Upper Fifth, Madison, and Park Avenues

Area: 47th St. on the south to 110th St. on the north; from 5th Ave. east to Lex-
ington Ave. (excluding area east of 5th Ave. between 96th and 110th Sts., and
5th Ave. between 47th and 60th Sts.).

Elegant bluebloods and solid burghers, tycoons and ne'er-do-wells, social
arrivistes and just plain people (or New Yorkers a little more affluent
than the average)—these are the residents of this district. It is a quarter
of old mansions, air-conditioned apartments, exclusive clubs, luxurious
hotels, fabulous penthouses; of great churches and museums; of art gal-
leries, antique shops, and specialty stores; of high-priced cafes, cocktail
lounges, night clubs.

In the face of an advancing business district the core of the city's fash-
ionable residential section moved northward from Washington Square in
the 1860's. It retreated steadily up Fifth Avenue until the startling de-
velopment of Park Avenue in the 1920's deflected its course eastward.
About ten years ago the exact geographical center of the addresses contained
in the Social Register was determined painstakingly by realtors: it was near
Sixty-eighth Street on Madison Avenue. It remains near the same spot to-day.

By 1872 Fifth Avenue was lined with residences as far as Fifty-ninth
Street. Edith Wharton in "A Little Girl's New York," a posthumous
magazine article, recalls that "the little brownstone houses, all with Dutch
'stoops' . . . and all not more than three stories high, marched Parkward
in an orderly procession, like a young ladies' boarding school taking its
daily exercise." She remembers when Fifty-seventh Street was a "desert"
and new construction on Fifty-ninth Street was regarded as a "bold move
which surprised and scandalized society." When Central Park was com-
pleted (1876) the movement northward continued and the dwellings
erected were pretentious and rococo, with limestone supplanting the brown-
stone fronts. Not until the twentieth century, however, did the long stretch
of the avenue facing the park achieve its fame as "Millionaires' Row."

When, in 1905, Andrew Carnegie built his mansion at Ninety-first
Street his nearest neighbors were inhabitants of a shanty. Soon one com-
modity king after another—in the company of the Astors, Vanderbilts,
Whitneys, Belmonts, and Fishes—erected sumptuous dwellings on the
avenue. Among these industrialists were Henry Phipps (iron), Daniel
G. Reid (tin plate), Charles T. Yerkes (rapid transit), James B. Duke
(tobacco), O. H. Havemeyer (sugar), Edward S. Harkness (oil), Sir Rod-
erick Cameron (ships), and F. W. Woolworth. Senator William A. Clark