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FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 GLANCES AT THE VICISSITUDES AND 
 ROMANCE OF A WORLD-RENOWNED 
 THOROUGHFARE, TOGETHER WITH 
 MANY RARE ILLUSTRATIONS THAT 
 BRING BACK AN INTERESTING PAST 
 
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 'T'RINTED FOR 
 
 THE FIFTH AVENUE BANK 
 
 OF NEW YORK 
 
 1915 
 

 C^kui 
 
 Copyright, 1915, 
 
 BY 
 
 The Fifth A\'enue Bank of New York 
 
 Photoarnphs copyrighted, 191-5, by Perry Walton 
 
 Written, designed and printed under direction of the 
 
 Walton Advertising and Printing Company 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 ^Ci K !9I5 
 
 ©CI,A414 029 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Inasmuch as the existence of The Fifth Avenue Bank of New York 
 has been contemporaneous with the remarkable growth and devek)p- 
 ment of Fifth Avenue during the past twoscore years, the Bank 
 deems it apj)ropriate to commemorate its fortieth anniversary on 
 October 13, 1915, by issuing this brief history of Fifth Avenue. While 
 a complete story would fill volumes, the Bank has gathered within these 
 pages the most essential and interesting facts relating to the Avenue's 
 origin and development. So far as can be learned, this is the first at- 
 tempt to tell the story of Fifth Avenue. There are few, even among 
 those familiar with New York, who know how interesting Fiftli 
 Avenue is. 
 
 Original authorities, histories, newspapers and magazines have been 
 freely consulted. A list will be found at the end of the narrative. 
 ^lany persons, whose experience has given them a wide knowledge 
 of the Avenue, have also been interviewed. The Bank desires par- 
 ticularly to acknowledge its indebtedness to Messrs. Edward X. 
 Tailer, Gardner Wetherbee, John D. Crimmins, Robert Weeks de 
 Forest, Amos F. Eno, Percy R. Pyne, 2nd, J. Clarence Davies, S. B. 
 Altmayer, John T. Mills, Jr., Francis Jordan Bell, Francis T. L. Lane, 
 Charles White, George Schmelzel, Frederick T. van Beuren, Jr., 
 J. H. Jordan, Robert Fridenberg, Max W'illiams, A. M. Chase, 
 Stewart Biircliard, A. T. Thomas, Mrs. J. J. Hlodgett, Lawson Purdy, 
 President of the Board of Commissioners, DejKirtment of Taxes and 
 Assessments of the City of New York, officials of the New York Pul)lic 
 Library', New York Historical Society, American Geographical So- 
 ciety, and others, for their courtesy and for the valuable information 
 they have suj)plied. 
 
Richard M. Hunt Memorial on the west side of Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets. 
 
 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 IFTH AVENUE is one of the world's famous streets. 
 What Regent and Bond Streets are to London, the Rue 
 de la Paix to Paris, the Unter den Linden to Berlin, the 
 Ringstrasse to Vienna, Fifth Avenue is to New York. It 
 is the most aesthetic expression of the material side of the 
 metropolis. A noted English author has characterized it as "architec- 
 turally the finest street in the world." Its general aspect is one of 
 great beauty, but its details present surprising contrasts and a few 
 ugly extremes. Long famous for the beauty of its residences, churches 
 and hotels, it is now rapidly becoming a great business street of pala- 
 tial shops. Close inspection shows that it has a manufacturing centre 
 and also a tenement quarter. Few, even of its residents, know the 
 Avenue in all its phases. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine the contrasts which may be drawn along 
 the Avenue. At one end is venerable Washington Square, the beautiful 
 Washington Arch, and the dignified homes of some of New York's 
 oldest families. At the other end, 143rd Street and the Harlem River, 
 is a quasi-{)ublic dump littered with unsightly debris. Within tlio 
 seven miles that lie between, may be found some of the most beautiful 
 homes in the world and unkempt double-decker tenements; building 
 after building given to the manufacture of wearing apparel, or con- 
 taining the headquarters or agencies of almost every known iiulustrj'; 
 luxurious and expensive hotels, and some of the most l)eauliful churches 
 and clubs in this country. Elbowing the churches and the clubs, 
 and pushing up to the very doors of the stately residences, are some 
 of the finest shoj)s and art galleries in the world. 
 
 This Avenue, the centre of fashion, wealth, society and trade — 
 where many of the leading business men of America make their home, 
 and the mart which attracts the most exjiensive products of America, 
 Europe, Asia and Africa — changes so rapidly that after an absence of Trade 
 twenty-five years a former resident would hardly recogni/.e it. To 
 realize what changes have taken place let us fix in our minds the general 
 
 ( 'ctitrc of 
 Wealth, 
 SDcieti/ and 
 
6 F T F T H A \' V \ T' V 
 
 aspect of the Avenue as it now is, sketch its rural aspect a century ago, 
 and then traverse it leisurely, stopping here and there to catch a 
 glimpse of its interesting past. 
 
 PRESENT ASPECT 
 
 Early The earliest residential part of Fifth Avenue, below l'2th Street, 
 R'-aidential is to-day much as it was between 1830 and 1840, when the square, 
 Section homelike, brownstone and brick houses — the first Fifth Avenue resi- 
 dences — were built. Trade has left this section untouched, because 
 the descendants of the old families, some of whom still live in this 
 locality, have refused to sell; but it has laid an iconoclastic hand upon 
 the rest of the Avenue below 59th Street. Between 12th and ^Srd 
 Streets the wholesale trade and makers of wearing apparel are en- 
 trenched; no less than 491 garment factories, employing 51,476 
 hands, were estimated to be on Fifth Avenue in April 1915. 
 Trade In- The Avenue from 23rd to 34th Streets is mainly devoted to retail 
 va.sion specialty shops; while from 34th to 59th Streets, department stores 
 and exclusive shops now predominate, having either swept away or 
 flowed around churches, clubs, hotels and residences. Jewelry 
 shops rivalling those of the famous Rue de la Paix; art galleries which 
 exhibit wonderful collections of world-famous pictures by old and 
 modern masters; antique and furniture shops, department stores and 
 other establishments wherein may be found products of the greatest 
 ancient and modern artisans make this part of Fifth Avenue one of 
 the most magnificent streets in the world. 
 Most From 60th to 90th Streets is the line of beautiful residences 
 Valuable popularly known as "Millionaires' Row." This mile and a half of 
 Residential Avenue — probably the most valuable residential section on the globe 
 Section in —has a total assessed valuation of $71,319,000. Protected here on 
 ' ^'"^ one side by Central Park, the Avenue seems to offer effectual resistance 
 to business. 
 Tenements Onward from Carnegie Hill, at 91st Street, the Avenue rapidly 
 and Open degenerates into a tenement section with many open lots, fenced with 
 Lots billboards, and with saloons and refreshment stands on some of the 
 corners. Beyond Mount JVIorris Park (120th to 124th Streets) for 
 several blocks it rises to the dignity of small brownstone or brick dwell- 
 ings, but quickly drops to the tenement level again. From 127th to 
 139th Streets it swarms with foreigners and negroes. Beyond, the 
 Avenue loses its identity in a rutted dirt road bordered by unsightly 
 oi)en lots, until, at 143rd Street, it conies to a degenerate end in the 
 slimy waters of the Harlem River. 
 
 FIFTH AVENUE A CENTURY AGO 
 
 We need turn back the hands of time less than a hundred years to 
 find almost virgin country where this wonderful Avenue now extends. 
 Prior to 1824 Fifth Avenue had no existence save upon the Commis- 
 
F I F T II A V F X I' F 7 
 
 sionors' Map of 1811. Durinj^' the first (juartor of the nineteenth Jlural 
 century the Hne which Fifth Avenue follows to-day wandered over Aspect 0/, 
 "the hills and valleys, dales and fields" of a picturestiue countryside, Ilnndred 
 where trout, mink, otter and nniskrat swam in the l)rooks and pools; Years ago 
 brant, i)lack duck and yellow le<f splashed in the marshes; the fox, 
 rabbit, woodcock and partridge found covert in the thickets covering 
 the rough, rocky hills which characterized the uj)per part of New 
 York. A few scattered farms lay about, while the City proper, with a 
 population of less than 100,000, was still below Canal Street. 
 
 MAP OF THI-: FARMS. 
 
 Prepared for the City in IS 19-1820, by John Randcl, .Ir. Showing the furnis superimposed upon 
 the Commissioners' Jklap of IKll. 
 
8 F T F T H A \' E X T' E 
 
 .\fanctta Beginning at what is now Washington Square, then Potter's Field, 
 Water the line of what afterward became Fifth Avenue left " the Road over the 
 Sand Hills" or the "Zantberg" of the Dutch, later called Art Street, 
 and now gone from the map, and went northerly across the estate of 
 Robert Richard Randall, the founder of Sailors' Snug Harbor. This 
 estate extended to about 9th Street, in the valley of the beautiful 
 brook which the Dutch called Bestavaer's Rivulet, and the English, 
 Manetta Water. This sparkling stream, once filled with trout, rose 
 in the high ground above 21st Street, flowed southeasterly to Fifth 
 Avenue at 9th Street, thence to midway between the present 8th 
 Street and Waverly Place, where it swung southwesterly and flowed 
 into the Hudson River near Charlton Street. After Fifth Avenue 
 was built up it frequently flooded cellars and weakened foundations, 
 and even yet, despite the great sewers which now give it an outlet, 
 causes trouble at this part of Fifth Avenue after very heavy rains. 
 
 Brooks, After leaving the Randall property the line of the Avenue crossed 
 Ponds and the meadow and marshland of what had been Henry Brevoort's 
 
 Su-amps farm, which stretched from 9th to 18th Streets, and had in 1714 been 
 bought by an ancestor for £400. At 12th Street it met the east 
 branch of the Manetta Water, which flowed into the main stream 
 between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. In the centre of the line of the 
 Avenue, and midway between 13th and 14th Streets, lay a small pond. 
 Low and level land, with swamp and marsh at Union Square, extended 
 from 13th Street to Love's Lane, now 21st Street. Isaac Varian owned 
 the land from 18th to 20th Streets, and Gilbert Coutant from 20th 
 to 21st Streets. From 21st Street to Madison Square at 23rd Street, 
 John Horn, John Watts and others had possession. At 23rd Street, 
 as at present. Fifth Avenue met the old Bloomingdale Road (now 
 Broadway), the highway to Kingsbridge. From 23rd to 34th Streets 
 stretched the Common Lands that later became the Parade Ground. 
 Snipe- The tract of Common Lands from 28th to 32nd Streets, through 
 
 shooting which the Avenue was later projected, was part of the thirty-seven 
 on the acre farm which Caspar Samler bought in various pieces, from the 
 
 Waldorf- City, between 1780 and 1799 for $12,100. On the Eastern Post-Road 
 Astorm ^[^^ ^f ^.^g Parade Ground, from 1794 to 1797, was the City's Potter's 
 Field, which later was removed to Washington Square. At 32nd 
 Street a small brook crossed Fifth Avenue, which flowed into Sun Fish 
 Pond, between 31st and 32nd Streets on Madison Avenue. At this 
 point it is interesting to note that within the lifetime of men still living 
 snipe were shot about where the W^aldorf-Astoria now stands. 
 
 The land rose rapidly from the northerly boundary of the Parade 
 Ground at 34th Street, reaching the summit of the steep slope of 
 "Inclenburg" (now Murray Hill) at about 38th Street. In the early 
 days, this hill was used for signal fires, and was known as Beacon Hill. 
 From 34th to 36th Streets the land belonged to the City, and from 
 3oth and 37th Streets was the propeity of John Murray, Jr., whose 
 house stood between 36th and 37th Streets, on land which later became 
 Fifth Avenue. The property from 37th to 40th Streets belonged to 
 
F I F T H A \' E X U E 9 
 
 a number of small farmers, and from 40th to 48th Streets to the City 
 of New York. 
 
 There was a small pond at the northeast corner of what is now 46th j'oiuls at 
 Street and Fifth Avenue, fed by a little brook which flowed across ',(;th and 
 the line of the Avenue. From Inclenburg the land fell gradually '''.ith Streets 
 until it reached o9th Street. At this point, on the sites of the Plaza 
 and Savoy Hotels, were ponds fed by a stream which flowed easterly 
 through 59th Street. 
 
 The land ascended from 59th Street, marked by abrupt rises and other Brooks 
 descents, and crossed by brooks at 64th, 74th and 83rd Streets, until and Creeks 
 its greatest height was reached between 90th and 91st Streets, 114 and Observa- 
 feet above sea level, about where Mr. Andrew Carnegie's mansion torij Hill 
 now stands. This was later known as Observatory Hill, and near here, 
 because of the elevation, was subsequently constructed the Croton 
 storage reservoir in Central Park. From 87th to 96th Streets were 
 the Harlem Conmions. At 91st Street the height fell away until 
 Benson's Mill Creek, or Harlem Creek, was reached, now the Harlem 
 Mere at the northerly end of Central Park. The Benson Farm 
 extended along the line of Fifth Avenue from 96th to l^lst Streets. 
 
 Harlem Creek, which was the largest stream that touched Fifth Roirlng and 
 Avenue, rose in the neighborhood of Tenth Avenue and HSrd Street, Fi.s-liina on 
 flowed to Fifth Avenue at 116th Street, and swung southerly along ^'(f'^' 
 the Avenue almost to 106th Street, whence it flowed into the Harlem -1 '<'""<' 
 River. Mr. S. B. Altmayer, an elderly gentleman, whose life has been 
 spent in the upper part of Manliattan, as a boy often rowed from the 
 Harlem River up this creek, and fished where it crossed the line of 
 Fifth Avenue. 
 
 Traversing the land of Benjamin Vredenburg and Thomas Addis 
 Emmet, the Irish patriot, who in 1812 was Attorney-General of the 
 State of New York, Fifth Avenue reached, at 120th Street, the rocky 
 hill of Mount Morris, called by the Dutch, Slangbcrg or Snake Hill, from 
 the numerous rattlesnakes found there. This height was never cut 
 through. Beginning at 124th Street the Avenue continued over the 
 lowlands to the Harlem River. 
 
 THE BEGINNIN(i OF THE AVENUE 
 
 The first appearance of a plan of Fifth Avenue is on the Com- f'ir.si 
 missioners' Alap of 1811, made in accordance with an act of the Ai)i>rarance 
 Legislature of April 3, 1807, appointing three Commissioners — nf Fifth 
 Gouverneur Morris, Simeon De ^^'itt and John Rutherford^to lay -iirnue ()n 
 out the City above Houston Street. Under their direction John ' '""""f- 
 Randel, Jr., surveyed the island and planned the streets and avenues V/'""^'/- ,0; « 
 in parallelograms. In the Commissioners' Report and the Map, ' "^' "•' 
 published by William Bridges, March 22, 1811, appears for the first 
 time the name "P^ifth Avenue." 
 
 The street was not opened, however, until many years later and Opening nf 
 then only in sections. From VVaverly Place to 13th Street was the Avenue 
 
10 
 
 F I F T H A \' K X T E 
 
 opened in August 18^24; 13th to ^21.st Streets, in May 1830; 2 1st to 
 
 4^2nd Streets, in October 1837; 42nd Street to 90th Street, in April 
 
 1838; 90th Street to 106th Street, in August 18^28; 106th to 120th 
 
 Streets, in April 1838. The grading and paving were not done in 
 
 some cases until long after the section was declared open. As late 
 
 as 1869 the Avenue at 59th Street is described as "a muddy dirt 
 
 road which ran alongside a bog." Few streets in New York have 
 
 required more grading and filling. 
 
 Original As at first laid out the Avenue was one hundred feet wide, providing 
 
 Dimensions for a roadway of sixty feet and sidewalks of twenty; but in 1833 and 
 
 )J the Avenne 1844 the City gave property owners permission to encroach fifteen feet 
 
 for stoops, courtyards and porticoes. As traffic grew congestion 
 
 increased, and the City advocated taking the full roadway. This led to 
 
 emphatic protest from the owners of private and business buildings, 
 
 in behalf of their ornamental entrances, stoops, and areas. However, 
 
 in April 1908 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment ordered all 
 
 the encroachments removed. 
 
 Hamilton In addition to the Parade Ground, which, as first planned, extended 
 
 Square and from 23rd to 34th Streets, two large squares on the upper part of 
 
 Observatorfi Fifth Avenue were projected by the Commissioners. One was 
 
 Place Hamilton Square, bounded l^y Fourth and Fifth Avenues, 66th and 
 
 67th Streets, comprising about twenty acres. Here on October 19, 
 
 1847, the Washington Monument Association laid the corner-stone of 
 
 a shaft 400 feet high to be known as the Washington Monimient, a 
 
 subscription list to raise the necessary money having been ojiened at 
 
 the Merchants' Exchange. The monument, however, was not carried 
 
 beyond the laying of the corner-stone, and the square itself was finally 
 
 closed in 1867. The other square, called Observatory Place, was to 
 
 have been between 89th and 94th Streets, Fourth and Fifth Avenues, 
 
 but was never laid out. 
 
 LAND VALUES PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 Fifth Avenue, which a century ago presented so rough and so un- 
 promising an aspect, is to-day assessed at $440,336,900. The most 
 valuable piece of property is the Altman site, at 34th Street, the 
 total assessed value of which is $13,800,000; diagonally op})osite is 
 the Waldorf-Astoria site, assessed at $12,125,000, the next most 
 valualile parcel. The average assessed vahie per block front is 
 $1,495,627, while each twenty-five foot lot has an average assessed 
 value of $186,953. This is the more astonishing when one learns 
 from musty real estate records that early in the nineteenth century 
 property including Fifth Avenue frontage was sold at valuations 
 which made twenty-five foot Avenue lots then worth about $15. 
 Elgin On August 6, 1804 Dr. David Hosack acquired title to four plots 
 Garden of the common land, or 256 city lotj, extending from 47th to 51st 
 Tract Streets, Fifth to Sixth Avenues, at a price of $4,807.36 and a yearly 
 quit-rent of sixteen bushels of good merchantable wheat or its equiva- 
 
F I F T H AVE X U E 11 
 
 lent in gold or silver coin. To-day this tract, where he laid out the 
 Elgin Botanical Garden, is assessed for $3(),.S7(),()()(). 
 
