Ladies' Mile History

The Ladies' Mile began in 1862 when A. T. Stewart moved his department store into a large white Venetian cast-iron palace at 9th Street, near Grace Church. The Stewart store has been demolished, but its extension, designed by D. H. Burnham in 1902 for John Wanamaker, survives at 9th Street.

Caryatid on 91-93 Fifth Avenue.

A bigger picture of Caryatid on 91-93 Fifth Avenue.

"I plead for decoration. Man is an ornamenting animal," Clifton Fadiman once wrote. Fadiman's sentiments are widely shared today. The building at the southwest corner of 11th Street, which has lost its exquisite window trimmings, cries out for restoration. It is the former St. Denis Hotel, designed by James Renwich Jr., in 1851, a few years before he received the commission to design St. Patrick's Cathedral. Historic figures from Abraham Lincoln to P. T. Barnum are said to have slept at the St. Denis. Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated the telephone to New Yorkers there in 1877. Even without its ornament (praised as a significant expression in terra cotta), the former St. Denis recalls historic moments of value to New York City. Across the street is the cast-iron palazzo of the former McCreery's, where the very finest silks were sold.
At 13th Street, like a terra cotta castle, is Stephen Hatche's 1893 design of the Roosevelt Building, formerly occupied by Hackett Carhart & Co., a clothing store which is now forgotten. Another building by Hatch, the former Gildsey House Hotel on Broadway at 29th Street, is already designated a landmark.

The Fifth Avenue Vista.

From a vantage point along the south side of Union Square, you can stop for a moment and enjoy the vista uptown. From here you can view the nearby McIntyre Building and the Metropolitan Life Tower and also the Empire State Building; and, on a clear day , you can see as far as Times Square. The views are not boxed off by other buildings, as they often are farther uptown.