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The City of New York is the most marvelous exemplification of those traits of the American people which have made the United States of to-day. Interest in New York does not lie in the mere magnitude of the city, but is found rather in the bound-less enterprise, the bold conception and the amazing achievement, which have reared the mighty fabric of the Metropolis. The theme is one which might well challenge the pen of him who would celebrate the America of the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
In describing New York, none other than the superlatives will suffice. It is in area the largest city in the world and in population is exceeded only by one.
The boroughs are linked together with the greatest of suspension bridges, and pierced throughout their length and breadth by the most extensive of subway systems. Broadway extending from the Battery north to Yonkers is the longest street in the world. The system of parks is the largest and costliest—in extent and in the sums de-voted to maintain them unapproached in America or Europe.
The gigantic office buildings of the business districts are among the modern wonders of the world; there are none to compare with them; their foundations are sunk deeper toward the center of the earth, their summits are uplifted higher toward the heavens. The largest steamships afloat make New York their port, and from the deck of the incoming ship the world-traveler beholds the towering bulk of Manhattan with amazement.
The superb mansions of upper Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive are among the most luxurious of the dwellings of man, as these streets are the grandest of residential avenues. The city's hotels and apartment houses are peerless in size and appointment; and each year witness their development, story added to story, luxury to luxury, magnificence to magnificence. The building operations characteristic of the day are audacious in their magnitude and in the engineering problem they involve. Municipal enterprises are unrivalled in scope and cost are likely to hold the world's records for generations to come, and then to be exceeded only by some new and more daring project conceived here on Manhattan Island.
The statistics which express the activities of the Metropolis are in figures which are incomprehensible. On the floor of the New York Stock Ex-change, millions of shares of stock change hands in a single day. The banks of New York lead the world in volume of clearings. New York is the financial center of the world.
Great and surpassing as the city is, each year adds to its material greatness and commanding influence. In the following pages are described some of the more conspicuous features of the growing and expanding New York of the present, the Metropolis of America, from which is emerging that city of the future which shall be the Metropolis of the World.
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