 One of the first important transfers of Fifth Avenue realty was the I'Mrly 
 sale in April 1836 of the estate of John Cowman, comprising the Important 
 block between 16th and 17th Streets, Fifth Avenue and Union Square, {/fl'^-j ^• 
 The twenty-eight lots l)rought $197,000, of which the seven Fifth /^|4/// """^ 
 Avenue lots brought $o7,'^00. '" '' 
 
 In 1850 lots at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, where the Cornelius ('onifr 
 Vanderbilt house stands, brought from $5'-20 to $710 each. Sixty-five Valuations 
 years ago, so little value had 57th Street corners of Fifth Avenue that '" ^'*»'-'^ 
 a twenty-five by one hundred foot lot sold for $l,0'-25. Three lots 
 in •i5th Street near Fifth Avenue brought $500 apiece at the same 
 time, while the corner of Fifth Avenue and ■i6th Street brought $1,300. 
 Below 34th Street, prices were better, a Fifth Avenue lot near '27th 
 Street bringing $4,500. On October 1^2, 1858 A. J. Bleecker & Sons Values in 
 sold at auction lots on Fifth Avenue between 40th and 46th Streets ^'*>'5-*>' 
 for $6,500 to $7,000 and upwards; Fifth Avenue, 48th and 51st Streets, 
 $6,000; 5^2nd and 58th Streets on the Avenue, $5,000. Lots on 59th 
 Street and Fifth Avenue brougiit $7,000; Fifth Avenue corners at 
 106th Street brought $2,500; and at 109th Street, $1,600. Inside 
 lots were as low as $1,025. The prices decreased from this point until 
 between the north side of Central Park and the south side of Mount 
 Morris Park, lots 25 x 100 feet were sold for as little as $385. 
 
 KALEIDOSCOPIC CHANGES 
 
 Having taken a bird's-eye view of the early topography of the 
 Avenue, learned something about its origin, and delved into its land 
 values, let us, starting at Washington Scpiare, stroll up this remarka))le 
 thoroughfare, stopping here and there to learn what fact and ronuuice, 
 time has woven into the Avenue's story. 
 
 Little known is the fact that at the very beginning of this patrician W'asliimjton 
 avemie once lay a paupers' burying ground. Three other Potter's Fields ■"■^'luarc a 
 were located, at one time or another, along Fifth .Vvenue. Although the ^'""'■'' ■'*■ 
 one we here encounter is the farthest south, it was not the earliest. " 
 
 As epidemic after epidemic of yellow fever, at the close of tiie eigh- 
 teenth century, swej)t the young City of New ^'ork, the need became 
 imj)erative for a new Potter's Field to succeed the one then at 
 Madison S(|uare, and, accordingly, the swamp and waste land, on the 
 site of Washington Scjuare, was bought l)y the City for £1,800 
 on April 10, 1797. The land then formed part of the farm of Elbert 
 Herring, an old resident of wealth and conse(|uence in the New York 
 of his (lay, and one from wliom many prominent families are descended. 
 The j)lot purchased consisted of ninety lots, "bounded on the road 
 leading from the Bowery Lane at the two-mile stone to (irecnwicji." 
 Here were buried, during tiie yellow fever epidemics of the early pari 
 of the nineteenth century, thousands of bodies, many of uliicli still lie 
 under the soil of Washington Scjuare. 
 
12 
 
 F I F T H AVE N U E 
 
 Washington 
 Parade 
 (i round 
 and the 
 Stone 
 Cutters' 
 Riot 
 
 Washington 
 
 Square a 
 
 Societif 
 
 Centre 
 
 "I remember when heavy guns were drawn over the Square, after 
 it became a parade ground, that the weight broke through the ground 
 into the trenches in which the dead were buried and crushed the tops 
 of some of the coffins," said Mr. E. N. Tailer, an elderly gentleman 
 who lives at 11 Washington Square North, and who has kept a careful 
 record of the City for almost three-quarters of a century. "At one 
 time near 4th and Thompson Streets I saw a vault under the sidewalk 
 opened and the body found there was still wrapped in the yellow sheet 
 in which the yellow fever victims were buried." 
 
 In an address before the Historical Society in 1857 Dr. John W. 
 Francis said that the last tombstone to be removed from Washington 
 Square was that of Benjamin Perkins, a "charlatan believer in 
 mesmeric influence who used this specific in his own ailment — yellow 
 fever — and his temerity terminated his life after three days' illness." 
 The site was also used for the town gallows. Rose Butler, a young 
 negress, who had maliciously set fire to combustible material under 
 a stairway, was hanged there in July 1819, before a large crowd which 
 included many young children. The Potter's Field was levelled, 
 filled in and abandoned in 1823. 
 
 Washington Square contains in all about nine and three-quarters 
 acres, of which six and one-half was the Potter's Field. The additional 
 land was bought for $78,000 in 1827, when the Square was fenced 
 with wood at a cost of $3,000, walks laid out and trees planted. It 
 was then called the Washington Parade Ground. Here in 1834 oc- 
 curred the "stone cutters' riot," which began as a protest against 
 Sing Sing convicts cutting stone for the New York University Build- 
 ing, then in process of erection on the east side of the Square, The 
 angry stone-masons held a meeting and paraded to the building, but 
 were dispersed by the 27th Regiment of the New York Militia, now 
 the 7th Regiment. The regiment was on guard at the Parade Ground 
 for four days and four nights. 
 
 The City had hardly levelled Potter's Field when Washington Square 
 became a fashionable neighborhood. Society, driven successively from 
 Bowling Green, Broad and Wall Streets, St. John's Park, Lafayette 
 Place, Bond and Bleecker Streets, found here an abiding place for al- 
 most a century. Among the well-known merchants who built along the 
 upper side of the Square in 1831 were Thomas Suffern, John Johnston, 
 George Griswold, Saul Alley, James Boorman and William C. Rhine- 
 lander. About the Square sprang up houses, some of which to-day have 
 a beauty of line and color and dignity of aspect unsurpassed in the City. 
 On the east side of the Square stood until 1894 the old white castellated 
 stone building of New York University which was opened in 1837. This 
 has been replaced by a large modern building, which contains important 
 branches of the University. The rest of the University has been re- 
 moved to a commanding site on the banks of the Harlem River. 
 Washington Square North is the only section which still preserves 
 unaltered the characteristics of early days. Some of the houses are 
 still tenanted by descendants of the original occupants. 
 
F I F r II A \' F X U E 
 
 13 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
 REiilUK.NCL Ul LLGLNE DELANU. 
 At the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North. 
 
 /'.-■v. .71 of Frank Courini. 
 
 Mrs. Emily Johnston de Forest in her interesting hfe of her grand- 
 father, John Johnston, describes the beautiful gardens of these houses 
 and charmingly portrays the delightful yet simple life and society of 
 this aristocratic part of New York from 1833 to 184'-2. "The houses 
 in the 'Row,' as this part of Washington Square was called, all had 
 beautiful gardens in the rear about ninety feet deep, surrounded by 
 white, grape covered trellises, with rounded arches at intervals and 
 lovely borders full of old-fashioned flowers." Some of these gardens 
 may still be seen from Fifth Avenue. Although some of the Row 
 had cisterns, all the residents went for their washing water because of 
 its softness to "the pump with a long handle" that stood in the S(|uare. 
 Concerning this i)ump Mrs. de F'orest tells the following amusing 
 story. One of her grandfather's iu'ighl)ors recpiested his coachman 
 to fetch a couple of pails of water for Mary, the laundress. The 
 coachman said that this was not his business, and upon being asked 
 what his business was, replied, "To harness the horses and drive 
 them." Thereupon he was requested to bring the carriage to the 
 door. His employer then invited the laundress with her two pails to 
 
 Life in the 
 " lioir" as 
 (liscrihed hi/ 
 Mrs. Emily 
 Jdlin.tton 
 lie Forest 
 
14 
 
 FIFTH A \' E X r E 
 
 step in and bade the coachman drive her to the pump. There was no 
 further trouble with the coachman. The Scpiare and its environs have 
 been the scene of many incidents in novels written about New York, 
 and is to-day, with its studios and population of artists and writers, 
 the nearest approach to "Bohemia" to be found in the Metropolis. 
 Washington At the entrance to Fifth Avenue stands the Washington Arch, one 
 Arch of the most beautiful monuments of its kind in America. It was 
 originally a temporary structure erected by the architects, McKim, 
 Mead and White, at the expense of William Rhinelander Stewart 
 and other residents of Washington Square, for the centennial cele- 
 bration on April 30 and May 1, 1889, of the inauguration of Wash- 
 ington as President. So beautiful was the temporary structure that 
 steps were taken, through popular subscription, to make it permanent. 
 In May 189'-2 this stately gateway to the Avenue was completed. 
 Stori/ nf the Part of Fifth Avenue between Waverly Place and 9th Street 
 Sailor/ traverses the Sailors' Snug Harbor property. About this tract hangs 
 Snug Harbor ^ romantic story. Robert Richard Randall, the donor of the twenty- 
 rroperty ^j^g acres "seeded to grass," which were valued at Randall's death 
 at $25,000, and are now worth twice as many millions, was the son of 
 Captain Thomas Randall, a freebooter of the seas, who commanded 
 the "Fox" and sailed for years in and out of New Orleans, where he 
 sold the proceeds of his voyages or captures. 
 
 After Robert Randall was born, Cap'n Tom, with fat coffers, settled 
 down and became a respectable merchant at 10 Hanover Street. He 
 was coxswain of the barge crew of thirteen ships' captains who rowed 
 General Washington from Elizabethtown Point to New York, on 
 the way to the first inauguration. Robert, who inherited the bulk 
 of his father's estate, added to his holdings by the purchase of " Minto," 
 a farm in the Seventh Ward of New York. While dying, in 1801, 
 propped up in bed, he dictated his will. After making bequests to 
 relatives and servants, he whispered to his lawyer: "My father was a 
 mariner, his fortune was made at sea. There is no snug harbor for 
 worn-out sailors. I would like to do something for them." Thus 
 came into being the Sailors' Snug Harbor estate, on the Fifth Avenue 
 portion of which, between 1830 and 184'0, the wealthiest families of 
 New York settled. 
 Misucs The Misses Green's School, conducted at No. 1 Fifth Avenue, l)y 
 Green's Lucy M. and Mary Green, sisters of Andrew H. Green, "the father 
 School and of Greater New York," was, for years before and after the C'ivil 
 ex-Senator \Yar, one of the most fashionable and select schools of its day. Later 
 "" it was carried on by the Misses Graham. Here were educated the 
 daughters of the commercial and social leaders of New York. Among 
 tlie pupils were Fanny and Jennie Jerome, the latter now Lady 
 Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston Churchill, recently the First 
 Lord of the British Admiralty. The Honorable Elihu Root, ex- 
 Secretary of State and Senator from New York, taught here, at 
 such an early age that Miss Lucy Green, a martinet for social projjrie- 
 ties, thought it best to frequent his classes. Here also the Honorable 
 
F I K in \ \ K \ r !•: 
 
 15 
 
 UttJiDKNCE OF CHARLES de HHAM. 24 IIFTH AVENUE. 
 Formerly the home of Henry Brcvoort, Jr. One of the most typiral eiirly Fifth .\ venue homes. 
 
 John Hi^elow taiij^'lit l)()t;my iiiid clinniictl tlic yoiiiij^' ladies of Wasliiiif^- 
 ton Stiuaro hecaiisc he was "so liaiKlsoiiic." 
 
 On the northeast corner of <Sth Street, where it has stood for niany lirivoort 
 years, is the Hrevoort House. The family from which the hotel takes tuiuthj 
 its name is (h'scended from Ilendriek \ an Brexoort, who had ser\"e(l 'V'".." ."" 
 Haarlem as constable and overseer, and later "emigrated" to New- 
 York, where he was an alderman from IHH to ITl.'J. His farm 
 adjoined the Randall farm and ran northeasterly to al)ont 14th Street 
 and Fourth .Vvenue. Later, one of his de.seendants, Henry Hrevoort, 
 whose farmhouse was on the west side of Fourth Avenue, stootl in 
 his doorway with a l)hm<lerl)uss, so traditi(»n says, and defied the 
 Commissioners to lay 11th Street throuuh his homestead. It is a 
 fact that, althou<,di in maps of lS(t7 11 Ih Street rims throu^di Hre- 
 voort "s homestead, and in iH.'Jd ami ISi!) the city aldermen passed 
 ordinances cuttinir the street through, such resixx-l was j)aid to the 
 
 ///(• Ifotil 
 tahcs its 
 \anic 
 
16 F T F T H A V E N T^ F 
 
 opposition of the doughty old burgher, that to this day 11th Street 
 has never been cut through; nor is it Hkely to be, for Grace Church, 
 its rectory and garden, cover the site of old Henry Brevoort's home- 
 stead. One of the most palatial early homes on Fifth Avenue was 
 the residence, at No. 24, of another Henry Brevoort of the same 
 family. It was sold in 1850 to Henry de Rham for $57,000, and is 
 now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Charles de Rham. Brevoort's only 
 daughter married James Renwick, whose son, James Renwick, Jr., 
 was the architect of St. Patrick's Cathedral and Grace Church. 
 Romance A romantic tale is told of the first masked ball given in New York, 
 of Neiv which was held in 1840 in the Brevoort house. It was popularly 
 \orks First spoken of as "an imported amusement." Among those who attended 
 Masked BaU jj^ fancy dress, domino and mask, was Miss Matilda Barclay, the 
 beautiful and charming daughter of Anthony Barclay, the British 
 Consul, who was later dismissed for raising recruits during the 
 Crimean War. Another guest was a young South Carolinian named 
 Burgwyne, who, in spite of the opposition of her parents, had won Miss 
 Barclay's heart. She went as Lalla Rookh and he as Feramorz. At 
 four o'clock, without changing their costumes, they left the ball and 
 were married before breakfast. This incident brought masked 
 balls into such odium that it was many years before another was 
 attempted in New York. 
 Early On lower Fifth Avenue are two of New York's earliest churches. 
 Churches on 'pj^^ Episcopal Church of the Ascension, standing at the northwest 
 '^!i corner of 10th Street, of which the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant is 
 
 venue ^^^^^ rector, was built in 1840 and consecrated November 5, 1841. 
 The First Presbyterian Church, between 11th and 12th Streets, built 
 in 1845, was opened for worship January 11, 1846. Its present pastor 
 is the Rev. Howard DuflBeld. 
 
 Fifth Avenue to 12th Street, which we have just traversed, has 
 scarcely changed in appearance since 1845. On an avenue lined 
 with trees and dotted here and there with front-yard grass plots, 
 many of the old houses still stand unchanged. Save for one or two 
 business offices, recently opened, and several large apartments, it is 
 the Fifth Avenue of seventy years ago. "Business has never been 
 able to get a hold below 12th Street," said Mr. Amos F. Eno, who 
 lives at No. 32, " because most of the residents think too much of their 
 old homesteads to sell." 
 
 But at 12th Street a change so sudden as to be almost startling 
 presents itself. There begins the portion of Fifth Avenue which 
 trade has so radically altered. At the northwest corner stands an 
 eighteen-story office building, a threatening outpost of approaching 
 business. Opposite, on the west side of the Avenue, Nos. 60 and 62, 
 until recently the last survivors, north of 12th Street, of the early 
 homes, are now being razed. No trees are to be seen from this point 
 northward. Immediately above, as far as 23rd Street, is the section 
 of large office buildings given almost exclusively to the manufacturing 
 and wholesale trade. 
 
18 
 
 F T F 'r TT A \' H X F K 
 
 Reiiren 
 Estates 
 
 Front a ixuittiiiy by [V. li. Miller in 1848. Collection of New York Historical Society. 
 
 SPINGLER FARMHOUSE. 
 
 Shown on the Damage Map of 14th Street (1828) as standing about in the centre of the street. 
 
 Near its site now stands the old Van Beuren house. 
 
 Story of the At 14th Street and Fifth Avenue was the Spingler market garden 
 Spmglcr farm of al)Out twenty-two acres. Long before New York had stretched 
 and Ian above City Hall Park, John Smith, a wealthy slave-holder, bought of 
 Elias Brevoort, in 17(>2, part of the Brevoort farm about 14th Street 
 and Fifth Avemie. On the choicest site, now the centre of 14th Street, 
 just west of Fifth Avenue, he built his country residence. His widow 
 continued to live in it until 1788, when James Duane, Mayor of the 
 City, and others, executors of Smith's will, sold the estate to Henry 
 Spingler for about $4,750. Here Spingler lived until his death in 1813. 
 His barn stood on the southwest corner of 14th Street and Fifth 
 Avenue. Most of the property was inherited by Mrs. Mary S. Van 
 Beuren, Spingler's granddaughter. She built the Van Beuren brown- 
 stone front hou.se on 14th Street and lived there for years, maintain- 
 ing a little garden, with flowers and vegetables, a cow and chickens. 
 Spingler's estate, valued in 1845 at $'■200, ()()(), eventually found its 
 way into the po.sse.ssion of many well-known New Yorkers. Moses 
 H. Grinnell of the firm of Grinnell, Minturn & Co., the famous mer- 
 chants of the clipper ship days, had his beautiful home at the northeast 
 corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue. Later the house was leased 
 to the Delmonicos until they moved in 1876 to ''26th Street and Fifth 
 Avenue. 
 
r 1 FT II A V K N r K 
 
 19 
 
 ^j_jpTrrE2::i^ V, ^_ 
 
 MAT OF THi; FAItMS. 
 PrcDnrod for the City in 1819-1S2(). by J..1.M Hun.l.l. Jr. Showing tho fiirn.s surH-rimposod 
 upoll Th" CVmrriissione™- Map of IHll. the 23r.l S.r.H part of th- I'anul.. Crouml. Hloon.n.^dalo 
 Road, and the Eastern Post-Hoad. 
 
 \.s we KO up the Avonur from l.Mli to IStli Streets wo pass lamis 
 across what was the farm of Thomas and Edward Hurhnj,', rela- iravrrsvd In, 
 tives of tliose old merchants .lames and John Hurhnj,', whose name '/!'■ ^^""- "•' 
 
 was given to linrhnu Shp, part of the Kast Hiver front, and also 
 over the farm owned until 1S:{() hy John Cowman. The stretch 
 from 18th to ^2 1st Streets was part of the farm sold m I'^J^l to 
 Isaac Varian for $:?,()()(), hy the heirs of Sir Peter ^^arren. Ihe 
 propertv formed part of the complimentary tract of land -ranted 
 by the corporation of the City in 1744 to Caplam, afterward A<linnal, 
 
 Fifth 
 Avenue 
 
20 
 
 F I F T li 
 
 : N UE 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
 Collection of J. ClaTence Davies. 
 
