will continue its march up town, and perhaps halt around the Hudson River Tun- nel depot to be opened near Washington SQuAre. 1Qe rolhll uEy gOOOs brhues IOlIOW- ing the tide of fashionable life, will go north ward until stopped or turned by the corner of Central Park
 After finance and foreign commerce fash ionable trade and. society will eventually be the chief features of the central city. The capitalization of true metropolitan corr, merce, which is to make lower New York the London of the future, will make upper New York it's Paris. Exclusive society in New York can scarcely be said to have any fixed and distinct habitat at present. It is in trans itionary lodgings looking about, as it were; ready poised to take wing for some choice new quarter, well walled from vulgar intru- sion. Where that quarter is to be, however, can hardly be question. One suitable spot remains, and that is at once so beautiful, so isolated, and so admirably adapted, that one is almost constrained to believe that the sus- capabilities of sublimated snobbery are not beneath the Providence that cares for the sparrow. Four or five square miles have been laid out by nature on the peninsular upper extremity of the island, between the Hudson and the Harlem, at an elevation of from fifty to @ hundred feet above plebeian street grades, expressly for the "court" quarter of New Yorks future aristocracy. It is ridge about mile wide, with abrupt sides and broad top; overlooking at once, on either hand, the magnifcence of the Hud- son beneath the Palisades, and the romantic hooks of the Harlem and Spuyten Duyvil, with the glittering reaches of Long Island Sound; swept by the purest airs from land and sea almost self drained, and drained again of drainage at it's base; inaccessible, in short, to the odors of the common world, to the heavy wheels of commerce, and to the enterprise of speculative builders"