dumbstruck. Then she levered to her feet and stuck out her hand. I shook it, finding her grip every bit as firm as mine. I liked that, though. I liked her, considerably. Even though something about her prickled the nape of my neck.
“Where am I bound?”
“Nassau Street and Cedar. It’s called the New American Textile Manufactory. Symmes owns at least four others I know of. Maybe more. But that’s where I worked.”
“I’m on my way there, then. Thank you for the whiskey.”
“Come back if you like, Mr. Wilde.” She followed me to her door. “We’ll have a drink and talk abolition and dirty politics. I mean it. You’re welcome here.”
“I’d love to,” I assured her, meaning it just as heartily.
I would be returning, of course, all too soon. Just not for any so charming a reason. Meanwhile, I pointed my boots south in the direction of the Second Ward, the affectionate April sun giving me no indication whatsoever that I was on a direct collision course with a hurricane.
6
The first event engraved on my memory was the birth of a sister when I was four years old. . . . I heard so many friends remark, “What a pity it is she’s a girl!” that I felt a kind of compassion for the little baby.
—ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, ORGANIZER OF THE 1848 SENECA FALLS CONVENTION
T HE STROLL FROM T HOMAS S TREET down to Nassau wasn’t taxing, so I walked there. Soon enough nearing what we’d used to call the Burnt District. And the teeming hive of manufacturing there, as if an industrious honeycomb had been cannonaded and splattered its sweet commerce throughout the once-charred First Ward.
If I could choose between a fire that destroyed our family and a fire that destroyed a patch of my skin . . . there isn’t any question which I’d erase from the record. But the Fire of 1845 brought its fair share of consequences. One was that my life was ruined, and thus I became a reluctant—very reluctant—star policeman. One was that people died. Too many of them. One was that about three hundred buildings at the busiest tip of Manhattan surrounding Wall Street burned down to their basements.
Another was that industry has popped right back up again from the soot. Startling and sudden and garish as a jack-in-the-box.
Brick buildings and board buildings. Brownstone buildings and even some strange few painted iron-faced buildings. Grey-trimmed buildings and whitewashed buildings and marble buildings and granite buildings. I can’t describe the vertigo of it. The sheer scope. Three-story buildings, four-story buildings, fives and even neck-craning sixes towering above the fractured pavement, where the speckled pigs still roam free in search of sex and cabbage scraps. It’s a heady business. Absinthe-rich, delirious. I’d made the mistake of nearing that newborn rumpus of a district at about half past twelve. And striding down Broadway, no less—the more fool I. So I was jostled continually by stockbrokers and hot-corn girls and stoggers with their hands half in my pockets before I’d slapped them aside like so many flies. My nostrils full of horse manure, and fried clams, and the sweet neutral aroma of stone simmering in the sun.
Quick as was possible, I turned off kaleidoscope Broadway down Cedar, in sight of my goal.
Nassau isn’t a street I much frequent. It’s being rebuilt with manufactories where the business-residences and coffeehouses had stood before the flames licked them to rubble. That is, I knew as much, but it must have been six months since I’d set foot in it, and I confess . . .
I was not a little bustled.
It was a cluster of manufactories all right, regardless of the irregularity of the architecture. Interrupted only by the newly famous American and French Dining Saloon, where the merchants gather to shake shrewd palms, its sign advertising TURTLE SOUP FOR EXPORTATION . Tradesmen bustling, their shabby custom-cut coats mended on a dozen occasions and cheap cuff links shining, doing
“Where am I bound?”
“Nassau Street and Cedar. It’s called the New American Textile Manufactory. Symmes owns at least four others I know of. Maybe more. But that’s where I worked.”
“I’m on my way there, then. Thank you for the whiskey.”
“Come back if you like, Mr. Wilde.” She followed me to her door. “We’ll have a drink and talk abolition and dirty politics. I mean it. You’re welcome here.”
“I’d love to,” I assured her, meaning it just as heartily.
I would be returning, of course, all too soon. Just not for any so charming a reason. Meanwhile, I pointed my boots south in the direction of the Second Ward, the affectionate April sun giving me no indication whatsoever that I was on a direct collision course with a hurricane.
6
The first event engraved on my memory was the birth of a sister when I was four years old. . . . I heard so many friends remark, “What a pity it is she’s a girl!” that I felt a kind of compassion for the little baby.
—ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, ORGANIZER OF THE 1848 SENECA FALLS CONVENTION
T HE STROLL FROM T HOMAS S TREET down to Nassau wasn’t taxing, so I walked there. Soon enough nearing what we’d used to call the Burnt District. And the teeming hive of manufacturing there, as if an industrious honeycomb had been cannonaded and splattered its sweet commerce throughout the once-charred First Ward.
If I could choose between a fire that destroyed our family and a fire that destroyed a patch of my skin . . . there isn’t any question which I’d erase from the record. But the Fire of 1845 brought its fair share of consequences. One was that my life was ruined, and thus I became a reluctant—very reluctant—star policeman. One was that people died. Too many of them. One was that about three hundred buildings at the busiest tip of Manhattan surrounding Wall Street burned down to their basements.
Another was that industry has popped right back up again from the soot. Startling and sudden and garish as a jack-in-the-box.
Brick buildings and board buildings. Brownstone buildings and even some strange few painted iron-faced buildings. Grey-trimmed buildings and whitewashed buildings and marble buildings and granite buildings. I can’t describe the vertigo of it. The sheer scope. Three-story buildings, four-story buildings, fives and even neck-craning sixes towering above the fractured pavement, where the speckled pigs still roam free in search of sex and cabbage scraps. It’s a heady business. Absinthe-rich, delirious. I’d made the mistake of nearing that newborn rumpus of a district at about half past twelve. And striding down Broadway, no less—the more fool I. So I was jostled continually by stockbrokers and hot-corn girls and stoggers with their hands half in my pockets before I’d slapped them aside like so many flies. My nostrils full of horse manure, and fried clams, and the sweet neutral aroma of stone simmering in the sun.
Quick as was possible, I turned off kaleidoscope Broadway down Cedar, in sight of my goal.
Nassau isn’t a street I much frequent. It’s being rebuilt with manufactories where the business-residences and coffeehouses had stood before the flames licked them to rubble. That is, I knew as much, but it must have been six months since I’d set foot in it, and I confess . . .
I was not a little bustled.
It was a cluster of manufactories all right, regardless of the irregularity of the architecture. Interrupted only by the newly famous American and French Dining Saloon, where the merchants gather to shake shrewd palms, its sign advertising TURTLE SOUP FOR EXPORTATION . Tradesmen bustling, their shabby custom-cut coats mended on a dozen occasions and cheap cuff links shining, doing
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