FIFTH   AVENUE
 

59
 

From a photograph.                                                                    Collection of The Fifth Avenue Bank.

54th  street  looking  WEST  FROM  FIFTH  AVENUE, 1867.
The dwelling on the left is No. 4 West 54th Street, now the home of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.,
and on the right is St. Luke's Hospital, now the site of the University Club and the Hotel
Gotham.

La Farge and Saint-Gaudens, and with its rectory cost about
$1,000,000. It was burned in 1906, and the present structure has
but recently been erected.

A landmark gone from Fifth Avenue is St. Luke's Hospital, which
occupied the block on the west side between 54th and 55th Streets,
where now is the home of the University Club, and near which stood
until 1861 the Public Pound. St. Luke's Hospital, built of red brick,
faced south, and consisted of a central edifice with towers. It was
opened, with three "Sister Nurses" and nine patients. May 13, 1858,
having cost $225,000. St. Luke's was the idea of the Rev. W. A.
Muhlenberg, D.D., Rector of the Church of the Holy Communion,
who had organized in 1845 the "Sisters of the Holy Communion,"
the first organization of Protestant Sisters of Charity in America.
He incorporated the hospital in 1850, with thirteen managers, and
opened beds in a house adjoining the Church of the Holy Communion
on Sixth Avenue and 21st Street. Here more than two hundred
patients were received prior to the erection of the Fifth Avenue build¬
ing. The funds for the new hospital were raised by public subscrip¬
tion. The hospital accommodated about two hundred patients.
The corner-stone of its present buildings, opposite the Cathedral of
St. John the Divine, on Morningside Heights, was laid May 6, 1893.

The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, long known as Dr. John
Hall's Church, has stood at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and
55th Street since 1875, at which time it moved from its old location at
19th Street and Fifth Avenue. Diagonally opposite, on the southeast
corner of 55th Street and Fifth Avenue, stands the St. Regis Hotel.

The block from 57th to 58th Streets, on the east side of th^ Avenue,
was known for years as the "Marble Row." The row was built by
Mrs. Mary Mason Jones, daughter of John Mason, a former president
 

St. Luke's
Hospital
and its
Fifth
Avenue Site
 

Fifth
Avenue
Presbyterian
Church

Romance of
the "Marble
Row**