The place shone with the pleasant, subdued lustre of polished oak The walls, the floor, the round tables with brass legs, the bar were spotless.
Walt Whitman, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 19, 1846 [unsigned in original]
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,
A million people manners free and superb open voices hospitality the most courageous and friendly young men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!
Walt Whitman, “Mannahatta”
“[The beauty of the park] should be the beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of the green pastures, and the still waters. What we wantto gain is tranquility and rest to the mind.”
Frederick Law Olmsted, 1870
Standing on the ferry, New York, across the water, gleaming in the sunlight, seemed to me to be those fantastic visions realized. A strong wind was blowing in from the bay, whipping the surface of the river. Ferryboats, tugs and steamers left wakes of sparkling foam, and innumerable sailing craft, varnished pleasure yachts and weather-beaten smacks alike leaned grace-fully from the wind, throwing showers of spray about their bows. The afternoon sun flashed from the windows of the city we were approaching. It tinted he floating plumes of steam that rose from roofs. …
Arthur Henry, Lodgings in Town (1905)
Crossing to N. Y. at the South Ferry, (what mortal could wish a better–managed mode of passage than appertains to our Brooklyn ferries?) We lingered awhile on the Battery—that beloved spot—and reflected whether the new Washington Park, on the heights of Fort Greene, would not be quite as noble a promenade, even without the water–front: it would have a far more magnificent water–view, you know. . . . . . . Stores, and very handsome ones, we observed, are encroaching on the south side of Broadway, from the Bowling Green up to the site of the old Waverly House—the stretch made vacant by the fire of last summer. The last gaps in the line are now being filled up, and the New Year’s callers on that route will behold not a single evidence of the ruin made by the ‘devouring element’ so short a while since. . . . . . What a fascinating chaos is Broadway, of a pleasant sunny time! Weknow1 it is all, (or most of it,) ‘fol–de–rol,’ but still there is a pleasure in walking up and down there awhile, and looking at the beautiful ladies, the bustle, the show, the glitter, and even the gaudiness. But alas! what a prodigious amount of means and time might be m Matters Which Were Seen and Done in an Afternoon Ramble
Arthur Henry, Lodgings in Town (1905)
I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“Past the projects, the land opened up and water came into view. The breeze carried rain and salt. Jetties and barrier walls supported the shore, which was stacked with crumbling brick warehouses. Out in the channel, the Statue of Liberty stood alone on her little island, her corroding flame held high in the air as the sun set over the industrial shoreline and skyways of New Jersey. Across the narrows, the bluffs of Staten Island wavered in the smoky light of dusk that turned the Verrazano into bronze. Faint light burnished water into busy with freighters and tug boats. A lone sail boat flitted in the distance. On the near shore, on a slip of water between a jetty and the land, a blood red barge bobbed on the tide.”
Andrew Cotto, Outerborough Blues: A Brooklyn Mystery
“Life in New York was like being in a giant bookstore: all these trillions of paths and possibilities drawing dreamers into the city’s beating heart, saying, I make no promises but I offer many doors.”
Emily Henry, Book Lovers
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2026
Roger Smith's New York 