 AUGUST BELMONT'S HOUSE AND ART GALLERY. 
 
 Northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 18th Street. 
 
 Just before demolition in 1894-95. 
 
 Sir Peter Warren, in commemoration of "Singular and Imminent 
 Services done and perfformed by him Not Only for the Kingdom 
 of Great Brittain in Generall, but for this City and Colony in par- 
 ticular." A valiant character was Sir Peter Warren, who in 1743 
 was Commodore of the English Squadron off the Port of New 
 York. 
 Prominent Worth noting are the names of prominent New Yorkers who, during 
 Early the fifties, lived on Fifth Avenue between Washington Square and 
 Rfstdejits 21st Street. Among them are Lispenard Stewart, Thomas Eggleson, 
 Silas Wood, Henry C. de Rham, Thomas F. Woodruff, Francis Cottinet, 
 David S. Kennedy, James Donald.son, Dr. J. Kearney Rodgers, C. N. 
 Talbot, N. H. Wolfe, James McBride, Charles M. Parker, L. M. 
 Hoffman, August Belmont, Benjamin Aymar, Henry C. Winthrop, 
 Eugene Schiff, Captain Lorillard Spencer, Moses Taylor, John H. Cos- 
 ter, Henry A. Coster, Sidney Mason, Marshall O. Roberts, Robert L. 
 Cutting, Gordon W. Burnham, Robert C. Townsend, George Opdyke, 
 Robert L. Stuart, whose magnificent art collection was given to the 
 Lenox Library, and James Lenox, the founder of the Lenox Library. 
 The fortunes of these gentlemen, as recorded in "Wealth and Biog- 
 raphy of the Wealthy Citizens of New York," averaged between 
 $100,000 and $300,000. One of the richest men in New York at that 
 time was James Lenox, who had inherited the then huge fortune of 
 $3,000,000; another large fortune was that of James McBride, es- 
 timated at $700,000. 
 
V V E N U I 
 
 21 
 
 From a print. 
 
 Collection of S. B. AUmayer. 
 UNION CLUB IN 1855. 
 Northwest corner of 2l8t Street and Fifth Avenue. 
 
 . \vnnif 
 
 A.s early a.s 1855 clubs had begun to elbow them.selves into Fifth i ird Clubs 
 Avenue, and one of the first to intrude among the residences was c" I'ififi 
 the Union Club, organized in 18.S6 with four hundred of the City's 
 most distinguished citizens as members. In 1855 it moved from Broad- 
 way near 4th Street into a new clul) hou.se on the northwest corner of 
 21st Street and Fifth Avenue, described at the time as "a superb 
 brownstone structure which cost $.'}()(),()()()," and which was the first 
 hou.se erected in New York .solely for clul) purposes. In 185!) the Athe- 
 neum established itself at the southwest corner of Fifth .Vvcinie and 
 16th Street. The Manhattan Club, in 187(i, when August Belmont 
 was president, occupied the former home of Charles M. Barker at the 
 .southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 15th Street. The I^otos CMub 
 in 1888 had its home o])positc the I'nion Club at the northeast corner 
 of 21st Street. The Travellers' Club occupied the large rcvsidcnce 
 that had belonged to (iordon W. Burnliam. at the southwest corner of 
 18th Street and Fifth Aveiuie. The.Vrcadian Club, for jjromotiug fellow- 
 ship among journalists, artists, musicians, literary and theatrical men, 
 was at 14() Fifth .Vvenue between IJUh and 2()th Streets. In 1874 the 
 New York Club, which had been formed in 184() by a number of young 
 literary and professional men and "men about town," moved from its 
 location at 15th Street and Fifth .\ venue to a building which faced the 
 AVorth Monument at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 25th Street. The 
 Knickerbocker Club, organized in 1871 and composed of descendants of 
 the first settlers of New York, bought from William Butler Diuican his 
 residence on the southwest corner of Fifth .\vemie and 28th Street for 
 $180,000 and fitted it up as a commmlious and elegantly api)oinltHi club 
 
22 
 
 i-^ I F r H A \ K \ r 1-: 
 
 ©©mip^^a.^mp 
 
 
 i^^^ 
 
 From a photonraph. Collection of Amos F. Eno. 
 
 ENGRAVED BUSINESS CARD OF THE MADISON COTTAGE. ANNOUNCING THE 
 
 TIME OF THE DEPARTURE OF STAGES. 
 
 house. On the northwest corner of 18th Street and Fifth Avenue, 
 opposite the former home of Gordon W. Buriiham, in later years stood 
 Chickering Hall, famous in its day as a musical and social centre. 
 Earliest As the residences drew the clubs to Fifth Avenue, so even earlier 
 Fifth they attracted the churches. The Church of the Ascension, at 10th 
 Avenue Street, and the First Presbyterian Church, at 11th Street, have lieen 
 Churches mentioned. The South Dutch Reformed Church was built in 1850 
 at the southwest corner of 21st Street, and the Fifth Avenue Presby- 
 terian Church was built at the corner of 19th Street and Fifth Avenue 
 in 1853. At the northwest corner of 29th Street stands the Marble 
 
I-' I F r II A \' K N V !•: 
 
 23 
 
 From a lithograph by T. S. Berry. 
 
 Collection of J. Clarence iJaritti. 
 
 FRANCOXrS HIPPODROME. 
 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue in 1853. 
 
 Collegiate Church. The corner-stone was laid November '■IG, 1851, 
 and the church was opened for worship October 11, 1854. This 
 massive building of Hastings marble hou.ses the oldest ecclesiastical 
 organization in New York, the congregation having been formed in 
 16'-28. For years the Rev. Theodore Cuylcr, I). I)., was pastor, and 
 later the Rev. Henry C. Van Dyke, D.l)., now United States Minister 
 to The Netherlands. In 1878 was held here the celebration of the 
 two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the ('ollcgiate Church. The 
 bell which stands in the chunhyard bears an inscription showing 
 that it was cast in 17(58 at Amsterdam. 
 
 Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue is an interesting spoi in 
 our antiquarian journey along the Avenue. Back in 1()70 Sir Kdnnmd 
 Andros, Governor of the Province, granted to Solomon Peters, a 
 free negro, tliirty acres of land from '■ilst to '■ifith Streets, between 
 liroadway ( Hloomingdale Road) and Seventh Avenue. Solomon's 
 desc-cndants sold flic tract in 171(5 to John Horn and Cornelius Web- 
 ber, and in 181.5 it became vested in .lolin Horn tlic second. 'IMic 
 Horn farmhouse stood near the centre of Fifth .Vvcnuc south of "i.Srd 
 Street, and was later occupied by Christopht-r Mildcnbcrgcr, who 
 married Horn's daughter. 
 
 When Fifth Avcmic was cut througli at ^i.Srd Stn-ct, in 18:57, the 
 Common Council allowed the old farmhouse to remain where it was 
 until 1839 when it was removed to the i)resent site of the Fifth Avenue 
 Building, the northwest corner of '•2.'5nl Street and Broadway. Here it 
 
 Fifth 
 Arcnuc 
 Farm of 
 Solomon 
 Pdcrs, a 
 Frrr \egro 
 
 Madison 
 Cofiage at 
 !.hd Street 
 
24 
 
 FIFTH A \' E N U E 
 
 Fifth 
 
 Avenue 
 
 Hotel 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Gardner 
 
 Wetherbec's 
 
 R,ecollections 
 
 of the 
 
 Prince of 
 
 Wales' 
 
 Visit to 
 
 Neiv York 
 
 became a road-house known as the "Madison Cottage," whose sign 
 was a huge pair of antlers and whose proprietor was Corporal Thomp- 
 son. This was a famous resort of the riders and drivers from the City, 
 still some miles south, and was also a post tavern in the coaching days. 
 
 Madison Cottage was torn down to make room for Franconi's 
 Hippodrome, opened May 2, 1853. The Hippodrome was built by a 
 syndicate of eight American showmen, among whom were Avery 
 Smith, Richard Sands, and Seth B. Howe. It was seven hundred feet 
 in circumference; of brick, two stories high, w4th an oval ring in 
 the centre two hundred feet wide by three hundred feet long. The 
 arena was covered with canvas and seated about six thousand people, 
 with standing room for almost one-half as many more. Although 
 the circus presented here compared very favorably with perform- 
 ances later given at Madison Square Garden, the venture was 
 not a success, and after two years of losses the Hippodrome gave 
 way to the Fifth Avenue Hotel (first called the Mount Vernon Hotel). 
 The property was bought by Amos R. Eno, a New Englander who 
 had made a fortune in New York. Many predicted that a hotel so 
 far up town would not pay. In fact, John Brougham, the actor, in 
 his reminiscences speaks of "shooting birds where the Fifth Avenue 
 Hotel now stands," and playing cricket in a field near 35th Street as 
 late as the forties. The hotel was opened in September 1859 under 
 the control of Colonel Paran Stevens. It fronted 23rd Street, Broad- 
 way, Fifth Avenue and 24th Street, was six stories high, built of 
 white marble, and had every convenience then known, including the first 
 passenger elevator (called a "Vertical Railroad") ever installed. This 
 hostelry accommodated one thousand guests, and the rates, including 
 room and board, were $2.50 a day. Under the management of A. B. 
 Darling, a native of Burke, Vt., and Hiram Hitchcock, of Claremont, 
 N.H., who had both gained great popularity while running well-known 
 Southern hotels, the house filled with a large Southern patronage and 
 soon became one of the famous hotels of the world. Well-known men 
 from all over America and from Europe were its guests. Here the 
 Prince of Wales, later Edward the Seventh, was entertained when 
 he came to America in 1860. 
 
 "I remember the Prince of Wales' visit well," said Mr. Gardner 
 Wetherbee, who was a clerk at the hotel and who later became one of 
 New York's most successful hotel proprietors. "He had the suite 
 on the first floor 23rd Street side, and was pretty much bored, as a 
 jolly youth of nineteen might well be, by the ceremony he was obliged 
 to face from the time he set foot in New York. So great was his 
 relief to escape to the privacy of his suite that he and his imme- 
 diate companions engaged in an enthusiastic game of leap-frog in 
 the corridor. 
 
 "At the time of the draft riots in 1863 when the rioters, after burning 
 the Orphan Asylum at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, came down 
 Broadway to burn the hotel, we put up the iron shutters for protec- 
 tion. A United States officer who was at the hotel told Mr. Hitchcock 
 

 ■^■i-i^, -ii^'-;.-siu.n's.n'-ig.i4.ii.uijJ.iitAmiLiUij '-J i. 
 
26 
 
 I- 1 F r II A \' K X r K 
 
 '■ , ! 'ignus, publisher. irence Dnvies. 
 
 MADISON SQUARE IN THE EARLY GO's. 
 
 that if he could borrow a pistol he would turn back the rioters. He 
 met them at the corner of ^oth Street and succeeded in diverting them 
 up Broadway. At 27th Street they burned the draft offices." 
 
 Emperor Dom Pedro, of Brazil, and the Empress, stayed at the 
 
 hotel in 1876. Presidents Lincoln and Grant, senators, congressmen, 
 
 governors, judges, generals, admirals, ambassadors, actors and 
 
 actresses stopped at the Fifth Avenue. Here for years lived General 
 
 W. T. Sherman, William J. Florence, the actor, and ex-Senator 
 
 Thomas C. Piatt, the Republican boss. Senator Piatt's "Amen 
 
 Corner," where weekly political conferences were held in a corner 
 
 of the corridor, made and unmade presidents, governors, senators, 
 
 and congressmen, as well as lesser political officials. The old hostelry 
 
 was razed in 1908 to make room for the present P^ifth Avenue Building, 
 
 occupied by stores and offices, and the Aldine Club, an organization 
 
 of advertising men, publishers, authors and artists. 
 
 Why the When Fifth Avenue was carried through to ^Srd Street, where it 
 
 Flatirnii intersects Broadway there was formed a triangular plot with a base 
 
 liuihliiuj of eighty-five feet on 22nd Street and an apex at 23rd Street. On 
 
 han an Apc.v the 22nd Street side of the plot formerly stood the St. Germaine 
 
 Hotel. The Fuller Building, popularly called the Flatiron Building, 
 
 now occupies the entire triangle. 
 
 Madison As originally laid down on the Commissioners' Map of 1811, the 
 
 Square, Parade (iround, extending from 28rd to ,'54th Streets, and bounded 
 
 formerhj the on the east by tiie Eastern Post-Road and on the west by the 
 
 Parade Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway), was largely common land be 
 
 Ground longing to the City. Fifth Avenue, as at first planned, did not bisec 
 
 the Parade Ground but was continued northward at 34th 
 
 bisect 
 Street. 
 
I- I FT II A \ 1-: N r 1-; 
 
 27 
 
 From Valentine's Manual. Collection of Perry Wallon. 
 
 HOUSE OF REFUGE IN 1832. 
 The remodelled United States Arsenal buildinR. which stood on a site now part of Madison 
 
 Sriuare. 
 
 Near the lower end stood an old United States Arsenal; to the 
 northeast was a Potter's Field; while to the west was the land of 
 (jeneral Theodoras Bailey, the City Postmaster; and at the north, 
 the farm of Caspar Samler. The Arsenal was erected in 1808, at 
 the junction of the Eastern Post-Road and the Bloomingdale Road, 
 near where the Farraj^ut Statue now stands, on land sold to the 
 Government in 1807 hy the City. A j)()W(ler majiazine stood here 
 as early as 1785. In 18'-2.S "the barracks," as the .Vrsenal was 
 called, were abandoned, and the following year the building and 
 land were sold, for $'5,000, to the Society for the Hefonnation of 
 Juvenile l)('liii(|uents, the first society in America oruaiii/.ed to 
 care for and reform youthful offenders. The renunlelled edifice, the 
 first House of Refuge in New York City, was opened with six boys 
 and three girls. In 18'39 it was destroyed by fire, and the institution 
 was transferred to the foot of East 23r(l Street, where it remained 
 until its removal, about 18.54, to Randall's Island. 
 
 At the southern end of the Parade (Jroun<l, on the Eastern Post- 
 Road, a Potter's Field was opened in 1701-, in which the dead of the 
 almshouse and \ictims of the yellow fever epidemics were interred 
 until the new Potter's Field was establishecl at Washington S<|uare, in 
 17!)7. In 18.S7 the Parade (iround. called "a public place," was reduced 
 to the present dimensions of Madison S(|uare ((5.84 acres), and in 1844 
 the Eastern Post-Road, which traversed the S(|uare, was closed. 
 The course of this old road may be still traced by the double row of 
 trees that runs northeast toward Madison S(|uare Carden. Madison 
 Square, named after President Madison, was formally opened as a 
 
 r lilted 
 States- 
 Arsenal 
 and the 
 J Id en He 
 Asi/tinn 
 
 I 'otter's 
 Field 
 and the 
 Open in;/ of 
 Madison 
 Sifiiarc 
 
28 
 
 FIFTH 
 
 Lithograph by A. Weiiiyarlner. 
 
 CulUclwn of Amos F. Eno, 
 
 CEREMONIES OF DEDICATION OF THE WORTH MONUMENT NOVEMBER 25, 1857. 
 The houses in the background are typical of the buildings which then surrounded Madison Square. 
 
 Prominent 
 
 Early 
 
 Residents 
 
 of Madison 
 
 Sqiiarc 
 
 Dedication 
 of the 
 Worth 
 
 Monument 
 
 park in June 1847. During the Civil War the Square was used as 
 a camp for recruits. 
 
 The migration of society to Madison Square began soon after the 
 opening of the Square in 1847, during the mayoralty of James Harper, 
 of the well-known publishing firm of Harper & Brothers. From 1853 
 until after the Civil War, Madison Square was the social centre of 
 the City. William Allen Butler's poem, "Miss Flora McFlimsey of 
 Madison Square," characterizes the frivolity of certain phases of 
 society at that time. The poem was published in Harper s Weekly, 
 which was owned by the firm who.se head was then Mayor of 
 the City. Among those who lived in this vicinity were Leonard 
 W. Jerome, and his elder brother, Addison G. Jerome, who, with 
 William R. Travers, were social leaders and prominent Wall Street 
 brokers; James Stokes, who, in 1851, built at No. 37 Madison 
 Square East, the first residence on Madison Square, and whose 
 wife was a daughter of Anson (i. Phelps; John David Wolfe, whose 
 daughter, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, gave her magnificent art collec- 
 tion to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; F'rank Work, William and 
 John O'Brien, Henry M. Schieffelin, James L. Schieffelin, Samuel B. 
 Schieffelin, Benjamin H. Field, Peter Ronalds and William Lane. 
 
 The triangular piece of ground bounded by Broadway and Fifth 
 Avenue, 24th and 25th Streets, was .set apart by order of the Com- 
 mon Council, December 5, 1854, for the erection of a monument 
 dedicated to the memory of Major-General William J. Worth, of 
 
FIFTH AVi: 
 
 2d 
 
 From a pholoi/raph. CoUeclion of J . CUireiice Darxes. 
 
 FIFTH AVENUE AND 33rd STREET. 
 
 Showing Grant's funeral procca^ion, August 8, 1885. On the right-hand .><icio aro tho residences 
 
 of John Jacob and William B. Astor, now the site of the Waldorf-.'^storia Hotel. 
 
 Mexican War fame, who died at San Antonio, Texas, June 7, 1849. 
 On November "io, 1857, when the nioninnent wa.s dedicated, with a 
 parade and a review, Cieneral Worth's reniain.s were interred under 
 its south side. 
 
 Within the confines of the ohl Caspar Sander farm, which compri.sed 
 the greater part of Fifth Avenue from Madi.son S(piare to JJlst Street, 
 have stood some well-known l)uildin<is. Amonj^ them were the old 
 Brunswick Hotel, at the northeast corner of "idth Street, once famous 
 as the head(|uarters of the ("oachiiij.; Clul), now replaced hy a m«)dern 
 office huildinj,', and the \'ictoria Hotel, at the southwest corner of '27tli 
 Street, patronize<l at one time hy (irover Cleveland, and recently de- 
 molislie(i to make way for a twenty-story husiuess structure. I'he 
 Marble Collegiate Chiirch at ^21)th Street and the Holland House at 
 30th Street also stand on sites once part of the Samlcr farm. 
 
