brownstone edifice, with a splendid colonnade over the entrance, and having spacious windows that disclose the luxurious apartments within. This is the Republican Union League Club, presided over by the genial Chauncey M. Depew, the president of the Vanderbilt railroads. Just above, on the east side of Fifth Avenue, is the historic Vanderbilt house, No. 459-a wide dwelling of brownstone, evidently built some time ago, and having alongside a carriage entrance into a small courtyard. This was the original home of the Vanderbilts, and is now occupied by one of the old commodore's younger grandsons, Frederick. The fortune of the Vanderbilt family, the greatest yet accumulated in America, represents the financially-expansive facilities of modern New York as manipulated by the machinery of corporation management and the Stock Exchange. It has been piled up by two generations, a father and a son, within the last half century, and is now held by the grandchildren. The old commodore, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was born on Staten Island in 1794, was an uneducated boatman who traded in a meagre way around New York harbor, and at the age of twenty-three owned a few small vessels, and is said to have then estimated his wealth at nine thousand dollars. He became a steamboat captain and went into the transportation business between New York and Philadelphia, afterward widening his operations. In 1848 he owned most of the profitable steamboat lines leading from New York, and as soon as the California fever began he started ocean steamers in connection with the transit across the Isthmus of Panama. This business grew, and at the height of his steamship career the commodore owned sixtysix vessels, the finest of which, the steamer Vanderbilt, that had cost him eight hundred thousand dollars, he gave the Government for a war-vessel during the Civil War to chase the rebel privateers. The war making American vesselowning in the foreign trade unprofitable, he determined to abandon it and devote himself to railway management, THE CROTON RESERVOIR. 43 having already bought largely of railway stocks. At that time he estimated his wealth at forty millions. He got control of the various railroads leading east, north, and west from New York, buying the shares at low figures, and, his excellent methods improving their earning powers, they advanced largely in value. The greatest of these roads is the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. When Commodore Vanderbilt died his estate was estimated at seventy-five million dollars, and nearly the whole of it was left to his son William H. Vanderbilt, as he felt the transcendent importance of concentrating wealth when in railway investments to get the full advantage of its power. By its own earning capacity, aided by Stock-Exchange operations, the son saw this colossal fortune still further grow, and when he died suddenly, some four years ago, it had reached an aggregate estimated at two hundred million dollars. At one time William H. Vanderbilt had fifty million dollars invested in United States Fours, and it is no wonder that the comparatively unpretentious dwelling at Fortieth Street and Fifth Avenue became too cramped for the increasing wealth of the modern Croesus, so that he had to build a row of palaces to house his family farther out toward Central Park. The bulk of his fortune was bequeathed to his two eldest sons, while other sons and daughters were also liberally provided for. The aggregate Vanderbilt fortunes now approximate two hundred and ninety million dollars. THE CROTON RESERVOIR. Upon the west side of Fifth Avenue, and diagonally across from the Vanderbilt mansion, is the old Croton distributing reservoir on the summit of Murray Hill, covering four acres, and having the pretty little Bryant Park behind it, extending to Sixth Avenue. This ivy-covered structure looks much like the Tombs prison, being built of granite in the same massive and sombre Egyptian style. The water was first let into it in 1842, and now there is talk of its abandonment, the city having grown far beyond its capabilities. North of this reservoir Forty-second Street stretches across the city, a wide highway, passing at the next block the Grand Central Station. This is the largest railway-station of New York, covering over five acres and having cost two million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It is of brick, with stone and iron facings and ornamentation, surmounted by louvre domes, and is an impressive building. Its vast interior halls for the trains is under a semicircular roof supported by arched trusses. Elevated railroads and horse-car lines from "down town" run into this great station, the latter coming up through the Park Avenue tunnel. The surrounding region is animated, abounding with restaurants, hotels, and lodging-houses, and the adjuncts of a railway terminal, including the prosperous Lincoln National Bank, which thrives upon the Vanderbilt patronage. The outgoing railways are laid