NEW YORK CITY.

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 719, 15 January 1903, Page 3

NEW YORK CITY.

MARVELLOUS ENTERPRISE, New York, Dec. 1, (Continued.)

Tho aerial picture appeals more strikingly to the eye because of Manhattan’s long sweep of water front, with far vistas from which it is effectively viewed. It is peculiarly fortunate that the best point of vantago from which to look at this famous sky-line is the deck of an incoming ship; therefore, the stranger almost upon our shores has presented to him before he lands one of the beautiful marvels of the new world. There is nowhere in Christendom a scene in which twentieth century civilisation is more emphatically and pleasingly exemplified than that shown by the narrow point of Manhattan as seen from the bay. It is a gathering together of so many cloud-reaching structures, of such diverse architecture and differing heights that there is no suggestion of monotony, that the mind is at once impressed with the certain grandeur of a city at whose very doors there is a wonder of such greatness. The important part that the high buildings play in making tbo oity wonderful and beautiful is readily apparent, and while so many millions of dollars have been spent on this structural feature of the city that the mind of the uninitiated is astounded, the work along that lino is far;from half done. A walk from the Pulitzer Building, parent of skyscrapers, down Park row to Broadway, and east and west on nearly every bisecting street, and to the very water’s edge at the Battery, speaks at every step of stupendous building operations. Each foot of ground in the lower part of the city is worth a fabulous sum compared with the prices for land elsewhere. One tiny plot on a corner in the Wall street district, the area of which would hardly accommodate a shanty, is held at £200,000, with £IBO,OOO offered. It has an ancient two-storey structure of brick upon it now, and it is an eyesore as it stands in the shadow of many tall structures, but it will go eventually, as will overy ono of its timeworn and ugly fellows. A man owns upward as far as the sun, and he may build as high-as safety to life and health warrants. The professions and commerce need more room down town, and so millions of dollars are going into the hands of labor and the producers of materials in order that more great structures may be addod to those that already adorn the city and astonish tho stranger. To fully understand the extent of the building operations down town one must study the table and statements from the Building Department herewith presented, as they apply merely to office structures. There are other things told of in these figures, heavy and prosaic enough as they stand alone, but deeply interesting in their analysis. They tell a story of human endeavor, not of nation or State or municipality, but of a people in their private capacity as co-builders with the government of the city, that has never been approached in the history of tho world. All the way up tho miles of Broadway and on offshootmg thoroughfares the tall building, designed for offices, for factory, for department store, for theatre, apartment-house or hotel, is in evidence, and s'o it is with respect to industrial structures all along the shore line on the North and East Rivers,