 North of the Caspar Samler farm, extending on Fifth .V venue from 
 near .'i'-2nd almost to .'J(ith Streets, were the twenty acres of land bought 
 in 179!) hy John Thompson for CiH^ lO.v. In i"h^>7 William H. Astor 
 bought a half interest, including Fifth .V\-euue from lVl\u\ to S.Uh 
 Streets, for $'-2()..')()(). He built an uupreteiitious scpiare red brick 
 house on the southwest corner of .'Htli Street and Fifth .Vveuue. while 
 John Jacob Astor erected a home at the northwest corner of .S.'Jrd 
 
 1 lilrrcsting 
 Sitfs on the 
 Old SamUr 
 I'ann 
 
 Thr 
 
 I li(>iiiji.S(»n 
 Far in. 
 hi lilt flit bij 
 William B. 
 . ( star 
 
F I F T tl A \' F X r K 
 
 31 
 
 From a photograph. Copyright, IQI $• by Perry WaUon. 
 
 34th STUEKT and FIFTH AVKNL'e TO-DAY. 
 
 ShowinK the Waldorf-Astoria, and the Columbia Trast Company huildinK on the .site of the 
 
 Townscnd and Stewart inan.sion.s. 
 
 Street. Tlie Waldorf Hotel, named after the little town of Waldorf, 
 (ierniany, the Astor.s' ancestral home, occupies the former site of John 
 Jacob Astor's house, and was opened for husiness March 14, 18J)S. The 
 Astoria, named after .\sloria. Ore., founded hy John Jacob Astor, Sr., 
 in 1811, stands on the site of William li. .\stor's hou.se. It was opened 
 November 1, 1S!)7. The two hotels, under one manaj,'ement, are now 
 called the Waldorf-. \storia. 
 
 On a site which was also part of the Thompson farnu at the north- 
 west corner of UMli Strci'l, stood, at tli(> bcj^imiiuf^ of the Civil War, 
 the residence of "Dr." Samuel 1'. Townsend, known as "Sarsaparilla" 
 Town.send. Town.send, who had been a contractor, made his money 
 by successfully advertisinj? Town.send's Sars;iparilla. His hou.se, 
 
 UdlJorf. 
 
 Astoria 
 
 Site 
 
 " Sar.tapa- 
 
 r)7/«" 
 
 Toicn.snid'n 
 
 IIoiLtc and 
 
 ihr A. T. 
 
 Strirart 
 
 }fan.''i(in 
 
32 
 
 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 From an old print. Putnam's Magazine. 
 
 COVENTRY WADDELL MANSION. 
 
 Northwest corner of 37th Street and Fifth Avenue. Now the site of tlie Brick 
 
 Presbyterian Church. 
 
 which co.st about $100,000, was one of the wonders of the City. He 
 sold it in IHiH to Dr. Gorham D. Abbott, uncle of Dr. Lyman Abbott 
 of The Outlook-, and here Dr. Gorham D. Abbott, who had been princi- 
 pal of the Spingler Institute on Union Square, conducted a school 
 until the site was sold to A. T. Stewart, the famous merchant. Stewart, 
 as a lad, came to America from Belfast in 1818; began life as a school 
 teacher; opened a small shop for trimmings; entered the dry-goods 
 business; and when he died in 1876, left an estate worth $4'0,000,000. 
 The estate included the Italian marble palace which he had built at 
 the corner of 34th Street at a cost of $'-2,000,000. His widow occupied 
 it until her death in 1886, after which the Manhattan Club leased the 
 property. It was later torn down to make room for the building of 
 the Columbia Trust Company. 
 Picking As remarkable a transformation as may be found anywhere on 
 Blackberries Fifth Avenue is the development of the section in the neighborhood of 
 on the 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. Within the span of a lifetime it has 
 changed from a rural district into the most exclusive residential locality 
 in the City, and, finally, into the notable business section which it now 
 is. Benson J. Lossing, the historian, writes that in IS-lo he and a com- 
 panion, while strolling up the country lane then known as the Middle 
 Road, picked blackberries at what is now the corner of 35th Street 
 and Madison Avenue — the northeast corner of the Altman block. 
 
 Site of the 
 
 Altman 
 
 Block 
 
FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 33 
 
 ■1 jiliiitoi/raph 
 
 BKICK I'l;!..-!."! 1 l.Kl > . V ili l>rll. 
 
 37th Stroft and Fifth Avenue. 
 
 SliowinK the reniiirkiil)le tr.iii.-f..riiiiitiim of the Wmidell ,sit<- sinee 1S4.5. 
 
 'I'lif Middle Road, tlien a typical count ly tlioroiiirliiarc, ran north- 
 westerly from the Eastern I'ost-Koad (jU al)ont Fourth Avenue and 
 '■ZHih Street) and intersected Filth Avenue at 41sl Street. This n)ad 
 was the eastern houndary of the Thompson farm, portions of which 
 have become the two most valuahle parcels on Fifth Avenue, namely, 
 the Altman and Waldorf-. Vstoria properties. 
 
 The Mock from 37th to 3.Sth Streets, between Fifth and Sixth 
 Avenues, was the country-seat of W. Coventry H. Waddell, a close 
 friend of President Andrew Jackson. WaddelTs fortune s|)ran^' from the 
 .services he rendere(i as financial representative of .Jackson's Admini.s- 
 tration. His villa stood on the site of the Ikick Presbyterian Clnirch, 
 at the northwest corner of 37th Street. In bS^.>, when Mr. Waddell 
 went "into the wilderness" to build. Fifth Avenue abo\c Ma<li^on 
 S(|uare was a country road line<| with farms, and while Mr. Waddell 
 
 ( (ircniri/ 
 WadcUil 
 Mansion at 
 .nth Street 
 
34 
 
 FIFTH AVE N II E 
 
 From a photuijraph. Cnpijriuld, nji=i, hii I'l rnj Walton. 
 
 UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 
 Northeast corner 39th Street and Fifth Avenue, once the site of Dickel's Riding Academy. 
 
 was bargaining for the land his wife sat under an apple-tree in a neigh- 
 boring orchard. He paid $9,150 for the tract, which was sold ten 
 years later for $80,000, and for part of which in 1856 the Brick Church 
 paid $58,000. His villa was of yellowish gray stucco with brownstone 
 trim, Gothic in style, and had so many towers, oriels and gables, 
 that when Waddcll's brother saw it and was asked what he would 
 call it, replied, "Waddell's Caster; here is a mustard pot, there is a 
 pepper bottle and there is a vinegar cruet." The house stood con- 
 siderably above the street level upon grounds which descended by 
 sloping grass banks to the street. It was elegantly furnished and had 
 a large conservatory and picture gallery. From a broad marble 
 hall a winding staircase led to a tower, from which a charming view was 
 obtained of both the East and Hudson Rivers, the intervening semi- 
 rural landscape, and the approaching city. Mr. and Mrs. Waddell 
 were noted for princely hospitality, and among their frequent guests 
 
F I F T TI \ \' F \ r F 
 
 3o 
 
 brum a phiAoi/ruph. C'opi/rialU, igis, t>U I'trry Wallun. 
 
 JOHN G. WENDEL HOUSE. 
 Northw<;»t corner of 39th Strrct and Fifth Avenue. 
 
 were the .socijil, political and literary celebrities of the time. Having 
 lost his fortune in the financial crash of 1857, Mr. Waddell was ohliged 
 to sacrifice his estate. The grounds were levelled to make way for 
 the growing city, and the villa, after standing le.ss than a dozen years, 
 was torn down. 
 
 At the northeast corner of .'5J)th Street and Fifth Avenue is the I'ninu 
 home of the I'nion lx.Mgue ("lui), built at a cost of .^00.000 in 1879- Lratiur 
 1880. The interior decorations are the work of Louis Tilfany, John <'liil> 
 La Fargc and Franklin Smith. The club, organized in 18().'{, "to 
 oppose disloyalty to the Lnion, to promote good (iovernment, and 
 to elevate American citizenship." had been hou.sed from 18(58 until 
 it moved into its present (piarters. in the former Jerome residence on 
 Madison S(juare. 
 
 Opposite the I'nion IxNigue ("lub, on the northwest corner of .'Ji)th ///<• W'tmlcl 
 Street, with a yard along Fifth Avenue, guarded by a high board llou.yaml 
 fence, is an old-fashioned brick an<l brownstone hou.se. dating back ''•'' ''>''^n/ 
 to 18o(). Three elderly sisters of the late John (ioltlici) Wendcl live 
 there amid surroundings which recall the simple days of fifty years ago. 
 
36 
 
 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 Mrs. 
 
 Murray's 
 
 Madeira 
 
 and 
 
 Generals 
 
 Washington 
 
 and Putnam 
 
 save the 
 
 Fleeing 
 
 Continentals 
 
 at Murrai/ 
 
 Hill 
 
 From VaUntitu's Miuiuiil, jS6j. Culh in nr, lj,iiies. 
 
 CROTON COTTAGE. 
 Southeast corner of 40th Street and Fifth Avenue. 
 
 These three women, with a married sister, are the sole heirs of the 
 $80,000,000 in real estate left by their brother. The Wendel name is of 
 Revolutionary fame, a direct ancestor, General David Wendel, known 
 as "Fighting Dave," having fought in the War of Independence. The 
 fortune, like that of the Astors', began with a furrier who bought and 
 sold real estate, the original John G. Wendel (great-great-grandfather 
 of the late John G. Wendel). He and the original John Jacob Astor 
 were partners in the fur business in a little house that stood on Maiden 
 Lane. They married sisters, and both the Astors and the W^endels 
 have since continued to buy and hold real estate. The passion for 
 holding became so great with the late John G. Wendel, that he would 
 never sell, and before he died his holdings, which were second only 
 to the Astors', extended all over the City. He collected his own 
 rents, would not lease to a saloon, gave only three-year leases, and 
 was characterized as "one of the squarest landlords in the City." He 
 lived with his three sisters in the most simple manner in a house 
 assessed at $5,000, on a site valued at $1,897,000. 
 
 Fifth Avenue, from S^th to 4'2nd Streets, was once part of "Inclen- 
 burg," the estate of Robert Murray, a Quaker. The entire estate 
 extended from Broadway to Fourth Avenue. At the manor house, 
 which stood near Park Avenue and .S7th Street, Mrs. Murray enter- 
 tained British officers so hospitably with her fine old Madeira, on 
 Sunday morning, September 15, 177(5, that Washington and Putnam 
 had time to rally the Continental troops. The Continentals had 
 been routed at Kip's Bay (the foot of East .'34th Street), and panic- 
 stricken soldiers filled the farms and fields in the neighborhood of 
 Murray Hill. General Washington strove so desperately to stop the 
 panic, that General Greene subsequently remarked, "He sought 
 
F I F T H A \ E N U E 
 
 .'J7 
 
 From It iiliUnyrayh 
 
 llixtoricdl .SociV/j/. 
 
 HITGEHS KKMAIJ-: C(>l,I,i;(_;i:;, AlJiiL 1 iMiU. 
 4l8t to 42nd Streets on the east side of Fifth Avenue. 
 
 death rather than hfe." On Lowe's Lane, an old road crossing Fifth 
 Avenue at 4'-2nd Street, and in the field now occupied by the Library 
 and Bryant Park, Washington and Putnam stopped the rout and 
 withdrew their tr<)()j)s to Harlem Heights, where the battle was fought 
 which enal)led the Continentals to esc-ape to White Plains. 
 
 In ISOt John Murray, Jr., a son of Robert, and the brother of 
 Lindley Murray, the famous grammarian, bought a tract of five acres 
 ))etween .'}.5th and .'J7th Streets, for $.5, ()()(), and built a large .stpiare 
 mansion a short distance from the Middle Road, directly in the 
 line of Fifth Avenue l)etween .'Uith and 37th Streets. Murray, who 
 was a brewer and wealthy philanthropist, hel])ed to establish public 
 schools in New York and to organize the American Academy of Fine 
 Arts; he was also one of the first conunissioiicrs of the State Prison. 
 His ample grounds were bordered by a sparkling brook, and the mansion 
 house is shown on the Colton Mn]) of IS.'Wi in the midst of a beautiful 
 formal garden and screened from the road by a row of trees. 
 
 At the southeast corner of 4()th Street and Fifth Avemic, in IS.Vt, 
 stood a small country tavern known as the Croton Cottage, which 
 took its name from the Croton Reservoir, located diagonally opposite 
 on the Avenue. It was built of woofi, painted y(>llow, and surrounded 
 by trees and shrubbery, and here ice-cream and refreshments were 
 served to those who came to \iew the City from the to|) of the reservoir 
 walls. The cottage was burned down during the draft riots in lH(i:{, 
 and on this site later lived William H. \;niderbilt, who l»ought it in 
 
 John 
 Miirraif's 
 Iloiisf ill 
 tlir Middle 
 of Fifth 
 A rrti ue 
 
 Tilt' Croton 
 Cottage and 
 tin- GUI 
 William If. 
 I'andirhilt 
 House 
 
Collection of J . Clarence Davies. Copyright, IQ04, by Max Williams. 
 
 VIEW OF FIFTH AVENUE. 
 Looking south from 42nd Street. Croton Reservoir on the right. From a photograph in 1879 
 
 by John Bachman. 
 
 ^pm^K!^r^>a4»^ _ 
 
 
 •■%v 
 
 
 Collection of J. Clarence Davies. Copyright, IQ04, by Max Williams. 
 
 VIEW OF FIFTH AVENUE. 
 Looking north from 42nd Street. Temple Emanu-El, 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue, in the 
 foreground; St. Patrick's Cathedral, before its spires were raised, in the background. 
 From a photograph in 1879 by John Bachman. 
 
^JN:ji 
 
 From a photograph. CulU.t'.nn ../ J . Clurture Danes. 
 
 CROTON RESERVOIR, FIFTH AVENUE AND 42nd STREET. 
 
 As it appeared when the work of demolition began in 1900. 
 
 From a photograph. L'opu^i{/ht, luis, bj J^erru Walton. 
 
 NEW YORK PUBLIC LIIiRARY. 
 
 Occupying the site of the old Croton Reservoir, Fifth Avenue. 40th to 42nd Streets. 
 
40 
 
 F I F T H A \^ E N U E 
 
 Potters 
 Field at 
 
 Bryant 
 Park and 
 
 the Old 
 
 Croton 
 Iteservoir 
 
 Rutgers 
 
 Female 
 
 College and 
 
 " The 
 
 House of 
 
 Mansions" 
 
 From an old engraiiny by Ciipi-wt II it Kimmil. CulUclion of John I). Crimrnins. 
 
 CRYSTAL PALACE AND THE LATTING TOWER IN 1S53. 
 
 The Crystal Palace was erected at the rear of the Reservoir, on the site which subsequently 
 
 became Bryant Park. 
 
 1866 for $80,000. Mr. Vanderbilt left the house to his son, Frederick 
 W. Vanderbilt, and it was only recently demolished to make room for 
 the new Arnold, Constable & Co. building. 
 
 The land between 40th and 4''2nd Streets, Fifth and Sixth Avenues, 
 now covered by Bryant Park and the Library, was used as a Potter's 
 Field from 182'2 to 18'25. Later, on the eastern part of this ground, 
 was erected the distributing reservoir of the Croton Water system, 
 ■which was opened with impressive ceremonies October 14, 184'2. 
 The reservoir, which occupied more than four acres, was divided into 
 tw o basins by a partition wall. Li appearance its exterior was like an 
 Egyptian temple. The enclosing walls had an average height of forty- 
 four and one-half feet and were constructed of granite. It was thirty 
 feet deep and contained '20,000,000 gallons of water. The introduction 
 of Croton water had the immediate effect of reducing insurance rates 
 forty cents on one hundred dollars. The reservoir was demolished in 
 1900, to make way for the New York Public Library, a consolidation 
 of the Lenox, Astor and Tilden Foundations, which was opened May 
 28, 1!)11. The Library, constructed of \ermont marble, cost about 
 $9,000,000 and is one of the most l)eautiful buildings on Fifth Avenue. 
 
 Opposite the reservoir on Fifth Avenue, between 41st and 4!2nd 
 Streets, was located for years Rutgers Female College. This institu- 
 tion occupied the buildings known as "The House of Mansions" or 
 "The Spanish Row." They were erected about 1855 by George 
 Higgins, who thought "that eleven dwellings, uniform in size, price 
 and amount of accommodation, of durable fire-brick, and of a chosen 
 
42 
 
 F T F 1^ H A V E X T' K 
 
 
 A/. Dripps, publisher; John M. Harrison, surveyor. Collection of New York Geographical Society. 
 
 MAP OF FIFTH AVENUE FROM 40rH TO 50th STREETS IN 1852. 
 
 Showing the cattle-yards on Fifth Avenue, from 44th to 46th Streets. 
 
 cheerful tint of color and variegated architecture," would suit the 
 most fastidious home-seeker. He notified the public in his prospectus 
 that the view from the windows was unrivalled, as it commanded 
 the whole island with its surroundings. The project was not, how- 
 ever, a success, and, later, most of the block was occupied by Rutgers 
 Female College This institution was first opened in the spring of 
 1839, on ground given it by William B. Crosby, at 262-264-266 
 Madison Street, which had been part of the estate of Colonel Henry 
 
i-^ I 1- T 11 A \' I : \ I ■ 1 : 4S 
 
 Rutgers, a distinguisliocl Revolutionary officer after whom the col- 
 lege was named. It was the first seminary for the higher education 
 of young ladies in the City. Dr. Isaac Ferris, long chancellor of the 
 University of New York, was the first president. In 1800, after 
 the institution had been in existence over twenty years, it moved to 
 the Fifth Avenue location. Here it conducted a complete college 
 course for young ladies. The encroachments of business soon drove 
 it from Fifth Avenue to a site farther up town. On the south half of 
 the bh)ck now stands the new Rogers Peet ('ompany building. 
 
