1884.] 
AMERIOAE AGEIOITLTUEIST. 
41 r 
Farms and Gardens in New York City. 
There are many lanes on the maps of the City of 
New York, but the only thing rural about them, is 
themselves in the country, until the jingling- street 
cars, or the clanking elevated trains, dissipate the 
pleasant fancy. Beyond the Harlem River, and 
still within the city limits, which extend for four 
OLD FABM HOUSE IN' MA-NBATTANYILLE .—Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist, 
their names. There are, however, in this city of 
wonderful contrasts of the miseries and splendors 
of modern life, certain spots in which nature still 
lingers. Our city farms are not nearly as numerous 
now as twenty years ago. Then you could find 
them below Fourteenth street, and in the quiet by¬ 
ways of the old Ninth ward. But there are some 
left yet, even in the heart of the city, and within 
the far-reaching limits of Gotham, thousands of 
acres still return their yearly crops in produce in¬ 
stead of rents. There are old farms and peaceful 
pastures, and among them people who lead pleas¬ 
ant rural lives, environed by the turbnlent multi¬ 
tude that pursues fortune with a feverish fur 3 q in 
factories and stores, and the great marts of com¬ 
merce and speculation. People who are not New 
Yorkers, picture the metropolis as one monumental 
mass of brick, and stone, and iron, with enough 
timber thrown in here and there, to make a roaring 
fire once in a while. They know that there are 
some parks, great and small, among these rows of 
houses, but there, as far as they know, the touch of 
nature which brightens and purifies the city, ends. 
Among the rocky undulations of Manhattanville, 
agriculture still holds its own. There is quite an 
extensive settlement of market gardeners on the 
west side of the city, between Central Park, and 
the North River. There are farmers here wlio live 
in the same houses, and till the same soil their 
grandfathers lived in and tilled nearly a century 
ago. The improvement in the city has made their 
land worth as much a foot, as it once was worth an 
acre. The oid farm-house at Manhattanville, the 
district above Central Park and near the Hudson 
River, the picture of which we present, was built 
over a hundred years ago. Two miles further 
on, at Washington Heights, the upper end of 
Manhattan Island, is Snider’s Lane, a coun¬ 
try road around the side of a hill, with a great 
row of tenement houses and French flats at one 
end of it, and a corafleld at the other. Within a 
quarter of a mile of Snider’s Lane, the life of the 
metropolis bustles and seethes. From its highest 
point you can see the myriad gas lamps and the 
electric lights of the city gleam and flash at night. 
Yet for half a mile or so along its jieaceful length, 
you tnay wander in solitude, and forget, amid the 
rustle of leaves, and the songs of birds, that 
there is such a place as New York. Washington 
Heights is lull of nooks where a metropolitan 
dweller may be surrounded by quiet rural life. 
The denizens of certain sections of Harlem can 
look out of their windows in summer, and imagine 
miles and take in the village of Fordham, perched 
on its wooded hills. New York exhibits a strange 
alternation of city and country. A couple of min¬ 
utes walk from High Bridge, in full sight of its 
crowded picnic gardens, overlooking the Harlem 
filled with pleasure boats, and with rows of 
houses along the main road, the solitary little lane 
of which we present a sketch, leads to a farm as 
solitary, and ont of the way among its orchard 
trees, as if it was in the Berkshire Hills. The fam¬ 
ily who occupy this farm, have lived here since 
the commencement of the present century. 
Jerome avenue is one of the liveliest thorough¬ 
fares in New York. It leads from the Harlem 
River at McComh’s Dam bridge, to the famous 
Jerome Park Race Course, near Fordham. Yet 
there are scores of farms whose lanes lead out into 
the bustling street. One of these farms is quite 
famous for sheep, and on others blooded horses 
and cattle are raised. One of the loveliest lanes in 
the city is along Jerome avenue, leading over the 
Fordham Hills towards the old city of Yonkers. 
Fordham itself, which is the upper ward of the 
City of New York, some fifteen miles from the Citj- 
Hall, is full of charming bits of rural scenery. In 
Tremont, still nearer the city, in Moriisania and 
Mott Haven, you find the country elbowing the 
city. Below the Harlem River, where land is more 
valuable, the city farmer cultivates vegetable crops. 
On the other side lie grows larger produce. The 
gardeners south of the Harlem, are not, as a rule, 
the owners of the land. They commonly hold it 
on long leases from old estates, and as the leases 
expire, the owners oust the tenants, and build at 
once. In consequence of this, you will often find 
an enormous French flat towering alongside of a 
picturesque littte cottage, or a rude shanty. There 
is one spot where a vast fiat occupies each corner 
of a block, and between the two is an oid farm 
house, shaded by huge elm trees, and with its nar- 
now strip of land covered with hot-beds, running 
through the block from street to street. 
Apart from the real city farms, there are whole 
blocks of waste land, so rocky as to be useless for 
the cultivator, on which the famous squatters of the 
metropolis have built up that curious community 
known far and widens Shantytown—a collection of 
huts built in the rudest and cheapest wa.y’ chiefly 
of odds and ends of lumber. 11s dwellers are 
laboring men, carters and the like, humble, but 
useful toilers. The jn'incipal industry^ of Shanty¬ 
town is goat-breeding, and since goat’s milk has 
become a fashionable beverage, the bulk of New 
York’s supply comes from here. With the great 
activity in building, however. Shantytown is steadi¬ 
ly and surely becoming a thing of the past. 
One of the most curious of our city farms, is that 
of the Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island. On it 
are raised the vegetables used in the prison. The 
warden of the Island is the farmer, and the convicts 
his laborers. They present a melancholy appear¬ 
ance in their striped suits working among the fields, 
but not nearly so much so as do the lunatics on 
the Ward’s Island farm. These poor wretches are 
employed in the kitchen garden of the asylum, and 
the doctors say, the air and exercise are highly 
beneficial to them. Another very odd farm is on a 
rock in the East River, near Hell Gate. It is about 
half an acre in extent, and from the vegetables pro ■ 
duced,and the 
fish caught, 
the family 
w' ho have 
lived here for 
over forty 
years, subsist. 
These hermits 
of the me¬ 
tropolis, are a 
brother and 
two sisters. 
They live in 
their little 
e a s 11 e sur¬ 
rounded by 
the waters, 
and apparent¬ 
ly enjoy life 
thoroughly. 
We can in¬ 
clude, in the 
bucolic categ¬ 
ory,the pump¬ 
kin patch iu 
theTombspri- 
son yard on 
Centre street. 
SNIDER’S LANE .—Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