north from this station through tunnels under Fourth Avenue for a long distance, until in the suburbs they cross the Harlem River and depart north and east. This is the only railway system leading directly from New York City, as all the others have to be reached by ferries crossing the rivers. Returning to Fifth Avenue, at Forty-second Street is a plain and modest residence, No. 503, which is the city home of Vice-President Levi P. Morton, the banker. At Forty-third Street the Jews have built their finest American synagogue, the "Temple Emmanuel," a magnificent specimen of Saracenic architecture, with the interior gorgeous in Oriental decoration. Creeping plants tastefully overrun the lower parts of its two great towers. At Forty-fifth Street is the Universalist “Church of the Divine Paternity," one of the noblest buildings in New York. Just above is the Episcopal "Church of the Heavenly Rest," a curious-looking, narrow-fronted, reddish stone building, apparently squeezed between the adjoining houses, but expanding to large proportions inside the block. THE "LITTLE WIZARD." 45 It really looks more like a museum than a church, and is surmounted by statues of brown angels vigorously blowing trumpets toward the various points of the compass. Occupying the whole of the next block, between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh streets, is the grandest hotel of upper Fifth Avenue the Windsor, tall and solid-looking, with a comfortable appearance and imposing front. The lobbies within the entrance are spacious, and in times of excitement in the evenings they are filled with the chief men of the city, this being the great resort for gossip and news and stock speculation at night. 66 Opposite the side of the Windsor Hotel, across Fortyseventh Street, is a square-built and roomy though not large house, with a mansard roof, and an abundance of foliage plants in the rear windows, and having in front an elaborate portico, under which a grand staircase, flanked by evergreens and garden vases, leads up to the hall-door. This is No. 579 Fifth Avenue, the residence of the most mysterious and probably the best-abused person in the United States-a retiring and modest man, who is usually in seclusion, yet manages to communicate with the outer world through the abundance of wires entering his house. The bulls and bears of Wall Street blame upon these radiating wires most of their woes, for Jay Gould is supposed to sit within and constantly manipulate them. This "Little Wizard" has been the greatest speculative power in New York in recent years, and has had a remarkable career, being alike the product, and to a large extent the producer, of modern Wall-Street methods. He was a poor orphan and clerk in a country store, afterward becoming a Surveyor and map-maker. He secured an interest in a Pennsylvania tannery, and to sell its leather was the object of his earliest visits to New York. Before long he owned the whole tannery, but his metropolitan visits taught him there were quicker methods of making money; so he sold out and removed, being at first too much afraid of New York to live there, and he made his home in New Jersey. But it was not long before New York became afraid of him. His subsequent career is well known. Nobody ever made such ventures. He was for years the "great bear," wrecking, pulling down, ruining-controlling newspapers, courts, legislatures, and being even accused of trying to bribe a President. Then, as he became an extensive investor, he changed, at least so far as his own properties were concerned, and in his later operations has been a "bull." His fortune is the largest at present in the hands of any one man in New York, being mainly in railways. and telegraphs, but its amount is unknown, for Jay Gould is a sphinx, talking, yet telling nothing. Unostentatious and modest to an extreme, this wonderful speculator moves quietly in his work, deeply mourns the recent loss of his wife, and is training up his sons to take his place. He makes display only in his grave, having expended one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in building a miniature of the Pantheon for his mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the northern suburbs. I have written of the old Dutch governor, Peter Minuit, who bought Manhattan Island from the Indians. About the time he made that shrewd bargain he founded for his little colony in 1628 an orthodox Dutch church. After several removals this church now exists in a costly brownstone structure at Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street. This magnificent edifice, the inscription tells us, is the "Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York, organized under Peter Minuit, Director-General of the New Netherlands, in 1628, chartered by William, king of England, 1696." The present church was built in 1872. Filling the entire block above, between Fiftieth and Fifty-first Streets, is the great Catholic cathedral of St. Patrick, a magnificent white marble structure |