Valentine's manual of old New York

(New York :  Valentine's Manual Inc.,  1920.)

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of old new YORK

Maine was chairman), and by his masterly presentation
of the subject secured the appropriation which gave New
York a suitable approach to its magnificent harbor. On
his return to New York the great shipping and commer¬
cial interests of our entire city acclaimed his splendid
success, and tendered him the compliment of a public
banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on April 26, 1899.
With characteristic modesty, he declined this attention,
insisting that the guest of honor should be Senator Wil¬
liam P. Frye, to whose staunch support he gave much of
the credit for his success. Fifteen hundred of the leading
■ citizens of our city and nation were guests at the "Frye
Banquet," and the late Theodore Roosevelt, then Gov¬
ernor of New York, introduced Mr. Ambrose as "a man
who had worked successfully to make ours the finest har¬
bor in the world, and whose crowning achievement was
that he had procured for the port of New York an en¬
trance channel 2,000 feet wide and 40 feet deep from
the Narrows to the ocean!"

In less than three weeks after this, on May 15, 1899,
Mr. Ambrose passed away without seeing the fruition of
that for which he had labored so long and unselfishly.
Those who had organized the Frye Banquet of which
the late Gustav H. Schwab was chairman, desiring in
some way to honor the memory of their friend and as¬
sociate, presented to his family a finely executed bronze
bust of Mr. Ambrose, by Andrew O'Conor, the sculptor.
In the same year the legislature of New York State
passed resolutions honoring his memory, setting forth in
detail all that he had done to advance the interests of his
well-beloved and adopted city, and in the session of 1901-
1902 Congress passed the bill naming the Channel after
him.

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