Part 60

Tammany Hall, in East Fourteenth street, between Irving Place and Third avenue, is a handsome edifice of red brick, with white marble trimmings. It contains several fine halls, and a number of committee rooms. The main hall is one of the handsomest in the city, and was formerly used as a theatre. It was in this hall that the National Democratic Convention of 1868 was held. The building is the property of the "Tammany Society." This Society was organized in 1789 as a benevolent association, but subsequently became a political organization and the ruling power in the Democratic politics of the City and State.

[Picture: NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN.]

The Academy of Design is located at the northwest corner of Fourth avenue and Twenty-third street. It is one of the most beautiful edifices in the city. It is built in the pure Gothic style of the thirteenth century, and the external walls are composed of variegated marble. It has an air of lightness and elegance, that at once elicit the admiration of the gazer. The interior is finished with white pine, ash, mahogany, oak, and black walnut in their natural colors; no paint being used in the building. Schools of art, a library, reading room, lecture room, and the necessary rooms for the business of the institution, occupy the first and second stories. The third floor is devoted to the gallery of paintings and the sculpture room. At certain seasons of the year exhibitions of paintings and statuary are held here. None but works of living artists are exhibited.

[Picture: STEINWAY AND SONS' PIANO FACTORY.]

One of the most imposing buildings in the city is the new Grand Central Depot, on Forty-second street and Fourth avenue. It is constructed of red brick, with iron trimmings painted white, in imitation of marble. The south front is adorned with three and the west front with two massive pavilions. The central pavilion of each front contains an illuminated clock. The entire building is 696 feet long and 240 feet wide. The space for the accommodation of the trains is 610 feet long and 200 feet wide. The remainder of the edifice is devoted to the offices of the various railways using it. Waiting-rooms, baggage-rooms, etc. The car-shed is covered with an immense circular roof of iron and glass. The remainder of the building is of brick and iron. The principal front is on Forty-second street. This portion is to be occupied by the offices and waiting-rooms of the New York and New Haven and the Shore Line railways. The southern portion of the west front is occupied by the offices and waiting-rooms of the New York, Harlem, and Albany Railway, and the remainder of this front by the offices and waiting-rooms of the Hudson River and New York Central railways. These roads are the only lines which enter the city, and they are here provided with a common terminus in the very heart of the metropolis. The waiting-rooms and offices are finished in hard wood, are handsomely frescoed, and are supplied with every convenience. The height of the roof of the main body of the depot is 100 feet from the ground; the apex of the central pavilion on Forty-second street is 160 feet from the ground.

The car-house constitutes the main body of the depot. It is lighted from the roof by day, and at night large reflectors, lighted by an electrical apparatus, illuminate the vast interior. The platforms between the tracks are composed of stone blocks. Each road has a particular portion assigned to it, and there is no confusion in any of the arrangements. The roof is supported by thirty-one handsome iron trusses, each weighing forty tons, and extending in an unbroken arch over the entire enclosure. The glass plates in the roof measure 80,000 feet. The interior of the car-house is painted in light colors, which harmonize well with the light which falls through the crystal roof.

About eighty trains enter and depart from this depot every day. The running of these is regulated by the depot-master, who occupies an elevated position at the north end of the car-house, from which he can see the track for several miles. A system of automatic signals governs the running of the trains through the city.

The building was projected by Commodore Vanderbilt. Ground was broken for it on the 15th of November, 1869, and it was ready for occupancy on the 9th of October, 1871.

LXXII. PATENT DIVORCES.

It may not be generally known in other parts of the country, but it is very well understood in the city, that New York is the headquarters of a powerful Ring of corrupt and unscrupulous lawyers, whose business is to violate the law of the land, and procure by fraud divorces which will not be granted by any court after a fair and full hearing of the case. It may be asserted at the outset, that those who are fairly and justly entitled to such a separation, never seek it through the Divorce Ring.

In any issue of certain city newspapers, you will see such advertisements as the following:

ABSOLUTE DIVORCES LEGALLY OBTAINED, in New York, and States, where desertion, drunkenness, etc., etc., are sufficient cause. No publicity; no charge until divorce obtained; advice free. M--- B---, attorney, 56 --- street.

The all-sufficient cause with these lawyers is the desire for a separation on the part of the husband or wife, and they never trouble themselves with questions of law or morality. The law of New York allows a divorce with the right to marry again, upon one ground only--that of adultery.

