Peculiarities of American Cities

On January eighth, 1815, New Orleans was successfully defended against the British by General Jackson, who threw up a strong line of defences around the city, protected by batteries, and who, with a force of scarcely six thousand men, defeated fifteen thousand British, under Sir Edward Packenham, the enemy sustaining a loss of seven hundred killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five hundred taken prisoners, while the American loss was but seven men killed and six wounded. The old battle field is still retained as a historic spot. It is four and one-half miles south of Canal street, washed by the waters of the Mississippi, and extends backward about a mile, to the cedar swamps. A marble monument, seventy feet in height, and yet unfinished, commemorative of the victory, overlooks the ground. In the southwest corner of the field is a national cemetery.

The old city bears the impress of the two nations to which it at different times belonged. Many of the streets still retain the old French and Spanish names, as, for instance, Tchapitoulas, Baronne, Perdido, Toulouse, Bourbon and Burgundy streets. There are still, here and there, the old houses, sandwiched in between those of a later generation – quaint, dilapidated, and picturesque. Sometimes they are rickety, wooden structures, with overhanging porticoes, and with windows and doors all out of perpendicular, and ready to crumble to ruin with age. Others are massive stone or brick structures, with great arched doorways, and paved floors, worn by the feet of many generations, dilapidated and heavy, and possessing no beauty save that which is lent them by time.

The city is made up of strange compounds, which even yet, after the lapse of more than three-quarters of a century since it became an American city, do not perfectly assimilate. Spanish, French, Italians, Mexicans and Indians, Creoles, West Indians, Negroes and Mulattoes of every shade, from shiny black to a faint creamy hue, Southerners who have forgotten their foreign blood, Northerners, Westerners, Germans, Irish and Scandinavians, all come together here, and jostle one another in the busy pursuits of life. The levee at New Orleans represents all spoken languages; and the popular levee clerk must have a knowledge of multitudinous tongues, which would have secured him a high and authoritative position at Babel. The Romish devotee, the mild-faced "sister," in her ugly black habiliments and picturesque head-gear, the disciple of Confucius, the descendant of the New England Puritan, the dusky savage, who still looks to the Great Spirit as the giver of all life and light, the modern skeptic, and the black devotee of Voodoo, all meet and pass and repass each other. All nationalities, all religions, all civilizations, meet and mingle to make up this city, which, upholding the cross to indicate its religion, still, in its municipal character, accepts the Mohammedan symbol of the crescent. Added to the throng which comes and goes upon the levee, merchants, clerks, hotel runners, hackmen, stevedores, and river men of all grades, keep up a general motion and excitement, while piled upon the platforms which serve as a connecting link between the water-craft and the shore, are packages of merchandise in every conceivable shape, cotton bales seeming to be most numerous.

Along the river front are congregated hundreds of steamers, and thousands of nondescript boats, among them numerous barges and flat-boats, thickly interspersed with ships of the largest size, from whose masts float the colors of every nation in the civilized world. New Orleans is emphatically a commercial town, depending in only a small degree, for her success, upon manufactures.

New Orleans is not a handsome city, architecturally speaking, though it has a number of fine buildings. Its situation is such that it could never become imposing, under the most favorable circumstances. The Custom House, a magnificent structure, built of Quincy granite, is, next to the Capitol at Washington, the largest building in the United States. It occupies an entire square, its main front being on Canal street, the broadest and handsomest thoroughfare in the city. The Post Office occupies its basement, and is one of the most commodious in the country. The State House is located on St. Louis street, between Royal and Chartres streets, and was known, until 1874, as the St. Louis Hotel. The old dining hall is one of the most beautiful rooms in the country, and the great inner circle of the dome is richly frescoed, with allegorical scenes and busts of eminent Americans. The United States Branch Mint, at the corner of Esplanade and Decatur streets, is an imposing building, in the Ionian style. The City Hall, at the intersection of St. Charles and Lafayette streets, is the most artistic of the public buildings of the city. It is of white marble, in the Ionic style, with a wide and high flight of granite steps, leading to a beautiful portico. The old Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Louis is the most interesting church edifice in New Orleans. It stands in Chartres street, on the east side of Jackson Square. The foundations were laid in 1793, and the building completed in 1794, by Don Andre Almonaster, perpetual regidor of the province. It was altered and enlarged in 1850. The paintings in the roof of the building are by Canova and Rossi. The old Ursuline Convent, in Conde street, a quaint and venerable building, erected in 1787, during the reign of Carlos III, by Don Andre Almonaster, is one of the most interesting relics of the early Church history of New Orleans. It is now occupied as a residence by the Bishop.

