The continuous transformation of the city is perhaps as clearly indicated in its chief artery as on any other channel of transportation. Once the heart of social life it has become the greatest shopping center in the world.

Men tear and rend its buildings. Great holes gape in the ground, gaunt walls crumble daily under the attack of the wreckers. Scaffoldings surround many of its famous edifices. The old haunt of aristocracy is going through another of those metamorphoses which have so profoundly changed its appearance in the last fifty years. Never has Fifth Avenue shown so many signs of rapid alteration as now; nor is change by any means confined to one part of it. Near Washington Square the builders are at work. Only a few weeks ago the old Brevoort home disappeared to be replaced soon by an apartment house.

Above Forty-second Street tokens of a new era are abundantly visible. Delmonico's has disappeared; the Vanderbilt chateau is going; the beams of the Church of Heavenly Rest gape at the sky through broken roof and walls. Large stores are pushing further and further north. High buildings in that fantastic Babylonian outline which the new zoning laws sanction are springing up on the sites of old landmarks. Even the Waldorf-Astoria is yielding to the resistless influence of commerce and giving over a large part of its ground to shops. The Fifth Avenue of even ten short years ago is disappearing rapidly; while of the avenue of forty years ago there remains hardly a trace from Madison Square to the Plaza; such of its homes as are still left in this stretch are doomed. The change is more than physical. There is a difference in atmosphere. The leisurely charm of the old street has been routed by a more bustling spirit.

The dignity of wealth and cultured homes has been replaced by a gorgeous display calculated to make shopping irresistible, if one possess the price. The eye, at any rate, enjoys an unending pageant of luxury. The crash of demolition and the riveting of new structures constitute only a few of the symptoms; but they are activities which most quickly arrest the attention. Watching the old avenue disappear you pause, perhaps, to remember what a variety of life it has witnessed; how much social and political and financial history.

A different avenue it was in the '80s, when Ward McAllister held sway and New York's social life centered in Madison Square. That park was then thick with big trees. Its walks, were filled with well dressed women, with nurses and children from neighboring homes. Along the curbs stood long lines of hansom cabs, the popular vehicles of those days_ now almost lost, save where an occasional ancient cabby flicks a discouraged whip in the clouds of gasoline fumes. Those were rosy days for cab drivers. There were no meters and the rates were high. A homeward-bound gentleman who had been dining too well was likely to be charged enough to cover the maintenance of horse and cab for weeks. The pavements were of Belgian block, and over them rolled the fashionable equipages; landaus, victorias, phaetons, the last now chiefly remembered as having appeared in the title of a Kipling story. Through this old square, where the two principal thoroughfares of the town crossed, flowed the business and social life of New York. It was said then, as it has been said since, of many another street corner, that if one stood long enough at Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, one might see everybody of importance. Men drove downtown for business. Women rolled by on their shopping adventures. And people walked much more than they do now. You might there encounter men famous in New York's business history of the great '80s, when the country was growing by leaps and bounds, the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, Daniel Drew, Jim Fiske and many others whose names were on every one's lips.

Over the way was the old Fifth Avenue Hotel. Facing it, across the Square at Twenty-fifth Street, was the only slightly less famous Brunswick. They were of white stone and quite monumental in size for those days. Trees grew in front of them, and the shifting crowd made a picture almost Parisian. It was still the day of parasols. When the weather was warm, women with their wide flounced skirts, tight bodices and jaunty bonnets, mincing by under gayly colored sun shades, lent the charm of color to Fifth Avenue, dimmed by subsequent prevailing drabness. Recently, however, color has begun once more to be fashionable, so that the avenue blossoms again in things beautiful and weird. The men at that time had but lately discarded their old plum-colored and blue coats, substituting for them that conservatism in apparel which called for dark and shapeless garments. Who, even now, does not remember the old gentleman in his long coat and high hat, who clung to his paper collar and string tie long after they in turn had become passé?

In Fifth Avenue Commodore Vanderbilt, Robert Bonner, General Grant, Leonard Jerome, and other famous horsemen used to show off their favorite mounts. Then the trotting horses gave way to four-in-hands, to the tandem and the dogcart. Horses played as important a part in the life of Old New York as the automobile now. The fashionable drive was up to the avenue to the old Croton Reservoir at Forty-second Street and back again to Washington Square. This interest in horses led, a few years later, to the inauguration of the horse show. Madison Square Garden was opened in 1890. But in the '80s men used to meet at the St. James and discuss the merits of their horses over a pint of the best.

The Brunswick was also a favorite resort for such comparing of notes. From its doors tandems and four-in-hands were wont to start for a run to New Rochelle. They were a glittering sight, the passengers of those ancient wagons, in club suits of green decorated with brass buttons, the guard sounding the coach horn from the rear seat. In winter the avenue was filled with sleighs, their bells jingling merrily as New Yorkers were carried over the snow to their work or to Central Park, then a wilderness, with a royal skating pond in the center. "Those were real winters" of New Yorkers are fond of recalling. There was almost always skating before Christmas, it seems; but whether their recollection is made mellow by time or the winters then were actually colder is a matter of dispute. The first sleigh of the season to drive uptown to a certain famous old roadhouse would be rewarded with a bottle of fine wine or whiskey.

