New York Ranks Among the World's Great Cities
New York.—The matter has finally been set at rest, and it is now admitted that New York is a great city—one of the great cities of the world, fit to be named in the same breath with London, Paris, Berlin, Dresden, and Pekin. Even a man of so thoroughly an English sentiment and conceit as Mr. Henry Ledley, of the Round Table, in an article of his which has just appeared in the Broadway Magazine, admits that the representative streets of New York and London are so much alike as to leave scarcely any points of divergence to fasten upon. Of course he refers to such thoroughfares as Broadway, Bowery, and the Fifth Avenue, but we doubt if London, or any city in the world, can show the same number of immense and costly buildings in process of construction at the present time as New York. And this is but a foretaste of what is to come; this is but the first bounding of the pulse of a renewed national life since the stupendous civil conflict which almost extinguished the national existence. In putting up these immense and costly structures New York but anticipates by a few years the growth and needs of the city, and the man is now living who will see the Empire City of the United States the queen of all the cities on the earth! Next to the Capitol at Washington, probably the largest building in America is the great Hudson River depot, which Mr. Vanderbilt is fast putting up on St. John's park. The casual visitor to New York would never see these great improvements unless he took the time and opportunity to hunt them up. Most of them stand off the main business street and some of them are a great ways up town, if the Astor house is taken as the starting point. Even the residents of New York themselves have no idea of what is going on in the city outside of Broadway, and some of the avenues through which they pass each day on their way to business. St. John's park was one of those out-of-the-way public squares which twenty-five years ago was the resort of the old Knickerbocker aristocracy. It is now surrounded by boarding houses, billiard saloons, and third-rate hotels. The park contained over three acres, the whole of this has been cleared of its trees, and a great depot is going up which will cover every inch of the ground. The house is being built fireproof, of iron, brick and granite. Three millions of dollars have been set aside with which to build it. The structure will be over 400 feet square, three stories high, with corner stones. No less than twelve railroad tracks run into this depot. Already the wall is up one story high on two sides of the house, and the iron pillars and girders for the second story are being put in place. This depot is intended to anticipate the completion and partially meet the wants of the Pacific Railroad. This is but one of the great houses going up in the city of New York. I will name some of the others—Booth's Theater, the Park Bank, Pike's Opera House, the new Tammany Hall, Stewart's great store, the Jews' Synagogue, the Roman Catholic Cathedral, and Dana's newspaper office.