Exhibition Lecture: Mosette Broderick on the History of Fifth Avenue

In conjunction with the Grolier Club's exhibition Wish You Were Here: Guidebooks, Viewbooks, Photobooks, and Maps of New York City 1807-1940, Mosette Broderick, Clinical Professor of Art History in New York University's Faculty of Arts & Science, will speak on the history of Fifth Avenue. One of the most remarkable thoroughfares in the world, it appears on the Commissioners’ map of 1807 emerging from a country road and then in the proposed grid plan of 1811 as a major boulevard. By the late 1880s, Fifth Avenue was synonymous with a lavish fashionable life, grand mansions, and services catering to the wealthy. Above Washington Square, in the 1840s and 50s, mainly speculative brownstone rowhouses marched steadily northwards. Aggressive arrivistes such as Alva Vanderbilt and Marietta Stevens, meanwhile, employed European-influenced architects and decorators to build and furnish grand mansions in contrast to their brownstone neighbors.

And then, it was all gone. Swept away in the shadow of tall buildings, the New York house was no longer the ultimate symbol of identity. All that exquisite and substantial work quickly fell before the wrecker’s ball.

Professor Broderick's new book, Fifth Avenue, Architecture and Society: History of America's Street of Dreams (Unicorn), will be available for sale and signing at the event. Broderick, who is also the Director of the London MA Programme in Historical and Sustainable Architecture, has been a professor of architectural history and urban issues at NYU since 1989. She has also published Triumvirate: McKim Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal and Class in America's Golden Age, and wrote the history portion of another book, The Villard Houses: Life Story of a Landmark.

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Accessibility

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Environment

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