the first three floors and central portion are steel-frame in construction,
the rest of the building follows a cantilevered concrete design. The great
horizontal bands of concrete floor, brick parapet, and continuous windows
sweep majestically to meet the service portion, which rises, framed in
steel, near the center of the block. The building has unusual power and
constitutes an important step in the development of contemporary archi-
tecture. The architects were Russell G. and Walter M. Cory.

The railroads have burrowed deeply into the water front between
Twenty-fifth and Seventy-second Streets, pre-empting most of the piers and
nearly all the property opposite. The New York Central's Thirtieth
Street Yard straddles ten city blocks, and its Sixtieth Street Yard,
thirteen blocks, constituting two of the largest privately owned areas in
the city. The latter is the main receiving, classification, and departure
yard for the only all-rail freight line on Manhattan Island. Both yards
were being arranged in 1939 to provide for building construction over
the tracks.

Sandwiched among this welter of railroad sidings are the piers of the
Hudson River lines and the terminals of many of the world's greatest
liners. The new Transatlantic Docks of the Cunard White Star,
French, Hapag Lloyd, Italian, Swedish American, and Furness Bermuda
lines extend from Forty-fourth to Fifty-seventh Street, and were espe-
cially designed to handle luxurious ships like the Queen Mary, Normandie,
Europa, Rex, and other greyhounds of the Atlantic. Piers 88, 90, and 92,
each of which is 1,100 feet long, make this terminal the largest in the
world.

Lower West Side

Area: Battery Place on the south to Spring St. on the north; from West St. east to
Trinity Place, Church St., and Broadway (Franklin to Spring St.).

Though this district has a few modern skyscrapers with impressive mar-
ble facades, the character of the neighborhood is derived from produce
sheds, crates, smells of fruit and fish of Washington Market, and the
amazing variety of retail shops selling radios, pets, garden seeds, fire-
works, sporting goods, shoes, textiles, and church supplies. There is an
endless flow of traffic through the streets, whose buildings, grimy with
age, reveal their pre-Civil War glory in carved lintels, arched doorways,
and ornate cornices.

Five streets—Washington, Greenwich, Hudson, West Broadway, and