Dawn in New York

"Out of the tenements, cold as stone,
Dark figures start for work;
I watch them sadly shuffle on,
'Tis dawn, dawn in New York."
Claude McKay, Complete Poems

Egyptian Majesty

"Like fixed massed sentinels guarding the approaches to the great metropolis, again the pyramids of New York in their Egyptian majesty dazzled my sight like a miracle of might and took my breath like the banging music of Wagner assaulting one's spirit and rushing it skyward with the pride and power of an eagle."
Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home

Chaotic Bigness

Hudson Yards

"One loves in New York its baroque difference from the classic cities, the blind chaotic surging of bigness of expression."
Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home

New York at a Distance

Staten Island Ferry

"Oh, I wished that it were possible to know New York in that way only — as a masterpiece wrought for the illumination of the sight, a splendor lifting aloft and shedding its radiance like a searchlight, making one big and great with feeling. Oh, that I should never draw nearer to descend into its precipitous gorges, where visions are broken and shattered and one becomes one of a million, average, ordinary, insignificant."
Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home

Most Glorious Experiment

Morningside Avenue

"New York is the most glorious experiment on earth of different races and divers groups of humanity struggling and scrambling to live together."
Claude McKay, Harlem, Negro Metropolis