the first of the group of luxurious hotels clustering around the southern
end of Central Park and the Grand Army Plaza. Both were
built at the beginning of the century. In the bar of the St. Regis is Max-
field Parrish's well-known painting, Old King Cole. The Gotham has for
years been popular with foreign (particularly English) visitors, and is
notable for its cuisine. The press of the expanding Fifth Avenue shop-
ping trade is evident in the installation of stores on its Fifth Avenue
abutment, space formerly occupied by a large dining room.

Elizabeth Arden's at No. 691 and Helena Rubinstein's at No.
715, are among the most luxurious beauty salons in the country. The
facades exemplify the current trend toward simplicity in retail shop design.

Two of America's best-known jewelry firms are Cartier's at the
southeast corner of Fifty-second and Marcus and Company at No. 681.
These establishments, together with Black, Starr, and Frost-Gorham, carry
on the avenue's luxury-trade tradition that was started by Tiffany.

On the southwest corner of Fifty-sixth Street, fine crystal ware is dis-
played in the five-story Home of the Steuben Glass Company, a divi-
sion of Corning Glass Works. The building, designed by John Gates, has
walls chiefly built of glass bricks. The Bonwit Teller store, dealing
exclusively in women's apparel, on the northeast corner of Fifty-sixth
Street, has the distinction of being headed by a woman, Mrs. Hortense
Odium. Another fashionable store is Bergdorf-Goodman (see page 230),
on the southwest corner of Fifty-eighth Street.

Grand Central District

Area: 42d St. on the south to 47th St. on the north; from 3d Ave. west to 5th Ave.

Huge Grand Central Terminal, set squarely athwart Park Avenue
on the north side of Forty-second Street, is one of the great railway pas-
senger terminals of the world. Around it, inevitably, have gathered sky-
scraper office buildings, large hotels, clubs, stores, and restaurants, until the
Grand Central zone has become one of those inner cities that characterize
a metropolis.

As the New York end of two important railroads—the vast New York
Central system, which reaches to the Mississippi, and the New York, New
Haven, and Hartford, which serves Boston and New England—the ter-
minal is one of the city's two principal gateways, the other being Pennsyl-
vania Station. Not only long-distance travelers use the