are, at
the northeast angle, on the site of the building now capped by the
figure of Diana, was a low, sordid shed. It was the Harlem Railroad
Station. There, from one side started the cars for Boston, and from the
other, the cars for Albany. Cars, not trains, for horses were the motive
power as far as Thirty-second Street. There engines were attached in the
open street. Later, the horses ran through the tunnel as far as
Forty-second Street where the Grand Central Station now stands. In the
Square the Worth Monument had been erected in 1857, and on the east side
of the park, then enclosed by a high railing, was the brown church which
dated from 1854. That decade from 1860 to 1870 was one of constant
changes and shiftings. The New England soldier who marched through the
town on his way to the front in 1861 rubbed his eyes a little when he
passed through it again homeward bound after the surrender of Lee's army
at Appomattox Court House had brought the War of Secession to a close.
The last vestige of Knickerbocker life had disappeared forever.

It had been, and still was, an era of extravagant speculation. Mushroom
fortunes were springing up, and their possessors, as socially ambitious
as they were socially inept, invaded Fifth Avenue strong in the belief
in the all-conquering power of the Almighty Dollar. In most cases they
did not last long. But they served a purpose. They erected the splendid
houses on the Avenue that a few years later the clubs were to occupy and
enjoy. Of the clubs that were on the Avenue in 1868, a contemporary
chronicler wrote that nearly every one recorded the brief life of a New
York aristocrat. "A lucky speculation, a sudden rise in real estate," so
runs the rhetorical statement, "a new turn of the wheel-of-fortune,
lifts the man who yesterday could not be trusted for his dinner, and
gives him a place among men of wealth. He buys a lot on Fifth Avenue,
puts up a palatial residence, outdoing all who have gone before him;
sports his gay team in Central Park, carpets his sidewalk, gives two or
three parties, and disappears from society. His family return to the
sphere from which they were taken, and the mansion, with its gorgeous
furniture, becomes a club-house." Perhaps this picture should be
regarded with a certain restraint. The observer was an up-state
minister, looking for the excesses, wickednesses, and extravagances of
the great city. His judgment may have been as faulty as his style.

But,