Why Do We Keep Coming Back to Fifth Avenue?
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Fifth Avenue is the "spine of Manhattan," Jay McInerney writes in the foreword to Assouline's new coffee table book, Fifth Avenue: 200 Years of Stories and Legends. But it's not just the geographic center of New York, it's the beating cultural heart of the city.
Fifth—which stretches from Washington Square Park to 142nd Street in Harlem—was completed during the Gilded Age. The avenue that once featured mansions built by the Vanderbilts and the Astors now is a major shopping destination for tourists and New Yorkers alike.
"Fifth Avenue is layered, revealing disparate moments in time, the old buffeted by the new," journalist Julie Satow writes. "Yet Central Park still blows its breath of nature onto the pavement, the Plaza hotel remains a white beacon on the corner, and, up and down the wide sidewalks, elegant shops, excited tourists, and busy New Yorkers carry on their way."
The coffee table book brings readers through the history of Fifth featuring over 200 photographs and illustrations, and highlights the people and places who have shaped it. Think: the Easter Day Parade, or Audrey Hepburn in front of Tiffany. Ahead of publication, Satow, the author of When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion and The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel, and McInerney, a novelist and T&C's wine critic, chatted with Town & Country about all things Fifth Avenue and their perfect New York City days.
Fifth Avenue: 200 Years of Stories and Legends
What drew you to writing about Fifth Avenue?
Julie Satow: I clearly have a love affair with New York! I moved here when I was 15, so I see its own character in a lot of my writing. My first book was on the Plaza Hotel, which is on Fifth—that was my first deep dive into Fifth Avenue. My most recent book follows department stores along Fifth Avenue and the women who ran them. It was fun to get to explore all the neighborhoods that Fifth Avenue approaches, not just these very specific buildings that I've written about.
Why does Fifth Avenue loom so large in the public imagination?
Jay McInerney: In the 19th century, there wasn't a great deal uptown, what we now consider to be maybe the most prominent part of Fifth Avenue—the '50s and the '60s, where the Plaza and Bergdorf's and so on is—was barely developed in the 19th century. As development happened, it tended to go up Fifth Avenue. The grand homes tended to be on Fifth Avenue, and eventually, the grand hotels and stores. Despite the occasional discount store and whatnot, it still seems to have a certain elegance that is pretty unique in terms of New York thoroughfares. Broadway is a lot more raffish and varied, and Park Avenue, for all of its elegance, is pretty strictly residential. There's not a lot to see and do in Park Avenue, whereas Fifth, you have this incredible window shopping and you have the hotel lobbies. It's unique.
Why do people love Fifth Avenue?
JS: Fifth Avenue and Broadway, I would think, are the two most iconic New York avenues. Since New York's inception, essentially, [Fifth Ave] has been a feature of Manhattan, but it's also been the centerpiece for wealth, for retail, and glamor. It's the heart of the city. Back in the Gilded Age, it was lower Fifth Avenue, the Henry James period, and then as the city kept developing, you moved uptown, and it still today is that way. It's baked into the concept of what New York is really.
JM: For a very long time, it's been the grand promenade of New York and the place where people go to window shop and also to show themselves off in their finery. It certainly was that in [F. Scott] Fitzgerald's time. He writes about Fifth Avenue, and he writes about going there when he was a young man and watching all the girls go by... The center of gravity of Fifth Avenue was a little lower down toward Washington Square Park, which is where it either begins or ends, depending on your point of view.
What's your favorite part of Fifth Avenue?
JS: If I'm going to be stereotypical, I would say Fifth along along Central Park, but if I'm going to be truthful, I would say that I live downtown and I love Washington Square Park. I've grown up there, in high school, hanging out there, I've always been around there. So I would say Lower Fifth; I love near NYU, there's these little mews [the Washington Mews]. That area of Fifth feels more like the gritty New York that I know. But, if I was a tourist, I would say that Fifth Avenue along Central Park is the most iconic.
JM: There's a lot of grand architecture on Fifth Avenue, and the hotels are semi-public buildings; the lobbies are open to the public and they're gathering spots. The most recognizable landmark in Manhattan, after the Statue of Liberty, is probably the Plaza Hotel. My first experience of New York City that I remember was staying at the Plaza Hotel with my parents—it's just such a landmark and so recognizable. All around there—The Sherry and the Pierre and Bergdorf's—all of those buildings are just iconic.
I wasn't entirely thrilled with the conversion of the Plaza Hotel [Ed. note: In the mid-2000s, the Plaza underwent a renovation, converting many of its hotel rooms into condominiums], but it's still a hotel, and the building remains unchanged, as does the Fountain where Zelda supposedly bathed and dipped herself back in the early, early twenties. It features in Fitzgerald's work pretty prominently, including the Great Gatsby, there's a whole scene set inside the plaza, with Tom Buchanan and Daisy and Gatsby. The Plaza also features heavily in his story, "the Rich Boy." I think of that as being the landmark of Fifth. The Plaza just is so freighted with symbolic significance, iconic significance that I would probably pick the Plaza.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about Fifth Avenue?
JS: Probably that it is only a street of great wealth and opulence. Obviously there are parts of Fifth Avenue that are absolutely not that way—there are business districts that have small businesses along it, there's affordable apartment buildings. It runs the gamut, just like New York does. People like to have shorthands for things, and a lot of times Fifth Avenue is a shorthand for 'rich' or 'wealth,' but I think that that's obviously a bit simplistic.
What’s your perfect day on Fifth?
JM: My perfect day is a fall day, wandering around either the Village or the Upper East Side—I could go either way, frankly, because sometimes it's so nice to be up there. I like to go to the Frick and look at some of the paintings there, including [by George] Romney. I used to go there and then I would go to Café Boulud, which for a very long time was in the Surrey Hotel, which is under new management and Café Boulud has moved. I do think that whole upper part of Manhattan, because I haven't lived there in a very long time, I like to visit and wander around and it does represent an aspect of New York living, which seems, I don't know, seems kind of old fashioned and kind of elegant.
JS: When New York is not 70 degrees, my perfect day would be a Saturday when I don't really have much to do and we can take a long walk. We live in Gramercy, so to walk up Fifth Avenue and pass the Flatiron and Madison Square Park and then go visit the museums along Museum Mile, maybe then walk across the park and have a lovely lunch and then walk home. That would be pretty great.
Assouline's Fifth Avenue: 200 Years of Stories and Legends is out now.
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