The Charity Hospital, on Common street, was founded in 1784, has stood on its present site since 1832, and is one of the most famous institutions of the kind in the country. Roman Catholic churches, schools, hospitals and asylums abound, some of them dating back for nearly or quite a century.

The St. Charles Hotel is one of the institutions of New Orleans, and one of the largest and finest hotels in the United States. It occupies half a square, and is bounded by St. Charles, Gravior and Common streets. The city has a French opera house, an academy of music, and several theatres and halls. Like those of St. Louis, its inhabitants are passionately fond of gayety, and places of amusement are well patronized. Sunday, as in all Catholic cities, is devoted to recreation, and the inhabitants, in their holiday garments, give themselves up to enjoyment. Theatres, concert rooms and beer gardens are filled with pleasure-seekers.

Canal street, the main business thoroughfare and promenade of New Orleans, is nearly two hundred feet wide, and has a grass plot twenty-five feet wide, in the centre, bordered on each side by trees. Claiborne, Rampart, St. Charles and Esplanade streets are similarly embellished. They all contain many fine stores and handsome residences. Royal, Rampart and Esplanade streets are the principal promenades of the French quarter. The favorite drives are out the Shell Road to Lake Pontchartrain, and out a similar road to Carrollton. The lake is about five miles north of the city, forty miles long and twenty-four wide, and is famous for its fish and game. Cypress swamps, the trees covered with the long, gray Spanish moss peculiar to the latitude, lie between the lake and the city, and render the drive in that direction an interesting one.

Carrollton, in the north suburbs, has many fine public gardens and private residences. On the opposite shore of the river is Algiers, where there are extensive dry docks and ship-yards. A little further up the river, on the same side, is Gretna, where, during Spanish rule, lay moored two large floating English warehouses, fitted up with counters and shelves, and stocked with assorted merchandise.

New Orleans has a few small, tastefully laid out squares, among which are Jackson, Lafayette, Douglass, Annunciation and Tivoli Circle. The City Park, near the northeast boundary, contains one hundred and fifty acres, which are tastefully laid out, but which is little frequented. Jackson Square has a historic interest, it having been the old Place d'Armes of colonial times. It was here that Ulloa landed in that ill-omened thunder storm, and here that public meetings were held and the colony's small armies gathered together. The inclosure, though small, is adorned with beautiful trees and shrubbery, and shell-strewn paths, and in the centre stands Mills' equestrian statue of General Jackson.

The city is not without other objects of historic interest. During the Indian wars barracks arose on either side of the Place d'Armes, and in 1758 other barracks were added, a part of whose ruin still stands, in the neighborhood of Barracks street. Then there is the battle field, already referred to, and many buildings belonging to a past century, some of which have distinctive historic associations. Near Jackson Square is the site of the oldest Capuchin Monastery in the United States. Sailing down the Mississippi, the voyager will reach a portion of the stream which flows almost directly south. Here is a point in the river which bears the name, to this day, of the English Turn. Up the mouth of the Mississippi sailed one day, in the seventeenth century, a proud English vessel, bent on exploration and acquisition of territory to England. Threading for a hundred miles the comparatively direct course of the stream, it had then made two abrupt right-angled turns, when, coming around a third point, in advance of it, it saw a French ship, armed and equipped, and bearing down stream under full sail. The English ship was given to understand that the Mississippi was "no thoroughfare" for boats of its nationality, and commanded to turn and retrace its course, which it reluctantly, but no less surely did. Hence the name "English Turn."

The Cemeteries of New Orleans are most peculiar in their arrangement and modes of interment. The ground is filled with water up to within two or three feet of the surface, and the tombs are all above ground. A great majority of them are also placed one above another. Each "oven," as it is called, is just large enough to admit a coffin, and is hermetically sealed when the funeral rites are over. A marble tablet is usually placed upon the brick opening. Some of the structures are, however, costly and beautiful, being made of marble, granite or iron. There are thirty-three cemeteries in and near the city, and of these the Cypress Grove and Greenwood are best worth visiting.

