At Twenty-third Street the Avenue intersects Broadway and skirts Madison Square. To the right is the Flat-iron Building. At Twenty-sixth Street is the Café Martin.
The whole block between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets, to the left, is occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, a huge double building of red brick and sandstone in a German Renaissance style. The restaurants and other large halls in the interior are freely adorned with mural paintings by American artists.
The Union League Club, the chief Republican club of New York, is a handsome and substantial building at the corner of Thirty-ninth Street.
Between Fortieth Street and Forty-second Street, to the left, on the site of the old reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct, stands the New York Public Library, a very dignified and imposing structure of white marble, built at a cost of ten million dollars.
A little to the east of this point, in Forty-second Street, is the Grand Central Station already referred to. At the southeast corner of Forty-second Street rises the tasteful Columbia Bank. The Temple Emanu-El, or chief synagogue of New York, at the corner of Forty-third Street, is a fine specimen of Moorish architecture with a richly decorated interior.
At the northeast corner of Forty-fourth Street is Delmonico’s Restaurant, a substantial building with elaborate ornamentation; and at the southwest corner is Sherry’s, a rival establishment, equally patronized by the fashionable world.
The Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas (Dutch Reformed), at the corner of Forty-eighth Street, is one of the handsomest and most elaborately adorned ecclesiastical edifices in the city. It is in decorated Gothic style and has a spire two hundred and seventy feet high. Just below Fiftieth Street, on the right, is the Democratic Club, the stronghold of Tammany and popularly known as “Tamany Hall” or the “Wigwam.”
Between Fiftieth and Fifty-first Streets, to the right, stands St. Patrick’s Cathedral, an extensive building of white marble in the decorated Gothic style, and the most important ecclesiastical edifice in the United States. It is four hundred feet long, one hundred and twenty-five feet wide and one hundred and twelve feet high, and the two beautiful spires are three hundred and thirty-two feet high. The building, which was designed by James Renwick, was erected in 1850-1879, at a cost of three million five hundred thousand dollars.
Adjoining the cathedral, to the right, is the handsome Union Club, and at the corner of Fifty-fourth Street is the University Club, adorned with carvings of the seals of eighteen American colleges. The library contains admirable mural paintings, adapted from Pinturicchio’s work in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican. At the corner of Fifty-fifth Street are the St. Regis Hotel and the Gotham Hotel. The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church has one of the loftiest spires in the city.
Between Fifty-ninth and One Hundred and Tenth Streets Fifth Avenue skirts the east side of Central Park, having buildings on one side only. Among these, many of which are very handsome, is the Metropolitan Club.