The Ways of Men

f lower New York, he would rub his eyes and wonder if they were not playing him a trick, for distance and twilight lend the chaotic masses around the

the morning!" when a visit to his banker takes the new arrival down to W

as an iron cooking stove! It is well death removed the Boston critic before our city entered into its present Brobdingnagian phase. If he considered that Stewart's and the Fifth Avenue Hotel

ling Green, for the truth would then dawn upon him that what appeared from a distance to be the ground level of the island was in reality the roof line of average four-st

on lower Broadway are gems in this way! Any one who has glanced at an auctioneer's shelves when a "job lot" of books is being sold, will doubtless have noticed their resemblance to the sidewalks of our down town streets. Dainty little duodecimo buildings are squeezed in between towering in-folios

uilder, like the frugal binder, leaves the sides of his creations unadorned, and expends his ingenuity in decorating the narrow strip which he naively imagines will be the only part seen, calmly ignoring the fact that on

s and the tops of their creations are elaborate, the designer evidently thinks the intervening twelve or fifteen stories can shift for themselves. One clumsy mass on the Bowling Green is an excellent example of this weakness. Its ground floor is a playful reproduction of the tombs of Egypt. About the second story the architect must have become discouraged-or perhaps the owner's funds gave out-for the next dozen floors are treat

, probably-a miniature State Capitol has been added, with dome and colonnade complete. The result recalls dear, absent-minded Miss Matty (in

dently look upon such adornments as compensations! The more hideous the structure, the finer its dome! Having perpetrated a blot upon the city that cries to heaven in its enormity, the repe

re every bit as appropriate. A choice collection of those monstrosities graces Park Row, one much-gilded offender varying the monotony by looking like a yellow stopper in a high

ns on that humble utensil, and the elevated road at the back seems in this case to do duty as the handle. Mrs. Van Rensselaer tells us in her delightful Goede Vrouw of Mana-ha-ta that waffle irons used to be a favorite wedding present among the Dutch settlers of this island, and were adorned with mono

oration by the way. Why, for instance, were those Titan columns grouped around the entrance to the American Surety Company's building? They do not support anything (the "business" of columns in architecture) except some rather

ailing round it serve on top of the New York Life Insurance building? It looks like a monument in Greenwood,

necessary. There must, I feel sure, be a reason for its use in this city; American land-lords rarely spe

seem? Then why do they continue to hide steel and fire-brick cages under a veneer of granite six inches thick, causing them to pose as solid stone buildings? If there is a demand f

it reverts to a design suggestive of a county jail (the Palace and the Prison), with here and there a balcony hung out, emblematical, doubtless, of the inmates' wash and bedding. At the ninth floor the repentant architect adds two more stories in memory of the Doge's residence. Have you ever seen an accordion (concertina, I believe, is the correct name) hanging in a shop window? The Twenty-fifth Street Doge's Palace reminds me of that humble instrument. The wooden part, where the keys and round holes are, stands on the sidewalk. Then come an indefinite number of pleats, and finally the other wooden end well up among the clouds. So striking is this resemblance that at times one exp

recognize their old friends, the ladies of the Erechtheum, doing duty on the Reveillon Building across the way, pretending to hold up a cornice, which, being in proportion to the building, is several hundred times too big for them to carry. They can't be se

nt the birds, and angels, it is to be hoped, appreciate the effort. I, perhaps, of all the inhabitants of the c

ve had to contend with difficulties that the designers of other ages never faced, demands for space and light for

has refrained from useless decoration and stuck to simple lines, the result, if not beautiful, has at least been inoffensive. It is where inappropriate elaboration is added that taste is offended. Su

have been the most beautiful of modern cities, it is galling to b

kets up toward its fifteenth story. He complacently gives us its weight and height as compared with the pyramids, and numerous other details as to floor space and ventilation, and hints in conclusion that only old fogies and dullards, unable to keep pace with the times, fail to appreciate the charm of suc

ms in each will be without light or ventilation. It's rather poor taste to brag

rse of construction, the artists and literary lights of Paris raised a tempest of protest. One wonders why so little of the kind has been done here. It is perhaps ra

ed city. There is a certain poetical justice in the proposition coming from those who have worked so much of the harm. Remorse