Fifth Avenue—Architecture and Society: History of America’s Street of Dreams

Fifth Avenue, America’s “Street of Dreams,” embodies New York’s evolving architectural, urban, and social history. Present on the 1807 Commissioners’ map emerging from a country road, then in the proposed grid plan of 1811 as one of the major boulevards, Fifth Avenue by the end of the 19th century had become synonymous with a lavish fashionable life, grand mansions, and services catering to the wealthy. As in her previous books, The Villard Houses and Triumvirate: McKim Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal and Class in America’s Golden Age, Mosette Broderick gives life to the glamorous stages of New York society. In Fifth Avenue—Architecture and Society: History of America’s Street of Dreams, she also tracks the street’s shifting fortunes as fashion, hotels, and apartment towers bring a new skyline to the elite environs.