The most picturesque and characteristic feature of New Orleans is the French Market, on the Levee, near Jackson Square. The gathering begins at break of day on week-days and a little later on Sunday morning, and comprises people of every nationality represented in the city. French is the prevailing language, but it will be heard in every variety, from the pure Parisian to the childish jargon of the negroes.

Mardi-Gras, or Shrove Tuesday, is observed in New Orleans by peculiar rites and ceremonies. Rex, King of the Carnival, takes possession of the city, and passes through the streets, accompanied by a large retinue, his staff and courtiers robed in Oriental splendor. The city gives itself up to mirth and gayety, with an abandon only paralleled by that witnessed in Italy on the same occasion; and the day is concluded by receptions, tableaux and balls.

New Orleans boasts a semi-tropical climate, being situated in latitude 29° 58´ north. The summers are oppressively hot, but the winters are mild and pleasant, with just sufficient frost to kill any germs of disease engendered by her unhealthful situation. Semi-tropical fruits, such as the orange, banana, fig and pine-apple, grow readily in her gardens, where are also cultivated many of the productions of the temperate zone. The neighboring country is clothed with a rich and luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation, and forests of perennial green, in which the cypress and live-oak predominate.

New Orleans had a population, in 1820, of 27,000. In 1850 it had increased to 116,375, and in 1860 to 168,675. In common with other cities of the South, New Orleans suffered in her business interests severely during the war of the Rebellion. Louisiana having seceded from the Union in 1861, New Orleans was closely blockaded by the Federal fleet, and on April twenty-fourth, 1862, the defences near the mouth of the river were forced by Commodore Farragut, in command of an expedition of gunboats. On the surrender of the city General B. F. Butler was appointed its military Governor, and held possession of it until the close of the war. Its commerce was entirely destroyed during that period, its business interests crushed, and many of its leading men impoverished, and, in addition, the State was disturbed by intestine troubles, which kept affairs in an unsettled condition. New Orleans did not rally as quickly as St. Louis from the effects of the war. Nevertheless, in 1870 its population had increased to 191,418, and in 1874 the value of its exports, including rice, flour, pork, tobacco, sugar, etc., but excepting cotton, were estimated at $93,715,710. Its imports the same year were valued at more than $14,000,000. It is the chief cotton mart of the world, and its wharves are lined with ships which bear this commodity to every quarter of the globe. In the amount and value of its exports, it ranks second only to New York, though its imports are not in the same proportion, which always speaks well for the business prosperity of a city. The census of 1880 gave it a population of 216,140, showing that its progress still continues. No longer cursed by the presence of the "peculiar institution," its former slave marts turned into commercial depots or abolished altogether, and its population numbering to a greater degree every year the industrious class, New Orleans will do more in the future than maintain her present prosperity; she will build up new industries, and originate new schemes of advancement; so that she is certain to continue her present supremacy over her sister cities in the South.

CHAPTER XXI.

NEW YORK

Early History of New York. – During the Revolution. – Evacuation Day. – Bowling Green. – Wall Street. – Stock Exchange. – Jacob Little. – Daniel Drew. – Jay Cooke. – Rufus Hatch. – The Vanderbilts. – Jay Gould. – Trinity Church. – John Jacob Astor. – Post-Office. – City Hall and Court House. – James Gordon Bennett. – Printing House Square. – Horace Greeley. – Broadway. – Union Square. – Washington Square. – Fifth Avenue. – Madison Square. – Cathedral. – Murray Hill. – Second Avenue. – Booth's Theatre and Grand Opera House. – The Bowery. – Peter Cooper. – Fourth Avenue. – Park Avenue. – Five Points and its Vicinity. – Chinese Quarter. – Tombs. – Central Park. – Water Front. – Blackwell's Island. – Hell Gate. – Suspension Bridge. – Opening Day. – Tragedy of Decoration Day. – New York of the Present and Future.

