Fifth Avenue

Name: Fifth Avenue
Author: Maurice, Arthur Bartlett

Maurice, Arthur Bartlett

Fifth Avenue (New York, N.Y.); Streets -- New York (State) -- New York

In former days the neighbourhood was given over largely to philanthropic
and religious institutions. The New York Institution for the Instruction
of the Deaf and Dumb stood between Forty-eighth and Fiftieth Streets and
Fourth and Fifth Avenues. That was from 1829 to 1853. The building was
one hundred and ten feet long, sixty feet wide, four stories high, with
a beautiful colonnade fifty feet long in front. The grounds are
described as "beautifully laid out in lawns and gardens, planted with
trees and shrubbery." When the Asylum sold the property in 1853 it moved
to Washington Heights. For many years the National Democratic Club and
the Buckingham Hotel have stood on the land. The site of St. Patrick's,
originally part of the Common Lands of the City, was sold in 1799 for
four hundred and five pounds and an annual quit rent of "four bushels of
good merchantable wheat, or the value thereof in gold or silver coin."
Then it became the property of the Jesuit Fathers, and in 1814 the
Trappist Monks conducted an orphan asylum there. Eventually it passed
into the hands of the trustees of St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street,
and St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street, who, in 1842, conveyed
about one hundred feet square on the north-east corner of Fifth Avenue
and Fiftieth Street to the Church of St. John the Evangelist. The ground
now occupied by the Union Club was once part of the site of the Roman
Catholic Orphan Asylum.




CHAPTER XVII

_Approaching the Plaza_


Stretches of the Avenue--Approaching the Plaza--The Great Hotels--Old
St. Luke's Hospital--"Marble Row"--Some Reminiscences of Mr. John D.
Crimmins--Men and Manners of Sixty Years Ago--Early Transportation--The
Saint Gaudens Sherman Group--The Cryptic Henry James--The Fountain of
Abundance.

    One August day I sat beside
    A cafe window open wide,
    To let the shower-freshened air
    Blow in across the Plaza, where,
    In golden pomp against the dark
    Green, leafy background of the Park,
    St. Gaudens's hero, gaunt and grim,
    Rides on with Victory leading him.

    --_Bliss Carman, On the Plaza._

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Fifth AvenueMaurice, Arthur Bartlett

History

Fifth Avenue

Maurice, Arthur Bartlett

Fifth Avenue (New York, N.Y.); Streets -- New York (State) -- New York

In former days the neighbourhood was given over largely to philanthropic
and religious institutions. The New York Institution for the Instruction
of the Deaf and Dumb stood between Forty-eighth and Fiftieth Streets and
Fourth and Fifth Avenues. That was from 1829 to 1853. The building was
one hundred and ten feet long, sixty feet wide, four stories high, with
a beautiful colonnade fifty feet long in front. The grounds are
described as "beautifully laid out in lawns and gardens, planted with
trees and shrubbery." When the Asylum sold the property in 1853 it moved
to Washington Heights. For many years the National Democratic Club and
the Buckingham Hotel have stood on the land. The site of St. Patrick's,
originally part of the Common Lands of the City, was sold in 1799 for
four hundred and five pounds and an annual quit rent of "four bushels of
good merchantable wheat, or the value thereof in gold or silver coin."
Then it became the property of the Jesuit Fathers, and in 1814 the
Trappist Monks conducted an orphan asylum there. Eventually it passed
into the hands of the trustees of St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street,
and St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street, who, in 1842, conveyed
about one hundred feet square on the north-east corner of Fifth Avenue
and Fiftieth Street to the Church of St. John the Evangelist. The ground
now occupied by the Union Club was once part of the site of the Roman
Catholic Orphan Asylum.




CHAPTER XVII

_Approaching the Plaza_


Stretches of the Avenue--Approaching the Plaza--The Great Hotels--Old
St. Luke's Hospital--"Marble Row"--Some Reminiscences of Mr. John D.
Crimmins--Men and Manners of Sixty Years Ago--Early Transportation--The
Saint Gaudens Sherman Group--The Cryptic Henry James--The Fountain of
Abundance.

    One August day I sat beside
    A cafe window open wide,
    To let the shower-freshened air
    Blow in across the Plaza, where,
    In golden pomp against the dark
    Green, leafy background of the Park,
    St. Gaudens's hero, gaunt and grim,
    Rides on with Victory leading him.

    --_Bliss Carman, On the Plaza._

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Fifth Avenue

Fifth Avenue

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