THE UNBUILT CITY

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 46, 18 November 1929, Page 15

THE UNBUILT CITY

RESTLESS NEW YORK A SHIFTING SCENE From the river New York’s claim to be the expression of a new civilisation seems more than justified. But the skyline is quickly belied on landing. It is not that the people are in any way disappointing. The porter on the quayside speaks in strange oaths, which makes him romantically unreal; the taxi-driver speaks a language even stranger, compounded of East Side dialect and some Slavonic tongue. Inside the cab is his portrait, with a notice asking tlie passenger to inform the police if someone else should be driving. But the roads over which we drive — long, wide, and dead straight, with tall buildings on either side—aro -full of potholes which would disgrace a Balkan town. Outside the main avenues, in fact, one is constantly reminded of the Continent. Skyscrapers, clean in line, as in fact, stand next to'dirty tumbledown liovels which have not even the 'justification of age. Repairs are going on everywhere, and, owing to the construction of the new subway, many of the main streets are “up.” The whole city has the appearance of a shelter shoved up while waiting for better things. When the new subway is constructed, New Yorkers say, the city will be itself once more. But there seems to be little hope for a city which, after three centuries of existence, has not sufficient individuality to overcome the temporary disfigurement of a subway: and even when the subway is finished there will remain the Elevated Railway, rickety and noisy, running down the finest avenues. Its ragged and unkempt outline gives a pioneer appearance which (its ill with skyscrapers. No doubt in time the hovels will disappear, along with some things worth preserving: already the old houses of Washington Square are making way for 20-story buildings. The elevated may some day go. But before that happens the first skyscrapers will have been torn down —40 years is their average life—— and so far as one can see there is little prospect of the city ever looking finished. Black and White. New York Is too restless ever to be complete: restless not only with the activity of 7,000,000 human beings cramped into a space far too small for them, but with the constant jostling of people of every race and nationality. It has its Italian quarter, its Jewish quarter, and so on. But the distinction has little meaning in a city where, at any rate during ’ ’working hours, every one is brought into contact with thousands of others. Even mass-pro-duced clothing is not sufficient to give an effect of homogeneity. Within one block every shade of colour is to be seen, from the almost white, whose admixture is betrayed only by softness of voice, to the pure black, with woolly hqir and thick lips. It is' estimated that one million of New York’s inhabitants are Jews, and another million and a half coloured. In the early evening, when the offices and factories empty themselves, tlio estimate seems low. Every uptown subway is packed tight, and every other person seems to be coloured. Getting into the subway down-town and getting out anywhere in the neighbourhood of 150th .Street, the full force of the coloured invasion is brought home. The streets in both parts of the city are exactly the same, with the same shops, cafes, and soda-fountains. The people in both wear tlie same clothes, with hats and cigars at the same angle. In each are to be seen types of every class of society, from street urchin to millionaire. But abound 150th Street every one is colofared, even to the policeman. Other American cities provide the same contrast —Chicago is an example. But at first, and especially if one. comes upon Harlem at might, it seems a giant masquerade. A more varied mixture is to be seen in the subway. The subway is the epitome of New York. It is simple; the uniform charge of five cents makes it. convenient to use, and the rectilinear plau makes it impossible to get far lost. It is efficient: it conveys New Yofk’simillions quickly and safely. But its efficiency is of a peculiarly American kind, aimed at one object only and neglecting such side-issues as comfort and cleanliness. Politics arc frequently offered as an explanation of the lack of comfort in the subway and the disriepair of the roads. The five-cent fare is one of Mayor Walker’s platforms, and the subway company, not being allowed to charge more, provides the bare minimum. But one suspects that the cause is deeper than that. Accustomed to move quickly from place to place, and to sit still only at a (Jesk, the American finds standing in a dirty and crowded subway train no more of an inconvenience than sitting ou a stool in a soda-fountain or sleeping in a Pullman car. Energy ;uid Nervee. A national restlessness allows no one to sit still Jong enough to consider what he lacks or to appreciate what he has. The restlessness is most marked in New York, but' it is characteristic in some degree of every city from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. It is to be seen in the restaurants, where the whole meal must.be ordered at once, and where coffee is served with the food; in the dining cars of trains where the perfect manners of coloured waiters are offset by the speed with which they reset the fable for non-ex-istent newcomers long before you Daye reached the conversation. Above all it is to be seen in the colleges, where boys and girls alike shift unceasingly from course to course, from idea to idea, and from pastime to pastime. Nowhere, in the student world is such abounding energy to be found, nor such receptivity. But it is energy of a nervous kind, never long directed into one channel unless the direction comes from outside. .