"The lawyers of the Divorce Ring are the pariahs of their profession--men who have been debarred in other States (sometimes in other countries) for detected malpractice; men who began life fairly, but sank into ignominy through dissipation, political failure, or natural vicious tendencies; men, even, who never opened a law-book before entering upon their present avocation, but gleaned a practical knowledge of the legal alternative of 'wedded woe' by a course of training in the private detective's trade. These latter worthies often hire the use of practising lawyers' names. Occasionally they hire the said lawyers themselves to go through the mummeries of the courts for them; and we could name one of our most eloquent and respectable criminal pleaders who, on a certain occasion at least, permitted himself to be nominally associated with one of the boldest operators of the Ring.

"The dens of the divorcers are situated chiefly on the thoroughfares most affected by lawyers of the highest caste, though even Broadway is not wholly exempt from them; and Wall street, Pine street, and especially Nassau street, contain a goodly number each. Without any ostentatious display of signs or identifications, they are generally furnished in the common law-office style, with substantial desks and chairs, shelves of law-books, and usually a shady private apartment for consultations. Sometimes the name upon the 'directory' of the building and name over the 'office' itself will be spelled differently, though conveying the same sound; as though the proprietor thereof might have occasional use for a confusion of personalities. Along the stairs and hallways leading to these dens, at almost any hour of the day, from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M., may be met women in flashy finery and men with hats drawn down over their eyes--all manifestly gravitating, with more or less shamefacedness, towards the places in question. They may be dissolute actresses, seeking a spurious appearance of law to end an old alliance and prepare for a new one. They may be the frivolous, extravagant, reckless wives of poor clerks or hard-working mechanics, infatuatedly following out the first consequences of a matinee at the theatre and a 'Personal' in the _Herald_. They may be the worthless husbands of unsuspecting, faithful wives, who, by sickness, or some other unwitting provocation, have turned the unstable husbandly mind to thoughts of connubial pastures new and the advertising divorcers. They may be the 'lovers' of married women, who come to engage fabricated testimony and surreptitious unmarriage for the frail creatures whose virtue is still too cowardly to dare the more honest sin. They are not the wronged partners of marriage, who, by the mysterious chastising providence of outraged hearths and homes, are compelled, in bitterest agony of soul, to invoke justice of the law for the honor based upon right and religion.

"The manufacture of 'a case' by the contrabandists of divorce is often such a marvel of unscrupulous audacity, that its very lawlessness constitutes in itself a kind of legal security. So wholly does it ignore all the conventionalities of mere legal evasion, as to virtually lapse into a barbarism, knowing neither law nor civilization. A young woman in flaunting jockey hat, extravagant 'chignon,' and gaudy dress, flirts into the den, and turns a bold, half-defiant face upon the rakish masculine figure at the principal desk. The figure looks up, a glance between the two tells the story, and the woman is invited to step into the consulting-room (if there be one), and give her husband's name and offence. A divorce will cost her say twenty-five, or fifty, or seventy-five dollars--in fact, whatever sum she can afford to pay for such a trifle. She can have it obtained for her in New York, or at the West, just as her husband's likelihood to pry into things, or her own taste in the matter, may render advisable. Not a word of the case can possibly get into the papers in either locality. She can charge 'intemperance,' or 'desertion,' or 'failure to support,' or whatever else she chooses; but, perhaps, it would be better to make it adultery, as that can be just as easily proved, and 'holds good in any State.' This point being decided, the young woman can go home, and there keep her luckless wretch of a husband properly in the dark until her 'decree' is ready for her. If the applicant is a man, the work is all the easier; for then even less art will be required to keep the unconscious 'party of the second part' in ignorance of the proceedings. The case is now quietly put on record in the proper court (if the 'suit' is to be 'tried' in New York), and a 'summons' prepared for service upon the 'defendant.' To serve this summons, any idle boy is called in from the street, and directed to take the paper to defendant's residence or place of business, and there serve it upon him. Away goes the boy, willing enough to earn fifty cents by this easy task, and is met upon the stoop of the residence, or before the door of the place of business, by a confederate of the divorce-lawyer, who sharply asks what he wants. 'I want to see Mr. ---,' says the boy. 'I am Mr. ---,' returns the confederate, who is thereupon served with the summons. Back hurries the boy to the law-office, signs an affidavit that he has served the paper upon defendant in person, is paid for the job, and goes about his business. The time selected for the manoeuvre is, of course, adapted to what the 'plaintiff' has revealed of her husband's hours for home or for business; and, after the improvised server of the 'summons' has once sworn to his affidavit and disappeared, there is no such thing as ever finding him again! A 'copy of the complaint' is 'served' in the same way; or, the 'summons' is published once a week for a month in the smallest type of the smallest obscure weekly paper to be found. This latter device, however, is adopted only when the plaintiff (having some moral scruples about too much perjury at once) charges 'desertion,' and desires to appear quite ignorant of unnatural defendant's present place of abode. If, for any particular reason, the party seeking a divorce prefers a Western decree, the 'lawyer,' or a clerk of his, starts at once for Indiana, or some quiet county of Illinois; and, after hiring a room in some tavern or farm-house in the name of his client (to establish the requisite fact of residence!), gives the case into the hands of a local attorney with whom he has a business partnership. This Western branch of the trade has reached such licence that, not long ago, a notorious practitioner of the Ring actually issued an advertisement in a paper of New York, to the effect that he had just returned to this city from the West with a fresh stock of blank divorces! The wording was not literally thus, but such was its obvious and only signification. Whether the 'trial' is to take place in New York or Indiana, however, there is but one system commonly adopted in offering proof of the truth of the complaint upon which a divorce is demanded. Plaintiff's villainous attorney, after waiting a due length of time for some response from the defendant in the case(!), asks of the Court, as privately as possible, the appointment of a referee.

