City of Promise by Beverly Swerling

level to make construction easier, the undeveloped countryside fell off to either side. Driving along Fifth above the Thirties it seemed they looked down into a different world. There was a good deal of rubble left over from laying out the roads, interrupted by an occasional tumbledown shack or a sprawling dwelling that housed hundreds. Rookeries everyone called them, huge barracks-like structures where landlords crammed in as many of the working poor as could pay a few dollars’ rent. And everywhere half-dressed urchins who frequently stopped playing long enough to stare after the phaeton until it was out of sight. Then, at Fifty-First Street, the desolation gave way to a half-built pseudo gothic pile that since 1858 had been promising to become the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Patrick.
    “Do you think,” Mollie asked, “the city will ever come up this far? Perhaps when the Catholic Church is finished. Will all the grand mansions march up to meet it?”
    “I suppose they will, but that’s not what interests me. I’m in real estate as it happens, and I can assure you, what this town needs is not more grand mansions. What’s required is a way to shelter the middle classes who make New York run. There has to be something between a shack, or a rookery for the poorest of the poor, and a castle on Fifth Avenue.”
    “But there is,” Mollie said. “Block after block of ordinary brownstones without any nonsense like gold banisters. And more being built everyday.”
    “True enough, but one house per family is not going to solve the problem for the future. We’re an island, don’t forget, and there’s only so much filling along our shores we can do. Land is the one thing New York City can’t manufacture.”
    “And do you have a solution to this problem?”
    “I have ideas, Mollie. Or I should say, one idea with numerous variations.”
    She started to ask what exactly the idea was, but they had reached Fifty-Ninth Street and were entering Central Park. Joshua immediately became occupied with making his way into a close-packed string of vehicles, while for her part Mollie was lost in wonder.
    Stately broughams and elegant coaches and racy landaus were making their way along a winding thoroughfare lined with trees just beginning to green. There were few coachmen. Almost everyone drove themselves, that being part of the afternoon’s pleasure. A number of the gentlemen took great trouble to show off their skill at handling teams of two or even four, and bettering their rivals as they did so. This involved a lot of side-by-side maneuvering on a roadway planned for single-file traffic in each direction, and you could hear the drivers taunting one another as they managed to bob and weave their way to the front of one carriage, only to be confronted by half a dozen more.
    Josh was soon in the heart of that competition, obviously enjoying the challenge of taking on grander carriages and frequently beating them. He’d gotten to his feet—he was remarkably steady despite the peg—and though he held a whip as did the other drivers, he seemed only to crack it in the air, and to control his horse with nothing but the reins. His hat fell off as he worked the phaeton around a particularly challenging curve, and the sunlight shone on his red hair. He looked, Mollie thought, like someone from the books she’d read as a young girl: a hero from the days of old, his head circled with laurel.
    Strollers, meanwhile, were thick on the ground either side, and all the women, riding or walking, wore brightly colored dresses, while the men sported cutaway coats and top hats. “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Josh asked with another of his broad grins. “Welcome to coaching, Mollie. Now tilt your parasol so everyone can see your gorgeous feathered bonnet. And don’t forget to smile at the gawkers. You’re exactly what they’ve come out to see.”

    There were countless boardinghouses in New York City. Rooming houses they were called,