In one
man's lifetime, New York has grown from a small town just out of its
Colonial swaddling clothes to the greatest city in the world. These
reminiscences, then, are but memories of yesterday or the day before.
We do not have to take them from history books but from the diaries of
men and women who are still wide-eyed with wonder at the changes which
have come to their city!
"The town was filled with beautiful trees," says one man (who
remembers Commodore Vanderbilt, with the splendid horses, the fine
manner and the unexampled profane eloquence), "but the pavements were
very dirty. Places like St. John's Park and Abingdon Square were quiet
and sweet and secluded. Where West Fourth Street and West Eleventh
Street met it was so still you could almost hear the grass grow
between the cobblestones! Everything near the Square was extremely
exclusive and fashionable. Washington and Waverly places were very
aristocratic indeed."
Waverly Place, by the bye, got its name through a petition of select
booklovers who lived thereabouts and adored Sir.
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