Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the
town where the few solid old houses not already demolished were in
transition: some, with their fronts torn away, were being made into
segments of apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into
trade, brazenly putting forth "show-windows" on their first floors,
seeming to mean it for a joke; one or two with unaltered facades
peeped humorously over the tops of temporary office buildings of one
story erected in the old front yards. Altogether, the town here was
like a boarding-house hash the Sunday after Thanksgiving; the old
ingredients were discernible.
This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs
reached the roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at
every crossing while the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms
of dust, hurried before it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy,
loomed hundreds of feet above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were
rising beside them, rising higher; old buildings were coming down;
middle-aged buildings were coming down; the streets were laid open
to their entrails and men worked underground between palisades, and
overhead in metal cobwebs like spiders in the sky.
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