The Coolidge examiner., 1932-06-10


Beneath one building are turn
tables for busses from railway ter
minals. Tunnels lead from 1t in
many directions Through them thou
sands Of its tenants arrive each
morning after many miles of un-
derground travel, and through them
one may wander, as in the streets
of subterranean city. In this hu-
man prairie dog town are more than
80 places to eat, and stores sell
ing everything from Office supplies
and lingerie to thermos bottles, sun
ray lamps, cigars, books and haber-
dashery. From these commercial
catacombs one may ride all the
way out to Long Island without
ever coming into the open air.
Speed in New Construction.
But New York's greatness is not
in structure alone. 1t lies also in
the speed at which life moves and
new buildings displace the old. This
swift transition stuns even the
blase New Yorker.
Troy was wrecked and rebuilt
nine times. Here history repeats.
Compare the skyline now with pic
lures of the same region made only
ten years ago. You will see that
palatial homes have been demol-
ished and whole residence districts
swept away to clear sites for high
er buildings. You see buildings
like the famous Waldorf-Astoria
turn to junk, and hard of the heels
of its wreck come giants like the
amazing Empire State building.
To widen streets, houses are
sliced off in front as with giant
shears. Four hundred buildings
wrecked to extend a subway spur;
trainlOads of dirt hauled to the
river front and dumped in to make
a park below Riverside drive. In
cyclonic devastation, whole neigh
borhoods are razed for new bridge
approaches.
Swiftly the old landmarks fade.
Only Grants tomb and similar OBJ
jects of sentiment seem safe. If
even the Sphinx stood on Fifth ave-
nue., somebody would probably want
to wreck it to build a skyscraper!
Here is no space for static things.
BY many cuts and running it fast,
imagine this picture shown in, say,
two or three days. You would see
old buildings crumbling down and
new skyscrapers Fastening heaven
ward, pushing up like giant mush-
rooms. 1t would be uncomfortable.
Compared with medieval cities,
think how fast New York grows. To
day, in New York, bricklayers may
run walls UP two stories in day. A
building of 80 floors is begun and
finished in about the same time it
used to take Sioux to kill a buff
falo and tan his hide for a wigwam.
Between crowds and skyscrapers
is reciprocal affinity. Each Is the
CduSc Vi liG OlHCls AulO LhoI pau
of Manhattan below Fifty ninth
street there comes to work every
morning an army of people equal to
the population of Paris or Chicago.
No other spot on earth Is so crowd
ed with men and houses.
On, Under and Over Manhattan.
Thus men crowd Manhattan rock.
Not only that. They bore holes in
it, dig tunnels under rivers, and
push bridges over it, so that still
more men may reach it hastily. The
passengers on it's transport lines
each year outnumber all the people
in the world. Those passing through
Times Square subway station alone
last year equaled in number half
the inhabitants of the western hemi-
sphere.
So jammed is Fifth avenue now
that in busy hours a man walking
goes faster than a bus. In many
streets motors average less than four
miles an hour.
New York's fight to keep men and
things in motion knows no lull. It
has built a great elevated express
highway, novel thOrOughfare many
feet above the street. 1t runs along
the Hudson river water front from
Canal street north to Seventy-sec-
Ond.
Think what this means to crowd
ed New York! A broad, free path
of two 30-fOOt rOadways, with no
grade crossings, able to carry from
5000 to 1900 motor cars an hour, at
a speed of 80 miles-right over all
congestion.
Then there's the new tunnel, to
run under tidewater from Brooklyn
out to Staten island. 1t will take
two to four years to bore this bold