"Wonderful indeed," agreed Smith, so thoughtfully that his companion glanced at him. "By the way, you didn't happen to be here half a century ago, did you?" he asked whimsically.
"No," said Miss Maitland. "If I had been anywhere, it would have been around Back Bay, I presume."
"Then you miss part of this. Unless you had been here then, you can't appreciate how marvelous all this is now," he went on. "Of course I wasn't here either; but I am a New Yorker, and I know how it used to look."
"Do you?" she asked with interest. "And how did it look then?"
"Well, suppose we go back another ten years and make it sixty in all. There was no tower there and no Flatiron building here beside us. And there was no open square before us. Oh, it was open, but not a square—more of a prairie. Broadway came up and intersected Fifth Avenue just as it does to-day. But on this Flatiron corner there stood just one thing. And what do you suppose that was?"
"I couldn't imagine."
"One solitary, lonesome lamp post. And over there, on the site of that monstrous building, was the little frame structure that gave the Square its name—the Madison cottage. And that was the only building to be seen."
"The only one! But when was this?"
"In the fifties—in fact, up to eighteen fifty-eight, when they began to put up the Fifth Avenue Hotel on the same ground. Next year that was finished, and in eighteen sixty came the Prince of Wales and honored it by leading the grand march in its great dining hall."
They had crossed Twenty-third Street by this time, and were standing on the memorable corner. An electric bus whirred by on the east side of Broadway, and Smith drew Helen's notice to it.