Lights and Shadows of New York Life Part 28

The city abounds in instances of the success which has attended honest, patient, and intelligent efforts. John Jacob Astor was a poor butcher's son. Cornelius Vanderbilt was a boatman. Daniel Drew was a drover. The Harpers and Appletons were printers' apprentices. A. T. Stewart was an humble, struggling shopkeeper. A well-known financier began by blacking a pair of boots. Opportunities as good as these men ever had are occurring every day. Those who are competent to seize them may do so, and rise to fortune and position.

Many of the colossal fortunes of the city have been created by the rise in the value of real estate. The rapid growth of the city during the past twelve years has greatly increased the value of property in the upper sections. Many persons who but a few years ago were owners of tracts which were simply burdensome by reason of the numerous and heavy a.s.sessments upon them, and for which no purchasers could be found, have become very wealthy by the rapid increase in the value of their property.

Many persons owning property of this kind sold at a heavy advance during the real estate speculations that succeeded the war. Others leased their lands to parties wishing to build on them. Others still hold on for further improvement. The Astors, A. T. Stewart, Vanderbilt and others have made a large share of their money by their investments in real estate.

A farm near the Central Park, which could not find a purchaser in 1862, when it was offered at a few thousand dollars, sold in 1868 in building lots for almost as many millions.

In 1860 a gentleman purchased a handsome house in a fashionable neighborhood. It was a corner house and fronted on Fifth avenue. He paid $50,000 for it, and spent $25,000 more in fitting up and furnishing it. His friends shook their heads at his extravagance. Since then he has resided in the house, and each year his property has increased in value. In 1869 he was offered nearly $300,000 dollars for the house and furniture, but refused to sell at this price, believing that he would be able in a few years to command a still larger sum.

x.x.xII. THE SABBATH IN NEW YORK.

On Sunday morning New York puts on its holiday dress. The stores are closed, the streets have a deserted aspect, for the crowds of vehicles, animals and human beings that fill them on other days are absent. There are no signs of trade anywhere except in the Bowery and Chatham street.

The city has an appearance of cleanliness and quietness pleasant to behold. The wharves are hushed and still, and the river and bay lie calm and bright in the light of the Sabbath sun. One misses the stages from Broadway, and a stranger at once credits the coachmen with a greater regard for the day than their brothers of the street cars. The fact is, however, that Jehu of the stagecoach rests on the Sabbath because his business would be unprofitable on that day. The people who patronize him in the week have no use for him on Sunday. The horse-cars make their trips as in the week. They are a necessity in so large a city. The distances one is compelled to pa.s.s over here, even on Sunday, are too great to be traversed on foot.

Towards ten o'clock the streets begin to fill up with churchgoers. The cars are crowded, and handsome carriages dash by conveying their owners to their places of worship. The uptown churches are the most fashionable, and are the best attended, but all the sacred edifices are well filled on Sunday morning. New York compromises with its conscience by a scrupulous attendance upon morning worship, and reserves the rest of the day for its own convenience. The up-town churches all strive to get in, or as near as possible to, the Fifth avenue. One reason for this is, doubtless, the desire that all well-to-do New Yorkers have to partic.i.p.ate in the after-church promenade. The churches close their services near about the same hour, and then each pours its throng of fashionably dressed people into the avenue. The congregations of distant churches all find their way to the avenue, and for about an hour after church the splendid street presents a very attractive spectacle. The toilettes of the ladies show well here, and it is a pleasant place to meet one's acquaintances.

The majority of New Yorkers dine at one o'clock on Sunday, the object being to allow the servants the afternoon for themselves. After dinner your New Yorker, male or female, thinks of enjoyment. If the weather is fair the fashionables promenade the Fifth and Madison avenues, or drive in the park. The working cla.s.ses fill the street-cars, and throng the Central Park. In the summer whole families of laboring people go to the park early in the morning, taking a lunch with them, and there spend the entire day. In the skating season the lakes are thronged with skaters.

The church bells ring out mournfully towards three o'clock, but few persons answer the call. The afternoon congregations are wofully thin.

In the mild season, the adjacent rivers and the harbor are thronged with pleasure boats filled with excursionists, and the various horse and steam railway lines leading from the city to the sea-sh.o.r.e are well patronized.

