The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-01-03

The Nightly Miracle of
Ne1O York, When the City
of Skyscrapers Sets $780,
900 Lights Abldze on
the Black Night.
WM1z HEY built to cent per cent; they
u : !: : !: !:
AINIoYA upreared city of stars
JS%UEDNWh Il Steel and stone it stands by day,
" NM N conceived by the cool brain ofI
MCMS/A finance, raised by beating engines,
@SAANS1 and tied together with iron rvets;
SgST a thing of sorcery it hangs by night,
flung against black heaven
So Lucfer the Fallen might have hung city of light
between earth and sky in internal defiance; Dore
might have thrown on paper wild image OF his daring
brain; SO calculating planning engineers, with girders
and beams and columns of Bessemer, massed in solid
reality-the city of skyscrapers, New York!
All day the machines camor in its sunken ways OF
streets and throb the deepest pits of those manmade
heights; all day the armies stream from bases to sum
mts and back again. between the echong walls through
every Alpured gate all day the windowed precp1ces
stand massive and cold, and sharply utting into the
upper air, the very symbol of immovable power
But scarcely has the swung below that torn sky
line, while the rolling waters geam as polished STEEL
while still the aspiring towers to storm the very
sunset before change, ndefnable, wonderful, comes
It is the nightly miracle of New York-nghtly, and
vet each night far aloof Splendor IT 1t were
rapt dream never known before and to be again.
The colossii change if the clear darkenng
air had transmitted them at touch into something
of its own fabric; the stiff Masses that but now
srOudered each other uncOmpromsng r1g1d1ty melt
into mighty sweep of heights that has become still
more vast but is stiff and rigid Angles and
straight lines dissolve The outlines of trusses and
beam and granite become nebulous; the very skyighs
turn ) flame; and every chimney is triumphal tower
Ever the dusk floods more strongly. Deep, deep be
low the peaks that still tipped with radiance, the
streets darkened and every inch of them is Hooded
by the army, making its last march OF the day lhe
wide that around the city do not I'LL their
beds completely than these throngs hl the mar
row trails with their black muttudes. The very tide
in its appointed flow not steady and irresistible
And down upon the moving silent, splendid, in
different the themselves look the skyscrapers,
their lighted wonder hanging in md-ar if set over
the very gulf of night
From every face of those sheer cliffs streams radi
ance From every crevce flashes white fire Each sum-
nit is pinnacle of light, each gable is flaming eye
and black hole of half million windows start
Look at it for the first time for the tenth. Look at
it through score of these tremendous dusks hun
dred and still the mind conceive that the won
der is only equence of communtys well-order
again. as if it could be nothing except wild revel of
maddened with JOY and power-such revel of
lights might be set on high by conquering army
drunken with victory and lust
But what army it would need to be! I1tans them
selves could not set that tupendous that IS set
nightly in downtown New York. Lights shine from
twenty-five miles of fronts east and west from SIX
miles of precipces north and SOUTH with barely
mans length between them where the streets