the ii bole of Sin len Island. is largely a (list riot of residences. although it contains a great number of establishments. The seaside resorts in t he boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens. and Ilichumnd are frequented in summer by thousands. New over a distance of more 011111 30 rniIca from the Yonkers line on the northeast to the soutlrwest extremity of Staten Island.
Manhattan Island (q.v.), which contains the chief offives of the city, its greatest banks. busi ness houses. museums, tenements, Mid palaces, lies between the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers, and is miles long. with a greatest breadth of miles at Fourteenth Street. The southern end of the island is laid out irregularly. the early settlers having built their houses wherever they saw fit, the streets being laid out after wards. Above Canal Street there is greater regularity. while above Tenth street the city is laid out, with a few exceptions, in blacks about 200 feet in length from north to south, and from about 400 to about 900 feet from east to west. The cross streets are 60 feet wide, as a rule, al though there are a number 100 feet wide, placed at :An average distance of half a mile apart. in order to facilit:1 te heavy traffic. The ay.ines run ning north and south are generally BM feet wide.
The great artery of New York is which unfortunately• is only SO feet wide in the business section of the city, its width being nearly doubled in its northern half. tni the east side (4 the city along the avenues D. C. 11, A. First, Second. and Third, counting west from the East River, and in an adjoining area to the south, are t he great tenenwut house districts. the the West Side, along the Hudson, and including the d i st r let between !Seventh and Tenth Ave nues, are manufactur ing plants, lumber yards. gas houses, and also ninny cheap tene ments. In the central part of the city. toward the southern cod of the island, with Itroad‘‘ay as the main are the largest I?anks and great c o m ercial houses. Fartlwr tip is the retail shopping district, and above that are the homes of the well-to-do classes. Fifth A ye butt a few years ago was occupied solely by the homes of rieh people, is and more a business thoroughfare as far as Fif let h street. Above rift iet 11 St reef, inn\ • ever, the character of the present structures ehurehes, tine club houses, and the spacious holm, if the rich—will probably prevent great elimmes. In P-105. when Central Park was ap• completion. the districts on both sides I If t he park east and west were entirely unini• proved. Along Fifth Avenue. from Sixtieth Street to One Hundredth Street, there were not a where to-day is a solidly built line of handsome dwellings. (In the west side
of the park the change has been still greater. but in addition to private 'here are hundreds of apartment houses. 11n Riverside Drive, the boulevard whirl; skirts the Hudson River. there are both private residences and apartment houses. Riverside Drive is one of the most beautiful avenues in the world. Uptown along the West Side there are miles of small, artistic private houses until the neighborhood of 110th Street is reached, where over large areas apartment houses are again the rule. The upper part of the island along the East Side is solidly built up with tenement houses. A rocky ridge, rising steeply from the Hudson, with an equally abrupt descent toward the east, extends through the upper part of Manhattan Island, rising finally into hills of nearly 250 feet elevation. These eminences, in part known as Washington Heights, offer charming sites for dwellings, and are in some places compactly built up, while extensive tracts are still covered with woods, iwesenting exquisite bits of scenery along the Hudson and Harlem rivers.
Blackwell's, Ward's. and Randall's islands, pic turesquely situated in the East River, are used for city institutions for the care of the poor, sick, and disorderly. Contagious disease hospitals are maintained by the city on the small islands off Port Morris, in the Borough of the Bronx.
BtrtsDINga. Viewed from the bay, the business part of the Borough of Manhattan presents a most extraordinary conglomeration of towering office buildings, varying from ten to twenty-five stories in height, huddled together in apparent confusion upon a strip of land less than a mile wide. Beginning at the Battery, the first build ing of importance is the Produce Exchange. a modern Renaissance structure of brick and terra cotta, with a fine tower 225 feet high. Opposite the Exchange. on Bowling Green. is the new Custom House, upon the site of the official resi dence built by the city for General Washington. From Bowling Green to Wall Street, Broadway is lined with immense business structures, each of them costing millions of dollars, occupied by the Standard Oil Company, the Manhattan Life 4nsuranee Company. the Commercial Cable Com pany, the Union Trust Company, and other large corporations. The. Consolidated Stock and Petro leapt Exchange is at Broadway and Exchange I'lace. From Trinity Chureh. running east to the river, is Wall Street. a narrow thoroughfare so completely lined on both sides with buildings from twelve to twenty stories high. used 1w banks and financial institutions, as to resemble more VoL.