Fifth Avenue
has been the haughty patrician face of Manhattan since the opening of Central Park in 1876 lured the Carnegies, Astors, Vanderbilts, Whitneys and other capitalists north from lower Fifth Avenue and Gramercy Park to build their fashionable Neoclassical residences along the park's eastern edge. A great deal of what you see, though, is third- or fourth-generation building: through the latter part of the nineteenth century, fanciful mansions were built at vast expense, to last only ten or fifteen years before being demolished for even wilder extravagances or, more commonly, grand apartment blocks. Rocketing land values made the chance of selling at vast profit irresistible.
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