called Avenues C, B, and A, the last being
the most westerly. Then begin the long avenues, which are numbered
First, Second, and so on, as they increase to the westward. There are
two other avenues shorter than those with numbers, viz: Lexington, lying
between Third and Fourth, and extending from Fourteenth street on the
south to Sixty-ninth street on the north; and Madison, between Fourth and
Fifth, and extending from Twenty-third street at Madison Square to
Eighty-sixth street. Madison and Lexington are each to be prolonged to
the Harlem River. These avenues are all 100 feet wide, except Lexington
and Madison, which are seventy-five feet wide, and Fourth avenue, above
Thirty-fourth street, which is 140 feet wide. Third avenue is the main
street on the east side above the Bowery, of which it is a continuation,
and Eighth avenue is the principal highway on the west side. Fifth and
Madison avenues are the most fashionable, and are magnificently built up
with private residences below the Park. The cross streets connecting
them are also handsomely built.

The numerical streets are all sixty feet wide, except Fourteenth,
Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, and eleven others north of
these, which are 100 feet wide. The streets of the city are well laid
off, and are paved with an excellent quality of stone. The sidewalks
generally consist of immense stone "flags." In the lower part of the
city, in the poorer and business sections, the streets are dirty and
always out of order. In the upper part they are clean, and are generally
kept so by private contributions.

The avenues on the eastern and western extremities of the city are the
abodes of poverty and want, and often of vice, hemming in the wealthy and
cleanly sections on both sides. Poverty and riches are close neighbors
in New York. Only a stone's throw back of the most sumptuous parts of
Broadway and Fifth avenue, want and suffering, vice and crime, hold their
courts. Fine ladies can look down from their high casements upon the
squalid dens of their unfortunate sisters.

Broadway is the principal thoroughfare. It extends from the Battery to
Spuyten Duyvel Creek, a distance of fifteen miles. It is built up
compactly for about five miles, is paved and graded for about seven
miles, and is lighted with gas along its entire length. There are over
420 miles of streets in the patrol districts, and eleven miles of piers
along the water. The sewerage i