Memories

A friend just sent me a picture of Broadway looking north from 176th street, taken about 1918. There is some question about the date but it almost certainly predates 1930. It was sent to me because I used to live there. In fact, the two buildings, front left, were my home for 28 years.

Thinking of the United States in 1918 conjures up the image of a young vibrant springlike country bursting with energy, of prosperous small towns with uncongested tree lined boulevards and happy people looking forward to the nascent development and liberty unleashed by the recently won victory in Europe.

This is what I expected when I opened the picture . I couldn't believe that back then, the buildings appeared as ugly as I remember them in a later era, blackened by the soot of time and neglect, the massive buildings crowding the unadorned, unbuffered sidewalks, their featureless facades a mess of small windows climbing to unnatural heights above the street. Even the puny trees in the picture never got any bigger. Admittedly, the streets had not yet taken on the congestion and hodgepodge of bumper to bumper parked cars squeezing the sidewalk from the street side corresponding to what the buildings were doing on the other side, but even then the mix of residential and commercial spaces packed together in a welter of busyness is sensed in the photograph.

This was a high class neighborhood at the beginning of the last century but why would anyone want to live there, that way? What an iconoclast!