But it happens that he has a sanctuary, a haven
after his own heart, where he can still draw a breath of relief, among
buildings small but full of age and dignity and with the look of homes
about them; on restful, crooked little streets where there remain
trees and grass-plots; in the old-time purlieus of Washington Square
and Greenwich Village!
The history of old New York reads like a romance. There is scarcely a
plot of ground below Fourteenth Street without its story and its
associations, its motley company of memories and spectres both good
and bad, its imperishably adventurous savour of the past, imprisoned
in the dry prose of registries and records. Let us just take a glance,
a bird's-eye view as it were, of that region which we now know as
Washington Square, as it was when the city of New York bought it for a
Potter's Field.
Perhaps you have tried to visualise old New York as hard as I have
tried. But I will wager that, like myself, you have been unable to
conjure up more than a nebulous and tenuous vision,--a modern New
York's shadow, the ghostly skeleton of our city as it appears today.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25