Broadway wears a silent and deserted aspect all day long, but towards sunset the Bowery brightens up wonderfully, and after nightfall the street is ablaze with a thousand gaslights. The low cla.s.s theatres and places of amus.e.m.e.nt in that thoroughfare are opened towards dark, and then vice reigns triumphant in the Bowery. The Bowery beer-gardens do a good business. The most of them are provided with orchestras or huge orchestrions, and these play music from the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.

Until very recently the bar-rooms were closed from midnight on Sat.u.r.day until midnight on Sunday, and during that period the sale of intoxicating liquors was prohibited. Now all this is changed. The bar-rooms do a good business on Sunday, and especially on Sunday night. The Monday morning papers tell a fearful tale of crimes committed on the holy day.

a.s.saults, fights, murders, robberies, and minor offences are reported in considerable numbers. Drunkenness is very common, and the Monday Police Courts have plenty of work to do.

At night the churches are better attended than in the afternoon, but not as well as in the morning.

Sunday concerts, given at first-cla.s.s places of amus.e.m.e.nt, are now quite common. The music consists of ma.s.ses, and other sacred airs, varied with selections from popular operas. The performers are famous throughout the country for their musical skill, and the audiences are large and fashionable. No one seems to think it sinful thus to desecrate the Lord's Day; and it must be confessed that these concerts are the least objectionable Sunday amus.e.m.e.nts known to our people.

It must not be supposed that the dissipation of which we have spoken is confined exclusively to the rougher cla.s.s. Old and young men of respectable position partic.i.p.ate in it as well. Some are never called on to answer for it, others get into trouble with the police authorities.

One reason for this dissipation is plain. People are so much engrossed in the pursuit of wealth that they really have no leisure time in the week. They must take Sunday for relaxation and recreation, and they grudge the few hours in the morning that decency requires them to pa.s.s in church.

x.x.xIII. THE POST-OFFICE

I. INTERNAL ARRANGEMENTS.

Strange to say, the great metropolis, in which the largest postal business in the country is transacted, has never had a building for a Post-office, which was erected for that purpose. It has been compelled to put up with any temporary accommodation that could be obtained, and for many years past its Post-office has been simply a disgrace to the nation.

In the days of the Dutch, letters were brought over from Europe by the shipmasters and delivered to some coffee house keeper, who took charge of them until the persons to whom they were addressed could call for them.

This custom was continued under the English until 1686, when the authorities required that all ship letters should be placed in charge of the Collector of the Port. In 1692, the city authorities established a Post-office, and in 1710, the Postmaster-General of Great Britain removed the headquarters of the postal service of the Colonies from Philadelphia to New York. The first city Post-office was located in Broadway opposite Beaver street. About the year 1804, the Post-office was removed to No.

29 William street, corner of Garden street, now Exchange Place, where it remained until 1825, when the Government leased the "Academy building" in Garden street, now Exchange Place, and opened it as a Post-office. In 1827, the office was transferred to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Merchants'

Exchange, the site now occupied by the Custom House. Wall street was then just undergoing the change from private residences to bankers' and brokers' offices. The Merchants' Exchange was destroyed in the great fire of 1835, and the next day a Post-office was extemporized in a brick building in Pine, near Na.s.sau street, and shortly after was transferred to the Rotunda, in the City Hall Park, which had been offered to the Government by the munic.i.p.al authorities. The Rotunda, however, proved too small for the business of the department, which had been greatly increased by the establishment of lines of railways and steamboats between New York and the various parts of the country, and in 1845 the Post-office was removed to the Middle Dutch Church, in Na.s.sau street, between Pine and Cedar streets, its present location, which was purchased by the Government for the sum of $350,000.

[Picture: THE OLD POST-OFFICE.]

This building has always been entirely unsuited to the needs of a Post-office for such a city as New York. It was dedicated in 1732, and was used for worship by one of the Dutch congregations of the city. In 1776, the British having occupied the city, it was converted into a prison by the conquerors for the incarceration of their rebellious captives. It was subsequently used by them as a riding school for the instruction of cavalry. After the British evacuated the city, the congregation reoccupied it, and refitted it for religious worship. After paying for it the large sum mentioned above, the Government was compelled to make a further expenditure of $80,000, to fit it up for its new uses.

Since then many changes, some involving a heavy outlay, have been made in the building, but even now it is not capable of meeting the demands upon it, and the Government is now engaged in the erection of a new building expressly designed for a Post-office.

