City of Dazzling Wealth

Lower Manhattan

"In the shadow of those grey and white pinnacles had grown up a modern Baghdad where the ends of the earth came together. A greater Italian city than Rome, a greater Irish city than Dublin, a greater German city than Cologne;  a city of dazzling wealth whose towers had once looked like peaks of solid gold to hungry eyes reaching beyond the horizons of the old world; a place that had sprung up from a lonely frontier to a metropolis, a central city, bowing to no other. A place where civilisation and savagery had climbed alternately on each other's shoulders, and reached their crest together."
Leslie Charteris, The Saint of New York