Alarm clocks are now ringing in Chelsea, in Greenwich Village, in the Bronx and Queens, in the identical houses, which continue row upon monotonous row to infinity. It is after eight o’clock. The subways are crowded with people hanging on to straps as they read their morning papers undeterred by the violent rocking of the trains. These hurtle through the under¬ ground tubes which disgorge their population at Times Square, at Chambers and Wall Street. Manhattan, with its canyoned streets, its subways tunnelling the ground, and its elevated trains above the ground, is a gigantic ant-hill, through which daily passes a ceaseless traffic of human freight. Transportation facilities to and from this metropolis include over three hundred motor-truck hues, and ten great trunk-line railroads. Access by water is provided by two hundred and eighty-five miles of developed water-frontage, including eighteen hundred piers, wharves and bulk-heads. It is early morning. In the harbour ferry-boats are sounding their whistles, tramp steamers are moving, carrying produce from the comers of the world: coffee from Brazil, bananas from Costa Rica, tea from Ceylon. Trains are arriving at the railroad stations from throughout the vast semi-continent. The silhouettes of the sky¬ scrapers, a silent army of man-made stalagmites, soar into the ultramarine sky. The moon is still brilliant. The street lights and a few recalcitrant neon signs bum on, while the night-workers return home. . Cecil Beaton on New York Image courtesy: William Klein, Anne St. Marie + Cruiser in Traffic, NY (Vogue), 1962