t, and another at the northern end of the
building. Seven hundred feet in circumference was the Hippodrome, of
brick sides, two stories high, with an oval ring in the centre two
hundred feet wide by three hundred feet long, seating six thousand
people, and having standing room for about half as many more. It was a
bold venture, perhaps too bold for its time. When the novelty had worn
off the profits began to dwindle and then ceased entirely. Amos F. Eno,
a New Englander who had prospered exceedingly in New York, bought the
property and planned to erect a hotel that was to surpass anything that
the city had already known. Sceptics ridiculed the idea, predicting that
a situation so far uptown meant certain disaster. But the Hippodrome
building was torn down, the new structure begun, and in September, 1859,
the Fifth Avenue Hotel opened its doors under the direction of Colonel
Paran Stevens. It was of white marble, six stories in height. Among the
innovations and conveniences that made it the wonder of its day was the
first passenger elevator ever installed. New York then knew the device
as "the vertical railway."

[Illustration: "THE TOWER OF THE METROPOLITAN BUILDING. WHATEVER ARTISTS
MAY THINK OF IT THE TOWER IS, STRUCTURALLY, ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE
WORLD. EXACTLY HALFWAY BETWEEN SIDEWALK AND POINT OF SPIRE IS THE GREAT
CLOCK WITH THE IMMENSE DIALS"]

But between the time when Solomon Peters received his grant and the day
when the opening of the Fifth Avenue Hotel ushered in a new era, the
land experienced many vicissitudes. In the last years of the eighteenth
century it was a Parade Ground, at one time extending from Twenty-third
to Thirty-fourth Streets, bounded on the east by the Eastern Post-road
and on the west by the Bloomingdale Road. At the southern end a Potter's
Field was opened in 1794, and there were buried the victims of the
frequent yellow-fever epidemics. But in 1797 a new Potter's Field was
opened in Washington Square. According to the plans of the
Commissioners' Map of 1811, there was to be no Fifth Avenue between
Twenty-third Street and Thirty-fourth Street. The Avenue was to end
temporarily at the former point, and resume its journey eleven blocks
farther north. As early as 1785 a powder magazine stood within the
present domains of the Square. A United States Arsenal, erected in 1808,
was near the spot of the Farragut statue. In 1823 the Arsenal building
became the house of refuge of the Society f