The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-09-25
In New York
By PAUL HARRISON

New York--All around the town: "A name that gives me the fidgets is Excellent- -Goody Shoppet. For an apt title, like the Grabb cafeteria !. And, by the way. named Finder, Gasser and Fuller.
 Maybe it's time we stopped ex- claiming over the tall buildings in New York. Height isn't everything look at Primo Camera; look at Napoleon. There are lots of build ings which are structurally remark able without being cloud-touchers. Most of them, for example. are built far down into the islands fa- nous bedrock. The Empire State building has two stories below on South street, the New United States assay office has five under ground foors-all below water lev ell and capable of being flooded in case an enemy ever tries to seize the gold stored there.
 Note to MT Hoover: On East Ninety-ninth street, grass Is grow ing between the cobblestones.
 Rural Gotham
 During the rush hours Fifth ave- nue buses move so slowly that it's possible to leap from one, go into a restaurant, down cocktail, and catch the same bus at the next cor ner They're going to build a 5-and-10 cent store on the site of the fabulous old Wendell house.. New York city has more than goo farms-all truck farms, of course, onA oy,nolI h,,f fpnp, nd Anr,clv ua1Iy- able Next door to a dog-and- cat hospital on Sixth avenue is a taxidermists shop. Just in case any, thing goes wrong
 On Central Park South is a new skyscraper apartment building which recently was sold for $36 it, though, and the new owners are having headaches {. Swankiest restaurant on the Bowery these days is Cooks. It's the rendezvous of all the best panhandlers and other transient businessmen. Whis- key, 10 cents; free lunch The depression spoiled plans for restor- ing many an historic building. For instance, the Washington Irving home, on Seventeenth street and Irving place, has been sold by the patriotic society that owned it, and
 now contains a basement restaur- ant and private apartments up- stairs.
 Famous "Firsts"
 History department: The first slave in New York was named San Francisco The first elected
 mayor was hanged by the British /. The first suggestion that New oYrk city should secede from the
 union was made by Fernando Wood, mayor when the Civil war began. He tried to make the town
 an independent republic In the first real estate boom the site
 of the Brooklyn navy yard was sold
 The first liquor law. prohibiting
 sale to bonded servants. brought
 about the opening of the first show was held in the Wall street slave market The first street lights were candles placed in the
 windows of every seventh house. .. The first show was one-man cir- | GUS: he stood on the back of gall
 loping horse and played French
 horn The frst detectives were
 called shadows:
 Good, Clean Fun
 The first athletic games were
 held on what is now called Bowl l ing Green, the small triangle at the extreme lower end of Broadway.
 Some leading citizens leased the plot from the city for an annual
 rental of one pepper-corn, which is
 a small berry from a pepper bush. :. On the city's first park they
 laid out courses for the game of
 bowls, which was played on the
 turf andswas not much like mod
 ern bowling.
 When the British moved in they grabbed Bowling Green as a site for the city's first statue. A pretty good precedent it was too, for the artistic atrocities which have been | installed around town in later years. This one was made of lead and had been modelled from a statue of Marcus Aurelius-but
 was labeled "King George III". In l1776 American patriots hauled it down and melted it into exactly 32,O84 bullets. A wag Of the day l remarked that "His Majesty's statue was to be returned to His Majesty's troops with the compli-
 ments of the brave men of New York"