Those drives took one past corners bearing no resemblance to their present aspect. The home of August Belmont, containing his famous art gallery, was at Eighteenth Street; the home of John Jacob Astor was at Thirty-third, and that of William W. Astor at Thirty-fourth. On the opposite corner stood the famous marble mansion of A.T. Stewart. Traveling uptown one came to the William H. Vanderbilt home, at Fortieth Street; to the old Windsor Hotel at Forty-Sixth, and the Buckingham, still of recent memory, at Fiftieth. The avenue was lighted by gas, and through the windows of these homes could be seen the sparkle of huge and wondrous glass chandeliers. At night life centered in some of the clubs, which stood then near Madison Square, or further down the avenue near Fourteenth Street; in the homes also of the socially elect; in theatres near the Square, or in Delmonico's, the Brunswick and the Fifth Avenue Hotel. What throngs of celebrities might be seen abroad at hours when New York fared forth to open the evening. Horace Greeley, Isaac Bull, Hamilton Fish, Thurlow Weed, John A. Dix, Henry Clews, William R. Travers, "Tom" Platt (who founded the Amen Corner in the Fifth Avenue Hotel), Samuel J. Tilden in his famous plug hat, Roscoe Conkling, Mark Twain, Edwin Booth, Cyrus W. Field, William Cullen Bryant.

There was one room in the old Fifth Avenue Hotel which was famous for a custom handed down to the present day in a more completely developed form and with an enlarged technique; a custom that finds its opportunities in many more places than were available in the '80s. On the second floor was a room called the "ladies' room," where, at any hour of the afternoon or evening one might see ardent young couples engaged in earnest whispered conversation. Many a proposal was made in the "ladies' room"; many a romance was born in that quiet and dignified seclusion. Society found much of its diversion in Delmonico's; for whether it was there that Ward McAllister formed the "400," or in the ballroom of Mrs. William Astor, the social leader of the day, Delmonico's was the place above all others where society dined and danced." (1) Russell Owen, New York "Times" Magazine, p.14.

The story of the "400" is the story of Fifth Avenue of that time. It was devised to exclude some of those who had climbed, fought or bought their way into the circles of the socially exclusive. New York was growing apace. The wealth of the great newly developed empire of the West was flowing into it, and bringing with it men and women who aspired to place the city at their feet, or at least to find a way to get in near somebody's footstool. The former placid ways of New York social life were disappearing under the pressure of the invasion; and Ward McAllister's dictum came at the psychological moment. Most of the theatres, the old Madison Square, back of Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Lyceum and others were within a stone throw of Madison Square in those days. North of this, square brownstone dwellings stretched as far as the Cathedral in an almost unbroken front. Their old high stoops and stone steps were done away with when the avenue was widened in recent years.

 The entire upper reach of Fifth Avenue, between Thirty-fourth and Fifty-seventh streets, became in a few years a church center, thus giving rise to the Easter parades and fashion shows to witness which people flocked from afar. The people who made the parades famous do not often walk there now, though the parades continue. "Such was the avenue, a quietly charming street, where homes predominated, though commerce was even then beginning to insinuate itself, particularly below Twenty-third Street. Of all the homes that existed then between Thirty-fourth and Forty-second streets, only one remains, the square unpretentious house built by John Gottlieb Wendell, at Thirty-ninth Street. Its dark shuttered windows make it an object of curiosity to all who see it for the first time, so strange an anachronism is it, but the house will stand as long as Mr. Wendell's sisters elect occasionally to return to it, and the yard will remain too, that million-dollar yard, which was kept so that the dog might have a place to play."

Fifth Avenue is today a vivid, vibrant street, lined with all that is beautiful in art, with the handiwork of the artificer in jewels and precious metals, gay with rugs of the East, with delicate and shining fabrics, a great Old World bazaar in modern guise, where each object is set in its window case like a rare pearl. Precious things from the markets of Europe and Asia stream into the shops of the avenue. The exhibition of these things has become an art in itself. And then there are the structures. Stewart's first store was at Broadway and Chambers Street; later he daringly moved all the way uptown to Eighth Street. Folks always shake their heads when some sagacious person moves farther uptown. They used to call the Fifth Avenue Hotel "Eno's Folly." When a few merchants shifted over to Fifth Avenue there was much croaking and prognostication of failure. When A.T. Stewart built his downtown emporium, Fifth Avenue was a cow pasture for most of its length, a realm of swamp and running brook. Now it is the greatest shopping center in the world, and its fame is greater than that of Bond Street or Rue de la Paix. From Madison Square, where a huge business building stands on the site of Franconi's Circus and the old Fifth Avenue Hotel, one may walk north past bookshops, little specialty shops, great silk and fur hourses, department stores, where every luxury is offered, and where buyers with modest purses may find what they want, too.

Where the famous Coventry Waddell home stood, a gray Gothic structure in which Thackeray stayed after what he called "a long drive into the country," is now a department store. Another big store covers the ground on which was once the William H. Vanderbilt home. A bank occupies the site of Sarsaparilla, Townsend's home. Where the Public Library is the Croton Reservoir used to be. The Waldorf-Astoria replaces the Waldorf and Astor homes. August Heckscher was asked recently what he remembered of the Fifth Avenue of the '80s. "I don't remember the '80s as well as I do the '70s," he said. "In the '70s one could buy a lot on the avenue for $10,000. Last year the value of Fifth Avenue real estate between Thirty-fourth and Fortieth streets was estimated to be more than $71,000,000. The old Wendell place alone, the only remaining residence, is valued at more than $2,000,000."

Above Forty-second Street a new sort of life is coming to the avenue. Here are huge office buildings. Above Fifty-ninth Street the pioneer homes remain; but all about them soar vast apartment houses. In the park appears the imposing art museum. All these are comparatively recent. Where the trotting horses of earlier days paced on their way to Harlem, now wend thousands of automobiles, turning the broad avenue into a main artery of traffic. Where the old stage coaches with gayly painted Indians rolled, double-deck buses pass. The avenue hums with life. The placidity of the old is no more. It is not likely to return until, perhaps. Macaulay's traveler sits on the ruins of the library and gazes on a vanished civilization. There are those who mourn the old days, but there is no denying that Fifth Avenue is the most brilliant thoroughfare of its kind, unique among the shopping centers of the world.