Less than three hundred years ago the narrow strip of territory now occupied by what its wide-awake and self-asserting citizens delight to term "The Metropolis of the New World," was a broken and rugged wilderness, which the foot of white man had never trod, not, at least, within the memory of its then oldest inhabitants, a few half-naked savages of the Manhattan tribe, from whom the island derives its name of Manhattan. In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English navigator in the service of the Dutch East India Company, landed near the present site of the Battery, securing, by right of discovery, the territory to the States of the Netherlands. Dutch traders soon followed, and in 1614 a small fort and four houses were erected in the neighborhood of what is now Bowling Green. The infant metropolis was christened New Amsterdam, and Peter Minuits sent out, in 1626, as its first Governor. He purchased the island from its native owners, for goods, about twenty-four dollars in value. Minuits was recalled in 1631, his successors being Wonter Von Twiller, 1633; William Krift, 1638; and Peter Stuyvesant, 1647. In 1644 a fence was built nearly along the line of what is now Wall street, and in 1653 palisades and breastworks, protected by a ditch, were added along this line. These palisades remained in existence until near the beginning of the present century.

Peter Stuyvesant was the last of the Dutch Governors. In 1664 Charles II, of England, gave the territory to his brother James, Duke of York, and an expedition was sent out under the command of Colonel Richard Nicholls, to take possession of it. The fort was easily captured, and the name of the settlement changed to New York. In 1673 the town was recaptured by the Dutch, who again changed its name to New Orange; but the following year it was restored to the English by treaty.

In 1689 Jacob Leister instituted an insurrection against the unpopular administration of Nicholls, which he easily overthrew, and strengthened the fort by a battery of six guns outside its walls. This was the origin of the "Battery." In 1691 he was arrested and convicted on a charge of treason and murder, condemned to death, and executed.

Negro slavery was introduced into New York at an early period, and in the year 1741 the alleged discovery of a plot of the slaves to burn the city and murder the whites resulted in twenty negroes being hanged, a lesser number being burned at the stake, and seventy-five being transported.

From the very first the mass of citizens of New York took an active part in the struggle for independence. In 1765 the "Sons of Liberty" were organized to resist the Stamp Act; in 1770 a meeting of three thousand citizens resolved not to submit to this oppression; and in 1773 a Vigilance Committee was formed to resist the landing of the tea, by whom, in the following year, a tea-laden vessel was sent back to England, while eighteen chests of tea were thrown overboard from another. On the eighteenth of September, 1776, as a result of the disastrous defeat of the American troops, under General Washington, on Long Island, New York fell into the hands of the British, who held it until the twenty-sixth of November, 1783, when they evacuated it. The day is still annually celebrated, under the name of "Evacuation Day."

From 1784 to 1797 New York was the Capital of the State, and from 1785 to 1790 the seat of government of the United States. The adoption of the National Constitution was celebrated in grand style in 1788; and on April thirtieth, 1789, Washington was inaugurated at the City Hall, as the first President of the United States.

In 1791 the city was visited by yellow fever. In 1795 and 1798 it reappeared, with added violence, over two thousand persons falling victims to it during the latter year. It made visits at intervals until 1805, after which it did not reappear until 1819. It came again in 1822 and 1823, occasioning considerable alarm, but since then its visits in an epidemic form have ceased.

In 1820 the surveying and laying out of Manhattan Island north of Houston street, after ten years of labor, was completed. The opening of the Erie Canal, in 1825, gave the city a fresh impetus on the road to prosperity. The first steam ferry between New York and Jersey City was started in 1812. In 1825 the city was first lighted by gas; while the great Croton Aqueduct, through which it receives its immense water supply, was not completed until 1842.

In December, 1835, the most disastrous fire ever known in the city destroyed over $18,000,000 worth of property. In July, 1845, a second conflagration consumed property to the amount of $5,000,000. Both these great fires were in the very heart of the business portion of the city.

In July, 1853, an industrial exhibition was opened, with striking ceremonies, in a so-called Crystal Palace, on Reservoir Square. This building, in the form of a Greek cross, was made almost wholly of iron and glass, being three hundred and sixty-five feet in length each way, with a dome one hundred and twenty-three feet high. The flooring covered nearly six acres of ground. This structure was destroyed by fire in 1858.

