An Exotic Foreign Land

From the New York Public Library scrapbooks, what appears to be a page of illustrations from a European tourist guide to New York:

Let’s start with the non-controversial item in the lower left: That is a decent engraving of Das Stadhaus / The City Hall / La maison de Ville as seen from the southwest. I’m gong to assume that the placement of the German title at the top means that the publisher was German – possibly Baedeker or one of their competitors.

Going clockwise…why isn’t “East River” translated into German and French? More importantly, this page is from the mid-1870s at the earliest (see below) so why do we have a view of the East River waterfront as it might have looked in 1840?

Upper right, that’s a decent engraving of the original Grand Central Depot (constructed 1872) although too clean and missing the endless crowds. The three languages all call it the Central Depot or Central Station, which would have been misleading to someone in the 1870s who was unfamiliar with the city: in that pre-elevated-train era, 42^nd Street was not “central”. It was the edge of the heavily built-up portion of the city. The station was built there because the use of steam engines had been outlawed south of 42^nd Street. The name “Grand Central” was a marketing ploy on the part of the New York Central Railroad.

Lower right, there are a few issues. First, the Windsor was never the top of the heap among NYC hotels, so I’m not sure why it would be included unless this was published in 1873, when the hotel was built. That’s Fifth Avenue and 47^th Street, completely unrecognizable, and a decent likeness of the building. The only reason anyone remembers the Windsor today is that it burned down in a spectacular and horrific manner in 1899. Despite its size (seven stories high, 20,000 square feet per floor) it was entirely wood except for the exterior walls, including wood elevator shafts, stairwells, and dumbwaiter shafts.