Perhaps fortunately, there is always some organisation ready to direct the life of the American citizen. Organisation is, indeed, the keynote of American life. It has enabled ]20,000,000 people to live lives of at least material comfort, and it makes for efficiency. But that efficiency is sometimes of maddening slowness. In one of the larger New York hotels it is -possible to wander about for ten minutes before discovering the office. When you do discover it, you find organisation and division of labour run mad. . A reservation clerk must book ydiir room, a mail clerk must look after your letters. The bell-hop takes you to your room \ one porter nnist bring your suitcase, another your trunk. When you pay your bill you must go first to the floor clerk, then to the reservation clerk, then to the bill clerk, then to the cashier. While in the hotel you have 101 different servants, each of whom can do one tiling only. Long before you leave you huve the impression of a crazy people, trying desperately to find something to do, and to make it appear worth doing. This impression is confirmed by later experience. To give only one example, when booking a ticket at an uptown railway office one is attended to by a clerk who is not a clerk but an assist-

ant ticket agent. The example is the more fruitful in that the assistant ticket agent is engaged in one of the four main industries of the country —that of selling. Mass production has made the supply of goods relatively so easy that an altogether disproportionate number of people are engaged in distribution. Nowhere in the world are there so many “salesmen”; and nowhere in the world is so much “service” offered in the mad scramble to push goods upou people.

Even the bootlegger has the cant of “service.” But the service is frequently more apparent than real. The travel bureau attached to a New York hotel will write to eacli incoming visitor assuring him of its readiness to give any information he may desire. But, if be should apply to the bureau, he may find the information he requires dispensed witli such curtness as almost to nullify the effect of the first courtesy. But that is in New York, which has manners all its own, and is in no way typical of the country as a whole. Giving a telephone number to the operator in a public exchange, the traveller new to the city will notice that, the operator does not answer, or in any way acknowledge his request. But if he should be so unwary as to repeat it, he will probably be told curtly :—“I heard yer first time.” There is no time for a second time in New York.

Restaurant Life. The haste everywhere apparent is surprising in view of tlie general appreciation of many of the adornments of life. New York has more theatres than any other city in the world, and incomparably more luxurious kinemas. Ties, shoes, and hats match tlie best that London or Paris can provide. Restaurants and cafes, drug stores, and fruit-drink stores are innumerable, and all seem to do a brisk business. A visit to almost any restaurant shows why this business is so brisk; but it is a long time before one gets accustomed to the sight, of grown men sitting on stools in a drug store, eating chocolate sundaes. Expenditure on education is lavish. But tire results, in New York, are disappointing. New York University, an institution much more typical of the city than Columbia, is like a scries of office buildings, both inside and out. Seen at night, from the other side of Washington Square, with every window brilliantly lighted, it is inspiring. But in the daytime it has a draff appearance which all its new paint and unceasing activity cannot efface. Classes go on from early morning to late evening; every room is occupied for 12 hours every day. In tlie faculty rooms there are rows on rows of desks —exactly like a bank except that it is not so well furnished. The dean of a faculty explains it as follows i—Tjie site of this building, midway between the uptown shopping and downtown commercial centres, is worth millions of dollars. So that each professor, with his ten feet by four, or lecturer, with five feet by three, is being generously treated. But that is not the whole explanation. New York University, surrounded by skyscrapers and able to extend only upwards, is in interior organisation exactly like the University of California, which looks out over San Francisco Bay and has the almost unlimited space of Berkeley at its disposal. To see the finest expression of New York’s civilisation, one must, look neither at universities nor offices, but at the railway stations. In the Central Station, for instance, there is perfect organisation, and, but for a certain heaviness in style which is unlike New York, perfect form. Everything is clean, spacious, and well lighted. Unlike our English railway stations, which seem to have grown in haphazard fashion to meet growing needs, New York stations have been carefully planned down to the smallest detail. The circular information bureau is right in the centre of the concourse, facing the traveller from whichever direction he enters. All around are ticket offices, telephone and telegraph, post offices, restaurants, and a railway museum (known as a “transportation exposition”). . Everything is to hand except, the waiting-room, which one has to look for I—London “Times.”