" I
heard this admiration emphatically expressed the other day by one of the
foremost and most justly famous of American authors; but, unlike Mr.
Steevens, I could not understand it. "What!" I said, "you would
Haussmannise New York! You would reduce the glorious variety of Fifth
Avenue to the deadly uniformity of the Avenue de l'Opera, where each
block of buildings reproduces its neighbour, as though they had all been
stamped by one gigantic die!" Such an architectural ideal is
inconceivable to me. It is all very well for a few short streets, for a
square or two, for a quadrant like that of Regent Street, or a crescent
or circus like those of Bath or Edinburgh. But to apply it throughout a
whole quarter of a city, or even throughout the endless vistas of a
great American street, would be simply maddening. Better the most
heaven-storming or sky-scraping audacity of individualism than any
attempt to transform New York into a Fourierist phalanstery or a model
prison. I do not doubt that there will one day be some legal restriction
on Towers of Babel, and that the hygienic disadvantages of the
microbe-breeding "well" or air-shaft will be more fully recognised than
they are at present.
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