NEW YORK CITY.

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 718, 14 January 1903, Page 3

NEW YORK CITY.

MARVELLOUS ENTERPRISE,

New York, Dec. 1. An American, fascinated and enthused with the aesthetic loveliness of the French capital, has epitomised his admiration thus:

“ Paris is the most beautiful oity in the world.”

If. for this moment, the palm for beauty is awarded to the city on the Seine, there is another saying, so true that it is impregnable, and this it is: “ Now York is the most wonderful city in the world.”

Looking forward, not as an inspired prophet, for the mind is guided into the future by material things, planned by the hand of man, another legend, this one, may bo written. “ New York will be tho most beautiful and tho most wonderful city in the world.” Nothing has ever exceeded or even approached among people the impetus recently given to private enterprise in tho ono time Dutch village that has grown so amazingly. To this unprecedented awakening of the highest civic spirit, embracing aesthetic as well as commercial activity, is ascribed the certainty that New York will eventually, and soon, be more pleasing to tho spiritual eye than any habitat of the many, seek whero you may, and that, wonderful as she now is, Burpassing in the grandeur and the prodigality of her achievements, completed and in prospect, any human effort of the past, marvels are to come that to-day the mind only faintly grasps because of the bewildering promise. As a city of homes, of the mansions of those with vast wealth, massive and splendid, enriched within by the best from the workshops and tho studios of the centuries, Now York leads, indisputably, tbo great cities of all countries. Each year she grows surprisingly in the respect. Each year more and more of the men who have made millions in the. West, in the South, anywhere and everywhere, make Mecca of the Dig metropolis, cornu here to build their homes with lavish outlay, and to live where live is at its fullest and its keenest. Rocky wastes upon which only a few years ago were scattered the shanties of Che squatter, aro now covered with the hu°o palaces of men familiar to all the world for their wealth and their works. Tho picturesque past has surrendered to the magnificence of toe present, and no one but tho dreamy artist mourns. So rapid and so recent is the encroachment northward, pressed away from the city’s heart by trade, ever clamoring at the boundary lines of the residential district, that arears of ground upon which even now there are the small and rneau houses of nearly a century ago aro purchased and marked for homes grander, if possible, than those that already rear their heights so proudly. For proof ot this feature of the city’s physical advancement one has only to consult the facts and figures collected by The World, from official sources, brought together to demonstrate one element ol New York’s astounding, imperial greatness.

The thoughtful stranger visiting the metropolis sees that the rich are .veil cared (or and asks, “ How do you house your poor ?” If his guide is honest and well informed he answers in this wise : “ Some of them very badly, shamefully, and others better and with more convenience than the rich of a few generations ago were able to obtain. We are striving, through public and private endfeavor, to eradicate all of the evils that have made odious the very' name of tenement, and we feel proud of tho rapid progress already made in this respect. We aro making the poor quarters of the city beautiful, and some day they will be almost as agreeable in appearance as is tho Fifth avenue of to-day.” The tenement of to-day that is taking the place of the rookeries known by that name, and of the old-time low buildings that are beingjrazed to the ground all over town under the new order of things, is not only a habitation designed for comfort and health, but is a handsome and pretentious (structure, attractive, like the home of the millionaire, \yithin or without.

As yet these modern; model tenements are not suffitieat la ffhtßber to make any

I general impression upon thr- physical aspai. ilis u'.j, but there is i generous ft'surunce in the future. Formerly the so called model tenements were constiueted only by the occasional philanthropist, and so deliciont was the ob3crvaneo of the inadequate sanitary laws, so prone are people to return to original barbarism, that the now homes and their tenants soon lapsed into harmony with their miserable surroundings. It was seen that philanthropy of this nature, unsupported by intelligently asserted authority, was a useless expenditure of money, and so those who felt a true and deep interest in the health, bodily and mental, of.the poor went further. The World, in its editorial columns, has ever been insistent that the housing of the poor be improved ; has pointed ouu that three out of every four of the city's 11,500,000 inhabitants live in tenements—an overwhelming part of the city’s entire population—and that the tenement dwellers are the people, demanding a reform in tenement house laws arid an honest enforcement of them. r J he rosult has boon new and excellent | laws, with sanitary provisions based upon the best scientific authority, and a tenement lii.uso commission able and anxious to enforce the laws. The public movement that has grown out of long insistence for better homes for more than 2,000,000 of people has been met, willingly or otherwise, by men who build houses for gain, I and it has also attracted anew tho philanthropists willing to devote their money to a charity tbut will no doubt pay its way I and work a great benefit to the city. New Y jrk has a sky lino famous ull over the world. Of course New York always had a sky-line, but until tho era of tho sky-scrupor it was not especially dif ferentiated from that of other large cities. The advent of tho tall buildings, all high, but some reaching further h.avenvvard than'others, and g aduated also by the surface heights anti grades upon which they stood, gave to the hitherto con ventional sky-line a new and must uove character