JOSEPH PENNELL

FTEN as I come back to NewYork-often as I look from ahigh place down on the cityoftenas from the narrow streetsI look up to the climbing buildingsround which the clouds gather and overwhich the steam plume waves-I see newsubjects, new motives, new combinations.New York is endless in subject. A noble pileof one year is dwarfed by a formless mass thenext ; a great arrangement grows from amean-looking mass.Always I love to get the composition comingup the bay. This year, however, there is nocomposition for me, for with the great newsquare boxes on either side, the silhouette ofBroadway is hidden, though the canyon of astreet grows finer and finer. The SingerBuilding has disappeared and the WoolworthBuilding lost its towering majesty. In thesesubjects you must, or I must, see buildingsas masses that lord it over the rest."Whose smile makes glad,Whose frown is terrible."But this is a time of levelling up or down,a time of the contractor, and a time forthe town planner, the commonplace jerrybuilder,the vulgar machine-made architectwho would reduce everything to his ownoffice space ideal, which is that of his patron.So this year from the bay New York is uninteresting: it is all big-all a level line-it doesnot climb and soar as it did a couple of yearsago. I have been drawing and etching thesesubjects, coming back again and again with afresh eye-and I know.