"His Honor the Court, upon learning that 'defendant' does not oppose (of course not!), names a referee, who shall hear the testimony in the case, and submit a copy thereof, together with his decision thereon, to the Court for confirmation. Then, before the referee--who is to be properly feed for his officiation--go the divorce-lawyer and two or three shabby-genteel-looking 'witnesses,' who from thenceforth shall never be findable by mortal man again. The 'witnesses' swear to any thing and every thing--that they have seen and recognized defendant in highly improper houses with improper persons; that they know plaintiff to be pure, faithful, and shamefully misused in the marriage relation, etc., etc. As 'defendant,' not even aware that he or she _is_ a 'defendant,' makes no appearance, either in person or by counsel, to combat this dreadful evidence, the referee must, of course, render decision for plaintiff--'the law awards it, and the Court doth give it.' The judge subsequently confirms this decision; a decree of full divorce is granted, _in due and full legal form_, to the triumphant plaintiff; and the 'defendant' is likely to become aware of the suit for the first time on that night."

The acts of the divorce Ring are no secrets in New York. Yet neither the judges nor the Bar Association make any efforts to rid the courts of such wretches. "A citizen of New York, whose misguided wife had secretly obtained a fraudulent divorce from him through such practice as we have described, and who, in turn, had successfully sued in the legitimate way for the dissolution of marriage thus forced upon him, sought to induce his legal adviser, a veteran metropolitan lawyer of the highest standing, to expose the infamous divorce 'Ring' before the courts, and demand, in behalf of his profession, that its practitioners should be at least disbarred. The response was, that the courts were presumed to be entirely ignorant of the fraudulent parts of the proceedings referred to; that the offenders could be 'cornered' only through a specific case in point against them, and, besides, that the referees in their cases were nearly all connected, either consanguinely or in bonds of partnership interest, with the judges who had appointed them, and before whom the motion for disbarment would probably come! For this last curious reason no lawyer could, consistently with his own best interests, inaugurate a movement likely to involve the whole referee system in its retributive effects. A lawyer so doing might, when arguing future cases in court, find a certain apparent disposition of the Bench to show him less courtesy than on former occasions--to snub him, in fact, and thereby permanently prejudice his professional future likelihoods in that jurisdiction!"

LXXIII. THE CROTON WATER WORKS.

There were many plans for supplying the city of New York with fresh water, previous to the adoption of the Croton Aqueduct scheme, but we have not the space to present them here. They were all inadequate to the necessities of the city, and all in turn were thrown aside. The most important was one for obtaining the water supply from the Bronx River. It was believed that a daily supply of 3,000,000 gallons could be obtained from this stream, but nothing was done in the matter, and it was not until the prevalence of Asiatic Cholera in 1832 had impressed upon the people the necessity of a supply of pure water, nor until the great fire of 1837 had convinced them that they must have an abundance of water, that the scheme for supplying the city from the sources of the Croton River was definitely resolved upon. De Witt Clinton gave his powerful support to the scheme, and the citizens at the municipal elections expressed themselves unqualifiedly in favor of a full supply of fresh water. It was decided to obtain the supply from the Croton River, and in May, 1837, the work on the aqueduct which was to convey it to the city was actually begun, and on the 4th of July, 1842, the Croton water was distributed through the city.

The first step was to throw a massive dam across the Croton River, by means of which the Croton Lake was formed, the water being raised to a depth of forty feet by the obstruction. From this dam an aqueduct, constructed of brick, stone, and cement, conveys the water to the city, a distance of nearly forty miles. It is arched above and below, and is seven and a half feet wide, and eight and a half feet high, with an inclination of thirteen inches to the mile. It rests on the ground for a portion of its course, and in other parts is supported by a series of stone arches. It crosses twenty-five streams in Westchester County, besides numerous brooks, which flow under it through culverts. It is conveyed across the Harlem River by means of the High Bridge. The water flows through vast iron pipes, which rest upon the bridge. The bridge is a magnificent stone structure, 1450 feet long, with fifteen arches, the highest of which is one hundred feet above high water mark. Its great height prevents it from interfering with the navigation of the stream. The High Bridge is one of the principal resorts in the suburbs of New York. The structure itself is well worth seeing, and the scenery is famed for its surpassing loveliness.

[Picture: THE HIGH BRIDGE.]

There are two large reservoirs at the city end of the bridge, the "Storage Reservoir," and the "High Service," the latter of which is designed for supplying the elevated section of Washington Heights. From here to the distributing reservoirs in the Central Park, which have already been described, the distance is two and a quarter miles. The distributing reservoir for the principal part of the city is on Fifth Avenue, between Fortieth and Forty-second streets. It covers about four acres of ground, and is built of granite. It is forty feet above the street, is divided into two parts, and will hold 20,000,000 gallons of water. It is exactly forty-one miles from the Croton Lake.

[Picture: THE FIFTH AVENUE RESERVOIR.]

The daily flow of water through the aqueduct is 60,000,000 gallons, its full capacity. The reservoirs hold over 2,000,000,000 gallons, or about fifteen days, supply. Nearly four hundred miles of main pipes distribute the water through the city, and supply it to 67,000 dwelling houses and stores, 1624 manufactories, 290 hospitals, prisons, schools, and public buildings, 307 churches, and 14 markets. There are 72 drinking hydrants, and a number of ornamental fountains in the city. The lakes and fountains in the Central Park are all formed by the Croton water, which is also supplied to the State Prison at Sing Sing, and the Institutions on Blackwell's, Randall's, and Ward's islands. The Croton River is one of the purest streams in the world. The water is bright and sparkling, and there is no sediment perceptible to the naked eye. Actual analysis has shown that the amount of impurity during an entire summer was but 4.45 grains in a gallon, or 7.63 parts in 100,000 parts.

The original cost of the aqueduct and reservoirs was about $9,000,000. Since then the increased supply, the new reservoirs, pipes, etc., have made the total amount upward of $40,000,000. The total receipts from the water tax since the opening of the aqueduct have amounted to about $22,000,000. The tax at present amounts to about $1,232,000 annually.

LXXIV. EXCURSIONS.

The suburbs of New York are very attractive, and excursions to nearly every point within reach of the city are made every day during the summer months. The fares are low, and a day may be pleasantly spent on the water by leaving the city about 8 o'clock in the morning and returning at 6 or 7 P.M.

One of the pleasantest excursions of this kind, is up the Hudson. One may go as far as West Point or Poughkeepsie, and enjoy the magnificent scenery of the famous river, or he may leave the boat at West Point, and spend an hour or two at that place before the arrival of the down boat. The steamers on the Hudson are the best of their kind, and afford every opportunity for enjoyment.

Staten Island, in New York Bay, seven miles from the city, and in full sight of it, offers many attractions to the pleasure seeker. There are several lines of steamers plying between the city and the towns on that island, and making hourly trips. The sail across the bay is delightful, and the fare is only ten or twelve cents each way.

Another trip, and one which should never be omitted by strangers visiting the city, is from Peck Slip up the East River to One-hundred-and-thirtieth street, or Harlem. The route lies along the entire East River front of the city, with Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and Long Island City on the opposite shores. Blackwell's, Randall's, and Ward's islands, with their magnificent edifices, are passed, and Hell Gate is an additional attraction. One is given a better idea of the size of New York and Brooklyn in this way, than in almost any other. Not the least of the attractions is the United States Navy Yard, at Brooklyn, an admirable view of which may be obtained from the deck of the steamer in passing it. The boats run hourly from Peck Slip and Harlem. The fare is ten cents each way. In the summer time there is a line of steamers plying between Harlem and the High Bridge, and connecting with the Peck Slip boats.

[Picture: U.S. NAVY YARD, BROOKLYN.]

The towns on Long Island Sound are also connected with New York by lines of steamers. These are among the pleasant objective points for excursionists within reach of the city.

The old route to Philadelphia, by way of South Amboy, offers another attraction. The boat is a fine and powerful steamer, and makes two trips daily between New York and South Amboy. Sometimes the route lies through the picturesque Kill Van Kull, or Staten Island Sound, or through the Narrows, into the Outer Bay, and around Staten Island into Raritan Bay.

[Picture: WEST POINT.]

The famous resorts of Rockaway and Coney Island are reached in from one to two hours by steamer. At either of these places a day may be spent on the sea shore. The surf-bathing is excellent at both, and each may also be reached by a railway. Of late years, Coney Island has become a favorite resort of the roughs of New York and Brooklyn, and, as a consequence, is not as attractive to respectable visitors as formerly.