The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1907-01-03

= Yet absolutely the only thing in which she
is truly modern and remarkable is her unique
and unequaled collection of sky-scrapers.
New York's system of urban and interurban trans
portation is VIGOROUSLY wretched
Her water supply is always the verge of being
inadequate for living purposes, and she actually has
not enough water to fight really big fire in the great
business districts She knows it and has known it
for many years. but she shuts her eyes and pes
other cities when they have big fire.
Miles of her busiest streets still paved with cobbe-
stones Where they have Belgian blocks the paving
usually is laid badly that the business men work
all day in an ncessant Grazing hell of noise.
Yet your real New Yorker loves to brag about his
town In other places and his favorite remark made in
his oudes voice. is that he would rather be lamp
post the Bowery than anybody or anything, how
ever glorious, in any other city, however beautiful
The stranger hurries to this marvellous town that
fills its citizens with such super Roman pride. Great
railroad lines carry him across continent hurrying
him breathessy, spending thousands OF dollars pre-
vent delay of even minutes. Everything is haste,
haste haste Thus they hurl him at last to the end of
the road-and that end is the west bank of great
river. Vain modern, " wonderful New York is on
the other side.
The stranger gets out of his train hustles through
throng of steaming horses and pounding trucks and
wagons and finds himself aboard pot eied ferry
boat In few minutes it is filled with people, who
like himself have been snapped across country by
giant locomotives
vi COURSE he ralroad Terry darts across the river at
top speed the instant the last railroad passenger is
aboard. Oh, does it? Not in New York-the world
metropolis-as she loves to call herself
In the middle of each squat ferry is space for
wagons. The boat waits patiently while the vehicles
lumber aboard, and if horse baks or mammoth
truck gets stalled, the ferry waits as long as her
captain dares.
Although the real city sits island and although
she has not a single bridge the Hudson River
and thus depends humbly ferry boats, she has not
single ferry in all her domain that is built and run
exclusively for passengers Every boat carries vehicles
in the center, and long after the people have pushed
and damned aboard the slow throng of wheeled vehicles
crawls on
Each ferryboat smells to high heaven like barn
yard. Every day wicked mule half sarved horse
holds up one ship-oads of people for periods
ranging from minutes to half an hour. But it never
has struck New York the Great that might be good
idea to carry wheeled traffic separate ferries.
When the ferryboat approaches New York, the
stranger sees marvellous and beautiful sght-over
powering in its wild, fantastic might the skyscrapcr
line 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 single stone quay not single structure that
could hold the eye for minute. He who approaches
New Works great scenic water front and looks for
magnificent water gates lordy granite piers and
basins will look in vain
What he is long, unspcakably ugly line of
low, oblong Sheds made of wood 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.
They driving tunnels under the rivers now, and
they speak of them with bated breath as new instances
of the incredible enterprise and gigantic daring of the
CITY, They should have been driven twenty years ago.