The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-01-03

q. So Lucifer the Fallen might have hung a city OF light
between earth and sky in internal defiance; so Dore
might have thrown on paper a wild image OF his daring
brain; so calculating, planning engineers, with girders
and beams and columns of Bessemer, massed it in solid
reality-the city of skyscrapers, New York;
All day the machines clamOr in its sunken ways OF
streets and throb in the deepest pits OF those man-made
mits and back again, between the echOng walls, through
every sculptured gate; all day the Widowed precipices
stand massive and cold, and sharply jutting into the
upper air, the very symbol of lmmovable power.
But scarcely has the sun swung below that torn sky
line, while the rolling waters CLEAN as polished steel,
while still the aspiring towers seem to storm the very
sunset, before a change, indehnable, wonderful, comes
over the mighty pile.
1t is the nightly miracle of New York-nightly, and
yet each night as far aloof in its splendor as if it were
a raPt dream, never known before and never to be again
The colossal change as If the clear, darkenIng
air had transmitted them at a touch into something
OF its own fabric; the vast stiff masses, that but now
shouldered each other in uncOmDromising rigidity, melt
into one mighty sweep of heights, that has become still
more vast, but is stiff and rigid no more. Angles and
straight lines dissolve. The outlines of trusses and
beams and granite become nebulous; the very skylights
turn to flame; and every chimney Is a triumphal tower.
Ever the dusk floods more strongly. Deep, deep be
low the peaks that still are tipped with radiance, the
streets are darkened and every inch of them is flooded
by the army, making its last march of the day. The
wide waters that race around the city do not fill their
beds more completely than these throngs hl the mar
row trails with their black multitudes. The very tide
in its appointed flow is not more steady and irresistible.
And down upon the moving mass, silent, splendid, IN
different as the stars themselves, look the skyscrapers,
their lighted wonder hanging in mid-air, as if set over
the very gulf OF night.
From every face Of those sheer cliffs streams radi
ance. From every crevice flashes white fire. Each sum
NIT is a pinnacle of light, each gable is a flaming eye,
and every black hole of half a million windows is a start
Look at it for the first time or for the tenth. Look at
1t through a score of these tremendous dusks or a hun
dred, and still the mind cannot conceive that the won
der IS only a consequence of a cOmmunitys well-order-
ed daily life: each NIGHT the spectacle 1pbuilds itself
again, as if it could be nothing except a wild revel OF
men maddened with JOY and power-such a revel OF
lights as might be set on high by a cOnquering army,
drunken with victory and lust.
But what an army it would need to be! Titans them
selves could not set that stupendous array that IS set
nightly in downtown New York. Lights shine from
twenty-five miles of fronts east and west, from six
teen miles of precipices north and south, with barely a
mans length between them save where the open streets