All Greenwich is beckoning to us, a few blocks away. We have
a new world to explore--the world below Fourteenth Street.
Fourteenth Street is the boundary line which marks the Greenwich
Village's utmost city limits, as it marked those of our
great-grandfathers. Like a wall it stands across the town separating
the new from the old uncompromisingly. Miss Euphemia Olcott, who has
been quoted here before, describes the evolution of Fourteenth Street
in the following interesting way:
"Fourteenth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues I have
seen with three sets of buildings--first shanties near Sixth
Avenue from the rear of which it was rumoured a bogy would
be likely to pursue and kidnap us.... These shanties were
followed by fine, brownstone residences.... Some of these,
however, I think came when there had ceased to be a
_village_. Later on came business into Fourteenth
Street...."
And today those never-to-be-sufficiently-pitied folk who live in the
Fifties and Sixties and Seventies think of Fourteenth Street as
downtown!
CHAPTER VII
_Restaurants, and the Magic Door_
I
What scenes in fiction cling more persistently in the memory
than those that deal with the satisfying of man's appetite?
Who ever heard of a dyspeptic hero? Are not your favourites
beyond the Magic Door all good trenchermen?
--ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE.
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