"Manhattan Island" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... limits as could be housed and furnished with environments consistent with the modern idea of healthful and agreeable living. New York, having been far worse crowded than Boston, has lost a still larger proportion of its former population. Were you to visit Manhattan Island I fancy your first impression would be that the Central Park of your day had been extended all the way from the Battery to Harlem River, though in fact the place is rather thickly built up according to modern notions, some two hundred and fifty thousand people ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... a sense of unreality in the whole conversation. Cal let the talk flow on, knowing it was a reaction to shock. What if a modern ocean liner pulled into the harbor of New York—to find an untouched Manhattan Island in ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Manhattan Island was this. To the south was General Knox, in command of a fort known as Bunker Hill on an eminence of what is now Grand Street. Near-by was General Israel Putnam—probably less known to posterity (above all, to youthful posterity) for his qualities as a commander ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... population, influence, and commerce, is worthy to be considered the metropolis of the New World. The situation of it is very advantageous. It is built upon Manhattan Island, which is about thirteen miles in length by two in breadth. It has the narrowest portion of Long Island Sound, called East River, on its east side; the Hudson, called the North River, environs it in another direction; while these two are connected by a ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... stuff we generally put over in our little group of unconventional thinkers. Attention, folks! Harken to the Tale of Dora the Dressmaker! Which proves that the way of the transgressor, as observed on Manhattan Island, is ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... TRADE.—Important as these discoveries were, they interested the Dutch far less than the prospect of a rich fur trade with the Indians, and in a few years Dutch traders had four little houses on Manhattan Island, and a little fort not far from the site of Albany. From it buyers went out among the Mohawk Indians and returned laden with the skins of beavers and other valuable furs; and to the fort by and by the Indians came to trade. So ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... but strong to hold; not so rash in adventure, nor so adroit in intrigue, as fond of fighting, but with less of the gift of the woods, and much more the faculty for government. There was little interchange of friendliness and trade between the rival colonists; and Frenchmen were as rare on Manhattan Island as Englishmen on the heights ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of New York, at the southerly point of Manhattan Island. The Hudson River, separating the island from the mainland of New Jersey on the west, is at its mouth two miles wide. The northern and eastern sides of the island are washed by the Harlem River, flowing out of the Hudson about a dozen miles north ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... there would never be anything worth having west of the Connecticut River, what if some seer had prophesied that in nineteen hundred there would be a city on Manhattan Island named New York that would rival London, two southwest, Baltimore and Washington to equal Venice, Philadelphia to match Liverpool, Pittsburg and Buffalo to surpass Birmingham, and beyond these a city called Chicago, which in ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... telegraph and telephone service, gas and electric lighting, are controlled by, and largely in the interests of, a small owning class. The Astors have become enormously rich because one of their progenitors bought for an inconsiderable sum farm land on Manhattan Island which is now worth so many dollars a square foot. Others have made gigantic fortunes out of the country's forests, its coal deposits, its copper, its waterpower, its oil. A certain upper stratum of society is freed from the necessity of work, can exercise vast power ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... peculiar shape of Manhattan Island, pressed in by arms of the sea on either side, and incapable of comfortable expansion, except along a narrow northward belt, that first gave the New York architects their bias for extreme vertical dimensions. Every need was lavishly supplied them—money, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the last few hours had meant anything whatever they had demonstrated two truths which shone like beacon lights: that Manhattan Island was overpopulated as long as both he and Ekstrom remained on it; that Ekstrom had been goaded to the verge of aberration by the discovery that Lanyard had come safely through the Assyrian debacle to take up anew his self-appointed office of Nemesis to the Prussian ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the principal seaport and commercial metropolis of the States. It is situated at the southern extremity of an island called Manhattan Island, near the mouth of the Hudson river. Its progress has been very rapid, and its population is more than double that of any other city in the new world. The approach to the city is very fine—the shores of the bay being wooded down to the water's edge, and thickly ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... where do you expect them to come from if not the City? Central Park is bounded on three sides by Manhattan Island and on the fourth by the Eighth Avenue Subway. And Brooklyn and Bronx boys have got pretty sharp scenters. And what's it get you insulting the woiking and non-woiking people of the woild's greatest metropolis? Be grateful for any audience you ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... a section of New York's Manhattan Island, down on the lower West Side, that has been known, for over a century, as "Radio Row." All through this section are stores, large and small, where every kind of electronic and sub-electronic device can ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... has for more than two centuries been a vague and variable term. In 1620-21 it was a line of forest which bounded the infant colony at Plymouth, a few scattered settlements on the James River, in Virginia, and the stockade on Manhattan Island, where Holland had established a trading-post destined to become one day the great commercial city ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... 1609, he entered a beautiful bay, formed by the spreading out of a noble river. At that point the stream is more than a mile wide, and he called it the "Great River." On the eastern side of it, not far from its mouth, there is a long narrow island: the Indians of that day called it Manhattan Island. ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... York, was first settled by the Dutch in 1614, on Manhattan Island. They established a government in 1629, under the name of the New Netherlands. In 1664 Charles II. granted the province to his brother, James II., then Duke of York, and possession was taken of the country on his behalf by one Colonel Nichols. In 1673 it was recaptured ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... limiting direct inheritance that no man able to work should escape its necessity by reason of the labor of his forefathers. I might say that I recognized the vested rights of the Astors to the soil on Manhattan Island, but that I recognized no right as vested in beings yet unborn. I might say that it was sufficient stimulation and reward for the most eminent Social endeavor to select, within reason, the objects of public utility to which ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... well ahead of his promise, because the sun was high in the heavens when the sloop began to pass the high, wooded hills that lie at the upper end of Manhattan Island, and they drew in to their anchorage near the Battery. They did not see the stone government buildings that had marked Quebec, nor the numerous signs of a fortress city, but they beheld more ships and more indications of a ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of necessity return first of all; for it would not much longer prove possible to go up and down and to and fro upon Manhattan Island in a black silk dress-coat and flaming scarlet small-clothes; ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... good thing this man ever did in his life, Was day before yesterday: He died.... But he didn't even do that of his own volition.... He was the meanest man in business on Manhattan Island, The most treacherous friend, the crudest and stingiest husband, And a father so hard that his children left home as soon as they were old enough.... Of course he had divinity: everything human has: But he kept it so carefully hidden away that he might ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... looked at the map of Manhattan Island and at the gleaming colored traceries that threaded their various ways across it. "Just what was the purpose of those tunnels?" ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to the teachings of their forefathers, sailed for the New World with the image of St. Nicholas for a figurehead on their vessel. They named the first church they built for the much-loved St. Nicholas and made him patron saint of the new city on Manhattan Island. Thanks, many many thanks, to these sturdy old Dutchmen with unpronounceable names who preserved to posterity so many delightful customs of Christmas observance. What should we have done without them? They were quite a worthy people ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... for the Subway was governed largely by the amount which the city was authorized by the Rapid Transit Act to spend. The main object of the road was to carry to and from their homes in the upper portions of Manhattan Island the great army of workers who spend the business day in the offices, shops, and warehouses of the lower portions, and it was therefore obvious that the general direction of the routes must be north and south, and that the line must extend as nearly as possible from ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... water-worn pebbles. The cymophane is mostly from the gem-gravels of Ceylon. Chrysoberyl is known as a constituent of certain kinds of granite, pegmatite and gneiss. In the United States it occurs at Haddam, Conn.; Greenfield Centre, near Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; and in Manhattan island. It is known also in the province of Quebec, Canada, and has been found near Gwelo in Rhodesia. (F. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of Guiana (Surinam).]—the Dutch had acquired a foothold in North America by the discoveries of Henry Hudson in 1609 and by settlement in 1621. Their colonists along the Hudson River called the new territory New Netherland and the town on Manhattan island New Amsterdam, but when Charles II of England seized the land in 1664, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... by ten o'clock had spread throughout the entire city. Police reserves were called out, and by midnight soldiers were being mobilized. Panics were starting everywhere. Millions of people crowded in on small Manhattan Island, in the heart of which was ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... see the business man flying to his office in the city from his country estate—unless some landing-field is built on the lower end of Manhattan Island as has been proposed. The Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York has taken up the matter of legislation to make landing-fields possible, and it must go through. The business man ought, in the near future, to be able to use the airplane for quick trips ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... Haerlem," a settlement established in 1658 by Gov. Peter Stuyvesant in the northeastern part of Manhattan Island. It existed for 200 years but is now lost under modern Harlem, which centers about 125th St. In this neighborhood to the west occurred the battle of Harlem Heights—a lively skirmish fought Sept. 16, 1776, opposite ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... Washington's headquarters were on Manhattan Island, at the home of the Quaker merchant, Robert Murray; and here, in the first week of September, 1776, he had asked his officers to meet him ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... muttered Russ, grinning cheerily at the familiar, sunlit city. His eyes darted to the chronometer beside him. The view seemed to be taken from a ship that was suddenly scudding across the heavens like a frightened thing, as it ran across from Manhattan Island, followed the Hudson for a short way, then cut across into New Jersey, swinging over the great woodland area of Kittatiny Park, resting finally on the New Jersey suburb of New York nestled in the Kittatinies, Blairtown. Low apartment buildings, ten or twelve stories high, nestled ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... editors of America. Born on Manhattan Island and for many years active in newspaper work in New York City. His experience also includes editorial direction of newspapers in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Boston. He knows the pulse of humanity and what pleases and interests the greatest number of ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... Washington's so-called army dwindled week by week. On November 16, a severe loss was incurred through the effort of General Greene to hold Fort Washington, which commanded the Hudson River from the heights at the northern end of Manhattan Island. This stronghold, besieged by Howe, made a fair defence, but was taken by storm, and the whole garrison captured. The American army then, in two detachments under Washington and Lee respectively, was obliged to retreat across New Jersey, followed by the British under Cornwallis, until, by December ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... the birch-stump champion without a glance of recognition. A few vigorous minutes brought him to the summit, whence, facing round, he saw the broad river crawl beneath him; the little boat, with Charon in the stern, drift downwards; and beyond, the whole rough length of Manhattan Island. