In the short stretch of Fifteenth Street that leads from Irving Place to Union Square are two points closely associated with the literature of the city. One is midway the distance, the prosaic office of a brewer now, but once the home of the Century Club when Bancroft the historian was its president. The other is nearer to the square, with a tall iron fence, and a gateway not at all in keeping with the modern appearance of the street. Behind the tall fence is a bit of greensward, and beyond that a house quaintly unusual in appearance, seeming to shrink from sight in the shadows cast about it. This is where Richard Watson Gilder at one time lived, where Charles De Kay organized the Authors' Club, and where the Society of American Artists was formed.
Beyond Union Square there is in Eighteenth Street the house numbered 121 where Brander Matthews lived for fourteen or more years, where he wrote many of his books, and where was held the first meeting to organize the American Copyright League. It was Professor Matthews who gave the dinner at which the unique society known as the Kinsmen came into being, at the Florence on the same street at number 105,—an apartment house in which Ellen Glasgow, Elizabeth Bisland, and Edgar Saltus have made their homes, and in which the widow of Herman Melville is now living.
In nearby Nineteenth Street is still standing No. 35, a house where Horace Greeley lived, with William Allen Butler, the author of Nothing to Wear, for a next-door neighbor. Three blocks farther on is the big office building where Dr. Josiah Strong wrote most of Our Country, and where Hamilton W. Mabie has a study in the editorial rooms of The Outlook. A few steps farther in Twenty-second Street, at No. 33, Stephen Crane wrote part of The Red Badge of Courage and worked on the daily newspapers. Close by in Fifth Avenue is the publishing house where the critic and essayist, William Crary Brownell, author of French Traits, and other works, spends his business hours. Around the corner in Twenty-third Street, on the top floor of another publishing house is the den of the energetic author, editor, and critic, Jeannette L. Gilder. Across Madison Square, at the Twenty-fifth Street corner, Edgar Saltus had apartments for some time, and just off Broadway in Twenty-seventh Street, at No. 26, Edgar Fawcett wrote A Mild Barbarian.
On up Madison Avenue past Twenty-eighth Street is a brownstone dwelling with a luxuriantly blooming window garden, where James Lane Allen lives when he is in town and revises his writings. A few steps into the next thoroughfare the Little Church Around the Corner nestles in a populous district, and in the next block, just beyond the Woman's Hotel, Mrs. Burton Harrison has written many of her books. Two blocks away, in the Life building, John A. Mitchell, founder of the paper, spends several working hours of each day.
Going farther up-town in Park Avenue just beyond Thirty-sixth Street is a substantial building where Dr. Josiah Gilbert Holland wrote and where he died. In nearby Thirty-seventh Street hover memories of Parke Godwin, who married the daughter of William Cullen Bryant, and whose business and literary interests were closely entwined with those of his father-in-law. A few steps westward is the solemnly quiet Brick Presbyterian Church, where Dr. Henry van Dyke preached before he was called to Princeton. Turning into Forty-sixth Street, note a house distinguished from its neighbors by a doorway of wrought-iron, where John A. Mitchell did much of the writing of Amos Judd.