 On land immediately west of the reservoir, from IH.y.i to 18.58, ' '■.'/•^''<" 
 stood the Crystal Palace, opened by President Franklin Pierce, July 14, i;""^,'^f" 
 1853, as a World's Fair for the exliibition of tlie arts and industries j',^,, 
 of all nations. The building, which cost $().50, ()()(), was constructed 
 in the shape of a Greek cross, of glass and iron, with a graceful dome, 
 arched naves and broad aisles. Its prototype was the famous Crystal 
 Palace of London. Here in 1858 an ovation was given to Cyrus W. 
 Field upon the completion of the Atlantic cable. As a place of exhibit 
 the palace was not a financial success. It was burned, October 5, 
 1858, burying in its ruins the rich collection of the American Institute 
 Fair. The site of the Crystal Palace, used as an encamj)ment for I'nion 
 troops in 18G'-2, was laid out into what was known as "Reservoir Park" 
 in 1871. In 1884 the name was changed to Bryant Park. 
 
 On 43rd Street with an entrance on 4'2nd Street, opposite the Crystal '-"''"'i/ 
 Palace, was the famous Latting Tower, an observatory, which, with its ""^'' 
 flagstaff", was three hundred and fifty feet high. From the summit a mag- 
 nificent view of New York and the country about could be obtained. It 
 was designed by Warren Latting, and cost $100, ()()(). The tower was an 
 octagon seventy-five feet acro.ss the base, l)uilt of timber, well braced 
 with iron and anchored at each of the eight angles with about forty tons 
 of stone and timber. There was a refreshment room inunediately over 
 the first story, and an opening one hundred and t\venty-fi\"e feet from the 
 ground, whence one olttained tlie first view of New ^'ork. \n elevator 
 ran as far as the second landing. Tlie highest landing was three hundred 
 feet from the ba.se, or one hundred and seventy feet higher than the 
 topmost window in St. Paul's spire. At each landing there were tele- 
 .scopes and maps. The ])roj)rietors took a ten-year lease of the ground, 
 and hoped to reap a fortune from those who would p;iy ;in admission 
 to view New York and the surrounding count ry. The xciiture was 
 a failure, however, and the structure was sold under execution. It 
 was destroyed by fire .Vugust 30, IS.JO. 
 
 The land on "the east side of Fifth .Vvemie, from 4-2nd almost to ^'f''''"''-*''".'? 
 44th Streets, about 18^5 was the i)n)perty of Lsaac Hurr, whose estate ■^''''•'' a'"'"' 
 extended along the Middle Road whicli here coincided with Fifth ' ■"<( •'^^rcct 
 Avenue. On the Burr property, at the northeast corner of 4'-2nd 
 Street, in 1889 was the Hamilton Hotel, later the site of ex-Ciovernor 
 Levi P. Morton's home, and now the Seymour Building. Of interest 
 is the fact that the immediate predecessor of (iovernor Morton, ex- 
 (lovernor Roswell P. Flower, li\"ed on Fifth .Vvenue, at No. 5!)7, and 
 
44 
 
 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 From an old print. 
 
 Collection of S. B. Altmayer. 
 
 COLORED ORPHAN ASYLUM, FROM 1842 TO 1863. 
 44th Street and Fifth Avenue. 
 
 Edwin D. Morgan, also a former Governor of the State, lived at the 
 corner of 37th Street and Fifth Avenue. At No. 511 Fifth Avenue, 
 near the corner of 43rd Street, stood the former residence of "Boss 
 Biir' Tweed, sold later to R. T. Wilson for $1,^200,000, and recently 
 demolished to make way for a business structure. From this house 
 Tweed made his escape after his arrest for robbing the City. Having 
 secured permission to return to his home for clothes, he escaped by 
 a rear alley, while policemen were on guard at the front door, and 
 made his way to his yacht, which lay with steam up, in the East River. 
 He fled to Spain, whence he was extradited. 
 
 Across the Avenue, on the northwest corner of 42nd Street, stood 
 a small tavern before the Civil War. On the lot next to it was the 
 garden of William H. Webb, the shipbuilder, who lived at No. 504 
 Fifth Avenue. On this corner later stood the Hotel Bristol, which 
 has been transformed into an office building. No. 506 Fifth Avenue, 
 on the same block, was once the home of Mr. and Mrs. Russell Sage. 
 Temple The Temple Emanu-El has stood at the northeast corner of Fifth 
 Emanu-El Avenue and 43rd Street since 1868, when it was completed at a cost 
 of $600,000. It was designed by Leopold Eidlitz, and is considered 
 one of the finest examples of Moorish architecture in the country. 
 The congregation was organized by a combination of the reformed 
 congregation of the Rev. Leo Merzbacher with an association of 
 young Hebrews who had organized a Kultur Verein. The congrega- 
 tion thus formed has widespread influence in reformed Judaism. 
 Rev. Samuel Adler, father of Felix Adler, was for years Rabbi of 
 the Temple. The present Rabbi is the Rev. Joseph Silverman. 
 
V I VT II A \' ': \ y V. 45 
 
 Tlic l)lo('k hetweeii 4.'5r(l aiid 44tli Streets, on the west side of Fifth Colored 
 Avenue, was the seeiie on July l.'J, lS(i.S, of the hurninj^ of the Colored Orphan 
 Oqjhan Asylum during the terrible Draft Riots. This asylum, whicii Asijlum 
 stood a short distanee l)aek from Fifth Avenue, was under the man- 
 agement of the Association for the Benefit of Colored Orpiians, or- 
 ganized in 1H8() by Miss Anna Shotwell, Miss Mary Murray, and 
 twenty other ladies. The Association received from the City in 184*2 
 twenty-two lots on P^ifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets, and 
 there the building was erected which contained two hundred and 
 thirty-three children at the time of the riot. The asylum was not 
 only a place of refuge for colored children, but here they were taught 
 trades .so that they could earn their living. 
 
 The riot was precipitated by the conscription law pa.s.sed by Con- The Draft 
 gress, which forced over 30, ()()() reluctant men from New York into Riots of 
 the ranks of the army. The names of those first drafted were an- fSGS 
 nounced in the evening papers of Saturday, July 11th, and all that 
 night and Sunday the City was a cauldron of excitement. On 
 Monday morning the rioters found a leader in a Southerner, 
 under whose command the worst elements of the city ranged 
 theni.selves. A mob surrounded the draft offices, and at eleven 
 o'clock, as the name of Z. Shay, 033 West 4'2n(i Street, was called, a 
 stone was thrown through the window of the drafting-room. The 
 crowd poured into the room, the furniture was shattered, and the 
 officers barely escaped with their lives. The rioters then .set fire to 
 the building, cut telegraph wires and successfully routed the i)olice. 
 A .s(juad of .soldiers .sent to the assistance of th(> police were set uj)on 
 after they had fired a blank volley, were disarmed, routed and many 
 of tluMU horribly beaten. The mob pillaged the honie of William 
 Turner on Lexington Avenue, destroying the furniture and valual)l(' 
 paintings, and burned it to the ground. Hull's Head Hotel on 44tli 
 Street was set on fire. Croton Cottage met the same fate. .\. whole 
 row of stores and the Provost Marshal's office at 1148 Hroadway were 
 plundered. Al)()ut three o'clock a i)arty attacked an arms factory on 
 Seventh Avenue and '•21st Street, which was ])artially owned l)y Mayor 
 Opdyke. .Vfter stealing the arms they burned the ])lace and killed a 
 number of people. 
 
 The Colore(l Orphan .Vsylum was then attacked, but l)el'or(> the Unrn'mg 
 rioters arrived the children were taken to the Police Station and later of the 
 conducted under guard to the .Mmshou.se on lilackwell's Island. Colored 
 When the mob reached the A.sylum they j)illaged and burned it to (Orphan 
 the ground. Here and there they overtook colored men and sum- 'v/'"'" 
 marily hanged them to the nearest trees or lamp-posts. The .\rsenal 
 on Seventh .\ venue was threatenecl, but troops sent from Fort 
 Hamilton and (Jo\-eriior's Island saved it. .Vfter haxing (hvstroyed 
 over half a million dollars' worth «»f property, which the City had 
 to make goo<l, the rioters were tinally put down l»y troops from the 
 front under (ieneral Wood and (ieneral Sanford. 
 
 The property of the old Asylum was sold i)y its proprietors in 1S()() 
 
46 
 
 F I F T TT A ^' K X U i: 
 
 From a photograph. Collection of J. Clarence Davies. 
 
 " YE OLDE WILLOW COTTAGE," THE WILLOW TREE, AND TYSON'S MARICET, 1880. 
 
 Southeast corner of 4-lth Street and Fifth Avenue, now the site of the American Real 
 Estate Co.'s building. 
 
 for $170,000, and a lot was bought at Amsterdam Avenue and 143rd 
 Street, where a new building was erected. Since 1907 the asylum has 
 been located at Riverdale, N.Y. Part of the site of the Colored 
 Orphan Asylum is now occupied by Sherry's. 
 Willoir At the time of the riot there stood near the southeast corner of 
 Tree Inn Fifth Avenue and 44th Street a little frame cottage, named from the 
 ? willow tree which stood in front of it, the Willow Tree Inn. At 
 ^^{fy^ ^^'^ ^"^ time this was run by Tom Hyer, the noted pugilist. According 
 lived there ^^ ^^' '^^hn T. Mills, Jr., whose father owned the cottage, the draft 
 rioters made it their headquarters during the riot. "My mother 
 planted the old willow tree," said Mr. Mills, "and I remember dis- 
 tinctly the Orphan Asylum fire. The only reason our home was not 
 destroyed was that father ran the Bull's Head stages which carried 
 people down town for three cents, and the ruffians did not care to 
 destroy the means of transportation. There were many vacant lots 
 in this section of Fifth Avenue at the time of the Civil War, and a 
 small shanty below the Willow Cottage was the only building that 
 stood between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue. On the north- 
 west corner of Fifth Avenue and 45th Street, then considered far 
 
V I VT H A V V \ y V 47 
 
 north, stood a three-story brick l)iiilciing. The stockyards were be- 
 tween Fifth Avenue and Fourth Avenue from 44th to 4Gth Streets, 
 and Madison Avenue was not then cut through. The stockyards 
 were divided into pens of fifty by one hundred feet into which the 
 cattle were driven from runs between the yards. On the east side 
 of Fifth Avenue, just above 42nd Street, stood four high brownstone 
 front houses, the first to be built in this neighborhood. In the rear 
 of these were stables that had entrances on Fifth Avenue." 
 
 The Willow Tree Inn corner illustrates the appreciation of Fifth Apprecia- 
 Avenue real estate. In 1853 this corner was the extreme southwest ^'^J} ^'f ''"' 
 angle of the Fair and Lockwood farm, and was sold for $8,500. Here , '''"" 
 in 1905 a twelve-story office building was erected, replacing Tyson's /'"'' ^"" 
 meat market and the old Willow Tree Inn. The corner was then 
 held at $2,000,000. The property was bought in 1909 for $1,900,000 
 by the American Real Estate Company. 
 
 At the northeast corner of 44th Street, where Delmonico's now 
 stands, was located, from 1846 to 1805, the Washington Hotel, also 
 called " Allerton's," a low white frame building surrounded by a plot 
 of grass. The rest of the block was a drove-yard. In 1836 Thomas 
 Darling bought the entire block for $88,000 and leased it to George 
 W. Archibald, M. and David Allerton. The latter ran the tavern 
 during the Civil War. After the cattle-yards were removed to 40th 
 Street and Eleventh Avenue, Allerton's was discontinued. John II. 
 Sherwood bought the site after the war and erected the Sherwood 
 Hou.se, a well-known family hotel. Mr. Sherwood was a promi- 
 nent builder who, as a pioneer in the erection of high-class resi- 
 dences north of 42nd Street, materially a.ssisted in establishing 
 upper Fifth Avenue as a residential part of the City. 
 
 It was in the basement of the old Sherwood House, at No. 531, story of 
 that The Fifth Avenue Hank of New York first opened for business. ^^'<' ^K^^^' 
 The Bank was founded by John H. Sherwood, William H. Lee, l''""*' 
 Pliilii) \'an Volkcnl)urgh and others, to furnish a place of deposit '•""''' 
 for those who resided or did business in this part of the City. There 
 was no other bank in the vicinity, and it was estimated that there 
 were at least fifty thousand people in the neighljorhood without 
 banking facilities. The Hank was organized October 7, and com- 
 menced doing business Octol)er 13, 1875. Philip Van Volkenburgh 
 was president, John H. Sherwood, vice-president, and A. S. Frissell, 
 cashier; conii)rising the l)oard of directors, were the officers and 
 James Huell, John H. Cornell, Jonathan Thorne, Cardner Wetherl)ee, 
 William H. Ix'c, Russell Sage, Webster Wagner. Jose|)h S. Lowery, 
 Charles S. Smith and Joseph Thompson, many of whom were Fifth 
 Avenue residents. The original mimite book of the Hank furnishes 
 an interesting record of early Fifth Avenue rental values. The 
 l^ank's offices in the ba.sement of the Sherwood House were secure<i 
 "at a rental of $2,600 per year, said rental to include the gas used, and 
 the heating of the rooms." The IJaiik moved to the northwest corner 
 of Fifth Avenue and 4Mh Street in .Vpril 1890, to the liouse of 
 
From Valentine's Manual. Collection of John D. Crimmins. 
 
 OLD HOUSE, 45th STREET NEAR FIFTH AVENUE, 1849. 
 
 
 "^•rtL^ 
 
 From a photograph. Collecliun of The Fifth Avenue Bank. 
 
 THE SHERWOOD HOUSE, 1889. 
 Northeast corner 44th Street and Fifth Avenue. The first offices of The Fifth Avenue Bank are 
 
 shown in the basement. 
 
50 F T F T H A V F X T' F 
 
 Bank X .Site John B. Cornell, which had been built in 18GG. Later, it bought the 
 Transferred adjoining residence of Manton Marble, former editor of the World. 
 but tour Yn these quarters it has been ever since. From the day in 1626, 
 \i7nliatian ^'^^" ^^^^'" ^inuit bought Manhattan Island from the Indians for 
 «as- boualit ^t)Out $24 in cheap trinkets, to the present, there have been but four 
 from the transfers of the corner on which the Bank stands. It became the 
 Indians property of the City under the liberal Dongan Charter on April 27, 
 1686, which granted to the corporation all the vacant, waste and un- 
 appropriated lands of the island. The plot, fifty by one hundred feet, 
 on the northwest corner of 44th Street, was sold by the City in 1848 
 to Samuel White for $3,850. White sold it to Amos R. Eno in 1862 
 for $15,000. Eno sold it to John B. Cornell in 1865 for $40,000, and 
 on April 22, 1889, the executors of John B. Cornell sold to the Bank 
 for $232,066, the corner lot, No. 530, with a frontage of thirty feet on 
 the Avenue, together with No. 1 West 44th Street. The adjoining 
 Avenue lot. No. 532, twenty feet wide, was sold by Cornell, in Janu- 
 ary 1867, to Matthew Byrnes, a builder, for $21,540. Byrnes sold 
 the property, November 6, 1868, to Manton Marble for $85,000. 
 The Bank acquired the property on March 5, 1897 for $125,000. 
 From the time of its organization the Bank has given especial atten- 
 tion to personal and family accounts, of which it has a great number. 
 So many prominent bank officials have received their training in 
 its employ that it is often referred to as the "Kindergarten of 
 Bankers." 
 Buchanan s On the east side of Fifth Avenue, extending from 45th almost to 
 Fifth Avenue 48th Street, was a portion of the fifty-five acre estate which Thomas 
 Estate Buchanan bought between 1803 and 1807 from the City, which was 
 then disposing of its common land, for the ridiculously low sum of 
 $7,537. This property is now worth over $20,000,000. Buchanan, 
 after being educated at the University of Glasgow, came to America 
 when but nineteen, and soon took prominent part in the business 
 activity of early New York. In 1800 he purchased real estate in 
 Wall Street which became the site of the United States Custom House, 
 and later the National City Bank. He also purchased for his coun- 
 try-seat a beautiful tract of ground on the East River between 54th 
 and 57th Streets. Buchanan died in 1815, leaving his real estate to 
 his widow and eight children. A daughter, Almy, married Peter 
 Goelet, and another daughter, Margaret, married Peter's brother, 
 Robert Ratzer Goelet; thus the Goelets inherited much of their 
 Fifth Avenue holdings. 
 Church On Fifth Avenue near 45th Street stands the Church of the 
 of the Heavenly Rest, noted for its stained glass windows and wood carv- 
 lleavenly j^g xhe Windsor Hotel formerly stood at 46th and 47th Streets on 
 ' the east side of Fifth Avenue. Under the management of Hawk & 
 Windsor Wetherbee it long enjoyed a patronage as distinguished as that of 
 Hotel the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It was, after Mr. Wetherbee had retired 
 from its management, the scene of one of the most tragic fires in 
 the history of New York, when many guests were fatally burned 
 
1' I I- T II A \" I-: \ r I 
 
 51 
 
 From a photograph. Collection of J . Clarenre Danes. 
 
 WINDSOR HOTEL. FIFTH AVENUE, 46th TO 47th STREETS, 18'.»S. 
 
 or injured by leaping from the windows of the burning structure. 
 In 18G9 part of the block later occupied by the Windsor was a 
 small skating pond. On the north half of tiie block now stands the 
 palatial building of \V. & J. Sloane. 
 
 The story of the Elgin Botanical (iardens which occupied the tract I'.h/iu 
 from 47tli to 51st Streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues begins in lUtianical 
 179'J in the garden of Professor Hamilton near E(liiii)urgh, where ''crdcns 
 Dr. David Hosack, a young American, who was studying witii the fm,,,;,,,!,, 
 professor, was much mortified l)y his ignorance of l)otany, with which /, 
 subject the other guests were famiUar. Ilosack took up the study /). . 
 of botany so diligently that in 17!)5 he was made professor of botany //o.vor/.-, 
 at Columbia College, and in 17!)7 held the Chair of Materia Medica. thrir 
 He resigned to take a similar professorship in the College of Physicians Fouudrr 
 and Surgeons, where he remained until lH'-2(». For over twenty years 
 he was one of the leading physicians of New York, bore a conspicuous 
 part in all movements comiectcd with art. drama, literature, city or 
 state affairs, and was fre(|ueiitly mentioned as Ix'ing, with Clinton 
 and Hobart. "one of th<' tripods upon which the City stood." He 
 was one of the physicians who attended .Mexander Hamilton after 
 his fatal duel with Burr. While professor of botany at Columbia he 
 endeavored to interest the State in establishing a botanical exhibit 
 for students of medicine, but failing to accomplish this he acquired 
 
52 
 
 T- [ V T TT A V 1-: \ T 
 
 From Valentine's Manual. Collection of New York Histi/rical Society. 
 
