76
 

FIFTH   AVENUE
 

From a photograph
 


 

Collection of J. Clarence Davies.

118th street and FIFTH AVENUE ABOUT 1880.
Fifth Avenue is the street shown on the left, with Mount Morris Park in the distance.

took an active part in obtaining the passage of the bill to secure the
land for the Park, and others that it took the name of Robert H.
Morris, mayor of New York City in 1841 and 1844, during whose
administration this Park was laid out. The City acquired title to
the property in 1839, paying $40,000 for it, and it has ever since been
maintained as a public park. It extends from 120th to 124th Streets,
directly in the line of Fifth Avenue, which has never been cut through
but is continued above the Park at 124th Street.
Two Old Beyond Mount Morris Park Fifth Avenue passed through the
Harlem old village of Harlem, which long maintained its corporate entity
Churches (Jistinct from the growing City of New York. In the middle of the
block on the west side of Fifth Avenue, between 126th and 127th
Streets, is Mount Morris Baptist Church. On the northeast corner of
Fifth Avenue and 127th Street is St. Andrew's Protestant Episcopal
Church, which goes back to the early days of this Republic. Among
the vestrymen were Aaron Clark, mayor of the City from 1837 to
1839, Lewis Morris, Edward Prime, Jacob Lorillard, Colonel James
Monroe, Archibald Watts, and members of the Blount, Sands, Ray,
Wilmerding, Slidell and Anderson families. In the vicinity of these
two churches clustered all the social life of Harlem, evidences of
which may still be seen in the fine old brownstone houses of earlier
days.
End of the Beyond these churches and private dwellings, Fifth Avenue con-
Avenue tinues among squalid surroundings for a few blocks to its end in the
made land which now covers the marshy meadows along the Harlem
River.