Valentine's manual of old New York

(New York :  Valentine's Manual Inc.,  1920.)

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VALENTINE'S MANUAL
"Reveries of a Bachelor" and Lower Fifth Avenue

Albert Ulmann

Ever since 1827 when the old Potter's Field was con¬
verted into the Washington Parade Ground a unique and
distinctly interesting character has attached to the neigh¬
borhood.

Readers of Henry James will readily recall Dr. Soper
who prescribed for the select members of the community
that were afflicted with real or imaginary ailments. The
Doctor had for a number of years lived in a pretentious
red brick house with granite copings and an enormous
fan-light over the door, standing in a street that was
within five minutes' walk of City Hall. This neighbor¬
hood, from the social point of view, saw its best days
about 1820. After this the tide of fashion began to set
steadily northwards. Naturally, the Doctor followed the
tide. In 1835, he built himself a handsome, modern, wide-
fronted house with a balcony before the drawing room
windows and a flight of white marble steps ascending to
a portal which was also faced with white marble. The
location was the north side of Washington Square, which,
as our author remarks, was the ideal of quiet and of gen¬
eral retirement. "This structure," he continues, "and
many of its neighbors, which it exactly resembled, were
supposed, forty years ago, to embody the last results of
architectural science, and they remain to this day very
solid and honorable dwellings. In front of them was
the Square, containing a considerable quantity of inex¬
pensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden paling, which
increased its rural appearance; and round the corner was
the more august precinct of Fifth Avenue, taking its
origin at this point with a spacious and confident air
which already marked it for high destinies.    I know not

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