Show NEW YORK CITY'S SIX EPOCHS IN THREE Her Slow Growth During the First Two Centuries When Everybody Went on No big city can grow faster than its transit Men have always refused in the long run to live in large numbers as far as an hour distant from their It is not really a question of but of Harlem at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street is now actually nearer the Battery than Fourteenth street was thirty-one years ago when the elevated railroads were Fourteenth street was twenty-five minutes from the Battery by horse One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street is twenty-two minutes from the Battery by Brooklyn has spread south and north as rapidly as the speed of the trolley car The city which shortens its local time tables always lengthens its New York is just at the beginning of its greatest era of For two centuries New Yorkers walked between their offices and their and in those two centuries' not only London and but Philadelphia and Boston gained population faster than New And New York has never grown so fast as she has since her first subway was And she needs' new ones now more than Although New York's greatest real estate families have clung more tenaciously to their land than the old families of any other American there is now no either in the tax books or in the social of the original plutocratic Manhattan Its name was Von The first of this must have had an acquisitiveness quite equal to that of any modern for when a forced loan equal to was levied in 1653 upon all New York property his share was Coming down to comparatively modern it is interesting to note what the biggest taxpayers gave The figures have been dug out of the city ar chives by a deputy tax commissioner for The In 1813 J. J. Astor paid R. Stephen John Washington Peter and four members of the Vanderbilt family paid from to And yet by the simple process of collecting rents and reinvesting the proceeds in more and again collecting more and again buying more all the while living the original J. J. Astor managed to pile up a fortune in New York City real estate alone which is now beyond the dream of His tax bill of in 1813 mounted to more than by to more than in 1850 and to more than in and in this year of the Astor estate there are even now only two of the family pays on New York City houses and lots value at exactly Its real market value is probably nearer and of course it could not be bought for New York |