nd Thorley (florists),
respectively at 500 and 502 Fifth Avenue; the jewellers and
silversmiths, Black, Starr, and Frost, 594 Fifth Avenue; Carlton and
Company, 634 Fifth Avenue; Kirkpatrick and Company, 624 Fifth Avenue;
and Gattle and Company, 634 Fifth Avenue; and such emporiums designed to
delight the hearts of extravagant women as J.M. Giddings and Company,
L.P. Hollander and Company, and Alice Maynard, all on the Avenue in the
neighbourhood of Forty-fifth Street.

CHAPTER XVI

_Beyond Murray Hill_

Stretches of the Avenue--The Public Library--Temple Emanuel--The Draft
Riots--The Coloured Orphan Asylum--The Willow Tree Inn--Remaining
Residences--Clubs of the Section--As Seen by Arnold Bennett and Henry
James--Three Churches and a Cathedral--The Elgin Botanical Gardens--Old
Land Values.

O beautiful, long, loved Avenue,
So faithless to truth and yet so true.

--_Joaquin Miller._

On the site of the old Croton Reservoir the cornerstone of the Public
Library was laid November 10, 1902, and the building opened to the
public May 23, 1911. To it were carried the treasures of the Astor
Library on Lafayette Place, and the Lenox Library at Fifth Avenue and
Seventieth Street. Designed by Carrere and Hastings, the Library was
built by the city at a cost of about nine million dollars. It is three
hundred and ninety feet long and two hundred and seventy feet deep, the
material is largely Vermont marble, and the style that of the modern
renaissance. The lions that guard the main entrance from the Fifth
Avenue side are the work of E.C. Potter. The pediments at the ends of
the front, the one at the north representing History and the one at the
south Art, are by George Grey Barnard. The fountains are by Frederick
MacMonnies. Above the main entrance are six figures by Paul Bartlett, in
order from south to north, Philosophy, Romance, Religion, Poetry, Drama,
and History. Augustus St. Gaudens, who was to have directed the choice
of the sculptors and supervised the work died before the Library was
completed.

Although consideration of the Public Library must necessarily be brief,
a word should be said of the collection of paintings. The paintings
comprise the gifts of three donors: James Lenox, whose collection of
about fifty paintings was presented in 1877; the Robert Stuart
Collection of about two hundred and fifty paintings, bequeathed by Mrs.
Stuart in 1892; and some of John Jacob Astor's pictures, prese