 THE ELGIN BOTANIC GARDENS. 
 
 Between 50th and 51st Streets, and Fifth and Sixth Avenues, 1825. 
 
 from the City, in 1801, the plot mentioned above, for the purpose of 
 
 establishing a botanical garden. In 1804 the Elgin Botanical Gardens 
 
 were opened. By 1806 two thousand species of plants with one 
 
 spacious green-house and two hot-houses, having a frontage of one 
 
 hundred and eighty feet, occupied what to-day is one of the most 
 
 valuable real estate sites in New York, the tract being now valued 
 
 without buildings at over $30,000,000. 
 
 Land The financial burden of maintaining the garden was more than 
 
 (/ivento the doctor could carry, and he appealed to the Legislature for sup- 
 
 Columbia port. Finally on March 12, 1810, a bill was passed authorizing the 
 
 College State, for the purpose of promoting medical science, to buy the 
 
 garden. The doctor sold it for $74,268.75, which was $28,000 less 
 
 than he had spent on it. The State finally conveyed the grounds 
 
 in 1814 to Columbia College, and this property, part of which the 
 
 College still holds, has largely contributed to the wealth of this great 
 
 University. 
 
 Collegiate The Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, a Dutch Reformed Church, 
 
 CImrcIi dedicated in 1872, is located at the northwest corner of 48th Street, 
 
 o/.S7. on part of the Elgin Garden site. In the tower hangs a bell, cast in 
 
 ^'lrh(>la.s Amsterdam in 1781, which for years hung in the Middle Dutch Church 
 
 on Nassau Street, where the Mutual Life Building is now situated. 
 
 This bell was taken down and secreted while the British held New 
 
 York. In the Consistory of the Church of St. Nicholas are portraits 
 
 in oil of all its ministers from Dominie Du Bois, who in 1699 preached 
 
 in the old Church in the Fort, to the present. 
 
 In the centre of the block between 51st and 52nd Streets, on the 
 west side of Fifth Avenue, there stood back from the street in 1868 a 
 
F T VT II \ \' I' \ r I' 
 
 53 
 
 DTaven and engraved by M . U.^ifn „• . Collection of New York Historical Society. 
 
 DEAF AND DUMB ASYLUM. 1829-1853. 
 
 Between 49th and 50th Streets, near Madison Avenue. Later occupied by Columbia ColleRe. 
 
 small three-.story frame house kept by Isaiah Keyser, whose vegetable 
 garden supplied the residents along lower Fifth Avenue, and who 
 also dealt in ice and cattle. Occupying this block are the famous 
 Vanderbilt "twin mansions," hand.some brownstone structures jjrac- 
 tically identical in design. They were built in IHS^ by William H. 
 Vanderbilt, the 51st Street hou.se for him.self, and the .yhu\ Street 
 hou.se for his daughter. They stand now, island homes in a flood 
 of business, and it is probable that before long they too will be 
 engulfed, de.spite the fact that the Vanderbilts .spent .several mill- 
 ions in purchasing property to protect themselves against business 
 encroachments. 
 
 The east side of Fifth Avenue, from 4Hth to 5'}rd Streets, and 
 the west side, from 54th to 55th Streets, were long used for philan- 
 thropic and religious purposes. Between 48th and 5(>th Streets and 
 Fourth and Fifth .Vvenues stood the New York Institute for the 
 Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. The A.sylum was incorporated 
 in 1817 and occupied a room in the almshouse then on Chambers 
 Street. The corner-.stone of the 5()th Street building was laid October 
 10, IS^T, and the new quarters opened in 18'-29. It was one hundred 
 and ten feet long, sixty feet wide, four stories high, with a beautiful 
 colonnade fifty feet long in front. The .Vsylum stotnl on one acre of 
 ground donated by the ("ity, from which the directors leased nine 
 adjoining acres. They had also a donation from the State of a per- 
 centage of the tax on lotteries. The grounds were beautifully laid 
 out in lawns and gardens, ])lanted with trees and sliriil)bery. There 
 were workshops in which tailoring, shoemaking, cabinet-making, 
 gardening and other trades were taught. Girls were instructed in 
 
 I ctn table 
 (iurJen 
 lii'tirccti 
 'list and 
 ■''.2n(i Slnrts 
 
 l)i (if and 
 I) II III 1 1 
 A.ti/liiin 
 lift men 
 i'jist ',Stli 
 (I ml Ea.st 
 '•mil Slrciin 
 
From a photograph. 
 
 Copyright, igis< by Perry Walton. 
 TWIN VANDERBILT HOUSES. 
 51st and 52iid Streets. 
 ' Island Homes in a Flood of Business." 
 
 From an old print of about iS^S. Collection of S. B. AUmayer. 
 
 FIFTH AVENUE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE CATHEDRAL SHORTLY 
 
 AFTER ITS ERECTION. 
 
 The two houses in the left foreground were occupied by the school of the Rev. C. H. Gardner; 
 
 in the background are the Cathedral, the site of the twin Vanderbilt houses, and St. Thomas' 
 
 Church. 
 
From a photograph. 
 
 Copuright, JO/5, 61/ I'm-y Walton. 
 ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL. 
 Fifth Avenue, 60th to Slst Street*. 
 
56 
 
 FIFTfr AVENUE 
 
 Xfw York 
 
 LUcrari/ 
 
 Iiisfitntinu 
 
 needlework and other useful occupations. In 1853 the Asylum 
 . sold the property and moved to Washington Heights between 162nd 
 and 165th Streets. The Buckingham Hotel and National Democratic 
 Club for many years have stood on part of the land of the Deaf and 
 Dumb Asylum. 
 Potter's Somewhat east of Fifth Avenue, with irregular boundaries from 
 Field at 48th to 50th Streets, was a Potter's Field. Speaking of this Potter's 
 60th Street Field, Mr. John D. Crimmins recalls that when excavations were 
 near Fifth j^^de for the Women's Hospital on the eastern side of the land wide 
 Avenue ^^.^^^^1^^^ ^rgj-g found into which many bodies had been thrown without 
 having been enclosed in coffins. Hundreds of barrels of bones were 
 removed from the field to Hart's Island. 
 The Site of The property on which St. Patrick's Cathedral stands, between 
 St. Patrick's 50th and 51st Streets, was originally part of the Common Lands of 
 Cathedral the City. It was sold to Robert Lylburn in 1799 for £405 and an 
 annual quit rent of "four bushels of good merchantable wheat, or 
 the value thereof in gold or silver coin." Lylburn, who was a 
 merchant at No. 8 Garden Street, now Exchange Place, sold the 
 property to Francis Thompson and Thomas Cadle for $9,000, and they 
 in turn conveyed it to Andrew Morris and Cornelius Heeney for 
 $11,000. In describing a part of the purchase. Cardinal Farley, in 
 his history of the Cathedral, says, "a mansion on the property was 
 occupied by the Jesuit Fathers as a school known as the New York 
 Literary Institution which had been transferred from its original 
 location opposite old St. Patrick's (on Mulberry Street). In the 
 summer of 1813 the New York Literary Institution was closed. The 
 title to the property remained with the Jesuits. The price they 
 paid for it above the mortgage was $1,300. In 1814 the Trappist 
 Monks occupied the building and conducted an orphan asylum. 
 They left New York in the autumn of that year, and their 
 work disappeared with them." The New York Literary Institu- 
 tion, referred to by Cardinal Farley, was started by Father 
 Kohlmann. It was so successful on Mulberry Street that Father 
 Kohlmann bought for it the site on upper Fifth Avenue, but in 
 the new situation it was maintained with difficulty, although it 
 possessed such an excellent teacher as Professor James Wallace, the 
 distinguished writer on astronomy. In 1813 the college sold the 
 property to the diocese for $3,000. 
 Steps i)t Subsequently the remainder of the land bought by Morris and 
 acquiring Heeney was mortgaged to the Eagle Fire Company, and under fore- 
 the Cathedral closure sale in 1828, was acquired for $5,550, by Francis Cooper, act- 
 Site jjjg \^ behalf of the trustees of St. Peter's Church, on Barclay Street, 
 and St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Mulberry Street. These churches had 
 contemplated establishing a new bury ing-ground, but found the Fifth 
 Avenue land, on account of its rocky nature, unsuited for the purpose. 
 Church of In 1842 the trustees of the two churches conveyed about one hun- 
 St. John thr dred feet square on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 50th 
 Evangelist Street to the Church of St. John the Evangelist. A little frame church 
 
FIFTH A YEN I 
 
 57 
 
 From a photoi/raph. C ollictiun oj Humnn LMiwiic Urptmn -isj/i 
 
 OLD CATHOLIC ORPHAN ASYLUM. ABOUT 1852. 
 5l8t Street and Fifth Avenue. 
 
 was erected on the site, and the old mansion of the Literary Institu- 
 tion used as a rectory. The church was hiter moved from this site 
 to a position east of Madison Avenue (then not cut throuj^li), between 
 50th and 51st Streets. Two of the well-known pastors of this little 
 church were Fathers Larkin and McMahon. The church was burned 
 while the Cathedral was being erected, but was immediately rebuilt 
 and used until the Cathedral was occupied. 
 
 A partition suit brought in 185'2 by St. Peter's and St. Patrick's 
 Churches finally vested the title in St. Patrick's u|)on the payment 
 of $59,500 to S\. Peter's for its share. In 1853 .Vrchbishop Hughes, 
 acting for the trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral, acquired the corner 
 belonging to the Church of St. John the Evangelist. Thus the entire 
 cathedral site came into the hands of the trustees of St. Patrick's 
 Cathedral. 
 
 The idea of the Cathedral had originated in 1850 in the mind of I'.rcclutu 
 Arclil)isji(»i) John Hughes, of the dioce.se of New York, who i)lanned ■<( the 
 a callu'dral to cost $8()7,()0(). He announced that one hnii(lre<l and ' 'liht^dral 
 three per.son.s, including two Protestants, had started a sul).serij)tion 
 of $1,000 each to help defray the cost. James Renwiek, Jr., who 
 designed (irace Church, was selected as the ar<-hileet. .Vrehbisjiop 
 Hughes died in 1804. The work was in turn carried on l)y Cardinal 
 McCloskey, Archbi.shop Corrigan and Cardinal Farley. After 
 years of effort to obtain the means to l)uild this magnificent edifice 
 —the ultimate co.st of which was $4,000,000— the Cathedral was 
 formally opened and ble.s.sed on May '■Vi, 1870, and dedicated on 
 October 5, 1910. 
 
58 
 
 F I F 1 
 
 i: N r ]■ 
 
 From a photograph. Collection of The Tribune. 
 
 EASTER SUNDAY PARADE PASSING ST. THOMAS' EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 
 
 Northwest corner Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street. Showing the results of a heavy 
 
 snowstorm April 2, 1915. 
 
 Roman North of the Cathedral, between 51st and 52nd Streets, on the 
 
 Catholic east side of Fifth Avenue, stood the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, 
 
 Orphan which was organized in 1817 as the Roman Catholic Benevolent 
 
 Asylum Society, and first established at Prince and Mulberry Streets. The 
 
 number of inmates, only thirty at first, so increased that a new 
 
 building was taken on Prince Street, which later had to be enlarged. 
 
 Finally the property on Fifth Avenue was occupied in 1852. The 
 
 first building had accommodations for five hundred boys, and a wing 
 
 built in 1893, as a trade school, accommodated two hundred more. 
 
 The girls' wing, completed in 1890, held eight hundred. There was 
 
 every facility for religious, moral and social training. The asylum 
 
 is now located at Sedgwick Avenue and Kingsbridge Road. At the 
 
 northeast corner of 51st Street since 1903 has stood the Union Club, 
 
 on land once part of the Orphan Asylum site. 
 
 St. Thomas' St. Thomas' Church, at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 
 
 Church 53rd Street, one of the most beautiful examples of Gothic architecture 
 
 in this country, was organized in 1823. The first church stood at 
 
 Broadway and Houston Street, then a rural community. Later, the 
 
 need of a building farther up town was felt, and in 1870 an imposing 
 
 structure of brownstone was built, the work of Richard Upjohn, 
 
 who regarded it as one of his masterpieces. It was decorated by 
 
M 
 
 59 
 
 I'M 
 
 Fifth 
 Avctiiie Site 
 
 From a photograph. CulUction of The Fifth Aienue Bank. 
 
 54th street looking WEST FUOM FIFTH AVENUE. 1867. 
 The dwelling on the loft is No. 4 West 54th Street, now the home of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., 
 and on the right is St. Luke's Hospital, now the site of the University Club and the Hotel 
 Gotham. 
 
 La Farge and Saint-Gaudens, and with its rectory cost about 
 $1,000,000. It was burned in 1906, and the present structure has 
 but recently been erected. 
 
 A landmark gone from Fifth Avenue is St. Luke's Hospital, which >/. Luke's 
 occupied the block on the west side between 54th and 55th Streets, II»fp}tal 
 where now is the home of the University Club, and near which stood """ '^"^ 
 until 1861 the Public Pound. St. Luke's Hospital, built of red brick, 
 faced south, and consisted of a central edifice with towers. It was 
 opened, with three "Sister Nurses" and nine patients. May 13, 1858, 
 having cost $225,000. St. Luke's was the idea of the Rev. W. A. 
 Muhlenberg, D.D., Rector of the Church of the Holy Communion, 
 who had organized in 1845 the "Sisters of the Holy Communion," 
 the first organization of Protestant Sisters of Charity in America. 
 He incorporated the ho.spital in 1850, with thirteen managers, and 
 opened beds in a house adjoining the Church of the Holy Communion 
 on Si.xth Avenue and 21st Street. Here more than two huntlred 
 patients were received prior to the erection of the Fifth .V venue build- 
 ing. The funds for the new ho.spital were rai.sed by pul>lic sui).scrii)- 
 tion. The ho.spital accommodated about two hundred patients. 
 The corner-stone of its present buildings, opposite the Cathedral of 
 St. John the Divine, on Morningside Heights, was laid May 6, IHJKJ. 
 
 The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, long known as Dr. John 
 Hall's Church, has stood at the northwest corner of Fifth .Vvemie and 
 55th Street since 1S75, at which time it moved from its old location at 
 lJ)th Street and Fifth Avenue. Diagonally opjjosite. on the southeast 
 corner of 55th Street and Fifth Avenue, stands the St. Regis Hotel. 
 
 The block from 57th to 58th Streets, on the cast side of the Avenue, 
 was known for years as the "Marble Row." The row was built by 
 Mrs. Mary Mason Jones, daughter of John Ma.son, a former president 
 
 / ■■■ 
 
 .1 veil itr 
 I'rr.'ihiftrrian 
 I hiirrli 
 
 Romance of 
 I he "■Marble 
 
60 
 
 F 1 F T H AVENUE 
 
 From a photograph. Copyright, IQIS, hy Perry Walton. 
 
 THE "MARBLE ROW," FIFTH AVENUE BETWEEN EAST 57th AND EAST 58th 
 
 STREETS. 
 
 Part of the Estate of John Mason, from which the Joneses, Iselins, and the Hamersleys inherited 
 
 their Fifth Avenue holdings. 
 
 of the Chemical National Bank, from whom she inherited the site. 
 Mason, who was long prominent in business and social circles early 
 in the nineteenth century, invested largely in real estate. Among 
 the parcels he purchased, most of which were Common Lands of the 
 City, were sixteen blocks from Park to Fifth Avenues, and from 54th 
 to ()8rd Streets, excepting the block from 56th to 57th Streets on 
 Fifth Avenue. The tract between 57th and 58th Streets, Fourth 
 and Fifth Avenues, he bought from the City in 1825 for $1,500. Mason 
 died in 1839, leaving a will in which he cut off with a small annuity 
 both his son, James Mason, who had married Emma Wheatley, a 
 famous actress of 1838, and his daughter, Helen, who also had married 
 against his wishes. The will was set aside, and in the division of 
 the estate the block from 57th to 58th Streets became the property 
 of Mrs. Mary Ma.son Jones, who in 1871 built tiie Marble Row. The 
 erection of these houses, built of white marble, and in a style of archi- 
 tecture unlike anything heretofore seen on Fifth Avenue, marked the 
 passing of the era of long-fashionable brownstone fronts. On the 
 57th Street corner lived Mrs. Mary Mason Jones, at one time a 
 New York social leader, and later, Mrs. Paran Stevens, also promi- 
 
1" I 1' r II A \ K \ I 
 
 61 
 
 From a lithograph, Currier <t Ives, i86q. ColUcUun uf Perry Wallon. 
 
 FASHIONABLE TURNOUTS IN CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK. 
 
 (Sketched from life by T. Worth in 1869.) 
 
 nent in society. Mo.st of the houses of the Marble Row hav(> heen 
 altered or torn down to make room for business buildings. 
 
 Although in 1869 P'ifth Avenue below 59th Street was an almost 
 unbroken row of brownstone mansions, as early as 188'-2 trade had 
 invaded the Avenue as far north as Central Park. Between 34th and 
 59th Streets are now established many of the foremost jewellers, art 
 dealers, publishers and high-class shops. 
 
 Not until 1847 was Fifth Avenue lighted with gas as far as 18th 
 Street, and not until 1850 as far as .'}()lh Street; about 1870 gas wjus 
 carried as far as 59th Street. As early as 1869 the Sunday parade 
 of fashion on Fifth Avenue had become a feature of New York life. 
 The Easter Parade still contimies, l)ut the fine e(juipages. with spirited 
 horses and uniformed footmen, have given way to the automobile. 
 Another notable feature of former days was the driving in Central 
 Park. Here might be .seen old Commodore \'an(ierbilt. driving his 
 famous trotter. "Dexter"; Robert Homier, specdiug ".Maud S.'"; 
 Thomas Kilpatrick, Frank Work, Russell Sage, an<l otlu-r liorscineu 
 driving to tlicir |)rivate (piartcr- or half- mile courses in Harlem; leaders 
 of society and dowagers in their gilded coaches; and even maidens 
 of the "Four Hundred" driving their phaetons. 
 
