Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-07-05
A WONDERFUL STREET.
Fifth Avenue in New York Is Both
American and Un-American.
ITS PEOPLE TRY TO BE FOREIGN.
The Young Folks Succeed. but the Old Can't
Make the Change.
HOTELS AND ITS SHOPPING PLACES
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE pIsPArcH.1

NEW YORK, July 3.-Ine foreigner VINO
| lands in this country and does New York
for the first time invariably expresses sur
prise at the appearance of our most fashion
able thoroughfare, Fifth avenue. Expect
ing to see something distinctively Ameri-
can, he finds a magnificent boulevard, lined
with brown-stone palaces, little Partisan
shops, aristocratic clubhouses and hotels
with foreign names. The visitor from the
interior may wonder at this also; but then
the usual visitor of this latter class expects
to see something widely different from the
characteristic environment of his own city
life He is, ordinarily, man who has
never been abroad.
To the foreigner the high stoop house is
somewhat original. High stoops on Fifth
avenue do not prevail, however. as they do
on the side streets. q write now of that
Central Park Fifth avenue is American
in that it is like no other street in foreign
lands; it is not American in that it resem-
bles no other American thoroughfare. 1t
stands alone 1t is quite as distinctively
foreign as it is domestic.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel.
If YOU care to take a mental inventory of
its characteristics, start out some lovely
morning from the Fifth Avenue Hotel and
stroll along the shady side to the plaza on
the Central Park entrance of the street.
When you leave the Fifth Avenue hostelry
you leave everything distinctively Ameri-
can behind you. That famous hotel has no
restaurant or cafe, but is conducted on the
American plan" from basement to garret.
1t is the only hotel of any prominence in
New York that is. Its name ispurely local.
1t is the only hotel you will find on your
morning trip that is.
Passing Delmonico's you first encounter
the quiet but aristocratic Brunswick and
the newer Holland opposite. The latter is
Just being finished and looms up tall and
white and grandly horrible in its stone pro-
fusion of bay windows and ornamentation.
Then come the Lenox, the Victoria, the
Cambridge, the st. Marc, the Windsor, the
Belgravia, the Buckingham, etc. The
latter is directly opposite st. Patrick's
Cathedral and has above its entrance a
golden bronze heroic statue of his nibs, the
ancient Duke of Buckingham. Above the
figure in another niche is the royal coat of
arms emblazoned in gold upon q tablet. Do
you see anything American about this?
Foreign Inside and Out.
The interiors and management of all these
hotels are intensely foreign. The brass
plate let into the foot of pillar ON the
Fifth avenr.e front of the Buckingham con-
tains the rather superhuous intelligence
that the hotel is administered "On the
European Plan" That announcement is
no longer necessary in New York 'fOn
the American Plan" is the exception that
would seem to require the notice. The
Windsor is quite as English-or rather
European, because these hotels embrace
many purely Continental features-as the
establishment dedicated to His Grace, the
Duke of Buckingham.
Not one of the lot but is as widely differ
ent from the Philadelphia or Chicago hotel
as hotel could very well be. The Plaza is
the newest and largest hotel on the grand
avenue and it fronts upon broad, level
sweep of ground that lies at the head of the
street like bulb at the end of thermome-
ter Two other hotels of the most expen-
sive kind are going up directly opposite and
all have, besides this parade ground, the
whole of Central Park for a dooryard.
They are to be the swellest of the swell,
and, necessarily, un-American.
An Invasion by the Plebeians.
But the character of its hotels does not
fully establish, though it indicates, the
modern characteristics of Fifth avenue
Not many years ago a small panic was
created among the aristocratic residents of |
that exclusive street by the advent of |
tailor shop in their midst. 1t was not q |
common, vulgar, everyday establishment,
but one of aristocratic mold, whose pro- |
prietor cut cloth to fit fat pocket-books, and |
with whom men of plebeian character and |
salary shekels had nothing in. common.
But the fact that he was quickly followed |
i
dressmakers and merchant tailors and drugs
and banks and more millinery and tailors,
finally paralyzed the parvenus, whose
fathers and mothers, grandfathers and
had been milliners and |
tailors, ETC., and who were greatly enraged
to find themselves liable to be stared out of
respectable countenance by these CHASTITY
reminders of their lowly origin.
1t was at first designed to "have the law
on them" to use a vulgar expression, but
as no unity of action could be obtained, and
as property owners began to realize that
they could get more money for first,
or even basement floor, from some enterpris-
ing shopkeeper, the evil could only be sue
cessfully met by running away from it.
That is what the Mortified Inhabitants began
10 do. Many of them
Simply Moved Further Uptown
IN the same street, but this means of escap-
ng vulgar business encroachments was linn
ted and so they either went along up both
,ides of the park or were squeezed into the
tide streets Some of these side streets are
pound between blocks with real estate
compact of the most sacred and legally bind
ng description to the effect that no part of
uch property can be sold or let for business
purposes. Even a doctors small, lean sign
s objected to unless he owns the dwelling,
hough no other exception is made.
In the meantime the haberdashers and
ailors and milliners and dressmakers stead
ly encroached on the avenue from below.
Their signs began to glare in the sun oppo-
lite the palace of the Stewarts before that
,difice was finished. Now fully one-half of
he old residences below Thirty-fourth
treet are occupied as business establish
nents or are open to proposals of that char
Icter. Above that point they grow rapidly
hinner, but are rapidly increasing. The
igns 'To Let" and 'For Sale among the
emaining private residences show what the
more aristocratic inhabitants think of it.
Within the next dozen years Fifth avenue
IS q swell residence street will have retired
nto the somber background of the past.
The final blow will
Come With the Surface Cars,
convenience which business demands and
rhich is now being annually agitated with
Increasing force. The horse cars will
estroy it as carriage thoroughfare, O
,osition the grand avenue still enjoys to
he practical exclusion of every other
fashionable street. But it will make up in
is palatial clubhouses, select hotels and
howy shops what it lacks in residential /
eauty. 1t will probably gain nothing {
American. These little shops are but the
ounterparts of the little shops of Paris :,
'he names are entirely foreign You can |