Fifth Avenue looking south from 38th Street

Fifth Avenue, 1878: from The Wickedest Woman in New York: Madame Restell, the Abortionist

Fifth Avenue, 1918 (Library of Congress Collection)

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5th Avenue

Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. more...

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It runs through the heart of Midtown and along the eastern side of Central Park, and because of the expensive park-view real estate and historical mansions along its course, it is a symbol of wealthy New York. Between 34th Street and 59th Street it is also one of the premier shopping streets in the world, often paired with London's Oxford Street and the Champs ElysÃ©es in Paris. It is one of the most expensive streets in the world, on a par with Paris, London and Tokyo lease prices: the "most expensive street in the world" moniker changes depending on currency fluctuations and local economic conditions from year to year. It is the dividing line for the east-west streets in Manhattan, separating East 59th Street from West 59th Street, as well as the zero-numbering point for street addresses Fifth Avenue extends from the north side of Washington Square Park through Greenwich Village, Midtown, and the Upper East Side.

Fifth Avenue, which had two-way traffic over most of its course until the early 1960s, now allows two-way traffic north of 135th Street only. South of 135th Street, Fifth Avenue allows one-way southbound traffic only while northbound traffic may take Madison Avenue. From 124th Street to 120th Street, Fifth Avenue is cut off by Marcus Garvey Park, with southbound traffic diverted around the park via Mount Morris Park West.

History

The status of Fifth Avenue was confirmed in 1862, when Caroline Schermerhorn Astor settled on the southwest corner of 34th Street, and the beginning of the end of its reign as a residential street was symbolized by the erection in 1893 of the Astoria Hotel on her house-site, later linked to its neighbor as the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Fifth Avenue is the central scene in Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Age of Innocence (1920). The novel describes New York's social elite in the 1870s and provides historical context to Fifth Avenue and New York's aristocratic families.

Originally a narrower thoroughfare, much of Fifth Avenue south of Central Park was widened in 1908, sacrificing its wide sidewalks to accommodate the increasing traffic. The midtown blocks, now famously commercial, were largely a residential district until the turn of the twentieth century. The first commercial building on Fifth Avenue was erected by Benjamin Altman who bought the corner lot on the northeast corner of 34th Street in 1896, and demolished the "Marble Palace" of his arch-rival, A.T. Stewart. In 1906 his department store, B. Altman and Company, occupied the whole of its blockfront.

In the early part of the 1900's, the very rich of New York migrated to the stretch of Fifth Avenue between 59th Street and 96th Street, the stretch where Fifth Avenue faces Central Park. This area contains many highly notable apartment buildings, many of them built in the 1920s by architects such as Rosario Candela and J.E.R. Carpenter. A very few post-World War II structures break the unified limestone frontage, notably the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum between 88th and 89th Streets.