 Jolm D. Crimmins, most of whose long life has Ixhmi spent in New 
 York, gives an interesting picture of Fifth Aveinie before the war. 
 His father was a contractor, who, before entering business, had heen 
 emi)loyed by Thomas Addis Emmet as a gardener. The Emmet coun- 
 try-seat was on the Boston Post-Road in the vicinity of 59th Street, 
 
 Iiirasmn of 
 Tradr a.v 
 f(tr Surtlt a.t 
 r.'.llh Strr,l 
 
 Lujlitunj the 
 Aveiuic 
 
 The Suttdai^ 
 Parade and 
 DririiKi in 
 < enfral 
 I'nrk 
 
 liertdlevtiDns 
 of John I). 
 ( ri nun ins 
 
62 
 
 FIFTH A V K \ r 1 
 
 Business 
 
 Methods 
 
 of Old Fifth 
 
 Avenue 
 
 Residents 
 
 Market 
 
 Gardens 
 
 near Fifth 
 
 Avenue 
 
 Early 
 Improve- 
 ments oti 
 Fifth Aven ue 
 
 then designated as Mount Vernon, from the tavern and race-track of 
 that name kept at one time on the East River shore. 
 
 " In the immediate vicinity were the country-seats of other prominent 
 New Yorkers, such as the Buchanans, who were the forebears of the 
 Goelets, the Adriance, Jones, and Beekman f amihes, the Schermerhorns, 
 Hulls, Setons, Towles, Willets, Lenoxes, Delafields, Primes, Rhine- 
 landers, Lefferts, Hobbs, Rikers, Lawrences, and others," writes Mr. 
 Crimmins. "A little further to the north were the country-seats of 
 the Goelets, Grades, and the elder John Jacob Astor. With all these 
 people, who were practically the commercial founders of our city, my 
 father had an acquaintance. 
 
 "The wealthy merchants of New York at that period frequently 
 invested their surplus in outlying property and left its care largely 
 in the hands of my father, who opened up estates, as he did the Anson 
 Phelps place in the vicinity of 30th Street, which ran north and ex- 
 tended from the East River to Third Avenue. He also opened up 
 the Cutting and other large estates. When a lad, as I was the oldest 
 son, my father would take me with him to the residences of these 
 gentlemen, several of whom had their permanent homes on Fifth 
 Avenue or in the vicinity. At that period, these wealthy citizens con- 
 ducted much of their business at their homes. James Lenox had his 
 office in the basement of his house at 12th Street and Fifth Avenue. 
 R. L. Stuart attended to much of his business at his residence, 20th 
 Street and Fifth Avenue, and the same may be said of the Costers, 
 Moses Taylor and others. These men had no hesitation in receiving 
 in their homes after business hours the people whom they employed. 
 I remember distinctly before gas was generally introduced, how very 
 economical in its use those who had it were. In the absence of the 
 butler, the gentleman of the house would often walk to the door with 
 his visitor and then lower the gas. 
 
 "The estates of many of these wealthy merchants were rented to 
 market gardeners. And it was not an unusual sight to see a merchant 
 drive in his carriage to the vegetable garden, select his vegetables 
 and carry them to his table, showing the economy and simple man- 
 ners of the people of that older day as compared with our present 
 extravagance. 
 
 "After the Board of Aldermen had acceded to the petition of the 
 residents of Fifth Avenue for permission to enclose a part of the road- 
 way in a closed yard or area, it was not an uncommon sight to see 
 many of the older men standing at their gates, in high stocks, white 
 cravats, cutaway coats with brass buttons, greeting their neighbors 
 as they passed along the Avenue — a custom which survived to about 
 1870 when the white cravat, too, passed into history. 
 
 "The improvement of Fifth Avenue, north of 34th Street, began 
 with the erection of the Townsend house, which was a feature of the 
 City and shown to visitors. The location was the foot of a high hill. 
 I recall very vividly the old Waddell mansion. I was taken into it 
 by my father the day they began to dismantle it, and remember very 
 
1 1 1111 A \ 1-; x { !■: 63 
 
 distinctly the courteous manner in which we were receiv^ed by Mrs. 
 Waddell, and how she regretted the destruction of her home. 
 
 "At that time the Reservoir was an attraction for the view it fur- 
 nished. There were no buildings high enough to interfere, and visi- '^'Cttuj jrom 
 tors could get a bird's-eye view of the entire City and the Palisades, ^^'f 
 The neighl)orhood at that time is well illustrated in the old New York ''('■i^''''^"^ 
 print showing the Reservoir and the Crystal Palace, 1855. There 
 were no pretentious houses north of 42nd Street. It was interesting 
 to see the drovers, — tall men, with staffs in their hands, herding eight, 
 ten, or twenty cattle, — driving the cattle to market, generally on 
 Sunday, as Monday was market day. 
 
 "On the corner of Fifth Avenue and 50th Street, where the Cathedral Ri'iniuis- 
 now stands, stood the frame church, thirty by seventy feet, in which 'ences of the 
 I was baptized in May, 1844. A path and a road led to the Post Road ' afhedral 
 which ran east of the church and bordered the Potter's Field. To '''.'. 
 the north was the Orphan Asylum, and further on was another cattle '^V^ ' "''"'^ 
 yard, Waltemeir's, a family well known to cattle men. From 50th 
 Street to St. Luke's Hospital at 54th Street, there were a few frame 
 houses, and the ground extending to Sixth Avenue was used for 
 market gardens. Old maps of New York show the lanes crossing this 
 section at the time, much like the country roads we see to-day thirty 
 or forty miles distant from the (^ity. Walls ran along these roads 
 with an occasional house with its gable of the old Dutch type. Mr. 
 Keyser, who dealt in ice gathered from ponds, and slaughtered cattle, 
 occupied the site of the present Vanderbilt houses, 51st to 52nd Streets. 
 The Decker house of Dutch architecture occupied the block between 
 Fourth and Fifth Avenues, 56th to 57th Streets. 
 
 "Peter and Robert Goelet I recall very well. Those who called Ways and 
 on Peter Goelet would find him in a jumper, bluish in color, such Habits of 
 as we .see mechanics wear, with pockets in front. He loved to be /|''''" o"" 
 occui)i(Ml anfl always had a rule and other articles in his pockets. '"'"'■' 
 His brotlicr. Robert, was the grandfather of the present Goelets; 
 Peter was the elder and a bachelor. Robert lived a few blocks 
 below him in 17th Street, the northwest corner. They accompanied 
 each other on walks, Peter, the more active of the two, in front, 
 and Robert a pace behind. They dealt directly with their tenants 
 and those whom they employed in taking care of their properties. 
 I can recall them coming on foot to my father to have him repair a 
 sidewalk or a fence. I doul)t if the.se men in their day, except for 
 ordinary living expenses, si)ent five thousand dollars a year. They 
 were simple in their manners and tastes. 
 
 "The older generation was noted for industry, thrift and economy. 
 An old niercliant, an executor of the Hurr estate which owned property 
 opposite the new Public Library, extending to Fourth .\ venue, once 
 stated that no man who had a million dollars invested, could spend 
 his income in a year. This was a frank statement from an impor- 
 tant man, made in his office where I visited him many times. Money 
 at that time brought 7*7^ per annum. The contents of his office 
 
64 'I F T II A \ K \ T' E 
 
 possibly did not exceed in cost fifty dollars, a pine desk and table, 
 a few chairs and no carpets or rugs, but everything neat and clean 
 and sufficient furniture to transact business. The men of that day 
 wrote their own letters. I have many letters of James Lenox, James 
 H. Titus, Robert L. Stuart and others. There were no stenographers, 
 and typewriters were unknown. 
 SimpU "I met practically all the noted merchants of that day as at the 
 
 Cii^stomsof age of fourteen I became my father's clerk, made out bills and col- 
 Larli/ lected them, often working after dinner. These old merchants at- 
 
 Mcrchani.s tended to their own personal accounts, drew their own checks, and 
 occasionally corrected errors in my accounts. They were always will- 
 ing to give advice, particularly to a lad. I recall very well Mr. Has- 
 sard, who established the Hassard Powder Company, a man at that 
 time more than eighty years of age. He told my father, in my 
 presence, how, before the introduction of gutta percha fuses for 
 exploding powder in blasts, he sold straw fuses. He spoke of his early 
 determination to become a business man and not to work for a salary, 
 and that whatever he manufactured must be of the best. 
 Transporta- "Transportation was principally by stage. There were car lines on 
 
 tion before Second, Third, Sixth and Eighth Avenues. The gentlemen who kept 
 the War carriages were few and they generally lived in Harlem or Manhattan- 
 ville. Occasionally smart four-in-hands were seen, and I recall 
 Madam Jumel driving to town and how we boys would run to the 
 side of the road to see her coach pass. Many business men would 
 go to the city driving a rockaway with a single horse. Few of the 
 streets were paved, and there were but two classes of pavements, 
 macadam and cobblestones. Where streets were not paved, the 
 sidewalks were in bad condition. In some places the high banks of 
 earth on either side of the street were washed down by heavy rains 
 and deposited on the sidewalks. 
 Strict- "Oil lamps were in general use as street lights, and the light was 
 ligldiiiij easily blown out by the wind. The lamplighter was usually a tall 
 man, a character, and his position was considered an important one. 
 Politics affected the general administration much more than is the 
 case to-day, and people were obliged to protect themselves. Con- 
 ditions to-day are better in many respects and I believe that the moral 
 tone of the people is better. 
 
 "Fifth Avenue, north of 59th Street, remained undeveloped for 
 years and it was not until sometime in the 70's that my father and I 
 finished grading upper Fifth Avenue. Sixty years ago saw the be- 
 ginning of the substantial situation we have to-day. On both sides 
 of Fifth Avenue were stone walls where there were deep depressions. 
 There was no traffic except drovers coming down to market with 
 cattle. There were but two main thoroughfares, Boston Post-Road 
 on the East side, and Bloomingdaie Road on the West side. From 
 the Boston Post-Road, long lanes led to the residences of gentlemen 
 who had country-seats on the East River, and similar lanes led from the 
 old Bloomingdaie Road to the country-seats on the Hudson River." 
 
r I F T II A \ i: \ i i: 
 
 Go 
 
 i^^T- -»•■>». ^-;rj^ ■•^^.-f 
 
 i , , .J- . • (■'ll..if'ii of Jahn L>. Crimmins. 
 
 POND OF THE NEW YOKK SKATING CLUB IN ISOO. 
 At 59th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues. 
 
 The sites of the Plaza, the Savoy and the Netherland Hotels at 
 59th Street and Fifth Avenue were once rocky knolls. A hrook which 
 came down 59th Street here formed several shallow ponds which re- 
 mained for a number of years after the Civil War. A lar^e pond 
 where the Plaza now stands was turned into a skatinjj rink, from 
 which the owner, John Mitchell, gained a respectable livelihood. 
 There was another pond at 58th Street, extending to 59th Street, 
 across Madison Avenue, made by this same stream, where the New 
 York Skating Club had its ((uarters. An old ledger owned by Mr. 
 Crimmins shows that many well-known residents of the City paid 
 annual subscriptions of $10 for the privilege of belonging to the Club. 
 In 1H59 at the northeast corner of 59th Street, now the site of the 
 Hotel Netherland, stood Disbrow's Riding Academy. The original 
 Plaza Hotel, which occupied the site of the present one, on the 
 blcK'k from 58th to 59th Streets, west of the Plaza, was built in 1890; 
 the Savoy in 189^2; and the Netherland in 189:J. 
 
 liefore Central Park was laid out, 59th Street was the (li\i(ling 
 line between the most exclusive .section of New York and the most 
 promiscuous. Helow 59th Street was the centre of fashion and 
 wealth; while above, along the country road which was then Fifth 
 Avemie and throughout the unsightly waste hind taken later for 
 the Park, lay what was jeeringly termed "S(|uatlers' Sovereignty" 
 section. It extended almost to Mount Morris Park. Here lived 
 over five thousand as poverty-stricken and disrei)utable people as 
 could be seen anywhere. The s(|uatters' settlements in the Park 
 were surrounded by swamps, and overgrown with briers, vines and 
 thickets. The .soil that covered the rocky surface was unfit for 
 cultivation. Here and there were stone cjuarries and stagnant ponds. 
 
 S/culilKJ 
 
 roiuls al 
 till' Plaza 
 (I lid Sail 11/ 
 
 lln 
 
 " Stjiiatii r.s 
 
 nfCnitral 
 
 I 'ark iuhI 
 
 rifth 
 
 Avniiif 
 
I ¥ T II A \- H X V K 67 
 
 In this wilderness lived the squatters, in little shanties and huts Shantits 
 made of boards picked up along the river fronts and often pieced ami Huts 
 out with sheets of tin, obtained by flatteninj^ cans. S(jnic occupants '"i Upper 
 paid $10 to $25 rent, but the majority paid notliing. Three stone ^'/''' 
 buildings, two brick buildings, eighty-five or ninety frame iiouses, -^''<""« 
 one rope-walk and about two hundred shanties, barns, stables, pig- 
 geries and bone factories, appear in a census made just before Central 
 Park was begun. Some of the shanties were dugouts, and most had 
 dirt floors. In this manner lived, in a state of loose morality, Amer- 
 icans, Germans, Irish, Negroes, and Indians. Some were honest and 
 some were not; many were roughs and crooks. Much of their food 
 was refuse, which they procured in the lower portion of tiie City, and 
 carried along Fifth Avenue to their homes in small carts drawn by 
 dogs. The mongrel dogs were a remarkable feature of squatter 
 life, and it is said that the Park area contained no less than one 
 hundred thousand "curs of low degree," which, with cows, pigs, cats, 
 goats, geese and chickens, roamed at will, and lived upon the refuse, 
 which was everywhere. In the neighborhood of these stj natter settle- 
 ments, of which one of the largest was Seneca Village, near 79th 
 Street, the swamps had become cesspools and the air was odoriferous 
 and sickening. 
 
 The largest building on the site of Central Park was the Arsenal, Central 
 on the Fifth Avenue side at C4th Street. Completed by the State Park 
 in 1848 at a cost of $30,000, it was then the largest arsenal in the Arsenal 
 State. In the rear of the main building was a small magazine. 
 The building was two hundred feet long by fifty feet deep, eighty- 
 two feet high and had towers at each angle. The basement was 
 used for heavy cannon and ball; the second story for gun-carriages, 
 and the third for small arms. It was sold to the City in 1857 for 
 $'^75,000, and became a museum and office of the Park Department. 
 The basement for a time was used as a menagerie. The top floor 
 has long been used as a weather observatory, in which accurate 
 records have been kept since 18G9. 
 
 McGowan's Pass Tavern, about which the tide of war ebbed and Mmini 
 flowed during the Revolution, had in 1847 after various vicissitudes St. Vincent 
 come into the possession of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de 
 Paul, who paid $0,000 for a plot of nearly seven acres. They opened the 
 academy and convent of Mount St. Vincent. When Mount St. \ incent 
 became Central Park {)r()perty, the sisters looked elsewhere for a 
 site, and in IH.jO l)ought the estate of Edwin Forrest, the actor, 
 known as Font Hill, now Mount St. \ inccut-on-the-IIud.son. The 
 last commencement was held in the Central Park building in 1858. 
 During the Civil War, the government used old Mount St. Vin- 
 cent as a hospital, where the sisters gave noble service until the 
 close of the war. Mount St. \'incent reverte<l in 18GG to its old 
 use by becoming a tavern under a lease granted by the Park Com- 
 missioners; the chapel, however, was u.sed as a mu.seum. In 1881 
 both the museum ami liie tavern were burned. Owing to protest 
 
I 
 
 e^ 
 
 VR?\i'r<c?' 
 
 From prints. Collection of J. Clarence Davieg. 
 
 CENTRAL PARK BEFORE AND AFTER. 
 
 The upper view shows Central Park before it was laid out. The lower is the Martel view of the 
 
 completed Park. A lithograph by Henry C. Eno in 1864. 
 
F I FT II A \' K N U E 69 
 
 against the use of the land for other than park purposes, the site 
 was cleared, but finally in 1883 another refreshment house was built 
 there. 
 
 The idea of creating a central park came first from the imaginative Andrew J. 
 brain of Andrew J. Downing, a landscape architect, who, while abroad, Doiniiny 
 studied the great parks of the world and wrote a series of eloquent ■'"'iW^'-'^f'^ o 
 letters upon the need of a central park for the increasing population ' '"''"f" 
 of New York. These letters were published in The Ilorticulturifit "^' 
 and created wide comment. Mayor Ambrose C. Kingsland took the 
 project up, and in 1851 commended it to the attention of the Board 
 of Aldermen. This action finally led to the introduction and passage 
 by the legislature, July 21, 1853, of the bill creating Central Park. Hill 
 Eleven commissioners were appointed to construct the Park, and creating 
 Andrew H. Green was made comptroller of the work. The com- < ^'fifral 
 missioners in 1858 offered prizes for the best design, and of the ''"'''* 
 thirty-three submitted, that of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert 
 \ aux was selected, and the Park was built in accordance with their 
 plans. Richard M. Hunt was the architect. 
 
 The original boundaries of the Park were 59th and 106th Streets, boundaries 
 Fifth and Eighth Avenues. It contained seven hundred and seventy- «'"/ Titles 
 six acres, but later when the Park was extended to 110th Street it 
 included eight hundred and forty-three acres. Traversed by a rocky 
 backbone, diversified by streams and ponds and natural gorges, 
 the land lent itself to picturesque landscape work. Roads, walks, 
 terraces, ponds and bridle-paths were built, and no less than half a 
 million trees, shrubs and vines were set out. The Park was not 
 finally completed until 1876. Taking the land for Central Park 
 involved searching the titles of, and buying, seven thousand lots on 
 the borders of a rapidly growing city, the adjustment of many claims 
 and the payment of $5,069,693.70 in awards, of which $1,()67,590 
 was assessed upon the adjacent owners who were to derive benefit 
 from the increase in value of their property. The era of speculation 
 wiiich followed the passage of the law creating the Park showed the 
 justice of the assessment, for a tract from 69th Street to 78th Street, 
 F'ifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, which was sold in 1852 for $3,000, 
 brought $40,000 in 1857; twelve years later William H. Vanderbilt 
 offered in vain $1,250,000 for it. 
 