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... great New York aqueducts and subways through highly complex crystalline rocks has been under the closest geological advice and supervision. The detailed study of the geology of Manhattan Island through a long series of years has resulted in an understanding of the rocks and their structures which has been of great practical use. In the aqueduct construction the kinds of rock to be encountered in the different sections, their water content, their hardness, their joints ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... navigators; and it was in 1609 that gallant Heinrich Hudson, alter two previous futile attempts to find a western passage to India, reached these shores, and sailed up the noble river which now bears his name. Five years after, a Dutch colony was formed on Manhattan Island, whereon the city of New York now stands, to which was first given the name of "New Amsterdam." The colony prospered, and in 1624 the island was purchased of the Indians for twenty four ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... curious fact that in the Edison family the pronunciation of the name has always been with the long "e" sound, as it would naturally be in the Dutch language. The family prospered and must have enjoyed public confidence, for we find the name of Thomas Edison, as a bank official on Manhattan Island, signed to Continental currency in 1778. According to the family records this Edison, great-grandfather of Thomas Alva, reached the extreme old age of 104 years. But all was not well, and, as has happened so often before, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... against the sea wall. He walked on in the direction of the sound and found himself standing at the very end of Manhattan Island looking toward the bay. ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... produce little impression of a salutary character. Ben looked about him in ill-concealed disgust. He neither fancied the neighborhood, nor the people whom he met. But the Island is very narrow just here, and he had not far to walk to West Street, which runs along the edge of Manhattan Island, and is lined with wharves. Jerry, of course, did not mind the surroundings. He was too well used to them ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... and more ago the founder of the Devon line had come to America, and invested his savings in land on Manhattan Island. Other people had toiled and built a city there, and generation after generation of the Devons had sat by and collected the rents, until now their fortune amounted to four or five hundred millions of dollars. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... have given us some modern sea terms, as sloop, schooner, yacht and also a number of others as boom, bush, boor, brandy, duck, reef, skate, wagon. The Dutch of Manhattan island gave us boss, the name for employer or overseer, also cold slaa (cut cabbage and vinegar), and ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... CITY (3,437), but including Brooklyn, Jersey City, and other suburban places, nearly three millions, the premier city of the American continent, and third wealthiest in the world; occupies Manhattan Island (131/2 m. long) and several smaller islands at the terminal confluence of the Hudson with East River, which opens into Long Island Sound; 18 m. S. of the city is Sandy Hook, where two ship channels cross the bar, and lead into the outer or lower bay, which in turn is joined ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... trading for furs with the Indians. They sent many expeditions to Hudson's River, and made a great deal of money. Some of their captains explored the coast northward and southward as far as Boston harbor and Delaware Bay. Their principal trading-posts were on Manhattan Island, and near the site of Albany. In 1614 some of the leading traders obtained from the Dutch government the sole right to trade between New France and Virginia. They called this ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... still held possession of Manhattan Island and the territory now known as New York, were not enjoying the peace and tranquillity promised the just. Because some swine had been stolen from the plantation of De Vries on Staten Island, the Dutch governor ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... and didn't quarrel with any one except the window-washer's little boy who brought meat for the cats in the basement. We drew the line at letting him boss us. And how we did enjoy being part of the big rumpus on Manhattan Island. We had a room—it wasn't so much of a room as it was a sort of stationary vest—and we ate at those hunger cures where a girl punches out your bill on a little ticket and you don't dare eat up above the third figure from the bottom or you'll go broke on Friday. By hook or crook we always managed ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... time and country, was born at Milan, Erie County, Ohio, in the United States, on February 11, 1847. His pedigree has been traced for two centuries to a family of prosperous millers in Holland, some of whom emigrated to America in 1730. Thomas, his great-grandfather, was an officer of a bank in Manhattan Island during the Revolution, and his signature is extant on the old notes of the American currency. Longevity seems a characteristic of the strain, for Thomas lived to the patriarchal term of 102, his son to 103, and Samuel, the father of the inventor, is, we understand, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... reaching out, on the part of the immensely enterprising Dutch merchants, after the lucrative trade in peltries; there was a plying to and fro of trading-vessels, and there were trading-posts established on Manhattan Island and at the head of navigation on the Hudson, or North River, and on the South River, or Delaware. Not until the great Dutch West India Company had secured its monopoly of trade and perfected its organization, in 1623, was there a beginning ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... was a neck-and-neck race between the Plymouth Company and the Dutch West India Company, for the control of the northern province. Dutch fur traders were already on Manhattan Island living in makeshift wooden huts, and Adrian Block was exploring Long Island Sound, when John Smith went out to map the coast north of Cape Cod for Sir Ferdinando Gorges of the Plymouth Company in 1614. The two little English ships reached the part of the coast called by the Indians ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... accuse father of being corrupt and of having forfeited the right to be judge? Isn't it still more absurd that we should be helpless and dejected and unhappy because we are on Long Island instead of Madison Avenue? Why should Manhattan Island be a happier spot than Long Island? Why shouldn't we be happy anywhere; we have each other. And we do need each other. We never knew how much till to-day, did we? We must stand by each other now. Father is going to clear his name of this preposterous ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein |
