Chapter I: Foreword

In the making of this book the author has drawn from many sources. First, for many suggestions, he is indebted to Mr. Guy Nichols, the librarian of the Players Club, whose knowledge of the city is so profound that his friends occasionally refer to him as "the man who invented New York." The author is indebted to the Fifth Avenue Association and to the invariable courtesy of those persons in the New York Public Library with whom he has come in contact.

Among the books that have been consulted are, first of all, the admirable monographs, "Fifth Avenue," and "Fifth Avenue Events," issued by the Fifth Avenue Bank. From these he has drawn freely. Among other volumes are "The Diary of Philip Hone," Ward McAllister's "Society as I Have Found It," George Cary Eggleston's "Recollections of a Varied Life," Matthew Hale Smith's "Sunshine and Shadow in New York" (1869), Seymour Dunbar's "A History of Travel in America," Miss Henderson's "A Loiterer in New York," William Allen Butler's "A Retrospect of Forty Years," Fremont Rider's "New York City," Francis Gerry Fairfield's "The Clubs of New York," Anna Alice Chapin's "Greenwich Village," Theodore Wolff's "Literary Haunts and Homes," Rupert Hughes's "The Real New York," James Grant Wilson's "Thackeray in the United States," Mrs. Burton Harrison's "Recollections, Grave and Gay," Abram C. Dayton's "Last Days of Knickerbocker Life in New York," and Martha J. Lamb's "History of the City of New York." Also various articles in the magazines and newspapers.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER Page

I THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 1

II THE STRETCH OF TRADITION 29

III A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 41

IV GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 60

V FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 78

VI SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 100

VII SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 125

VIII LITERARY LANDMARKS AND FIGURES 150

IX FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 165

X TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 183

XI THE SLOPE OF MURRAY HILL 199

XII CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 211

XIII A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 226

XIV THE CREST OF MURRAY HILL 244

XV GIANT STRIDES OF COMMERCE 255

XVI BEYOND MURRAY HILL 266

XVII APPROACHING THE PLAZA 285

XVIII STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 297

XIX MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 312

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Massive and splendidly Gothic is St. Thomas's. The church
dates from 1825. In 1867 the present site was secured,
and the brown-stone edifice of the early seventies was for
nearly two generations the ultra-fashionable Episcopal
church of the city" Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The Washington Arch. A splendid sentinel guarding the
approach to the Avenue. Beyond, houses dating from the
thirties of the last century, that mark the beginning of the
Stretch of Tradition 14

At the northeast corner of the Avenue and Tenth Street is the
Episcopal Church of the Ascension, built in 1840, and
consecrated November 5, 1841. It belongs to a part of
the Avenue, from the Square to Twelfth Street, which has
changed little since 1845 32

Madison Square. Yesterday it was the home of the Flora
McFlimsies of the William Allen Butler poem "Nothing
to Wear." Today, in the eyes of the Manhattanite, it is
the centre of the Universe 68

"The Tower of the Metropolitan Building. Whatever artists
may think of it the tower is, structurally, one of the wonders
of the world. Exactly halfway between sidewalk and
point of spire is the great clock with the immense dials" 86

In the bright sunlight the Avenue glitters with the pavillions
of patriotism. Old Glory may be counted by the tens of
thousands; England's Union Jack, and the Tricolour of
France by the thousands. To forestall the Kaiser the
Avenue is "coming across" 112

Where the Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street cross stands the
building popularly known as the Knickerbocker Trust Company.
Here, in the middle of the last century, "Sarsaparilla"
Townsend built in brown-stone, and A.T. Stewart
later built in white marble 136

"At the northwest corner of Fifty-fourth Street is the
University Club, to the mind of Arnold Bennett ('Your
United States'), the finest of all the fine structures that
line the Avenue" 172

"The site of the old Lenox Library is now occupied by the
house of Mr. Henry C. Frick, one of the great show residences
of the Avenue and the City. A broad garden
separates the house, which is eighteenth century English,
from the sidewalk" 218

The terrace of the Public Library. Today the spot is the
scene of the activities of those engaged in the work of
speeding America's Answer. Once it was far uptown, and
on the eastern side of the Avenue were the residences
known as "Spanish Row," or "The House of Mansions". 248

Commerce, with giant stride, is marching up the stately Avenue.
The story of a business house that began in the neighbourhood
of Cherry Hill, migrated to Grand Street, thence
to Broadway and Union Square, and again to the slope
of Murray Hill, is, in epitome, the story of the city itself. 260

"On the site of the old Croton Reservoir the cornerstone of
the Public Library was laid November 10, 1902, and the
building opened to the public May 23, 1911. To it were
carried the treasures of the Astor Library and the Lenox
Library" 268

Entrance to the Public Library. The Library, 590 feet long
and 270 deep, was built by the City at a cost of about nine
million dollars. The material is largely Vermont marble,
and the style that of the modern renaissance 274

"O beautiful, long, loved Avenue,
So faithless to truth and yet so true."--JOAQUIN MILLER 280

South of where "St. Gaudens's hero, gaunt and grim, rides on
with Victory leading him," may be seen the Fountain of
Abundance, and, in the background, the new Plaza Hotel 290

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the site of what was once
the Deer Park, had its origin in a meeting of the Art
Committee of the Union League Club in November, 1869 304

FIFTH AVENUE