The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-10-17
A FAMOUS HOSTELRY
THE GREAT MEN WHO HAVE TAR
RIED IN NEW YORK'S
ASTOR HOUSE.
THE UNCHANGiNG LANDMARK

Its Register Is the Nations Auto
graph AIbun-The Inky Spec
trum of american History
Names That Call to Mind the
Fierce Struggles of Our Earlier
Days.
Richard Grant White some years ago
pointed out that New York has what
he called "a horizon line of fifteen
years, says j. P. NJ, In the New York
Post. 1t appeared to him to be the
limit of mans popularity and of
houses adaptability. A poet, a player,
belle, or a preacher became ancient
history at the end of that time.
This mutabihty Of the face marks Of
a great city is indeed about the only
| characteristic that New York does not
outgrew. It's palaces pass, by some
| steady pressure, into banks, clubs and
baZaars. It's churches, when they do
not pull up stakes and affairs and get
| away bodily, stagger into theaters or
| express offices, and even the shops do
| not outlast a generation. Let a young
man born in the Bowery, who knows
| all the neighbors and the familiar
| signs, go away for fifteen years and
then come back. 1t is the Bowery still,
| but 1T is not the Bowery that he knew.
There Is one other pretty old affair
| that has stayed thus far and doesn't
| adapt itself to the manSarded times,
| and nobody thinks of it. 1t is the
| Astor house, which defies with it's
| square granite honesty the mural ter
| giYersations of our day.
Though not the oldest hotel in the
city for "Holt's Folly" still stands
| there on Fulton street, and it was
| built several years before), 1t is the
| most famous hotel in the United
| States, and during it's siXty-four years
| OF standing there with it's arms open
| to the world, SO to speak, history has
| been pouring steadily through that
| granite entrance. When the steps were
| laid Andrew Jackson was president.
| -Four times at least he was a guest
in the house, and all you have to do
| Is to recall his political associates to
| know who gathered round him there.
| This was before the American hotel
| keeper had passed from boniface to
| bureaucrat. He stood at the head
Of his own table in white apron, not
only the host, but the supervisor.
| The formal opening of the Astor
| house was attended by all the mag
mates of the city, his honor, Mayor Cor
| nelius w. Lawrence, presiding, while
| about him were grouped Caleb S.
| Woodruff, Isaac L. Varian, Gen. Will
| liam Hall, Thurlow Weed (who was
| then editing the Albany Evening Jour
| nab, and the men best known to us
| afterwards as Recorder Talmadge and
Judge Ingraham. 1t Is curious to
know that, aside from the festivities
Of the occasion, the chief topic Of con-
| versatiOn was the murder of Helen
| JeWett.
ITS INDUSTRIOUS GUESTS.
A year later, Hawthorne wrote his
Twice Told Tales" Dickens wrot
Sketches by Boz" and Irving 1.-THE
Adventures Of Caatt. Bonneville" and
they shook binds afterwards in the
Astor ]1eSse court, which is now the
rotu91a One year after the opening,
lack Hawk stood on the granite steps,
with the scars Of the pale face still on
him, and looked wonderingly across to
the brick church, high up on q bank,
| where the Times building now stands,
| and to the Park theater, where the
| memories of Sweet Fanny Kemble'
were still fresh. And there, too, stood
| Sam Houston, one year after the bat
tie Of San Jacinto, with a civic guard
Of honor waiting for him to enter that
| civic chariot the barouche. Similar ba-
rouches drove UP to the same steps for
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Franklin
Pierce, Willard Fillmore, James Bu-
chanan, Winfield Scott, Jefferson Da-
Wis and Abraham Lincoln.
In 1841, Poe edited Graham's Mag
azine, and went there regularly for re-
| freshment for news and 1t was there
during the Mary Rogers excitement
| that he caught the idea which he EN-.
| bodies in the tale of Marie Roget.
From these steps we cheered Gen.
| Scott when he went to Mexico, and
welcomed Gen. Worth's brigade when
it came dilapidated back as did the
regiment Of his son-the Thirteenth
| regulars William L. Worth, from San
tiago, the other day. From the same
steps Dickens looked out for the first
| time on New York, and saw the pigs
doing scavenger work in that square,
where the cable cars now make a mer-
| ry-gO-round.
There, too, Louis Kossuth babe fare
we'll to America, and the Prince of
| Wales and the Duke Alexis bowed to
the Democrats. It was there that Lord
Ashburton was welcomed, and there
was once heard the now forgotten
shibboleth of "54-40 or fight" There
Thackeray admired the pictures on
on the balcony playing Wilkins and
His Dinah.''
IT'S OLD REGISTERS.
The old registers which were pre-
served by the Stetsons had depths Of
| ScraWl6Q anu pldSu6Q put
down with all manner of hands reach
ing out of all manner of events, and
leaving an indelible trace of all kinds
of character. They were written by
| men who made wars, and made treaties,
and even made international love- who
wrote proclamations and epics and pre-
scrptions No such collection of auto
graphs can be found anywhere else. In
it are all the unarranged mysteries of
complex life, with the detective look
ing for the murderer of Nathan fixing
his alias by the side Of the foreign his
torian, looking for dinners and waiting
for committees. 1t is an inky spectrum
| Of American history. What resurgences
of forgotten circumstances, big enough
in their day, what upheavals of ghosts,
all operative once, in those long layers
Of interviewer sign manuals so hig-
| gledy-piggledy, but so surely fixed in
their succession by the date at the top!
To turn the pages must be like dig
ging in memorial sands, to find the rec
ords of drifts and storms, and the prints
Of gigantic feet amid the ripple marks.
! The names come in eVentful groups
Here they signify anti-rent riots, and
there the opening Of the Crystal Palace.
Here they indicate the Tweed ring and
there the return Of the cholera or the
yellow fever. Now they tell Of Walker
and his filibusters, and now of bred
Scott and Gen. Ben Butler and his
| staff. One page; If you interpret it,
49, n