The Pine street front is devoted to the reception and departure of the mails. The street is generally filled with wagons bearing the mystic words, "U.S. Mail." Some are single-horse vehicles, used for carrying the bags between the main office and the numerous stations scattered through the city; others are immense wagons, drawn by four and six horses, and carrying several tons of matter at a time. These are used for the great Eastern, Western, and Southern, and the Foreign Mails. The Pine street doors present a busy sight at all hours, and the duties of the men employed there are not light. Huge sacks from all parts of the world are arriving nearly every hour, and immense piles of similar sacks are dispatched with the regularity of clockwork.

The body of the building, by which is meant the old church room itself, is used for opening and making up the mails. This work is carried on on the main floor, and in the heavy, old-fashioned gallery which runs around three of the sides. Huge semi-circular forms are scattered about the floor, each divided into a number of open squares. From each of these squares hangs a mail bag, each square being marked with the name of the city or town to which the bag is to be sent. A clerk stands within the curve of the form, before a table filled with letters and papers, and tosses them one by one into the squares to which they belong. This is done with the utmost rapidity, and long practice has made the clerk so proficient that he never misses the proper square. The stamping of the office mark and cancelling of the postage stamps on letters to be sent away is incessant, and the room resounds with the heavy thud of the stamp. This is no slight work, as the clerks who perform it can testify.

The upper floor is devoted to the use of the Post-Master and his a.s.sistants, the Superintendent of the City Delivery, and the Money Order and Registered Letter Offices. A wooden corridor has been built along the side of the church along Na.s.sau and Cedar streets, and here, on the street floor, are the box and general deliveries, and the stamp windows.

This is the public portion of the office, and is always thronged.

The visitor will notice, in various parts of this corridor, the slides for the depositing of letters and papers intended for the mails. The acc.u.mulation of mail matter here is so great that it is necessary that letters designed for a certain part of the country should be deposited in one particular place. Letters for New England must be placed in a certain box, those for the Middle States in another, those for the Southern States in another, those for the West in another. The names of the States are painted conspicuously above each box, so that there may be no mistake on the part of strangers. Letters for the princ.i.p.al countries of Europe and Asia are posted in the same way. Newspapers and periodicals have a separate department. The mails of these journals are made up in the office of publication, according to certain instructions furnished by the Postmaster, and go to the Post-office properly a.s.sorted for distribution. This system of depositing mail matter saves an immense amount of labor on the part of the clerks, and also hastens the departure of the mails from the office.

The Box Delivery contains nearly seven thousand boxes, on each of which the enormous rent of $16 per annum is charged. Considering that the box system is quite as advantageous to the Government as to the box holder, this rent is simply extortionate.

The daily business of the New York Post-office is enormous, and is rapidly increasing. The letters received by mail steamers from foreign countries, partly for delivery in the city, and partly to be forwarded to other places, average about fifteen thousand daily. The number dispatched from this office by steamer to foreign countries is about seventeen thousand daily. The number of letters sent from New York to other offices in the United States is about one hundred and fifty-five thousand daily. The number received from domestic offices for delivery in the city is about one hundred and twenty-six thousand daily; in addition to about seventy-two thousand per day, which are to be forwarded to other offices. About one hundred thousand letters, and about twenty thousand printed circulars, are mailed every day in the city, for city delivery. The carriers deliver daily, to persons who do not hire boxes at the general office, about fifty-three thousand letters; and collect from the street boxes about one hundred and one thousand letters every twenty-four hours. About five hundred registered letters, of which about four hundred are for delivery in the city, are received, and about two hundred and fifty are dispatched, daily. About one thousand dollars are paid out daily on money orders, and a much larger amount is received for orders granted to applicants. The sales of postage stamps amount to about forty-four thousand dollars per week. About two hundred unstamped letters are deposited in the office daily, and about one hundred letters on which the name of the town or State is written improperly, or on which the address is illegible. These are all sent to the Dead Letter Office, in Washington.

The number of persons employed as clerks, porters, etc., in the general office and the various stations, is 715.

The city is too large to admit of the transaction of all its business by the general office. To meet the necessities of the town, and to insure the rapid dispatch of the postal business, about 700 "lamp-post boxes,"

or iron boxes attached to the posts of the street lamps, are scattered through the city. Letters for the mails and for delivery in the city are deposited in these boxes, from which they are collected by the letter-carriers nine times each day, except Sunday, between the hours of seven A.M. and seven P.M. The Sunday collection is made once, at seven in the evening.

There are fourteen branch or Sub-Post-offices, designated as "Stations,"

located in convenient parts of the city, north of the general office.

