Icing on the Pie

Chrysler Building

"It is the place where all the aspirations of the Western World meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

Hearts of New York

Central Park

"New York is not all bricks and steel. There are hearts there too, and if they do not break, then they at least know how to leap."
H.L. Mencken, Second Mencken Chrestomathy

Garbage Can

Garbage cans on Canal St.

"New York is no place for a civilized man. Nothing good has ever come out of it, and nothing good ever will come out of it. It degrades, it vulgarizes, it dehydrates, it demolishes, it belittles—it is a sewer, a cesspool, a garbage can."
H.L. Mencken, quoted in Articulating Biographical Sketches of Diminutive Luminaries

The Richest Man

740 Park Avenue

"The very richest man, in New York, is never quite sure that the house he lives in now will be his next year — that he will be able to resist the constant pressure of business expansion and rising land values."
H.L. Mencken, Prejudices

The Rocks of Manhattan

World Financial Center Plaza

"Every great wave of popular passion that rolls up on the prairies is dashed to spray when it strikes the hard rocks of Manhattan."

H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Crestomathy

America Without New York

East Coast Memorial

"The American people, of course, could go on living without New York, but they could not go on living as a great and puissant nation."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

Virtue and Vice

Second Avenue

"What passes as virtue in Kansas is regarded as intolerable vice in New York, and vice versa."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

It Springs from Money

Woolworth Building

"There is little in New York that does not spring from money. It is not a town of ideas; it is not even a town of causes. But what issues out of money is often extremely brilliant."
H. L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

Dreadful

Seventh Avenue

"What makes New York so dreadful, I believe, is mainly the fact that the vast majority of its people have been forced to rid themselves of one of the oldest and most powerful of human instincts -- the instinct to make a permanent home."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

Useless and Evil Things

H. Stern store on Fifth Avenue

"During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

Heaven of a Certain Man

Christie's

"New York, indeed, is the heaven of every variety of man with something useless and expensive to sell."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy