They Are Houses, Not Hotels Or
Palaces; But They Are Very Roomy Houses, With Every Luxury That
Complete Finish Can Give Them.
Many of them cover large spaces of
the ground, and their rent will sometimes go up as high as 800
pounds and 1000 pounds a year.
Generally the best of these houses
are owned by those who live in them, and rent is not, therefore,
paid. But this is not always the case, and the sums named above
may be taken as expressing their value. In England a man should
have a very large income indeed who could afford to pay 1000 pounds
a year for his house in London. Such a one would as a matter of
course have an establishment in the country, and be an earl, or a
duke, or a millionaire. But it is different in New York. The
resident there shows his wealth chiefly by his house; and though he
may probably have a villa at Newport or a box somewhere up the
Hudson, he has no second establishment. Such a house, therefore,
will not represent a total expenditure of above 4000 pounds a year.
There are churches on each side of Fifth Avenue - perhaps five or
six within sight at one time - which add much to the beauty of the
street. They are well built, and in fairly good taste. These,
added to the general well-being and splendid comfort of the place,
give it an effect better than the architecture of the individual
houses would seem to warrant. I own that I have enjoyed the vista
as I have walked up and down Fifth Avenue, and have felt that the
city had a right to be proud of its wealth. But the greatness and
beauty and glory of wealth have on such occasions been all in all
with me. I know no great man, no celebrated statesman, no
philanthropist of peculiar note who has lived in Fifth Avenue.
That gentleman on the right made a million of dollars by inventing
a shirt collar; this one on the left electrified the world by a
lotion; as to the gentleman at the corner there, there are rumors
about him and the Cuban slave trade but my informant by no means
knows that they are true. Such are the aristocracy of Fifth
Avenue, I can only say that, if I could make a million dollars by a
lotion, I should certainly be right to live in such a house as one
of those.
The suburbs of New York are, by the nature of the localities,
divided from the city by water. Jersey City and Hoboken are on the
other side of the Hudson, and in another State. Williamsburg and
Brooklyn are on Long Island, which is a part of the State of New
York. But these places are as easily reached as Lambeth is reached
from Westminster. Steam ferries ply every three or four minutes;
and into these boats coaches, carts, and wagons of any size or
weight are driven.
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