" Those were the days of ropewalks and "selectmen," of
stage-coaches and oil-lamps. The Yankee invasion had scarcely superseded
the Knickerbocker element. The Free Academy was undreamed of; and the
City Hotel assemblies were the embryo Fifth Avenue balls. An old
Directory or a volume of Valentine's Manual, compared with the latest
Metropolitan Guide-Book and Trow's last issue, will best illustrate the
difference between Broadway then and now.
But it is not so much the more substantial memorials as the "dissolving
views" that give its peculiar character to the street. Entered at the
lower extremity by the newly-arrived European, on a rainy morning, the
first impression is the reverse of grand or winsome. The squalor of the
docks and the want of altitude in the buildings, combined with the
bustle and hubbub, strike the eye as repulsive; but as the scene grows
familiar and is watched under the various aspects produced by different
seasons, weather, and hours of the day, it becomes more and more
significant and attractive. Indeed, there is probably no street in the
world subject to such violent contrasts. It is one thing on a brilliant
and cool October day and another in July. White cravats and black coats
mark "Anniversary week"; broad brims and drab, the "Yearly Meeting" of
the Friends; the "moving day" of the householders, the "opening day" of
the milliners, Christmas and New Year's, sleighing-time and spring,
early morning and midnight, the Sabbath and week-days, a cold spell and
the "heated term,"--every hour, season, holiday, panic, pastime, and
parade brings into view new figures and phases,--diverse phenomena of
crowd and character,--like the shifting segments of a panorama.
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