Reflections on a City

This was written in November of 1995.


Working, as I am, at the lower end of Manhattan, where some vestiges of the city's previous centuries still remain amidst the crowded bustle and glitter of the ultramodern, I can't help but be reminded on a daily basis of the wealth of history to be found as I walk the unnumbered (and sometimes unnamed) streets and lanes of this most quintessentially American of cities. These walks to places still paved with cobblestone, along with views of the harbor which show evidence of a still active maritime traffic, evoke faint echoes of the former character of this metropolis, this city of steel towers whose pulse is measured in the flow of megabytes, but which has not forgotten that it was for many years America's, and for a time even the world's, greatest seaport.

To further enhance the pleasures of my excursions through the streets of time, I've picked up a copy of Richard McKay's South Street: A Maritime History of New York. The book was originally published in 1934, and reprinted in 1969 to commemorate the restoration of South Street Seaport. I'm quite enjoying reading this volume, because it relates history the way I like to narrate things myself: in a rambling fashion, progressing steadily towards a given point, but allowing much room along the way for digressions, free association and interesting anecdotes. Among the more memorable tangential comments in the book is a paragraph regarding State Street, the social center of the city in the mercantile days of the 1820's. This reflection on the changing face of New York rings as true in 1995 as it did in 1934, or indeed at any point in this city's picturesque history.

There is not a city in the world that within sixty years has so changed in its general appearance, in the aspect of particular neighborhoods, and in the character of its various quarters; and of these changes, twenty or thirty years have seen some of the most deplorable and obliterative. Cities before this have been destroyed, or wrecked by war, by decay, or by convulsions of nature; and been rebuilt, but old New York has been swept out of existence by the great tidal wave of its own material prosperity. Other cities are changed chiefly by additions. New York not only adds to itself, but incessantly rends itself in pieces. In such a city, adventurous men may push their fortunes, and they ... may lead a certain sort of prosperous life, accompanied by the enjoyment of certain sorts of pleasure. But such a city cannot be an assemblage of true homes; and it must lack certain admirable and respectable traits -- outward, if not inward -- which go with stability.

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