Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-04-28
THE RAILROADS DELIVER THE VISITOR AT THE BACKYARD

York, the stranger sees a marvellous and
| beautiful sght-overpowering in it's wild,
fantastic might; the skyscraper line, seem
ing TO storm heaven like torn mountains.
But what is at their bases, along the river
front that might be as beautiful as any in
the world?
Not a single stone quay, not a single
structure that could hold the eye for a
minute. He who approaches New York S
great scenic water front and looks for
magnificent water gates or lordly granite
piers and basins will look In vain.
What he sees is a long, unspeakably ugly
line of low, oblong sheds, made of wood or
corrugated iron, stretching in dreary row
from the Battery to the north as Tar as the
eye can reach.
The boat bumps into her slip and spews
her passengers and her trucks forth in one
beautiful mass.
New York at last! And the stranger S
ewes are ready for the spectacle of the
great city.
He is fooled again. Every railroad ferry
without exception lands the visitors In the
hack ward. Instead of debouching on fine
open squares, with all the transit faciilties
of really modern city, READY TO carry inc
thousands and tens Of thousands OF dally
arrivals to the hotels, business centers and
show nlaces. the stranger finds in front Of
him as tawdry and cheap street as can
be found In any port town in the civlllzed
world This Is West street-a muddy nope
less, generally 'low-down thofoughIare,
so vilely paved that every shower leaVes II
full of pools and rivulets. And the only
way to reach the rest of the town is to take
cab or walk through the mud Tor many
blocks or-to board horse car.
Two of the railroads 1t is true achieved
A great modern improvement few years
ago, after much cogitatlon ana arhld al
most fearful acclamations OF Joy from liie e
naopIe They built two covered bridges
across West street, so that their passengers
might at least get across dry shod and I'M
manned of trucks
These covered bridges are typicai OF west
street and in large general sense, OF New
York They are so intensely ugly that they
inspire one with the conviction that the
carpenters who erected them must have
studied for lifetime to produce such per-
fections of the unbeaunful.
THAT same uginess is rampant all along
the great river street Along all those miles
where the treasure ships of the world lie
roaring at their piers, where the golden
trafic of the globe pours in and out, there
is not single, solitary thing of beauty.
New York among Its other boasts loves to
call itself the modern Rome. If old Rome
had possessed such street as this she
would have poured her wealth at the feet
of her dreamers her artists and her sculp-
tors that they might raise portals and Pill
lars and statues in which would be wrought
all that rich fancy could express or the
wonder and mystery of the ships and the
glory of the sea
New York has lined her West street on
each side with magnified boxes of wood and
iron, smeared with paint-temples sacred to
the inspiring business of handling and ship
ping bales and cases
Far From Anywhere.
Broadway and the business centers of the
city are from a quarter mile to a half mile
and more away from all the railroad terni-
nails The great hotels OF the uptown sec
ton are more than two miles away, and
there is not single fine driveway leading