In 1999 I bought Fifth Avenue, 1911 From Start to Finish when I was working at Borders Bookstore to add to my collection of books of historic photographs of New York.  As with all my other books, I looked through it a few times, imagined how incredibly beautiful Fifth Avenue must have been at the turn of the 20th century when Burton Welles took those block-by-block panoramas, then put it on the shelf.

 

Fast forward fifteen years.  One day I pulled Fifth Avenue, 1911 off the shelf to look at the pictures again when it suddenly dawned on me that 1911 was when my grandfather was born in Manhattan.  The son of Polish immigrants, he grew up in East Harlem where, according to my father and my uncle, he played stickball with Burt Lancaster.  These photos are what he and my great-grandparents would have seen walking down Fifth Avenue.  Then it occurred to me: I have a digital camera with photo-merging software.  I can recreate these block-by-block images myself.

 

I'm an avid photographer and have taken thousands of pictures of New York - monuments, skyscrapers, bridges, Central Park, views of the city, you name it - but this project was different.  Not only did I open a time capsule and see a by-gone era, I was creating my own time capsule of early 21st century New York for the future to see.  Every time I took the four pictures I needed to stitch together the panoramic photo, I marveled at how much of 1911 Fifth Avenue remains and was saddened by how much has been lost.  To be as precise as possible, I tried to stand in the exact same spots where Burton Welles had stood when he took the original photos and, in so doing, thought about him with his oversized wooden camera on a tripod, using large photo plates to create his panoramic shots.  Unlike Welles, however, I didn't take all my pictures in one day.  This collection actually took more than four years to complete.  Why, you ask?  One word - scaffolding.  I wanted the best possible views and sometimes waited years for the scaffolding to come down.  Whether it was the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral or many other structures, scaffolding is at times more ubiquitous than cabs.  Even after four years, there is still some which hasn't come down.  Another issue was traffic.  Some panoramas were very difficult to achieve because of it.  At some corners it was nearly impossible to take pictures without cars, trucks, taxis and/or buses stopping and getting in the shot.  In the end, I left them in where they were unavoidable, if only to show that Fifth Avenue is normally heavily congested.  During those four years, several buildings were demolished while others were cleaned or renovated.  Many businesses moved while others folded.  But one thing hasn’t changed, Fifth Avenue’s limitless energy.

​

I see Fifth Avenue differently now, having spent so much time walking up and down its sidewalks.  There are six sections, each with its own unique look and feel. From Washington Square to 14th Street you’ll find apartments, NYU buildings and housing, but few shops.  The Church of the Ascension and the Old First Presbyterian Church are the most prominent of the very few buildings that Burton Welles would recognize if he were alive today.  On the other hand, if Welles were to walk from 14th street to Madison Square Park, he’d feel as though no time had passed were it not for the cars.  Almost all the buildings along this stretch of Fifth Avenue had just been built when Welles photographed them, and luckily they've never succumbed to the wrecking ball.  Madison Square Park to 34th Street is currently undergoing a building boom, being part of the trendy NoMad neighborhood.  While several beautiful structures can still be admired, such as the Brunswick Building and No. 315, others have very recently been demolished.  Just south of East 30th Street, some of the last remaining brownstones that once stretched nearly the entire length of Fifth Avenue were removed.  At the time of my writing this introduction, No. 318 and No. 316 are currently being taken down.  They will all be replaced by tall, slender, glass and steel condominiums.  In 1931 the Empire State Building became the successor of the Hotel Waldorf Astoria and between it and the New York Public Library there is a surprising number of buildings still around since 1911, however once you get past 42nd Street very few structures from Welles’ time remain.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, starting at 47th Street, New York’s upper class would build their fabulous residences.  Names synonymous with wealth and power - Vanderbilt, Astor, Frick, Goelet, Huntington, to name but a few – tried to outdo each other by building opulent, French-style chateaux up and down Fifth Avenue.  Only a handful still exist, the rest having long since been removed and replaced with the modern high rises and luxury shops with which we associate Fifth Avenue today.  Three churches, however, did not suffer the same fate – St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Thomas Episcopal Church and the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.  The St. Nicholas Church at West 48th Street and the Brick Presbyterian Church at West 37th Street, unfortunately, are no more.  The Metropolitan Club and the Plaza Hotel still anchor Grand Army Plaza, however almost all the Gilded Age homes that once lined Fifth Avenue from 59th Street to 96th Street are gone, having been torn down to build luxury apartments with unobstructed views of Central Park.  Yet, you can still get an idea of what Fifth Avenue must have been like a hundred years ago. You need only to walk down many of the streets between Fifth and Madison.  Many fine examples of luxury brownstone and beaux-art architecture still stand there, having been purchased by private schools, foreign governments to house their missions to the United Nations or New York’s wealthiest residents.

​

This project has given me an appreciation for Fifth Avenue that I hadn’t felt since I came here for the first time with my family in the mid 1980’s.  Coming from Long Island, Manhattan was like a different planet with all the people and skyscrapers, but when I lived off Fifth Avenue from 2003-2006, I drove down it every day coming home from work.  It became an obstacle course I wanted to turn off of and pull into a parking lot as soon as possible.  Now that I’ve photographed every block, every building, it’s like an old friend I’ve gotten to know again.  Fifth Avenue isn’t just a street, it’s New York’s spine, its heart, its soul. Fifth Avenue is pedestrians and cars, Gilded Age mansions and modern apartment buildings, luxury hotels and art deco skyscrapers, shopping and tourism, churches and synagogues, noise and commotion, yesterday and today. 

 

And tomorrow?  I hope someone in the year 2118 will find these two collections of photographs and make a third volume in the Fifth Avenue, Block-by-Block series.  I can’t help but wonder which buildings will survive another hundred years and which won’t.  Will they look at the clothes people are wearing and the cars on the streets in my photos with the same sense of quaintness and nostalgia that I look at the photos from 1911?  Will there even be cars in 2118?  What will the street signs and traffic signals look like?  Will trolleys be brought back into use? Only time will tell.  But one thing is certain, Fifth Avenue’s importance to New York’s history and culture will never change.

 

Dominick Kosciuk

February 22nd, 2018