New York has been the scene of several sanguinary riots within the past half century. In 1849, when Macready, the English tragedian, attempted to play a second engagement at the Astor Place Opera House, the friends of Forrest attacked the building, resulting in calling out of the military, the killing of thirty-two persons, and wounding of thirty-six others. In July, 1863, a mob, made up of the poorer classes of the population, rose in fierce opposition to the draft rendered necessary by the requisition for troops by the general government. For several days this mob was in practical possession of the city, and it was dispersed only by a free use of military force. This mob resulted in the death of one thousand persons, and the destruction of $1,500,000 worth of property. In 1871 a collision occurred between a procession of Irish Orangemen, who were commemorating the Battle of the Boyne, and their Catholic fellow-countrymen, during which sixty-two persons lost their lives.

The summer of 1871 was made memorable by the discovery that the most stupendous frauds upon the public treasury had been carried on for several years, by certain city officials, some of whom had been extraordinarily popular. A mass meeting, called at Cooper Institute on the fourth of September, appointed a committee of seventy-six to take measures for securing better government for the city. The elections in November following resulted in a complete sweeping out of the obnoxious officials, many of whom were subsequently prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned, or obliged to fly the country.

New York City, the greater portion of which lies on Manhattan Island, is situated at the mouth of the Hudson River, some eighteen miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Its extreme length north from the Battery is sixteen miles, while the average breadth of the island is one and three-fifths of a mile. The city has an area of about 27,000 acres, of which 14,000 are on Manhattan Island, and about 12,000 on the main land; while the remainder is in the East River and the Bay, and includes Ward's, Blackwell's, Randall's, Governor's Ellis', and Bedloe's Islands. It is bounded on the north by the town of Yonkers; on the east by the Bronx and East Rivers; on the south by the Bay; and on the west by the Hudson River. Manhattan Island is separated on the north, from the main land, by Spuyten Duyvel Creek and Harlem River, both names recalling the Dutch origin of the city.

The more ancient portion of New York, from Fourteenth street to the Battery, is laid out somewhat irregularly. As far north as Central Park, five miles from the Battery, it is quite compactly built. Various localities in the more northern and less densely built-up part of the island are known by different names; as Yorkville, near Eighty-sixth street; and Harlem, in the vicinity of One-hundred-and-twenty-fifth street, on the eastern side; and Bloomingdale and Manhattanville, opposite them, on the western. North of Manhattanville, near One-hundred-and-fiftieth street, is Carmansville, and a mile and a half further north are Washington Heights; while Inwood lies at the extreme northwestern point of the island. All these are places of interest, and offer numerous attractions to the visitor.

That part of New York lying on the mainland, comprising the twenty-third and twenty-fourth wards, was added to it in 1874, and contains many thriving towns and villages. Prominent among them is Morrisania, with avenues running north and south, and streets crossing them at right angles, and numbered in continuation of those of Manhattan Island. Numerous other towns, with a host of beautiful country residences, are scattered over the high and rolling land of which this late addition to the area of the city is composed; but with the exception of Morrisania it has not yet been regularly laid out for building purposes. The whole country in this section of the city, with a romantic natural beauty, to which wealth and artistic taste have largely contributed, is a perfect paradise of picturesqueness.

The foreigner who visits New York usually approaches it from the lower bay, through the "Narrows," a strait lying between Staten Island on the left and Long Island on the right. From the heights of the former, a beautiful island, rising green and bold from the water's edge, frown the massive battlements of Fort Wadsworth and Fort Tompkins; while on the latter is Fort Hamilton; and in the midst of the water, gloomy and barren, is Fort Lafayette, famous as a political prison during the late war. New York Bay is one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, in the world. Staten Island rises abruptly on one shore, with hills and valleys, green fields and trees, villages and villas; and on the other shore are the wood-crowned bluffs of Long Island. Within the bay Ellis' Island is near the Jersey shore; Bedloe's Island is not far from its centre, and is the selected site of the colossal statue of Liberty which France has presented to New York; while Governor's Island, the largest of the three, lies to the right, between New York and Brooklyn. Each island is fortified, the latter containing Castle William and old Fort Columbus.