 The development of Fifth Avenue above 59th Street, begun shortly ( Omplrtinn 
 before the completion of Central Park, has continued ever since, and of Central 
 now F'ifth Avenue from the Plaza and entrance to Central Park, j'"^''' 
 to Mount Sinai Hospital is the site of the most costly residences ^'"'Jy^"" 
 in America. Numerous magnificent houses, the homes of some .j'|.^,,|,^^ 
 of the wealthiest and most representative New York families, ^j^,^,,,^ -,,^;, 
 extend in an unbroken line north of 60th Street. At the north- street 
 east corner of Fifth Avenue and 60th Street stands the Metro- 
 politan Club, a palace of white marble, built in 1903. Among its 
 members are so many men of great wealth tliat it is called the 
 "Millionaires' Club." 
 
70 
 
 F T F T H A V E X l" E 
 
 From a photograph. Copyright, 1915, by Perry Walton. 
 
 HENRY C. FRICK'S RESIDENCE. 
 
 Occupying the site of the Lenox Library, between 70th and 7l8t Streets. At the left is Mr. 
 Frick's art gallery, which contains one of the finest private art collections in the world. 
 
 Village' 
 
 The "Lennox At the corner of 68th Street begins what in 1839 was the farm of 
 Fiftli Robert Lenox, whose uncle was a British commissary during the Revo- 
 Avenuc lution. This farm extended from 68th to 73rd Streets, from Fifth to 
 «'■'« ^o"" Madison Avenues. The land value of the farm, which was bought some 
 time prior to 1829 by Robert Lenox for about $40,000, is now over 
 $9,000,000. Lenox was wiser than his generation, for when he bought 
 his farm at the five-mile stone, he was strongly of the opinion that the 
 growing city would greatly increase land values, even so far out in the 
 country. Under the various sections of his wnll which bear the dates 
 of 1829, 1832 and 1839, he devised his farm to his only son, James 
 "Lennox" (then spelled with two n's), with his stock of horses, cattle, 
 and farming utensils, during the term of his life and after his death 
 to James' heirs forever. The farm then comprised about thirty acres. 
 The will reads: "My motive for so leaving this property is a firm 
 persuasion that it may, at no distant date, be the site of a village, and 
 as it cost me more than its present worth, from circumstances known 
 to my family, I will to cherish that belief that it may be realized to 
 them. At all events, I want the experiment made by keeping the 
 property from being sold." Under a clause in the will dated 1832, 
 however, he withdrew the restriction covering the sale of the farm, 
 but, nevertheless, urged his son not to sell it, as he was still of the 
 firm conviction that some day there would be a village near by, and 
 the property would appreciate. 
 The Leno.v On the lot between 70th and 71st Streets, now occupied by the 
 Library home of Mr. H. C. Frick, was opened in 1877 the Lenox Library, 
 which owed its creation to the generosity and love of books of James 
 Lenox. This library was completed in 1875, a solid and graceful 
 structure with two projecting wings of white stone, designed by 
 
F I F T H A V E X U E 
 
 71 
 
 From a photograph. Copyright, IQIS, by Perry Walton. 
 
 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. 
 View southward from 84th Street and Fifth Avenue. 
 
 Richard M. Hunt. Here was housed, until the building was torn 
 down, a collection of priceless paintings, masterpieces of ancient and 
 modern literature, sculpture, missals, bibles, incunabula Americana, 
 autographs, ceramics, the Drexel musical collection, and other treas- 
 ures now in the New York Public Library. 
 
 The Temple Beth-El, which stands at the southeast corner of Temple 
 Fifth Avenue and 7Gth Street, is a magnificent .synagogue, built of Beth-El 
 Indiana limestone. It was completed in 1891. The congregation is 
 a consolidation of the congregations Anshi-Che.sed and Adas-Jesurun, 
 and represents the first German-Jewish congregation in this country, 
 dating back to 18^26. 
 
 On the site formerly called Deer Park, in Central Park, near S'-ind Mefrojioli- 
 Street, is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which, from small be- tan Mii-seum 
 ginnings, has grown until it has become one of the great art museums of "J •^'■' 
 the world. It sprang from a meeting of the art committee of the Union 
 League Club in 18(59, which purchased an art collection and exhii)ited 
 it at 681 Fifth Avenue. The committee rented a house at l'-2G West 
 14th Street in which it kei)t the e.\hil)iti()u for a while, but in 1872, 
 having purcha.sed the antiquities unearthed in Cyprus by (Jcneral 
 L. P. di Cesnola, it applied to tlie Park Coinniissioncrs for a site in 
 Central Park. Here in 1880 the first wing of tlic Museum was opened. 
 
 Where now are some of the most beautiful hoiues in the world .Vf»- Vorl: 
 about 1836 on the north side of 88th Street near Fifth Avenue, stood M(i<i<lahn 
 the New York Magdalen Benevolent Society, an institution for the Bcntrohut 
 reformation of fallen women. This Society occupied a plot of ground '"^^^^'^'Z/ 
 containing twelve city lots and an old frame btiilding, which was 
 
From a photoyraph. Collection of J. Clarence Davies. 
 
 NORTHEAST CORNER OF SIst STREET AND FIFTH AVENUE. 
 Showing the small frame houses which stood here prior to the erection of an ultra-luxurious apart- 
 ment house, the first to be erected in this exclusive section of Fifth Avenue. 
 
 From an old print. Collection of John D. Crinimins. 
 
 THE MAGDALEN BENEVOLENT ASYLUM, ABOUT 1856. 
 
 Fifth Avenue and 88th Street. 
 
FIFTH AVKXIK 
 
 From a photograph. Copyriuhl, 1915, by Perry Walton. 
 
 NORTHEAST CORNER OF 83rd STREET AND FIFTH AVENUE. 
 
 Showing at the right the tiny frame house of Mrs. Hicks Arnold. 
 
 purcha.sed for $4,000. After occupying the building for almo.st twenty 
 years, the hidie.s who managed the in.stitution erected a fine three-.story 
 brick building, which cost about $30,000, and which fronted on 88th 
 Street near P'iftli Avenue. In this institution, which could accommo- 
 date about one hundred women, the inmates were trained in u-seful 
 occupations and given religious instruction. 
 
 On the block where squatters long held sway, between 90th and 
 Ol.st Streets, is now the beautiful house and grounds of Mr. Andrew 
 Carnegie. So well have the architect and the landscape gardener 
 co-operated, that this mansion and its surroundings have already the 
 dignity and picture.squene.ss which age alone can give, although the 
 building is of comparatively recent date. It is the only house on all 
 Fifth Aveinie which looks as if it might have been transplanted from 
 historic old England. 
 
 Mount Sinai Hospital, originally known as the "Jewish Hospital 
 in the City of New York," occupies the whole block on Fifth .\ venue 
 between lOOth and 101st Streets. The hospital, which was opened on 
 Fifth Avenue March lo, 1904, was founded in 185'-2 by a num- 
 ber of benevolent Hebrews headed by Samson Simpson, who gave 
 land on 28th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, where the 
 hospital remained imtil 1871 when it was moved to buildings on Lex- 
 ington Avenue between GOth and G7th Streets. From there it moved 
 to its Fifth Avenue location. 
 
 The 
 
 Carnigie 
 
 Home 
 
 Mount 
 
 Sinai 
 Uospital 
 mid iia 
 Fifth 
 Ave tine 
 Site 
 
From a photograph. Collection of J. Clarence Davies. 
 
 THE SQUATTERS' SETTLEMENT WHICH OCCUPIED THE SITE OF ANDREW 
 
 CARNEGIE'S RESIDENCE. 
 
 From a photograph. Copyright, igis, by Ferry Walton. 
 
 ANDREW CARNEGIE'S RESIDENCE. 
 
 90th to 91st Streets on Fifth Avenue. 
 
F I F r H A \' E X U E 75 
 
 Another philanthropic institution, opened between Fourth and Lcalcc and 
 Fifth Avenues, 111th to lUih Streets, in 1843, was known as the Mo/Ay 
 Leake and Watts Orphan Asyhim. This institution was established ^'''P^'O't 
 by a legacy left in IH'il by John G. Leake, a wealthy lawyer, and ' '''""i 
 added to by his friend and executor John Watts, who was a noted 
 philanthropist. Recorder of the City, and Speaker of the Assembly 
 from 1791-1794. A building two hundred feet in length, fronting 
 toward the south and with two wings, was erected on twenty-six 
 acres of land purchased with income from the estate. The insti- 
 tution accommodated two hundred children and commanded a wide 
 view of the surrounding country. It later moved to the present 
 site of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. 
 
 The land now covered by Fifth Avenue and the adjacent streets ///'/// 
 north of Mount Sinai Hospital, was, during the Revolutionary days, Ainmc's 
 the scene of much marching and counter-marching by troops of both j^?'/*" "/ 
 the American and the British armies, for a part of the Avenue "* 
 is on the line of the old road leading to McGowan's Pass Tavern, 
 where, during the Revolution, both Americans and British built 
 fortifications. 
 
 Extending from 96th Street, as far north as the Harlem Mill Creek ACulorai 
 at 106th Street, was the estate of Laurence Benson, the ancestor of '| '>">an's 
 many well-known New Yorkers. The creek and meadow extended '^"'. , 
 from 106th to 109th Streets, where an old road crossed upon a bridge. '•' ' 
 This was a famous resort for sportsmen, for the marshes, creeks and )^^^^„j 
 the pond, known as Harlem Mere, were favorite haunts of duck and 
 snipe, which were once numerous in the streams and ponds about 
 New York. North of the bridge, where tenements now line Fifth 
 Avenue, was one of the smallest, yet most picturesque, of the early 
 Harlem farms. It was four acres in extent and skirted the creek. 
 It was bought for eighteen pounds in 1793 by Lanaw lienson, a 
 colored woman, who had once been a slave of the Benson family 
 and whose name she had taken. On Fifth Avenue, north of Mount 
 Sinai Hospital to 110th Street, are many vacant lots, and a few 
 tenement houses. At 110th Street, the northerly end of Central 
 Park, is another plaza, quite different in appearance, however, from 
 the one at 59th Street. In place of stately residences, beautiful hotels 
 and luxurious clul)s, are saloons, moving picture theatres and crowded 
 tenements. 
 
 That part of Fifth Avenue immediately to the south of Mount Mnimt 
 Morris Park ran through the Vredenburg farm. Later Thomas '^/"'■'■'•<" 
 Addis Emmet acquired a strip directly south of the hill for a coun- ^'^^^j """ 
 try home. To the east of the hill stretched Harlem Village. Mount '''"'' 
 Morris Park has always been an abrupt, rocky knoll, heavily wooded. * 
 During the Revolution there was an .Vmerican battery ui)on its sum- 
 mit, succeeded in 1776 by a Hessian battery, which commanded the 
 Harlem River. And here for years was a fire tower, which was used 
 to call together the volunteer fire department of Harlem. Some say 
 the hill was named after Lewis Morris, a resident of Harlem, who 
 
76 
 
 TIT AVENUE 
 
 From a -photograph. Collection of J. Clarence Danes. 
 
 118th street and FIFTH AVENUE ABOUT 1880. 
 
 Fifth Avenue is the street shown on the left, with Mount Morris Park in the distance. 
 
 took an active part in obtaining the passage of the bill to secure the 
 land for the Park, and others that it took the name of Robert H. 
 Morris, mayor of New York City in 1841 and 1844, during whose 
 administration this Park was laid out. The City acquired title to 
 the property in 1839, paying $40,000 for it, and it has ever since been 
 maintained as a public park. It extends from 120th to 124th Streets, 
 directly in the line of Fifth Avenue, which has never been cut through 
 but is continued above the Park at 124th Street. 
 Tuo Old Beyond Mount Morris Park Fifth Avenue passed through the 
 Ilarleni old village of Harlem, which long maintained its corporate entity 
 Churches distinct from the growing City of New York. In the middle of the 
 block on the west side of Fifth Avenue, between 126th and 127th 
 Streets, is Mount Morris Baptist Church. On the northeast corner of 
 Fifth Avenue and 127th Street is St. Andrew's Protestant Episcopal 
 Church, which goes back to the early days of this Republic. Among 
 the vestrymen were Aaron Clark, mayor of the City from 1837 to 
 1839, Lewis Morris, Edward Prime, Jacob Lorillard, Colonel James 
 Monroe, Archibald Watts, and members of the Blount, Sands, Ray, 
 Wilmerding, Slidell and Anderson families. In the vicinity of these 
 two churches clustered all the social life of Harlem, evidences of 
 which may still be seen in the fine old brownstone houses of earlier 
 days. 
 End of the Beyond these churches and private dwellings, Fifth Avenue con- 
 Avenvr tinues among squalid surroundings for a few blocks to its end in the 
 made land which now covers the marshy meadows along the Harlem 
 River. 
 
I A \ i: N 1 1-: 
 
 77 
 
 From a photograph. . i 
 
 THE END OF FIFTU AVENUE, 143kd STREET AND THE llAULEM RIVER. 
 
 A story of Fifth Avenue would not be complete without referrinj? The Smir 
 to the many great parades of which it has been the scene. Witiiin of Manf/ 
 the past fifty years more processions, pageants and parades have Xotcworlhi/ 
 marched along Fifth Avenue than on any other street in America, /'trades 
 not excepting even Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington, D.C. 
 During gala celebrations commemorating historical events, or on 
 occasions when the country has been steeped in sorrow, Fifth Avenue 
 has been fittingly chosen as the scene for public exhibition of the 
 Nation's emotions. Among the most noteworthy events were the 
 Evacuation Day parade in 1883; the vast parade in 1881) at the Cen- 
 tennial of Wasliiiigton's Inauguration; the series of pageants in 180'-2 
 celebrating the 400th Anniversary^ of the Discovery of America; the 
 Dewey Celebration; the Hudson-Fulton parades; Lincoln's and 
 Grant's funeral processions, and those of Horace Greeley and General 
 Sherman. An endless number of political, police and firemen's 
 parades, and other exhibitions of local importance, have also taken 
 place on Fiftii Avenue. 
 
 From an obscure beginning to a position of world-wide importance, 
 from a country road to the Nation's greatest street — within the span 
 of a single century — this is the remarkable transformation of Fifth 
 Avenue. Unj)aralleled in progress and achievement, held in high 
 esteem for its historic associations and present importance, who 
 can foretell to what higher plane destiny may lift this marvellous 
 thoroughfare ? 
 
AUTHORITIES 
 
 Among the authorities consulted in the preparation of this brochure, 
 and to whom the author desires to acknowledge his indebtedness, are 
 the following : 
 
 History of the City of New York, by Mrs. Martha J. Lamb (1877). 
 
 History of the City of New York, by Benson J. Lossing (1884). 
 
 Reminiscences of New York by an Octogenarian, by Charles H. Haswell (1896). 
 
 Phelps' New York City Guide (1854). 
 
 Millers New York as It Is (1876). 
 
 Francis' Handbook of New York (1853). 
 
 A Pen and Ink Panorama of Neio York City, by Cornelius Mathews (1853). 
 
 Manual of the Common Council of the City of New York, ed. by D. T. Valentine (1857). 
 
 New York Illustrated, pub. by D. Appleton & Co. (1869). 
 
 New York by Sunlight and Gaslight (1882). 
 
 King's Handbook of Neiv York City, pub. by Moses King (1893). 
 
 Historical Guide to the City of New York, by F. B. Kelley (1909). 
 
 History of the Metropolitan Museum, by Winifred E. Howe (1913). 
 
 Minutes of the Common Council (unpublished). 
 
 Manual of the Corporation of the City of New Y'ork, ed. by John Hardy (1870). 
 
 Redfield's Traveler's Guide to the City of New York, by J. S. Redfield (1871). 
 
 New I'ork and Its Institutions, by J. F. Richmond (1872). 
 
 History of and How to See New Y'ork, by Robert Macoy (1875). 
 
 Historical Sketch of Madison Square, pub. by the Meriden Britannia Co. 
 
 New York in a Nutshell, by Frederick Saunders (1853). 
 
 Phelps New York City Guide (1857). 
 
 Old New York, by Dr. Francis (1866). 
 
 Glimpses of New York City, by a South Carolinian (1852). 
 
 The Citizens and Strangers' Pictorial and Business Directory of the City of New l^ork (1853). 
 Reminiscences of a Hotel Man, by Henry S. Mower (1912). 
 
 The City of New York, pub. by Taintor Bros. (1867). 
 Wealth and Biography of Wealthy Citizens (1845). 
 
 The Stranger's Hand-Book (1853). 
 
 Backward Glances, by Thomas Floyd Jones (1914). 
 
 A History of the Churches of New York, Jonathan Greenleaf (1846). 
 
 The Earliest Churches of New Y'ork, by Gabriel Poillon Disosway (1865). 
 
 "New York in 1870" in Belgraina Magazine, October, 1870. 
 
 A Manual of the Reformed Church in America, by Rev. Edw. T. Corwin (1902). 
 
 "Clubs" in The Galaxy (1876). 
 
 The Diary of Philip Hone, ed. by Bayard Tuckerman (1889). 
 
 How to Knoiv New Y'ork, by Moses F. Sweetser (1888). 
 
 Elite Directory. 
 
 A Description of the City of New York, ed. by O. L. HoUey (1847). 
 
 History of the City of New York, by Mary L. Booth (1867). 
 
 Guide to the Central Park, by T. Addison Richards, pub. by James Miller (1866). 
 
 The Island of Manhattan, by Felix Oldboy (J. F. Mines) (1890). 
 
 History of St. Patrick's Cathedral, by the Most Rev. John M. Farley, D.D. (1908). 
 
 The ok Merchants of New York, by Walter Barrett (1863). 
 
 The Wealthy Citizens of the City of New Y'ork (1855). 
 
 Old Streets of New York City, by John J. Post (1882). 
 
 Queens of American Society, by Mrs. E. F. Ellet (1867). 
 
 The Elgin Botanical Gardens, by Judge Addison Brown, in Bulletin of the New York 
 Botanical Gardens, Vol. 5, No. 18. 
 
 "Value of Real Estate, New York," by a retired merchant, from Evening Post. 
 
 The Memorial History of the City of New Y'ork, ed. by James Grant Wilson (1892-93). 
 
 Life of John Johnston, by Mrs. Robert Weeks de Forest. 
 
 Deeds in Register's Office, magazine articles in Century, Harper's, Putnam's, Scribner's, 
 Magazine of American History, Architectural Review, and many old maps and plans. 
 
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