Fifth Avenue

Once called America’s “Street of Dreams,” Fifth Avenue has gone through a myriad of architectural and societal transformations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Join Mosette Broderick on a journey through the avenue’s history, from its appearances on the Commissioners’ map of 1807 and the proposed grid plan of 1811, to chronicling how the speculative brownstone rowhouses that lined the avenue above Washington Square gave way to grand mansions designed by European-influenced architects and decorators as the center of the city marched northward. By the end of the 19th century, Fifth Avenue was synonymous with a lavish fashionable life catering to the wealthy. And then, as quickly as it was built, it was destroyed; the New York house was replaced by more modern architecture as the evolving city shifted again.

Mosette Broderick, Clinical Professor in the Department of Art History, New York University, is also the Director of the London MA Program in Historical and Sustainable Architecture.