as "the sort of thing you
find about Russell Square." The Waldorf-Astoria, the Knickerbocker, the
McAlpin, or the Astor as "like the Cecil, Savoy, or the Northumberland
Avenue Hotels." The vast, expensive edifices of public welcome in the
neighbourhood of the Plaza as "something rather on the order of
Claridge's and the Carlton."

These hotels are the St. Regis and the Gotham on opposite corners of the
Avenue at Fifty-fifth Street, the Savoy and the Netherland on the east
side of the Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street, and the huge new Plaza Hotel
facing them from across the square. When the St. Regis was first opened
popular fancy ascribed to it a scale of prices crippling to the average
purse. The idea was the subject of derisive vaudeville ditties. When a
"Seeing New York" car approached the Fifty-fifth Street corner the
guide invariably took up his megaphone and called out, "Ladies and
gentlemen! We are passing on the right the far-famed St. Regis Hotel! If
you order beefsteak it will cost you five dollars. If you call for
chicken they will look you up in Bradstreet before serving the order!"

St. Luke's Hospital, now crowning Morningside Heights, opposite the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, was formerly on the land now occupied
by the Gotham and the adjoining University Club. A photograph in the
Collection of the Fifth Avenue Bank shows the old Hospital as it was in
1867. The point from which the picture was taken was in the middle of
Fifty-fourth Street, east of the Avenue. At the north-east corner an
iron rail fence separates the hospital grounds from the sidewalk, but
the other three corners are vacant lots. To the west, on the south side
of Fifty-fourth Street, a solitary house looms up. It is No. 4, now the
residence of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Near the Hospital, until 1861, was
the Public Pound. The Hospital was opened May 13, 1858, with three
"Sister Nurses" and nine patients. Its cost was two hundred and
twenty-five thousand dollars. It was a red brick building, facing south,
and consisted of a central edifice with towers. The cornerstone of the
present St. Luke's was laid May 6, 1893.

"Marble Row" was the name given for years to the block on the east side
of the Avenue between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Streets. John
Mason, at one time president of the Chemical National Bank, bought the
land from the city in 1825 for fifteen hundred dollars. Mason was
another of the early New Yorkers who foresaw the fu