They rear themselves beneath and around me as the lesser
peaks of the Himalayas seen from Mount Everest. My eyes ache with the
diversity of their shapes, the eccentricity of their styles, the
irregularity of their altitudes. No man viewing them can continue
blind to the independence of the American citizen, to the ostentation
of his right of personal selection, to his individual caprice. They
stand, a brick-and-iron commentary upon the competing ambitions of two
generations of townsmen.
A hulking, twenty-story modernity stands side by side with a dwarfish,
Dutch anachronism, but neither possesses any right of precedence over
the other. They are equal in the eyes of the proletary. Classic and
nondescript, marble and brick, granite and iron, unite to form the
most heterogeneous collection of fashions the earth's surface anywhere
exhibits. Even Milton's blind eyes pictured nothing so fantastic as
this architectural chaos of Manhattan, so hopeless of eventual order.
And yet are there not lacking signs that the quaint pot-pourri of
whimsicalities will one day coalesce into a well-defined, artistic
composition, a twentieth century City Beautiful. God grant its
attainment be not unduly protracted!
But it is with the insides of this vast confusion of buildings I am
presently concerned.
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