the southern half, from about Fortieth Street right down to the Battery, was all drowned all the time, up to the second or third floor of every building that did not quickly collapse or melt into the drink. North of Forty-second much of the west side stood well higher than the fifty-foot rise in ocean. On the east side, water covered the big flats of Harlem and the Bronx, and it also flooded the big dip at 125th Street, which people actually took the trouble of filling in with landfill, as it was too inconvenient to have the northern end of the island cut off, especially as the Cloisters and
...more
