Part 13 (2/2)
Timmerman (1007), Angier B. Duke (1009), J. Francis A. Clark (1013), Senator George B. Peabody Wetmore (1015), Mrs. W.M. Kingland (1026), and George Crawford Clark (1027).
This part of the Avenue faces the Obelisk, Cleopatra's Needle, a present to the United States from the Khedive of Egypt, brought to this country in 1877, and erected here in 1880; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the latter on the site of what was once the Deer Park. The Museum had its origin in a meeting of the art committee of the Union League Club in November, 1869. Among the founders were William Cullen Bryant, president of the Century a.s.sociation, Daniel Huntington, president of the National Academy of Design, Dr. Barnard, president of Columbia, Richard M. Hunt, president of the New York chapter of the American Inst.i.tute of Architects, and Dr. Henry W. Bellows. Andrew H. Green, the ”Father of Greater New York,” who was one of those representing the city, was the first to suggest placing the Museum in the Park. For a time the collection was kept in a house rented for the purpose in West Fourteenth Street. The first wing of the present building was opened in 1880.
To continue the list of the private residences of the Avenue. Jonathan Thorne (1028), Louis Gordon Hammersley (1030), Countess Annie Leary (1032), George C. Smith (1033), Herbert D. Robbins (1034), James B.
Clews (1039), Lloyd Warren (1041), Mrs. James Hedges (1044), R.F.
Hopkins (1045), Michael Dricer (1046), George Leary (1053), William H.
Erhart (1055), James Speyer (1058), Henry Phipps (1063), Abraham Stein (1068), Dr. James H. Lancas.h.i.+re (1069), Mrs. Herbert T. Parsons (1071), W.W. Fuller (1072), J.H. Hanan (1073), Benjamin Duke (1076), Malcolm D.
Whitman (1080), McLane Van Ingen (1081), A.M. Huntington (1083).
In the block between Ninetieth and Ninety-first Streets, on land where once the squatter gloried, is the home of the Iron Master, perhaps of all the residences in the long line of the Avenue the one most observed by the stranger within our gates. ”So well have the architect and the landscape gardener co-operated,” is the comment of ”Fifth Avenue,” ”that this mansion and its surroundings have already the dignity and picturesqueness which age alone can give, although the building is of comparatively recent date. It is the only house on all Fifth Avenue which looks as if it might have been transplanted from old England.” The Carnegie house is almost the outpost to the north of ”Millionaire's Row.” Two blocks beyond, after the I. Townsend Burden house, and the Warburg house, and the Willard D. Straight house have been pa.s.sed, we are once more in the region of unprepossessing chaos. Between Ninety-third Street and the end of the Park there is a riot of hideous signboards, and vacant lots, and lots that though occupied, are unadorned. The only relief in the unpleasant picture is the Mount Sinai Hospital at One Hundredth Street. In name at least the Avenue marches on, its progress being suspended for a s.p.a.ce where Mount Morris Park rises to the summit of the Snag Berg, or Snake Hill, where, in the days of the Revolution, a Continental battery for a moment commanded the valley of the Harlem, only to be whisked away, when the enemy came, and a Hessian battery was installed in its place. But where the stretch of magnificence breaks, although it continues to be Fifth Avenue in name, it ceases to be Fifth Avenue in spirit.
CHAPTER XIX
_Mine Host on the Avenue_
Mine Host on the Avenue--A Gentleman of Brussels--Poulard's--Some Old New York Hotels--High Prices of 1836--The American--The Metropolitan--Holt's--The Brevoort and the Steams.h.i.+p Captains--Delmonico's--Famous Menus--The Glory of the Fifth Avenue--The Logerot--A Bohemian Chop-house--The Great Mince Pie Contest--About Madison Square--Lost Youth.
Is there anything that civilized man recalls more poignantly than the menus of yesterday? Of the Brussels of the winter of 1917, the last winter that the Americans of the Commission for Relief were allowed to remain, I have many vivid memories. One of them is of a crowd gathered before a shop-window in the Rue de Namur, a street that winds down from the circle of boulevards to the Place Royale. Within, the object of hungry curiosity, a fowl, adorned by a placard informing that the price is forty-four francs. Conspicuous in the crowd, his face pressed against the gla.s.s of the _etalage_, a little old gentleman. The bowl of munic.i.p.al soup and the loaf of bread are all that he has to look forward to as the day's sustenance. But as he gazes his mouth waters quiveringly, and for the moment the grey-green uniforms of the invaders that are all about him, and the hated flag that is flying over the Palais de Justice are forgotten. Soon he will go home and sit down and write a letter to _La Belgique_, in which he will recall the happier days, and tell of how one once was able to dine at the Taverne Royale for the sum of two francs, fifty, or three francs, fifty, enumerating carefully and lovingly the various courses. His letter, and others of similar nature and inspiration, were the only genuine letters that the occupying military authorities allowed to appear in the Belgian press.