They are named from the letters of the alphabet, and are known as "Stations A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, K, L, M, N, and O." They are designed to serve as distributing centres for certain sections of the city. They receive from the general office all letters and papers for delivery in their sections, and to them the carriers bring all the matter collected from the lamp-boxes. There is no delivery from them except through the carriers. They dispatch to the general office, at stated times throughout the day, all matter deposited in their boxes or collected from the lamp-boxes by the carriers.

A recent writer thus relates some of the gossip connected with the office:

"People who come to the Post-office and make complaints of being robbed, when they discover that they were mistaken never call and make reparation, or relieve the department of the charge made against its employes. A merchant, much excited, complained that a letter sent to him 'by a most responsible house,' containing $500, had not been received.

This charge was fortified by showing a letter from the postmaster who mailed the missing letter, certifying that it was forwarded, and contained the $500. Detectives were at once set to work to unravel the iniquity, but all efforts proved unavailing. Finally the Post-office authorities, after weeks of hard work, called on the complaining merchant and asked if he had heard anything about the missing money. 'Oh,'

replied the gentleman, with great vivacity, 'that's all right; by mistake that letter was thrown into the safe, and remained unopened nearly four weeks. Funny, wasn't it?' Not even an apology was made for charging the Post-office with purloining the money, or for giving its officers so much unnecessary trouble.

"Charges of dishonesty against the Post-office are made where n.o.body but 'extraordinary circ.u.mstances' are to blame. A letter containing two $1000 bills in it was delivered by the carrier, who, according to custom (ignorant of its contents, of course), at the house of its owner, shoved it into the hallway, under the door. The letter was missing. Complaint was made at the Post-office; evidence was produced that the money had been forwarded. The detectives were set to work to trace out the robbery. The poor carrier, and the clerks in the office who handled the letter were placed under surveillance. The clerks where the letter was mailed were 'shadowed.' Every dollar they expended after the probable robbery was secretly inquired into, to see if any of them had been at any given time, after the letter was lost, unusually 'flush;' but all signs failed. After a long time the floor covering of the hall was taken up, and there was the letter, 'safe and sound;' the unfortunate carrier had thrust it under, instead of over, the oilcloth.

"The misdirection of letters is the cause of serious charges against the Post-office. A letter containing $700 was mailed from Albany to New York. It was sent from a well-known person, and the package which was supposed to contain the letter, made up in Albany, was not opened until it reached New York. Both ends of the line were under suspicion. It was stated that the letter was addressed to Mr. --- ---, Broadway, New York.

After a long search it was found that the letter had never left Albany at all, being directed by mistake, Mr. --- ---, Broadway, Albany, and the faithful clerks had thrown it into their own city delivery box instead of forwarding it to New York. The confusion in the mind of the writer grew out of the fact that there is a Broadway in both cities, and from force of habit he wrote the wrong address.

"Miserable chirography is one of the most prolific causes of Post-office inefficiency. It is safe to say that unmistakably written directions would remove nine-tenths of the complaints. What is a non-plussed clerk to do with letters addressed to 'Mahara Seney,' 'Old Cort,' or 'Cow House,' when Morrisonia, Olcott, and Cohoes were really intended?

"One day, possibly four years ago, Mr. Kelly was sitting in his private office opening his _personal_ letters, and enjoying the delusion that everything was working satisfactorily, when, to his surprise, he found one letter from Washington calling his especial attention to the 'inclosed editorial,' cut from the _Tribune_, in which the carelessness of his clerks, and the generally unsatisfactory manner with which he carried on his business, were dilated upon, ending with the startling announcement that, under the present management of the department, it took _four days_ to get a letter from New York to Chappaqua, distance about thirty miles, and made literally no distance by a fast railway!

Consternation ensued, and Mr. Kelly, to commence examination into these serious charges, sent a special agent to Chappaqua for the envelope of said delayed letter. At the place named the official fortunately not only found what he went after (the envelope), but also Mr. Greeley and 'Miles O'Reilly.' After due explanations, the envelope was handed to Miles O'Reilly, with the query of what he thought was the meaning of the superscription.

"Why,' said that genial wit, who had once been a deputy postmaster, 'the devil himself couldn't make it out.'

"The envelope was then brought to the attention of the berated clerks, who looked at it with glazed eyes, the hieroglyphics suggesting somewhat the same intellectual speculation that would result from studying the footprints of a gigantic spider that had, after wading knee-deep in ink, retreated hastily across the paper.