THE UNBUILT CITY

Hokitika Guardian, 5 December 1929, Page 2

THE UNBUILT CITY

RESTLESS NEW YORK

A SHIFTING SCENE.

From the river New York’s claim to he 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 tho cab is his portrait, with a notice asking the 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—are 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 hovels 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 out-' line gives a pioneer appearance which fits 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—4o 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 fig complete ; restless • not only -with the activity of., 7,000,000 human be mgs, cramped into-a space fari 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 homgeneitv. Within one block ; every shade of colour is to be seen,;from the alm,ost white, whose admixture is betrayed only by softness of voieg,'- to. the pure black, ‘with woolly hair 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, the estimate seem. slow. Every uptown subway js,-,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 df the col- j oured 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 botli? wear the 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 mi!-! lionaire. But around 150th Street every one is coloured, 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 night, 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 plan makes it impossible to get far lost. It is efficient: it conveys New , York’s millions 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 are frequently offered as an explanation of the lack of comfort in the subway and the disrepair 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 desk, the American finds standing in a dirty and crowded subway train no more of an inconvenience than sitting on a stool in a soda-fountain or sleeping in a Pullman car. ENERGY AND NERVES. A national restlessness allows no one to sit still long enough to consider what lie 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 Paefic const, ft is to be seen in the restaurants, where the whole meal must lie 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 table for non-ex-istent newcomers long before you have reached the conversation. Above all it is to he 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 randy to direct the life of the American citizen. Organisation is, indeed, the keynote of American life. It has enabled 120,000,000 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 your room, a mail clerk must look after your letters. The bell-hop takes you to vom: room; one porter must 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 i do one thing only. Long before you | leave you have 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 hut an assistant 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 so relatively 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 upon people. Even the bootlegger ha- the cant ol “service.” But the service is frequently more apparent than real. The travel bureau attached to a New York hotel will write to each incoming visitor assuring him of its readiness to give any information he may desire. But, if lie should apply to the bureau, he may find the information lie requires dispensed with 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 wiiole. Giving a telephone number to

the operator in a public exchange, the I traveller new to the city will notice | that the operator does not answer, or 1 in any way acknowledge his request, i Butt,if lie should be so unwary as to repeat it, he will probably be told curtly;—“l heard yer first time.” ’I here is no time for a second time in New | York. RESTAURANT LIFE. The haste everywhere apparent is surprising in view of the general appreciation of many of the adornments of life. New York lias more theatres than any other city in the world, and incomparably more luxurious kinemas. Ties, shoes, and hats match the best that London or Pan's 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; hut 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 the results, in New York, arc disappointing. New York University, an institution much more typical of the city than Columbia, is like a series of office buildings, both inside and out Been at night, from the other side of Washington Square with every window brilliantly lighted, il is inspiring.

But in the daytime it has a drab 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 the faculty rooms there are rows ou rows of desks —exactly like a bank except that it is not so well furnished. The dean of a faculty explains it as follows:—The 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 Univorsitv, 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 lias 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, nnv at the railway stations. In the Central Station, for instance, there is ported organisation, and, but for a certain heaviness in style which is unlike New York’s, perfect form. Everything is like our English railway stations, clean, spacious, and well lighted. Unwliieh seem to have grown in liaphaz-

arcl fashion to meet growing needs. New York stations have been carefully planned down to the smallest detail The circular information bureau is right m 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!—London “Times.”