Stephen Smith
speaker
1,482 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 23 Jul
Stephen Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
We shall be shocked, we shall be filled with horror.
But accepting the city that now is, great as her faults may be, with a new gratitude, we shall turn with anointed sympathy and understanding to any
the earnest voice that pleads for the city that should be.
And indeed, other volumes which doctor Smith himself has in preparation, as suggestive and as interesting as this one, may help us on in this direction.
Frank ALBAN
End of publisher's note
Chapter one of the City That Was by Stephen Smith This Liber Box recording is in the public domain.
Chapter one A Blind Metropolis and Her Dying Children
A problem was left for the first civilized inhabitants of New York to determine.
Nature had made ample provision for the metropolis of the western hemisphere, but two possibilities were attached to its occupation by man it could be healthy or unhealthy at the option of the people.
The conditions which made for health were two large rivers of pure water, from the mountains and the sea, flushed its shores, carrying the outflow of its waste far away seaward.
Its soil could be thoroughly drained.
Its sewage could be so constructed as to convey to the sea all forms of domestic waste and surface filth.
Its southern exposure towards the ocean ensured sunlight and sea breezes, its inland situation supplied to its atmosphere the life giving virtues of abundant vegetation.
The climate was temperate.
The conditions which made for unhealthiness were large areas of sodden marshlands, a rock formation of shale having a dip of the strata, nearly perpendicular, emitting the flow of surface water to great depths, thus poisoning springs and wells, numerous streams flowing into the rivers, large ponds of stagnant water, feet.
Fierce summer heat.
From the year sixteen twenty two to the year eighteen sixty six, a period of two hundred and forty four years, the people elected that the city should be unhealthy.
The land was practically undrained, the drinking water was from shallow wells, befowled by street, stable, privy, and other filth.
There were no adequate sewers to remove the accumulating waste, the streets were the receptacles of garbage, offensive trades were located among the dwellings, the natural water courses and springs were obstructed in the construction of streams.
Showing 21–40 of 1,482 · page 2 of 75
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