Bayrd Still restlessness, and transient, ever-changing character of the physical scene. Today, the city has an uncanny way of transforming parts of itself, almost overnight. This aspect of the contemporary city seemed especially noteworthy to Chiang Yee, China's "Silent Traveller," who visited New York in 1946. This inveterate observer contended that in other places he felt more or less sure that the things and buildings he had come to know would look almost the same upon his return. "I do not have this certainty about New York," he wrote. "When I first went to Park Avenue I noticed a solid old building many storeys high, and in what seemed like a few days it had vanished to make way for a new skyscraper. I realize that I shall be sure to see big changes however soon I shall return to New York."40 Ever in the process of becoming, New York is never content to be arrived. Actually, this facet of the city's personality had prompted comment for more than a century. As early as 1839, Mayor Philip Hone laid the cluttered confusion of the streets to what he called the "annual metamorphosis" of the city. "The spirit of pulling down and building up is abroad," he wrote. "The whole of New York is rebuilt about once every ten years." "Overturn, overturn, overturn! is the maxim of New York," he complained, six years later. "The very bones of our ancestors are not permitted to lie quiet a quarter of a century, and one generation of men seems studious to remove all relics of those which preceded them."41 As the nineteenth century progressed, contemporaries were struck with the transformation of the physical scene that attended the relentless northward march of business and residence on Manhattan Island. William Dean Howells, commenting on this trend in 1913, remarked that New Yorkers were never surprised to return from a vacation and find that an "architectural geyser" had shot up where formerly "a meek little ten-story edifice cowered."42 Considerably earlier—in 1855—the Chancellor of the Univer- 40 Chiang Yee, The Silent Traveller in New York (New York: n. d.), 278. " The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828-1851, ed. by Allan Nevins (2 vols.; New York: '927)s I, 41, 395; II, 730. 42 William Dean Howells, "The Editor's Easy Chair," in Harper's Monthly Magazine, CXXVIII (December 1913-May 1914), 472. 417