Fifth Avenue, one hundred feet wide, is probably the New York street that is most talked about, for they say the main object of working so hard to get rich in the metropolis is to be able to live in a fine mansion on Fifth Avenue. This great highway extends northward almost in the centre of Manhattan Island, but it has an humble beginning, starting from the original "Potter's Field," where for many years the outcast and the unknown were buried and over a hundred thousand corpses are believed to have been interred. When the city spread beyond this cemetery it was decided to make the place a park, and thus was formed Washington Square on Fourth Street, a short distance west of Broadway, an enclosure of about nine acres. From this Square Fifth Avenue is laid in a straight line six miles northward, to the Harlem River. The fine Washington Centennial Memorial Arch spans the avenue at the southern end, near the Square, marking the Centenary of Washington's inauguration as President. In the lower portions the famous avenue has been largely invaded by business establishments, but above, it is the finest residential street in the world, there being four or five miles of architectural magnificence, in which for two miles it borders Central Park. The street displays the best dwelling and church architecture, the progress northward into the newer portion showing how the styles have changed. All railways have been carefully excluded from this street. At the southern end the older houses are generally of brick, gradually developing into the use of brownstone facings, and then into almost uniform rows of elaborate brownstone buildings, with imposing porticos reached by high and broad flights of steps. The rich yet gloomy brown is somewhat monotonous, but as Central Park is approached this is broken, as all styles of designs and materials are used. Fifth Avenue has the great "Methodist Book Concern" at Twentieth Street, and in this neighborhood are also several of the leading book houses. The wealthy and exclusive Union Club is at Twenty-first Street, with the Lotus Club in a more modest house adjacent.