But a world tragedy was not needed to invest with romance the menus of yesterday. A memory of youth is the rock of Mont St. Michel on the French coast. The name suggests a towering, isolated height in the ocean, close to the mouth of the river dividing Normandy from Brittany, surrounded at high tide by las.h.i.+ng waves, and at low tide by a muddy mora.s.s, save where a causeway joins it to the mainland. The monks of St.
Michel sent s.h.i.+ps to help convey the armies of William to Hastings, and when the yoke of the Normans on England was young two sons of the Conqueror waged battle here, and Henry besieged Robert or Robert besieged Henry. When Philip Augustus burned it and it was the only Norman fortress that withstood Henry the Fifth, and many years later, in Maupa.s.sant's ”Notre Coeur,” a certain Madame de Burne entered a room of one of its hotels and there blew out a candle. But above all I recall, and ninety-five out of every hundred others who have visited the rock recall, the breakfast that was once renowned throughout Europe--a breakfast at two francs, fifty, brought to perfection for the reason that it was always the same, the shrimps, the cutlets, the chicken, and the amazing omelette, which the portly Madame Poulard prepared in full view, tossing it like a flapjack, to a chorus of delighted ”Ahs!”
There is no need to go far afield. There is the older New York, with its memories of Mine Host of oyster-bar and chop-house, of culinary joys and the ghosts of viands. Yesterday the personality of the landlord was more in evidence and that of his staff happily less so. Mine Host was an individual and not yet a corporation. He oozed welcome. He walked from table to table, bland, smiling, eager for commendation, keen-eared for criticism. Although paid for, it was none the less his hospitality that was being dispensed, and he was acutely sensitive to appreciation. His retainers were fewer in number and were retainers only. Then, from the Spanish Main the last of the pirates disappeared, bequeathing to their descendants the tables and hat-stands of the hostelries of Fifth Avenue and the Great White Way. There they are today, insolent-eyed and ”walk-the-plank” mannered to all but the few whom they feel they can hold to high ransom. To those of us who do not belong to that few of the race of Dives there is satisfaction in turning over the old bills-of-fare, and musing on the repasts that were once within the reach of the purses of the humble.
When Horace Greeley arrived in New York in 1831, he had ten dollars in his pocket and knew no one in the city. He entered a tavern. The bartender looked him over superciliously. ”We are too high for you. We charge six a week.” Horace agreed with him, and found shelter in a boarding-house where he paid two dollars and a half a week.
Occasionally, when the table there palled, he and the other boarders sought a change by repairing to a Sixpenny Dining Saloon in Beekman Street where a splendid feast was to be had for a s.h.i.+lling (twelve and a half cents).
Two years after Horace Greeley arrived in New York Holt's Hotel opened its doors. It was the wonder of the town, the largest and most magnificent inn erected up to that time. Even by rich people its prices were thought exorbitant. They were one dollar and a half a day. That, of course, meant the American plan. Even the panic years, from 1835 to 1837, when prices soared in a manner that brought consternation to the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of careful housekeepers, do not very much startle us who are living in the present Anno Domini 1918. Philip Hone, in his ”Diary,”
wrote of living in New York in 1835 as exorbitantly dear, and went on to say: ”it falls pretty hard on persons like me who live upon their incomes, and harder still upon that large and respectable cla.s.s whose support is derived from fixed salaries.” The sweat of the brow of New York all ran into the pockets of the farmers. Hone laid in a winter stock of b.u.t.ter at twenty-nine cents a pound. ”In the course of thirty-four years housekeeping I have never b.u.t.tered my bread at so extravagant a rate.” In March, 1836, he recorded: ”The market was higher this morning than I have ever known it. Beef, twenty-five cents; mutton and veal, fifteen to eighteen; small turkeys, one dollar and a half.
Poor New York!”
A few years later and the prices were back to what was then held to be normal. According to a Guide Book of the city issued in 1846, there were one hundred and twenty-three eating-houses in the town, besides the oyster-houses. At the cheaper places the prices were six cents a plate of meats and three cents a plate of vegetables. In the more pretentious restaurants the rates were of course considerably higher. Chamberlain's Saloon in Pearl Street was a famous restaurant in 1851. Here is its advertised bill-of-fare. Soups: beef, mutton, chicken, six cents; roast pig, turkey, goose, chicken, duck, twelve and a half cents; beef, lamb, pork, mutton, six cents; beefsteak pie, lamb pie, mutton pie, clam pie, six cents; boiled beef, any kind, six cents. Made dishes: pork and beans, veal pie, six cents; oyster pie, chicken pot-pie, twelve and a half cents.
Philip Hone lived in a house on Broadway, facing City Hall Park. When he wished to dine out he did not have to go far, for almost next door was the American Hotel, one of the most famous hostelries of the period. Its cooking was as st.u.r.dily patriotic as its name, although the menu is flavoured with badly written French. Here is a sample bill-of-fare, bearing the date of June 10, 1848.
Soup.
Rice Soup.
Fish.
Blackfish.
Boiled.
Leg of Mutton.
Fowl, oyster sauce.
Corn beef.
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