THE NEW YORK FINANCIAL CENTRE.

17

the clergy depart from their duty." The oldest grave in the yard dates from 1681, and among the most noted is Charlotte Temple's, under a flat stone having a cavity out. of which the inscription-plate has been twice stolen. Her romantic career and miserable end, resulting in a duel, have been made the basis of a novel. William Bradford's grave is here one of Penn's companions in founding Philadelphia, but he removed to New York, and for fifty years was the official printer. A brownstone mausoleum covers the remains of Captain James Lawrence of the frigate Chesapeake, killed in action in 1813, when his ship was captured by the British frigate Shannon, his dying words being, "Don't give up the ship." Here are buried Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton, with other famous men, and almost the latest grave is that of General Philip Kearney, killed during the Civil War.

THE NEW YORK FINANCIAL CENTRE.

Opposite Trinity Church is Wall Street, leading, with winding course and varying width, down to the East River, following the line of the ancient palisade wall, which it has replaced. Here are the bankers and brok

ers.

Its chief point of concentrated attraction and the financial centre of the United States is one block down from Broadway, where Broad Street enters from the south and the narrower Nassau Street goes out to the north. Here stands, at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, the white marble Drexel building, while on the opposite corner of Wall and Nassau Streets is the United States Treasury, with the Assay Office alongside. The three leading banking-houses of the country are at this street intersectionDrexel, Morgan & Co. at one corner, and, diagonally across, Kidder, Peabody & Co. and Brown Bros. & Co. Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan in the intervals of his financial diplomacy can look out of his office-window at the Stock Exchange on the other side of Broad Street, which is the

theatre of vast transactions, and at times of enormous activity, while adjoining his office is the towering Mills building, the home of many bankers and brokers, extending down to the next corner, Exchange Place. These structures at Broad and Wall Streets are the most valuable real estate in the world. The Treasury and Assay Office contain in their vaults most of the gold and silver owned by the United States, and at the latter the kegs of gold are made up that go to Europe. It holds millions in gold bars, whose duty it is to make annual excursions in fast steamers across the ocean and back again to adjust our foreign exchange balances. The Treasury is a white marble building, fronted by an imposing colonnade and a broad flight of steps, and here is a statue of Washington on the spot where he was inaugurated the first President of the United States in 1789, the location then being occupied by the old Federal Hall, where the first Congress met. Standing by the statue and looking down Broad Street, one can see the great square tower of the Produce Exchange, at the foot of Broadway. Upon these Treasury steps are convened public meetings when grave subjects stir the financial centre or the politicians desire to invoke Wall Street aid in important elections. Proceeding farther along Wall Street, the next corner is William Street, and here is the Custom-house, with its long granite colonnade, where the Government collects the larger part of its revenues from imports. Here are controlled an army of placemen who make a powerful "political machine," and more than one President, who has been harassed by the intrigues for its spoils, has described this Custom-house as giving him more anxiety than all the rest of the country besides. A short walk down William Street, past the Custom-house and across Exchange Place, brings one to a low, broad granite building of two stories, with heavy-columned portico, having over the centre doorway the inscription, "Chartered 1822." This is the "Farmers' Loan and Trust Company," with a million dollars' capital and an enormous

THE BATTERY.

19

surplus. Some farmers may have started it, but they don't have much to do with it now. It is a financial institution of wide renown, whose shares of twenty-five dollars' par value each command five hundred and fifty dollars, and it makes 40 per cent. annual dividends. This prodigious success as a money-maker is the outcome of its fidelity in executing trusts, good faith being a factor in New York.

THE BATTERY.

Turning westward through Exchange Place, and passing the offices of more bankers and brokers, we are soon at Broadway again, and see the palatial brick and brownstone building of the new Consolidated Stock Exchange, the rival of the older institution on Broad Street. Below this Broadway soon comes to the Bowling Green, a triangular space of about a half acre having a small oval park in the centre. This green ends the street, which divides into two smaller ones, Whitehall on the one side and State Street on the other. In the early days this place was the court end of the town, surrounded by the homes of the proudest Knickerbockers. Here in the Revolution lived Cornwallis, Howe, and Clinton. Benedict Arnold occupied No. 5 Broadway, and Washington's headquarters was in No. 1, then Captain Kennedy's house. The site of these

west side of Bowling Green is now occupied by Cyrus W. Field's great Washington Building, an immense structure filled with offices, which rises nearly three hundred feet to the top of its tower. To the eastward is the broad stretch of the Produce Exchange, with its huge square tower, part of the ground it stands upon having been the site of the house where Robert Fulton lived and died. Talleyrand leaden statue of King George III., which was there at the once lived on Bowling Green, and the opening of the Revolution, was melted down to make bullets for the Continental soldiers, so that it was facetiously said at the time that "King George's troops will probably

have his melted Majesty fired at them." The space south of the green was the site of the old Dutch fort guarding "New Amsterdam" which afterward became Fort George. Six fine residences were built here, which are now the favorite locality of the offices of the great steamship lines. Beyond, the island ends in the Battery Park, over which the elevated railways come from both sides of the city, joining at the point of the island in one terminal station at the South Ferry. This park superseded the forts after the war of 1812, and in the earlier years of this century the fashionable people took their airing here. But they long ago left it, as the residential section moved far up town. It is a pleasant place and well kept, and into the spacious rotunda of its old Castle Clinton are brought the immigrants— sometimes thirty thousand in a single week-and its occupants overflow the entire neighborhood. It is wonderful to see the place filled with men, women, and children of all races, who bring their old-country clothes and languages with them, and reproduce the ancient Babel of tongues as they ask information, change their money, and buy railwaytickets for the Far West. At Whitehall slip, the point of the island, is the Government barge-office. This pretty foliage-covered park at the Battery is an attractive spot, and a fitting terminus for the famous island of Manhattan.

III.

A SURVEY OF MANHATTAN ISLAND.

THE long and narrow island of Manhattan, upon which New York is built, stretches about thirteen miles, while it is not much over two miles broad in the widest part, and sometimes narrows to a few hundred yards, particularly in

A SURVEY OF MANHATTAN ISLAND.

21

the northern portion. The corporate limits of the city are extended also over the mainland to the north and east of this northern portion, so that while the island area is about twenty-two square miles, the city covers altogether fortyone square miles, its boundary going about four miles eastward from the Hudson to a picturesque little stream known as Bronx River, which separates New York from Westchester county. The Harlem River and the winding narrow strait of the Spuyten Duyvel separate Manhattan from the mainland. The rapid growth of the metropolis has expanded it beyond the limits of Manhattan and built populous towns on the opposite shores of all the boundary rivers, Brooklyn and Williamsburg being across East River on Long Island, and Jersey City and its kindred towns on the western bank of the Hudson. Various islands in East

River also are utilized for the city's penal and charitable institutions. The capacious harbor, the converging rivers, and the numerous adjacent arms of the sea combine all the requisites of a great port, and they could hardly have been better planned if human hands had fashioned them. There is a vast wharf-frontage, accommodating an almost limitless commerce in and around New York harbor, for it has over fifty miles of shore-line available for shipping. This has attracted the enormous population, there being nearly as many people as live on the island itself housed on the opposite shores or in adjacent towns, who daily pour into New York to engage in its business activity. The southern portion of Manhattan has a low surface, but to the northward it becomes rough and rocky, culminating in high elevations with intervals along the Hudson, rising at Washington Heights to two hundred and thirty-eight feet, where there is a grand outlook. marshes on the southern part of the island, and it was also and considerably widened there by reclaiming shallow portions from the rivers. This long and narrow construction of New York puts Broadway longitudinally in the centre of